The University of Hawaii at Manoa is welcoming the public to an all-day event Tuesday in honor of two occasions: the seventh annual National Day of Racial Healing and 130 years since the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom.
The event, called Hawai‘i Ku‘u Home Aloha, will include a series of activities that aim to build connections within the community, aligning with UH Manoa’s commitment as a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center. The day’s focus will be on Hawaii residents’ stories and experiences from the past and present and how they may be applied to better Hawaii’s future.
“One thing we all have in common is that we all call Hawaii home,” UH’s Native Hawaiian Affairs program officer, Kaiwipunikauikawekiu Punihei Lipe, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” livestream program. “I want to invite us to think about — no matter where we are, where we come from, our original ethnicities and cultures — if we’re in Hawaii and Hawaii is taking care of us, how do we work together to take care of her back?”
UH Manoa applied to become a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center in 2017 to advance its efforts in caring for the natural environment and community well-being as a whole.
It is one of 25 TRHT campuses nationwide, appointed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. They all share the mission to “prepare the next generation of strategic leaders and thinkers to break down racial hierarchies and dismantle the belief in the hierarchy of human value,” according to the UH Manoa website.
Issues such as the climate crisis were brought on because modern practice normalized disconnecting from cultural values and practices such as those belonging to the Native Hawaiians, Lipe told “Spotlight Hawaii.” In Hawaii the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy was one of the many events that initiated that disconnect, she said.
“The overthrow affects every single one of us,” Lipe said. “It deeply affects Native Hawaiians in many profound ways, but it also affects every single one of us, whether we’re aware of it or not.”
Lipe hopes that the community can begin finding solutions to larger community issues, like cultural disconnect and the climate crisis, by setting differences aside and focusing on ways to relate to one another.
“There are many, many hard conversations to be had,” Lipe said. “Isn’t it easier to go into a conversation, into a hard space, when we have some kind of mutual respect for our connections as human beings?”
The Tuesday event will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and also will include a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. in its noon activity.
Those who are interested in attending are encouraged to register online at the UH event’s website at bit.ly/3QFYAJS, where they also can learn more about the day’s events.
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Linsey Dower covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
