Hawai I Quotes

“We, the Hawaiian people, who are born from the union of Papahanaumoku and Wakea, earth mother and sky father, and who have lived in these islands for over 100 generations, will always have the moral right to the lands of Hawai'i now and forever, no matter what any court says.”
― Lilikalā K. Kame'eleihiwa

“Land meant something different in Hawai'i then it did in California. People here said the word with a kind of worship in their voices.”
― Clemence McLaren

“They took our land, then they took our water. But Hawaiians lost more then that. The haole took away our pride. They called us 'natives'. They told us our language was no good, that our gods were evil.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“We gave away our land and our water-ka wai ola, our life source. But we forgot to tell the haole they should love then like we do. That the streams are our brothers. That the earth is our mother.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“We used to grow taro, bananas, sweet potato. Now we grew headstones.
The only remaining place where Hawaiians were still a majority was in the
cemetery. We were a species on the brink of extinction.”
― Jasmin Iolani Hakes, Hula

“In Hilo, we are the `āina. Its mist is our breath, its rain our tears, its
waters our blood.
Our veins run deep, our song louder than their noise. Roots too deep to
extract. That’s the thing about hula. Burn your books, rewrite your history,
build walls, plant flags. Hula is written within the swirls of our feet. It’s our
umbilical cord, our pulse. Our battle cry, our death rattle, our moment of
conception. The chants are archived in the stars. Hula is the heat rising from
within our volcanoes. It is the pull of the tides, the beat of the surf against
our cliffs. It is our hair, our teeth, our bones. Our DNA.
You can steal a kingdom, but the kingdom will never belong to you”
― Jasmin Iolani Hakes, Hula