(c) Copyright 2002, Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved
PROFESSOR TRASK'S GENERAL ATTITUDE REGARDING HAWAIIAN HISTORY, AMERICA, RACISM, AND RIGHTEOUS ANGER
Haunani-Kay Trask is former chairperson and current Professor at the Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa (the flagship campus). She writes and speaks with a fiery passion that intimidates opponents and often frightens even her allies. Her language drips with hatred toward America, and anti-white racism. Yet she was born in California and thus is an American citizen and immigrant to Hawai'i! She has some white ancestors (perhaps half her ancestry), and her long-time live-in lover is a white immigrant from America who is a professor of American Studies.
Nearly everyone says her views are extreme, and most sovereignty activists publicly disavow her. But privately she is applauded by both the racial separatists and the ethnic nationalists. The simple truth is that the views Professor Trask espouses so vehemently are the same views held quietly by nearly all sovereignty activists of both varieties. Most of the activists exercise restraint in their rhetoric either because they lack Professor Trask's courage or because they exercise careful prudence in public relations to preserve the image of Hawaiians as peaceful, welcoming, and filled with aloha. Many sovereignty activists, especially those seeking racial separatism inside the U.S. in a tribal model, say in public that they disagree with Trask. But in reality what they disagree with is Trask's honesty, aggressiveness, and publicly expressed anger.
It must be noted, of course, that most ethnic Hawaiians are not sovereignty activists. Most Hawaiians are happy to be Americans. They do not want racial separatism. They enjoy living, working, and praying side by side with everyone else in Hawai'i's multiracial society.
Professor Trask vacilates between racial separatism and ethnic nationalism. Her most famous speech was delivered extemporaneously at 'Iolani Palace in January 1993 at a huge protest rally commemorating the 100th anniversasry of the overthrow of the monarchy. In that speech she proudly asserted the independence theme, saying "I am NOT an American. I am NOT an American. I will DIE before I am an American ..." (Unfortunately the speech is not available for this webpage.) But on other occasions she seems to support the tribal model of racial separatism. For example, she supported the original version of the Native Hawaiian Recognition bill, S.2899 in the 106th Congress, which was forwarded to the 107th Congress as S.81. But regardless of her ambivalence between racial separatism and ethnic nationalism, Professor Trask firmly endorses all their common core attitudes.
The common core attitudes held by all sovereignty activists and angrily stated by Professor Trask include the following. White sailors from England who "discovered" Hawai'i in 1778 brought diseases which wiped out 95% of the native Hawaiians. White missionaries from America "forced" native Hawaiians to adopt religious views contrary to native culture, and smoothed the way for colonialism. White businessmen from America colonized Hawai'i and eventually conspired with the U.S. government to overthrow the native government. The United States staged an armed military invasion in 1893 which overthrew the monarchy, and established a puppet regime. After a few years the puppet regime was able to get Hawai'i annexed to the United States despite a written protest signed by nearly all ethnic Hawaiians. The puppet regime both before and after annexation made Hawaiian language illegal and suppressed the native Hawaiian culture. Hawai'i is now under military occupation by the United States. Native Hawaiians are oppressed and their culture is trivialized by a tourist industry using it to reap huge profits.
If someone truly believes his native land has been colonized, invaded, and forcibly annexed by a foreign country whose people are of a different race, he would naturally be angry against that country and race. If the land, culture, and language were stolen, the thieves should pay reparations, and be punished and deported. If the foreign occupier takes over huge portions of the homeland for use as military bases, and conducts military training activities that burn and pollute the sacred land, and stations nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of troops on those bases for many decades, the natives become bitter and feel justified in doing whatever it takes to expel the occupier from their homeland. If the natives are brothers to the land and both the natives and the land are descended from the gods, then the natives are entitled to racial supremacy in land "ownership" and management.
Professor Trask has some interesting essays in her slim volume: "From a Native Daughter" (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1993 second printing somewhat revised in 1999). Four of the essays are: (1) "What Do You Mean ‘We', White Man?" (2) "Racism Against Native Hawaiians at the University of Hawai'i: A Personal and Political View" (3) "The Politics of Academic Freedom as the Politics of White Racism," (4) "Native Student Organizing: the Case of the University of Hawaii." In these four essays Professor Trask says there can never be full partnership between whites and Hawaiians; there is severe white racism against ethnic Hawaiians at the University of Hawai'i; the concept of academic freedom is is a bourgeoisie white intellectual construct designed to allow whites to analyze and criticize natives and native culture and thereby to continue to oppress natives; and it's entirely appropriate for ethnic Hawaiian students to engage in identity politics by supporting only ethnic Hawaiian candidates for student government offices.
Professor Trask's definition of "racism" is found in a sort of glossary near the end of the book: "A historically created system of power in which one racial/ethnic group dominates another racial/ethnic group for the benefit of the dominating group; economic and cultural domination as well as political power are included in this systematic dominance of the exploiting group ... " Readers should consider that definition while pondering the kind of future envisioned for Hawai'i under the proposals of the sovereignty independence activists, who see a two-tier system of citizenship where only ethnic Hawaiians have full voting rights and property rights while all others are second-class citizens. These proposals for an ethnic nationalist independent nation of Hawai'i are clearly racist according to Professor Trask's own definition of that word. For analysis, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/racistdemands.html
Professor Trask also offers a definition of "righteous anger" which helps explain why she and her supporters at the Center for Hawaiian Studies feel perfectly justified in intimidating UH professors, staff, and students who disagree with the CHS party line: righteous anger is "the emotional/psychological response of victims of racism/discrimination to the system of power that dominates/exploits/oppresses them. Righteous anger is not racism; rather, it is a defensible response to racism." Some of that "righteous anger" is contained in the speeches below.
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A PHOTOGRAPH OF PROFESSOR TRASK, AND BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT HER ACADEMIC BACKGROUND AND PUBLICATIONS, CAN BE FOUND AT:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/TraskBio.html
ON JUNE 25, 2003 THE NATIONALLY CIRCULATED FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED A LENGTHY ARTICLE DESCRIBING HAUNANI-KAY TRASK AS A "HATE AMERICA PROFESSOR." LATER, THE ON-LINE MAGAZINE ADDED HER TO ITS ROGUES' GALLERY AND PUBLISHED A PROFILE OF HER BASED ON THE ARTICLE. BOTH THE ARTICLE AND THE PROFILE CAN BE SEEN AT:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/traskfrontpagemag062503.html
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PROFESSOR TRASK'S PUBLISHED LETTER TO STUDENT JOEY CARTER, SEPTEMBER, 1990
In September 1990 white undergraduate Joey Carter wrote a letter published in the student newspaper complaining about the perjorative use of the word "haole." The word "haole" originally was a neutral term meaning "foreigner" or "outsider", and was not specifically racial. Today it has come to mean "white person" and is used as a self-description by many local people who are white. But as used by Professor Trask and some others, the word is highly perjorative and directed specifically at white people, spoken with bitter sarcasm and prolonged intonation, carrying some of the burning hostility of the modern use of the word "nigger." A naive Joey Carter, in a pleasant but rambling letter, said he didn't like people calling him "haole" in the perjorative way, and he didn't like being being blamed for the real or imagined bad deeds of white people in the past, and he hoped people could all get along together.
In 1990 Professor Trask was Director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies, which was then part of the Department of Philosophy. Joey Carter was a white undergraduate student majoring in philosophy. Thus, Professor Trask had great power while Joey Carter had none. Her attack on him fits her own definition of racism. Her vicious, racist, public attack on Joey Carter in the student newspaper caused a major uproar at the university and drew international attention. There was serious talk that she should be formally reprimanded or even fired. But in the end nothing bad happened to her. A few years later Haunani-Kay Trask was promoted to full professor and was further rewarded with the construction of the multimillion dollar building which houses the Center for Hawaiian Studies. Failure to reprimand Professor Trask in 1990 was the beginning of a long-term trend toward violation of academic freedom at the university, where a hostile work environment includes an atmosphere of fear and intimidation toward any student or professor who dares to contradict the party line of the Center for Hawaiian Studies. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacademicfreedom.html
For the complete text of Joey Carter's mild-mannered letter that provoked this diatribe, and documentation for Trask's reply, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/joeycartertrask1990.html
Here is Professor Trask's letter published in September 1990:
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Caucasians are haole
By Haunani Kay Trask
Mr. Joey Carter's dilemma of whether or not he is a "haole" (Ka Leo, Sept. 6, 1990) can easily be answered. If he is white or "Caucasian" (as he prefers), then he certainly is haole.
This word is one of the few surviving Hawaiian language descriptions in common use in Hawai'i. And it has survived despite official suppression of my Native Hawaiian language by an all-haole, English-speaking American government in 1900. Indeed, Mr. Carter follows in the footsteps of his American haole compatriots who came to Hawai'i in the 19th century demanding that Hawaiians convert to the haole ways of behaving. Now, Mr. Carter demands that we stop using our own land. Too bad, Mr. Carter, you are a haole and you always will be.
And this is precisely Mr. Carter's typically white American problem: he wants to pretend that he is outside American history, a history which has made white power and white supremacy the governing norm from the birth of the American colonies to the present American imperium that holds the world as a nuclear hostage.
Mr. Carter is a privileged member of American society because he is haole, whether he acknowledges his privilege or not. His very presence in Hawai'i, and before that in Louisiana, is a luxury provided him through centuries of white conquest that visited genocide on American Indians, slavery on Africans, peonage on Asians and dispossession on Native Hawaiians.
Hawai'i is presently a colony of the United States, not because we Hawaiians chose that status, but because the American government overthrew our Hawaiian government in 1883 [sic, 1893], and forcibly annexed our islands in 1898. With the overthrow, things Hawaiian were outlawed and things haole American were imposed.
As an American in Hawai'i, Mr. Carter is benefiting from stolen goods. Part of that benefit is the moral blindness of the settler who insists on his "individuality" when his very presence has nothing to do with his "individuality" and everything to do with his historical position as a member of a white imperialist country. Mr. Carter could examine his own presence here, and how things haole, including the English language, the political and economic systems, and the non-self-governing status of Native Hawaiians allows him to live and work in my country when so many of my own people have been driven out.
Of course, Mr. Carter needs to know, before he learns about Hawaiians, that in the long and bloody march of American history, only African-Americans were classed as 3/5 of a person in the American Constitution, that noble document of democracy. Asians were beaten and killed because they were "yellow peril." Only Japanese were interned in concentration camps because they were Japanese, only American Indians were "removed" and "terminated" as a people because they were Indian.
In fact, Mr. Carter does not understand racism at all, another common characteristic of white people. For racism is a system of power in which one racially-identified group dominates and exploits another racially-identified group for the advantage of the dominating group. People of color in America don't have enough power to dominate and exploit white people. That's what the so-called "founding fathers" of the United States intended, and that's how American society operates today. But Mr. Carter hasn't noticed this reality.
The hatred and fear people of color have of white people is based on that ugly history Mr. Carter is pretending to have an "individual" exemption from, and which he refuses to acknowledge. It is for self-protection and in self-defense that we people of color feel hostility towards haoles.
Contrary to what Mr. Carter believes, this hostility is not "haole-bashing"; it is a smart political sense honed by our deep historical wounding at the hands of the haole. On the rare occasions that we feel something other than hostility, something like trust or friendship for certain haole, it is because we have made an exception for them. It is our privilege and not Mr. Carter's privilege to make exceptions, and to make them one by one. For it would be the mark of extreme historical stupidity to trust all haoles.
In his uninformed, childish moaning, Mr. Carter flaunts his willful ignorance of where he is (in my native country, Hawai'i), and who he is (a haole American). Of course, his statements are disingenuous. If Mr. Carter does not like being called haole, he can return to Louisiana. Hawaiians would certainly benefit from one less haole in our land. In fact, United Airlines has dozens of flights to the U.S. continent every day, Mr. Carter. Why don't you take one?
The 2002 re-publication of Professor Trask's 1990 letter provoked several responses containing similar anti-American and anti-white rhetoric. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/traskbarksdaleetseq.html
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Professor Haunani-Kay Trask published a book of poetry entitled "Light In The Crevice Never Seen" which included some blatantly racist attacks against whites, including the poem "Racist White Woman." Grant Crowell, a student on the staff of the U.H. student newspaper "Ka Leo" published an editorial cartoon satirizing the poem. Professor Trask launched a major attack against the student cartoonist, and the newspaper; and mobilized her students to intimidate them. The Honolulu newspapers got involved. Professor Trask's poem, the cartoon by student Grant Crowell, and numerous published articles tracking the controversy can all be found on the following webpage:
http://www.grantsrant.com/kaleo/cartoon_controversy/1994_fall.html
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PROFESSOR TRASK'S SPEECH AT AN ETHNIC HAWAIIAN POLITICAL RALLY SEPTEMBER 2, 2002
The following is a transcript of a speech delivered by Professor Haunani-Kay Trask at an ethnic Hawaiian political rally on the grounds of 'Iolani Palace on September 2, 2002. The events of that day were later broadcast on cable television, which is what made it possible to produce the transcript. The political rally was to protest a bill before the city council making it easier for owners of apartments on land leased from a landowner to force the landowner to sell his land to them. Trask's speech stands alone, and can easily be understood without reference to the reason for the rally. For an explanation of the controversy over mandatory lease-to-fee conversion, and why it is often a racial issue in Hawai'i, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/leasetofeetrask090202.html
A note regarding the use of language. Occasional Hawaiian words used by Professor Trask have been translated in square brackets. When a particular word was spoken LOUDLY or with special EMPHASIS, it has been printed as all capitals. Paragraphs and quote marks are, of course, entirely my own invention. The word "haole" originally was a neutral term meaning "foreigner" or "outsider", and was not specifically racial. Today it has come to mean "white person" and is used as a self-description by many local people who are white. But as used by Professor Trask and some others, the word is highly perjorative and directed specifically at white people, spoken with bitter sarcasm and prolonged intonation, carrying some of the burning hostility of the modern use of the word "nigger."
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Aloha, my people, aloha.
I want to talk today about the causes, both historical and contemporary, for the situation that we, the native people of Hawai'i, now find ourselves in.
If we go back in time to contact with the syphilitic Captain Cook, what we realize is that the first thing that was a gift of Western civilization was disease. The second thing that was a gift of Western civilization was violence -- they tried to take our chief hostage, and as a result of that we killed him. That was called Justice. Death to the conqueror is justice, that's what it is.
In 1848 the missionaries -- the disease-laden racists -- that's a very good word. Racism. Racist. Race. Very very good words. These were racist people. They came here to colonize us because we didn't have the right gods. Who were they to say we didn't have the right gods? Who were they to say that? And what are their descendants doing today -- Mr. Freddy Rice, taking away our entitlements. That is the geneology of racism. They came with racism in their hearts, they lived here with racism in their hearts, and they are still racists today.
And Hawaiians, do not be afraid to name the enemy. The enemy is racism. Your own people can practice racism. Your own people can tell you, as they always tell me, "Don't be so angry!" Why not? Why not? Do we think Kamehameha was a peacemaker? Only when he defeated his enemies.
Don't let anybody tell you not to be angry. We have every right to be angry. We have every reason to be angry. And we ARE angry. And the reason that we're angry -- the reason we are angry -- is because this is OUR country, and they took our government and imprisoned our queen -- right here she was imprisoned in her palace. And they banned our language. And then they forcibly made us a state of the racist, colonialist United States of colonial America. Do you have a right to be angry? Of course you do. Of course you do!
Never, never forget your own history. We don't need to know what the haole is telling us. What we need to know is what really happened to our people. Who brought the disease? Who created private property? Who overthrew our queen? You won't find any Hawaiians there. There were FOREIGNERS who overthrew our queen. There were FOREIGNERS who made us a state. There were FOREIGNERS. And they are still FOREIGNERS today. Rice. Conklin. Burgess. They are FOREIGNERS. This is OUR country Hawaiians.
And you have to stand up and tell the truth. That is our job. That is what the great black American leader said. [chanting] "Tell the truth. Tell the truth." His name was Malcolm X. We must tell the truth. And that is the truth.
Foreigners came. They conquered. They took our lands. They imprisoned our queen. And THEY divided us by blood quantum. THEY did. Isn't it ironic that a HAOLE -- Freddy Rice -- Mr. missionary, whose illustrious ancestor overthrew Kalakaua and created the bayonet constitution that that racist man, who received so much of our land, now says that we are racists. IMPOSSIBLE! That is impossible!
You have to have power to be a racist. Number one. Do we have power? No. But Freddy Rice does. Ken Conklin does. Burgess does. They all have power. The power of white supremacy. The power of white courts. The power of a white country called the United States of white America.
I don't understand why Hawaiians aren't angry. I don't understand it. Every time somebody tells me I'm so angry at 5 ft. 4, 120 pounds my answer to them is "And why aren't you?" What is the matter with our people that they are not angry! It's not enough to pray to the kupuna, to pray to gods. It's not enough to participate in culture. Those things are important, but they are not important as politics.
Politics has to do with power. Who has it and who doesn't. Do WE have power? No! If we have power, what are we doing here? They took away the queen's land. They did. Who is "they?"
The city council. Hawaiians didn't have city council. That was created during after the overthrow, during the Territory. That's not OUR political form. Why do we have to be subjugated to them? Why do we have to be subjugated to the state? To the federal government? The racist Bush "bomb every dark person" federal government.
Why are WE, as native people, subjugated in our own land? Why are we made to be afraid? Because we are colonized. We live in a colony. The United States of America. All that military theft of our lands, our homelands, our ceded lands, all of that, all of that was done by the United States of America.
All you Hawaiians who think the United States is good think again. Take my class. Hawaiian Studies 390. Read the Blount Report. Read the report that shows what the haoles [white people] thought of us. They think the same thing today. That's where we get Rice and Conklin and Burgess. These are your ENEMIES Hawaiians, your ENEMIES. When Kamehameha was getting ready to go to war, he didn't sit there and think, "Oh gee I wonder if we should make nice. I wonder if I should go over to Kahekili and say hey, let's have a little pa'ina [party]." No.
When you gonna make war, you get your facts down and you make war. The opposition knows that. Aren't they making war against us? You bet they are. Who do you think is funding that war? The guy who owns the Advertiser that's who. Whose illustrious ancestor overthrew the queen, created the Mahele. Learn your history, and then you will know which side of history you belong on.
And you do not belong on the American side. You do not belong on the Hawai'i state side. You belong on the side of your people --lahui Hawai'i [racially defined Hawaiians] -- that's the side you belong on.
And if people are upset, so what? So what? I'm so tired of people telling me I make them feel bad. Good! Ten flights a day. United Airlines. Beat it!
If this is our country then we have to ACT like it is our country. I don't want to see people walking around at the University of Hawai'i walking like this [shuffling, downcast]. I never walk like that. And I'm only five feet four and a half inches. I never walk like that. If this is your country then BEHAVE like it's your country. You tell those racist haoles "You're a racist haole." That's the word we need to use. RACIST!
Racism. That is what is going on right here and right now in Hawai'i. The same thing that's going on against black Americans. The same thing that's going on by Bush. Bush wants to bomb Islamic countries. Why? Because he's a racist. Because Islamic people don't believe in Christianity. Because they have their own region of the world, called the Middle East. Who bombed us? Wasn't Hawaiians.
We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America, and everybody who supports it. Rice. Conklin. Burgess.
You have to know which side of history you're on, and who is there with you. They are not there with you, Hawaiians. They want to take every single thing away from you.
And now, let us go to the city council. Where is the position on the city council? They want the land. The queen's land. Every time somebody says the queen was racist, I laugh. If she was a racist, why did she leave her entitlements to orphan Hawaiian children? Why did Bernice leave her moneys and lands to the Kamehameha Schools? Not because they were racists. But because they understood as ali'i their job was to care for their people -- for lahui Hawai'i. And right now, right now what we have is another foreign entity named the city council, filled with FOREIGNERS, named city council persons, who want to take away our land. When your children say to you, "Auntie, why are they doing that?" "Mom and Dad, why are they doing that?" Your answer is "Because they are racists. Because they want to take every last entitlement that Hawaiians have, and replace our own people with FOREIGNERS."
We have the largest diaspora in Hawai'i, which means people out-migrated. And who are those people? The native people of Hawai'i, that's who they are. The native people. This is what is affecting us today is RACISM. And we have to tell it like it is. As black people say, it's not [inaudible], it's racism. That's what it is. You are not a racist because you fight racism. You're a warrior, like I am. You are a warrior.
You name it. You name -- you name the enemy. You name the enemy so your people know who the enemy is. The enemy is anybody who takes anything from Hawaiian people. I don't care who they are. I don't care what their position is. That is your enemy. And we need Hawaiians to understand that.
We need to have an analysis of the current situation and understand that. And once we understand that we will not be afraid to speak the truth. Malcolm X used to always say "Speak the truth brother, speak the truth." What's wrong with the truth? It's the truth. That's why nobody wants us to speak the truth. And that's what we need to do. And that's what the purpose of this rally is today. To speak the truth.
And the truth is, that racists are taking everything away from Hawaiians, and they will not be content until Hawai'i has no Hawaiians left. That IS the truth. And I don't care what their names are. That is their intent. Ku'e! [resist] Ku'e! Ku'e! Mahalo nui. [thanks very much]
==============================
PROFESSOR TRASK'S TELEVISED COMMENTS OPPOSING ACADEMIC FREEDOM FOR PROFESSORS OPPOSED TO HER VIEWS, AND TAKING PLEASURE IN THEIR INTIMIDATION AND SILENCING
A television program called "First Friday," broadcast live on Friday September 6, 2002 on Channel 53 NATV, 7-8 PM, included an amazing 3-minute diatribe by CHS Professor Haunani-Kay Trask. On Thursday September 5 the Honolulu Advertiser had reported that threats of violence had intimidated the director of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and frightened away the elderly students who had signed up for Dr. Conklin's course on Hawaiian sovereignty. On Friday the Advertiser published an editorial strongly supporting academic freedom at UH, and Dr. Conklin's right to teach his course. For the news report and editorial, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreemedia.html
Thus, the Friday evening live broadcast was very timely.
Professor Trask said she thinks the intimidation is a good thing; Conklin is merely a recent arrival to Hawai'i and doesn't know about sovereignty; Conklin doesn't share the values of the ethnic Hawaiians; Conklin's intentions are really bad; Conklin is rude; Conklin is a classic rude outsider; Conklin has a psychological problem that causes him to crave attention; the Center for Hawaiian Studies would not want to invite Conklin to speak, because he behaves in a way that's injurious to ethnic Hawaiians.
Trask's outrageous comments illustrate the arrogance of the Center for Hawaiian Studies. She apparently thinks of CHS as a private home where undesirable outsiders need not be invited as guests -- but in reality CHS is (supposed to be) an academic department in a public university, where robust debate of controversial issues should be normal. She repeatedly portrays Conklin as a recent arrival to Hawai'i, although she knows he has lived permanently in Kane'ohe for ten years. She seems to think that so-called "recent arrivals" should not be taken seriously -- that would mean that President Dobelle (only 14 months in Hawai'i) and Chancellor Englert (only one month in Hawai'i) should be totally discounted.
Trask's expression of pleasure that "it's great that somebody came back at him and threatened him" places her stamp of approval on intimidation. Here is a professor expressing joy at the intimidation and silencing of another professor whose views she doesn't like. Professors of mathematics who disagree with each other over standards for proving theorems would never try to silence or intimidate each other. CHS is not functioning as an academic institution where scholarly issues can be debated openly -- CHS is functioning as a political machine, a religious shrine, and a propaganda factory. Heresy is not tolerated.
Perhaps the most arrogant aspect of Trask's diatribe is her assumption that she and/or CHS have any right at all to comment on a course being taught in a completely different department, in an outreach program for elderly people. Why would such a course be of any interest or concern to her? Clearly, she thinks she should be the arbiter of what should be taught on the topic of Hawaiian sovereignty, and who should have the right to teach on that topic.
Following is the complete transcript of the three-minute on-air live conversation between Professor Haunani-Kay Trask and her sidekick straight-man Shane Pale:
--------------------------
Shane Pale: "Um, moving on, I hear there's some controversy up at the university with Mr. Ken Conklin"
Trask: "Yes, Mr. Conklin. He's such a twit. Conklin, for most of you, I think, is known because he wanted to vote in the OHA elections. He's a recent arrival, he is not from Hawai'i, doesn't share any of the values that he keeps saying Hawaiian culture evinces .. um .. because if he did he would not be trying to take away our entitlements, which is what he's doing. He ran for office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee, he loves all the public attention he gets, because it's his way of being in the news .. um.. but really his intentions are really bad. So he signed up with kind of a continuing education program to teach a course on sovereignty -- as if he knows anything about it. He should teach a course on bad manners. And he claims he was threatened, and therefore the course was dropped. And I think that's wonderful. I think it's great that somebody came back at him and threatened him the way he has been threatening all of us, and he is truly a despicable person, I mean, he's very difficult to deal with in public forums. I myself was accosted by him in a forum in Kane'ohe where my grandfather lived and I lived. He tried to tell me that I didn't live in Kane'ohe and I didn't come from Kane'ohe. He knows nothing about it; he just got to Hawai'i. He is a classic maha'oi outsider that's what he is and he loves attention. So this is his way, apparently, of satisfying his psychological needs is to create problems and controversy. Anyway, his course was cancelled, and now he's claiming that he was, you know, uh, dishonored. There's no right for people to teach courses at the university. Um, he said that the project director was threatened and so she canceled the course. Then he went on to complain that he's never been invited to the Center for Hawaiian Studies. And of course that's another maha'oi example. You are not invited to somebody's place if you behave in a way that's injurious to those people, which he has. So our response at Hawaiian Studies is: no, my goodness, you're the one who hates Hawaiians. Why do you want to be invited to the Center for Hawaiian Studies. He's essentially a crybaby. He's a malcontent. Obviously he has some psychological need for publicity so .. now he's complaining that, you know, people are treating him badly. But in fact, you know [Trask interrupted by Pale]"
Pale: "You wouldn't invite Hitler to a bar mitzvah"
Trask: "No! No. He should look very carefully at his own behavior. He's the one who's been behaving badly since the day his plane landed."
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