Healing from the Center: Decolonizing the Self and Our Communities

Saturday, November 14, 2009

8:30 am – 4:00 pm.

University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Hemenway Courtyard (“Manoa Gardens”)

LINK TO WEBSITE AND REGISTRATION

Healing is a process of taking back control for our selves, our communities and the land. This conference is a way for participants to deal with different forms of violence that are the results of colonization and to move forward. Real healing begins from the center of each individual and is created through dialogue that changes how we relate to one another while working to decolonize our selves in hope of a better world.

Keynotes: Monisha Das Gupta, Ha`aheo Guanson

Workshops featuring women activists: Terri Keko`olani, Angela Cruz, Kisha Borja, Grace Caligtan, Jennifer Rose, Gigi Miranda and many, many more!

The general timeframe will be as follows (subject to minor changes):

8:30-900: registration

9:00-10:00: opening remarks and ceremony (ha’aheo guanson, darlene rodrigues, monisha dasgupta, ceje organizers)

10:00-12:00: breakout workshops (five simultaneous)

12:00-12:45: lunch

12:45-1:30/1:45: reflections and strategy panel (facilitated; report back from each workshop/sharing)

1:45-2:15: closing words/ceremony (darlene rodrigues)

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Workshop Brief Descriptions:

1) Pacific Women and Demilitarization Struggles

–Perspectives from women activists on organizing strategies, political analysis, personal and spiritual insights on demilitarization and decolonization work at various sites in the Pacific, especially with respect to environmental, economic, political, and cultural sovereignty and justice.

2) Strategic Storytelling

–Situating and practicing the use of narrative and the sharing of our personal/political stories in order to create social change and foster intergenerational, multidimensional levels of healing, reconciliation, recovery of genealogies, and the creation of new possibilities.

3) Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking: Transnational Perspectives on Violence Against Women

–Creative, locally-based, grassroots analyses and strategies of social change and the transformation of social norms impacting gender-based violence, and violence against women as it manifests within and between national/international borders.

4) Health, Race, Poverty and the Law

–Critical perspectives identifying the intersections of race, class, and gender subordination in specific communities, especially with respect to the role of the state, the law, and other institutions of power in exploiting these intersections in ways that concretely and severely affect women in communities of color in very specific ways.

5) Environmental Justice

–Context-specific analysis and strategies on achieving environmental justice in the midst of conditions of pervasive militarism and a highly unequal capitalist economic system in illegally occupied Hawaii.

Sponsored by the Collective for Equality, Justice and Empowerment

Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ceje/Home.html

Contact information:  ceje@hawaii.edu

Co-Sponsors: Third Path Movement for Reproductive Justice, American Friends Service Committee – Hawai`i, GiRL FeST Hawai`i, Pacific Justice & Reconciliation Center, Hands In Helping Out, UHM SAPFB

Flyer & Artwork: Kamran Samimi / kamransamimi@gmail.com / http://kamransamimi.com

MESSAGE FROM ANN MARIE KIRK

Drum for our Sacred Cultural Sites throughout Hawai’i Nei

Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 6pm

Aloha,

The kahea, the call, from Hawea Heiau complex to drum for the proper protection, respect and care for all our sacred cultural sites in Hawai’i nei and the call to drum to honor our kupuna and their presence at all these sites has been heard throughout Hawai’i and worldwide.

The kahea has brought a ripple effect reaching supporters from many places in the world. It is a simple kahea with no expectations. All those who choose to participate are given the freedom to choose their special place and to focus on creating a positive environment to ask the ancestors for guidance.

Those who support our effort will use the pahu, their ipu, ohe pu or whatever instrument they need to join us and this can be as simple as tapping gently over their heart, but most importantly they come with the beat of their hearts, the beat that unites us all as Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians.

We also unite together and drum to let the State Historic Preservation Department hear that throughout our islands we have lost faith in their ability to properly protect and respect our precious and priceless cultural areas. A change must come.

In less than a week we have received responses from many that the beat of the drum on Saturday, Nov. 7th will be taking place in sites around the world including:

Bora Bora, Tahiti

Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Australia

Guatemala

Mexico

At Union Square New York City, New York

San Francisco, California

Ojai, California

New Mexico

Colorado

Oregon

Native American Tribes drumming with us include:

Shumash

Anisnebe

At 6pm on Saturday, as the drumming begins, wherever you are, and even if you are by yourself at your sacred site, please know you are not alone but united with someone else in Hawai’i nei, or around the the world. As Auntie Nani and Auntie Louise sound the pahu for our kupuna iwi ‘o Naue on Kaua’i, the sound of drums will reverberate through Union Square in New York City and the sound will unite us with our friends in Mexico who will be drumming with us.

We will all be connected at all our sacred sites.

In Guatemala, when they heard about the kahea, they emailed us to let us know they will drum too, “ . . . in Guatemala many of our sacred sites are also in danger. Together we can have a strong voice.”

And to quote Auntie Louise from Kaua’i, “The drums will beat to unite us all in our belief and cause. We will be drumming to make sure they receive proper protection, care and respect.”

Please feel free to contact us after the drumming takes place on November 7th to share your thoughts and feelings about what this has meant to your cultural and sacred site.

Our kupuna are with us always, in the sky, the land, the sea and in our hearts and we will fight to make sure they know we are with them and we have not forgotten how important they are to all of us – Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian.

Aloha,

Ann Marie Kirk, Liveable Hawai’i Kai Hui

Chris Cramer, Liveable Hawai’i Kai Hui, East O’ahu Historian

Kaleo Paik, Cultural Keeper

haweaheiau@gmail.com

Drum for our Sacred Cultural Sites throughout Hawai’i Nei

Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 6pm

Hawea

The drums of Hawea were silenced,

Years of neglect caused its demise.

A once prominent wahipana,

Reduced to rubble and ruin,

Scarred pohaku caused by ignorance,

Left in a pile of disgrace.

A pohaku canvas paints

The history of those long gone.

Sacred `aina used, as was pono,

To build a kauhale, heiau,s

Sacred enclosures for our people,

To come and pay respect.

The essence of the spirit within Hawea

Calls out to be heard.

The vibration echoing the pulse

Of those who have made a stand.

For the sanctity of the Pahu,

The drum to unite us all.

By: Linda Kaleo-o-kalani Paik August, 2009

Please forward to others. Mahalo.

One of the most important writers to come out of the Asian American community, Jon Shirota will be in Hawai‘i for four events in November 2009:

“An Okinawan Sense of Place,” a talk and discussion, Thursday, Nov. 5, 3–4:30 p.m., room 410, Kuykendall Hall (English department), UH Manoa campus.

Opening of his play Voices from Okinawa. Thursday, Nov. 5, Kumu Kahua Theatre, 46 Merchant St., downtown Honolulu.

“Akisamiyo! From a Pig Farmer to a Writer,” a talk at UH-West Oahu, Monday, Nov. 9, 5–6:30 p.m., beginning with a reception at 4 p.m. This free event is part of the Chancellor’s Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by the UHM Center for Okinawan Studies.

A Celebration of Jon Shirota, Friday, Nov. 13, 7:00-9:00pm at Kapiolani Community College Ohia Cafeteria. Event & Parking are FREE!

WHAT? A Conversation with and Celebration of Jon Shirota!!

WHERE? KapiolaniCC Ohia Cafeteria – http://www.kcc.hawaii.edu/object/ohiamap.html

WHY? This is an opportunity for the Uchinanchu community to come out and honor Jon Shirota, something we have not yet done. If not now, then when?!?

7:00 pm: A Conversation w/ Jon Shirota, followed by Q&A

8:00 pm: A Celebration of Jon Shirota

The Okinawan community will be thanking and honoring Jon with music and dance.

We’ll have Norman Kaneshiro, Jimpu Kai U.S.A. Kin Ryosho Ryukyu Geino Kenkyusho, Okinawa Minyo Kyokai Wakugawa Dojo Derek Ichiro Shiroma Kenkyusho, Tamagusuku Ryu Senjukai Frances Nakachi Ryubu Dojo and a Shishimai performed by Jon Itomura and Eric Nitta.

9:00 pm, Jon will be signing books. Bring your old copies of Lucky Come Hawaii or the new Voices from Okinawa book to get them autographed.

Copies of Voices from Okinawa ($20) will be on sale that night. UH Press printed around 1,000 copies of this and are not planning on printing more! Make sure you get a copy of this wonderful book before it is too late (and get it signed by Jon Shirota and editor Frank Stewart!). More info at: http://manoaokinawaissue.wordpress.com/

FOOD OPTION: You can pre-order a bento and water from Off the Wall (cost $8). Please provide your full name, order and phone number via pigsfromthesea@gmail.com or 734.9562 by the close of Wednesday 11.11 to place an order.

About Jon Shirota

Shirota was born in Peahi, Maui, in 1928. His father immigrated to Hawai‘i from Ginoza Village, Okinawa, in 1907, and his mother immigrated from Kanna Village in 1910. Upon graduating from Brigham Young University in Utah, he worked as a U.S. Treasury agent. In 1963, he was invited to the Handy Writers’ Colony, where he completed Lucky Come Hawaii, the first of his three published novels. His plays have been produced in Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. He has received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American College Theater Festival, the Los Angeles Actors Theater Festival of One Acts, the Los Angeles County Cultural Affairs Department, and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.