Text Mirror:
What does decolonization of Hawaii, and the US look like? From one Native Hawaiian’s perspective (me)
The US military is destroying our islands along with the 12 million tourists under foreign billionaire-owned tourism. Too many Americans are buying up our lands forcing us out by jacking home prices to $1.5 million etc.
But the solution in places like Hawaii, North America is not as simple as everyone who is white or non-indigenous simply leaving.
If the people in Hawaii & North America could repair the inequities with the indigenous people there, respect treaties, allow indigenous and ethnic minorities to exist as equal yet different - the way Vietnam, China have 50+ ethnic minorities who co-exist, allow them to speak languages, don’t mass-arrest imjpoverish, etc - then everyone would not need to leave.
If the colonizer-mindset people in Hawaii leave and go to N America, that pushes the problem to Native Americans. If they go to Europe, at least you don’t have re-settler colonialism.
When the French colonizers were defeated and kicked out of Vietnam, they were < 5% of the population, had clearly delineated ‘us and them’ lines, and so decolonization was more straightforward. Most French chose to leave Vietnam, because they were there to extract resources and labor from their ‘coolies’ and when they couldn’t anymore, they went back to Europe.
At the same time, all people of French/white heritage were not required to leave Vietnam after the dismantling of colonial yt supremacist rule.
As an example, my Vietnamese friend Luna Oi has a white American husband in Vietnam, and he is not required to ‘go back to America’ because he’s white. He simply has to follow the rules of Vietnam, its socialist anti-imperialist country, and co-exist peacefully, and it is fine. Vietnam is 98% indigenous.
Bolivia is ~60% identifying as indigenous, with a unique history, but they have had great successes with their indigenous-led socialist plurinational - meaning many language, many peoples, coexisting within one state - in the Western sense.
They do not require the 40% white/non-indigenous identifying people to leave Bolivia and go back to Spain, Europe, US, etc. but over time, they will need to learn to co-exist in actual equality with the indigenous.
The US is 98% identifying non-indigenous, with ~20-30% non-white identifying.
The US is the worlds’ largest European settler colony by far with 330 million people, and the worlds’ capitalist superpower that dwarfs and puppeteers its parent Europe itself.
The process of undoing colonization, and healing the broken people and ways (including indigenous and non-white people who have had our ways and languages severely harmed by colonization) will not look identifical to either Bolivia or Vietnam, and will be unprecedented in human history - but we can learn from each of these struggles.
Education, listening to the marginalized, indigenous etc. and implementing that education in concrete ways is certainly an important part of the process. Which is why the US is banning CRT, anything that makes white people ‘uncomfortable’ from schools. Because it would indeed be the undoing of the US over time.
Long story short - it will be a long story and there is no easy shortcut out of it, lol.
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Wait… is this person asking the US to voluntarily end its own existence? The indigenous people of this land definitely got a shit deal, but just… no. People aren’t going to do that. What has been shattered cannot be reforged, nor should it at this point. Amends should be made where possible, and at a far greater rate than currently is done. But unmaking a well established nation is not a reasonable ask. This is our home, and that can’t be reversed in favor of the tiny minority of indigenous people that remains after the genocide.
He’s not even saying the only way is for you to go. Literally at the start of the essay: “If the people in Hawaii & North America could repair the inequities with the indigenous people there, respect treaties, allow indigenous and ethnic minorities to exist as equal yet different - the way Vietnam, China have 50+ ethnic minorities who co-exist, allow them to speak languages, don’t mass-arrest imjpoverish, etc - then everyone would not need to leave.”
How about all of us that are privileged and non-Indigenous in colonized countries, you included, spend our energy pushing for that if we want to stay? I think the above is an extremely generous deal. They’re asking to be treated as humans and equal, they’re not looking to have us be their subservients, they just don’t want to be our subservients.
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Hun, are you alright?
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Sorry if I don’t like you attacking my home.
You should be sorry for occupying the homeland of countless others. This country is built on the imperialism and genocide of countless civilizations. That is a fact. I say it is worth it to destroy everything for the people that are left. They deserve their homes back, and its the american’s fault if that results in their downfall.
It’s honestly really generous that SilverSpook isn’t even saying every white person needs to GTFO, instead that they don’t necessarily need to leave if they get their act together and, you know, stop being colonizers.
Exactly! He is being very fucking generous to those who genocides his people and culture.
Bruh your home was built by destroying someone else’s home, and culture, and religion, and identity, and life.
Do you like having wrong opinions or does it just come naturally? Like, this is not even just liberal chauvinism, this is extra imperialist viewpoints.