Category Archives: Jere’s Soapbox

Miss Aloha’s Mana o – On protecting the iwi (bones) and the oiwi (Hawaiians)

I’m quite sure I’ve never been within 5 miles of Ms. Lana, and by the look of it, I’ll never get within 2000 miles of her any time soon:

http://starbulletin.com/2002/07/18/editorial/letters.html

“If Jere Krischel is not careful I will be filing a permanent restraining order against him”

Well, I certainly have no desire to come within 5 miles of you, so if you’d just like to pretend there is already a restraining order in place, I think we’ll get along just fine :).

If she would also be so kind as to post the articles of incorporation for her “Hawaiian Foundation, Inc.”, I will retract my assertion that it is not an official non-profit organization. I assume she can provide information as to whether or not it is a 501c3 tax exempt organization, or some other non-tax exempt non-profit, and which state it is incorporated in.

The I Have a Dream Speech – The U.S. Constitution Online – USConstitution.net

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

One can only hope this dream will be true in Hawaii someday, when children are not kept out of schools because of their race, and people are not given special privileges based on their race.

HAWAIIAN REFORESTATION PROGRAM FOUNDATION

Excellent article on the suffering imposed upon the commoners by ali’i during the sandalwood trade.

The kingdom was passed on to Kamehameha III along with a huge debt of $500,000 owed to the American traders. The pressure on the king was great. In December 1826, the kingdom’s first written law, a sandalwood tax, stated that every man was required to deliver one-half picul of sandalwood to the governor of the district to which he belonged, or to pay, in lieu thereof, four Spanish dollars, on or before September 1, 1827. Every woman 13 years and older was required to hand weave a 12 foot by 6 foot mat, or a quantity of tapa cloth of equal value. All the taxes collected were applied to the kingdom’s sandalwood debts. Again commoners were forced to abandon their crops, and food shortages plagued the islands. The accessible sandalwood was all gone, making it more difficult to locate trees with adequate heartwood to meet the new tax requirements.

Unjust demands caused so much toil for the commoners, carrying the heavy wood down the mountain trail, that they pulled up the young sandalwood trees, so that their children would not be forced to live the same life.