Just had to post this. Melissa Leina'ala Haa Moniz, You should know that one of our resos that failed this past ahcc convention was drafted by Tom Coffman He wrote about Stevens, Blaine, Seward and others planning 40 years before 1893 to orchestrate takeover of the Hawaiian Islands. The reso was meant to call attention to the fact that many people wrongly think the overthrow came about because of the actions of the Committee of Safety, almost a local kind of response to the actions of the Queen at the time. It was written to challenge the understanding of history through a narrow lens. I moved to adopt the reso and the very first question that came to me was "is Tom Coffman Native Hawaiian?" And second question, "did he work with Native Hawaiians?" And third comment, "Are his writings credible?" But not one person questioned the content of the reso. Tom Coffman is a longtime newspaper reporter and researcher, an author (The Occupation of the Hawaiian Nation) and a video/film maker. No one cared what the reso said. The content pretty much echos this article cited in nupepa-hawaii, and it failed because the "facts" should have had more citations and should possibly have included Native Hawaiian authors. But really, i think, it failed because our club submitted it. As a teacher, i consider such actions part of a 'dumbing down' of Hawaiians. How sad is that? Standard m.o. for keeping Hawaiians, especially civic club Hawaiians, stupid. Yikes!
No comments:
Post a Comment