Airlines, cruise ships and resorts all tout the exotic Hawaii vacation, where anyone can escape from reality, be “Hawaiian” and partake in the “aloha spirit.” In actuality, tourists are buying only a parody - a gross perversion of meaningful and complex cultural practices, neatly packaged and available for purchase at your hotel gift shop. This tourism industry is built on a carefully constructed fantasy of our culture, land and people that explicitly appeals to White tourists while ignoring the realities we face as Native Hawaiians. Just seven years after statehood, the number of visitors had doubled, catalyzing a shift in the economy from sugar to tourism.
These events may sound distant, but my father was born before Hawaii became a state in 1959.Ĭolonialism continues to manifest in Hawaii through tourism.
government has acknowledged that Native Hawaiians have been deprived of our rights to self-determination and never directly relinquished our sovereignty or lands. to illegally overthrow the sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. In their quest to consolidate political and economic power, White businessmen colluded with the U.S. He was commissioned to find new territories to build wealth for the British Empire, and this came at the expense of the Hawaiian people: Disease decimated the population, the land was sold to White settlers, and cultural practices were condemned as “savage” and outlawed. But mainlander travel to Hawaii puts Native Hawaiians at risk and is another example of how the Hawaiian people are routinely exploited in the name of economic and colonial interests.Ĭolonialism, which is defined as the subjugation and economic exploitation of one group of people by another, began in Hawaii in 1778 when Capt. This change in regulations, which has drawn criticism from Hawaii’s mayors, has caused the state to have an influx of visitors. After months of being confined indoors, Californians are eager for a vacation, and a month ago, Hawaii, which 2.6 million Californians visited last year, began allowing out-of-state visitors to bypass a mandatory 14-day quarantine if they tested negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours of arrival.
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