A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

In Rodney Morales’s 2002 novel When the Shark Bites, former PKO activist
Kanani Rivera’s native consciousness is reawakened during her participation in a
procession commemorating the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy:
I can’t concentrate on the proceedings. My mind wanders. And then there’s the
chanting. I feel the beating of my heart, my sovereign heart. Feel it in my na’au,
stemming from my piko, my center. My pulse is the chanting. Whether I like it or
not, I am part of this, I am…part of this. And we are…making history. We are
mocking history. We’re turning history on its sorry ass. 404
Kanani had retreated from the still-emergent movement in 1976, disappointed with
friction and power games. The centenary of 1993 provided Hawaiians with a new chance
for commonality and community. The movement gained an unknown momentum, which
may well have been due to the pooled mana of its native supporters.
In the face of a strengthened and viable sovereignty movement, non-natives are
increasingly realizing the precarious ground on which their claims to belonging rest.
Their ambiguity will be further analyzed in chapters 5.4.3 and 5.4.4 which negotiate the
significance of place in Local literature. An explicit and self-aware position is
exemplified by Reshela DuPuis’ following statement:
As is the case for most non-Hawaiians who call these islands home, however, my
connection to this place is primarily a result of the illegal, armed overthrow of the
legal, internationally-recognized, constitutional monarchy of the sovereign Nation
of Hawai’i by the United States of America. Although in significant ways I am a
beneficiary of American colonialism in the Pacific, […] I am committed to the
struggle of Native Hawaiians to regain their lands and sovereignty. 405
404 Rodney Morales, When the Shark Bites, Honolulu 2002: 157. Na’au in Hawaiian means intestines, the
place where intelligence is located, while piko is the navel.
405 DuPuis 1997: 5.
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