A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

matters Hawaiian. “We are native Americans too. What must we do to hear from you?” 551
At the same time, he was said to be gathering evidence of high-level political corruption
in connection with the sugar industry, but the fatal last landing on Kaho’olawe
intervened.
In his biographical elegy/eulogy for Helm, Rodney Morales views death at sea as
fitting, relating a dream Helm once had, “being in the ocean as if I was a part of it, like I
belonged to the water […] to return to my mother’s womb – warm, secured, fearless, and
contented.” 552 In Morales’ tribute collection of songs, poetry, and essays, the making of a
Local hero, a legend in our times, can be traced: to further Helm’s association with
ancient Hawaiian mythology, the traditional name and meaning of Kaho’olawe (translated
as “the taking away by currents”) is invoked: Kohe Malamalama o Kanaloa, “the shining
vagina of Kanaloa,” the sea god’s receptive place of nourishment and resuscitation. The
“native son so true” 553 has entered the womb of the sea in order to be born again. Two
weeks after his death, Hawaiians gathered throughout the islands to celebrate his 27 th
birthday. By the time of the tribute collection, 1984, an agreement had been signed with
the U.S. navy about access, erosion control, ordnance removal, and the protection of
archeological sites. Several heiau and numerous petroglyphs had been found on the
island, and the Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana (PKO) was currently occupied with
revegetation, symbolic settlement and the conduction of religious ceremonies. As Noa
Emmett Aluli, founding member of the PKO, rightly stated, “the lives of George and
Kimo have inspired many to advocate greater self-determination for Hawaiians through
access and use rights of alienated lands on every island.” 554 More fundamentally, the
mysterious deaths have functioned as a wake-up call for people with Hawaiian blood,
helping to create a defiant pride in being Hawaiian, and entailing many personal journeys
of ethnic rediscovery. 555
551 Letter to President Carter, quoted in Morales 1984: 66.
552 Morales 1984: 32. Looking at a map of the Hawaiian islands, one can easily follow the activists’
interpretation of Maui’s, Kaho’olawe’s and Molokini’s shape and relative position as an ample mother
figure bending toward her foetal child, the cut umbilical cord floating between them.
553 Morales 1984: 44, taken from Malani Bilyeu: “Ballad of George Helm.”
554 Ibid.: 108.
555 Richard Hamasaki mentions the typical example of the poet Wayne Westlake (1947-1984), who became
an advocate on land rights. Before his native consciousness was startled into activism, “his awareness as a
native Hawaiian had been suppressed, neglected and even denied” (quoted from Hall 1985: 99).
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