The Sense of Sacred: Mauna Kea, Hawai'i and Oura Bay, Okinawa

The Okinawan movement to save Henoko and the Yambaru subtropical rainforest is one aspect of a global indigenous movement calling for respect of indigenous cultural heritage, especially natural sacred sites under ongoing threat of destruction.

Indigenous peoples know that sacred sites are centers of collective spiritual and psychological power that go into the past and into the future, connecting generations. Maybe this is why sacred and cultural heritage sites have been targeted for destruction by invading powers for millennia.

In "The Sense of Sacred: Mauna Kea and Oura Bay," published at The Asia-Pacific Journal earlier this month,  Katherine Muzik  compares the similarities between the struggles to save Mauna Kea in Hawai'i and Henoko in Okinawa to introduce William B.C. Chang's analysis of the foreign settler pattern of violating indigenous religious and cultural heritage rights as well as land rights and indigenous human rights:

“Sacred is not necessarily a place. It is a relationship, a deep visceral relationship: beyond reason, beyond law, beyond rationality.”

These words were recently spoken by William B.C. Chang, a University of Hawaii Law Professor, in his impassioned testimony to the UH Board of Regents, about the current conflict on Mauna Kea here in Hawaii.

To the Hawaiians, the Mountain known as Mauna Kea, or Mauna a Wākea, on the Island of Hawaii, is a sacred place. Thus, the proposed construction of the northern hemisphere’s biggest telescope, thirty meters tall (TMT), 18 stories high, on eight acres of the mountain top, costing $1.4 billion, has recently sparked peaceful but ardent protests and occupations by Native Hawaiians, environmentalists and allies across the Pacific. With 13 telescopes already blighting the landscape, the protesters seek to prevent further desecration.

To the Okinawans, the Sea known as Oura Bay, on the Island of Okinawa, is also a sacred place. For nearly two decades, Okinawans have protested its destruction by US/Japan military expansion.

Besides being sacred and beautiful, what else do these two very distant places share? They share history, of illegal takeovers by a foreign power and the subsequent, on-going outrage among the local populations. Locals in Hawaii and Okinawa are deeply angered by the heinous and reckless environmental destruction their islands have suffered. They are frustrated by the destruction that continues, despite prolonged protests. In both cases, illegal land-grabs by the US have resulted in the waste of their natural resources and the disintegration of their cultural identities. However, being sacred, both places continue to inspire passionate and courageous struggles against foreign dominance.

The Hawaiian Islands were once a kingdom, a sovereign nation. In a series of events, the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893 by a group of US and European businessmen, ending in annexation as a “Territory of the United States” in 1900. And so too, were the Ryukyu Islands, sovereign. Invaded by Satsuma forces in 1609, they were formally annexed by Japan in 1879 as “Okinawa Prefecture”. After World War 2, the US “acquired” Okinawa from Japan, establishing military bases which have remained and proliferated, destructively, for the last seventy years.

Laura Kina's Blue Hawai'i & Wesley Uenten's "Okinawan Diasporan Blues"

"Graves By the Sea" by Laura Kina

In this excerpt from "Okinawan Disaporan Blues," included in Laura Kina's Blue Hawaii exhibition catalogue, Wesley Uenten describes the Japanese colonial rule's erasure of traditional Okinawan culture and ongoing resistance by a group of grandmothers and grandfathers, child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, to the US plan to turn the habitat of the Okinawan dugong, a sacred cultural icon, into another military base:

...At least on the level of cultural genocide, what happened to Okinawans was similar to what happened to Native Americans. It seems so familiar when I read about the...philosophy of the “Indian Schools” that prohibited Native American school children from speaking their own language or practicing their culture.... By the time that my grandmother was born in 1893, most Okinawan children were in schools, where they would be punished for speaking the Okinawan language and expected to worship the Japanese emperor. A large wooden tag with the words 方言札 (hōgen fuda), or “dialect tag,” was place around the neck of school children who spoke in the Okinawan “dialect.” The tag symbolically relegated the Okinawan language to the inferior status as a backward “dialect” of Japanese, while corporeally ingraining a sense of shame and fear in generations of Okinawans for speaking their own language and being their own selves...

Physical genocide did take place on Okinawa. Japan’s leaders knowingly caused about a fourth to a third of Okinawa’s population to perish in less than 3 months during the Battle of Okinawa when they used Okinawa as a buffer to hold off American troops heading toward Naichi (mainland Japan)...in 1945...

I stare at "Graves by the Sea." ...Departed souls encased in concrete tombs pushed up against each other. They are testament of the reverence for ancestors and tradition in Okinawa that contradicts the reality of the lack of space on Okinawa...There is a strong and powerful message that the ancestors and land is telling us through Laura’s work.

I end this essay at a time when I have just returned from a trip to Washington D.C. with an Okinawan delegation that was making a direct appeal against plans by the U.S. and Japanese governments to push ahead with construction of a new U.S. Marine Air Station on the clear blue waters of Henoko...At this time, both the Jp and U.S. governments are stepping up their attempts to push past unyielding local Okinawan opposition... Henoko is the site of a large thriving coral reef, turtle spawning grounds, seaweed beds, and an already endangered species of dugong. The blue ocean of Henoko will be no more if this plan goes through.

Most of the officials, politicians, and researchers we met in Washington D.C. [during the Jan. 2014 Okinawan Delegation] had made up their mind about new base construction at Henoko saying that it is the best plan... However, what the delegation was trying to get across to deaf ears was that Okinawans have stopped the construction for 18 years by placing their bodies in front of ships and equipment coming to start construction. Old people, as old and tiny as my Baban in my memories of her, have come to sit on the beach everyday in quiet but unrelenting resistance to American Manifest Destiny and Japanese fatalistic dependency on that destiny...

Wesley Ueunten is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. A third generation Okinawan, he was born and raised in Hawaiʻi and received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Mayumi Oda: On Energy of Change, Feminization, and New Birth of Japan

"Earth Ship" by Mayumi Oda  (Image: Safe Energy Handbook) 

Longtime nuclear-free activist and visual artist Mayumi Oda shared her wisdom in "On Energy of Change, Feminization, and New Birth of Japan," a 2012 interview with Alice Miyagawa published at Kyoto Journal.  A few excerpts: 

You were interviewed previously for Kyoto Journal following the Tokaimura nuclear accident in the summer of 1999, when you lived in California. You said that you had come to Japan to help empower people, especially women, in response to the government’s negligence in handling the issue. Then, at the turn of the millennium, you moved from California to Hawai’i. That seems to have marked a turning point in your life...

Until 1999 I had really tried to focus my work to let people know the dangers of having nuclear [power plants] on earthquake faults. I couldn’t convince them. I already saw the possibilities of disaster. I thought it would be in Tokai, or Hamaoka, near Tokyo. I was terribly, terribly worried. I had worked nearly nine years in the antinuclear movement. I was very discouraged that Japan was not really responding to the danger.

 I was just very tired, and I felt like I had to rebuild a new life. So I chose Hawai’i to do sustainable living, making a farm, to show people that there’s another way to live. I felt like somebody had to be doing this — not just thinking about the possibility, but practicing it. Hawai’i taught me to live with aloha, within an island. In 2000 I bought the farm [Ginger Hill Farm and Retreat, in Kealakekua, meaning the Path of God], and for eleven years I have worked on it. I have probably educated about two hundred young people, just to live hopefully sustainably through farming, through eating the right things, making medicines, cleansing, healing oneself with herbs and the things that we grow.

I just finished painting a six-panel screen of mostly women marching towards Amaterasu the Sun Goddess — I painted about forty women, with a few men. They are all practitioners of my Goddess Academy, marching from the life they lived, to a more nature-based life, symbolized by Amaterasu — marching from an oil-based economy towards a solar-based economy...

...I painted a Sotatsu screen of the Gods of Wind and Thunder turned into females to bring more of the feminine into culture, especially Japanese culture, which really needs more feminine. Traditional culture has it, but somehow this modern culture in Japan became so Westernized that we gave up a lot of that stuff.

... I felt almost like the women in Fukushima all feel, and so it’s a lot of force and a strength — I felt that these Goddesses can somehow break through something that we are so up against. That’s how I painted those two Goddesses, to bring an energy of change that our country needs at this moment...

These are all yamato-e style paintings, the tradition is extremely old-fashioned. It’s been going on 1,300 years in Nara so I kept that tradition...So I decided that I will focus on this old beautiful tradition that our ancestors used, and with that how can I express who we are now in this time.

In 1993 I did some hand-scrolls called Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty [for] a story that was written by Anne Herbert and Margaret Pavel, right after I became an anti-nuclear activist, so my message was very anti-nuclear, anti-war and anti-violence, and how to live with the peace of others in the land. That was the story behind it. Now it’s a nine-meter scroll.

...So I did this work for the younger generations that we just deprived because of our own luxury, our own wantings, our own electricity, our rich food, we really just left such a legacy to these young people. It feels to me this is an apology — I’m sorry that we did so badly. I’m dedicating this to the younger generations. When I think about it, it just makes me so sad. Our generation was so bad, especially men in my generation, [they] could not think about anybody — they were so caught up in the Japanese becoming so wealthy, so luxurious, they were just awful, awful, so wrong...

...The people who can really make a choice will win, get out and start a new life somewhere in the country, or in other cities. Especially if they have parents in the countryside, they should go back, and start a new life...

Artists bring message of harmony, spirit of earlier era to Tokyo event

Alicia Bay Laurel performs "Rinpoche", a song that she wrote for Tibetan Buddhist master Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche, which includes an enlightenment mantra, at his request

This past Sunday, in a home that doubles as a café and event space overlooking the stunning vistas of the Hachioji Basin in western Tokyo, one might have thought they had traveled back in time.

Accompanied to the backdrop of a flashing multi-colored light show, artist and author Alicia Bay Laurel—whose 1970 best-seller “Living On the Earth” has inspired generations of hippies and permaculturists across the planet—strummed her acoustic guitar and told fascinating stories of her life as a traveling artist.

“Over and over again, I watched people come to Hawaii and heal their bodies and spirits simply by absorbing the energy from the sun and the ocean,” she said, speaking of Maui island, her home for some 25 years. Her stay there served as the inspiration for her second book, “Being of the Sun”—described by Amazon as a “cult classic among nature-worshippers to this day”.

Laurel has earned a devoted following in Japan, where she has traveled nearly every year since 2006 to play music, sign individual copies of her books and CDs in her trademark flowing script, and collaborate with numerous artists, musicians and designers. She illustrated a book for bestselling author Banana Yoshimoto in 2010, and her works have helped raise funds for environmental nonprofit Artist Power Bank, as well as its sister project Kurkku, a complex of environmentally sustainable businesses. Her designs also helped raise funds for survivors following the 2011 disaster in Tohoku.

This past Sunday’s event, held at the aptly named Holistic Earth Café, indeed featured a distinctly Beatnik vibe. Guests were invited to try on and purchase hemp-based clothing, and the lineup of kitchen offerings even included fresh hemp pasta. “I could easily imagine myself in northern California in the 1960s, but here we are in present-day Tokyo,” Laurel commented. “The popularity of Living On the Earth never diminished in Japan, in large part because of the absolutely phenomenal community of people here who are committed to the ideas represented in the book.”

Event attendee, who told Laurel that he and his wife utilized the advice from her book to home-birth all three of their children

Laurel was joined by actress-turned-environmentalist Ikue Masudo (who was also a featured speaker at Harukaze 2010, a peace and sustainability event held in Tokyo). Masudo left the metropolitan capital several years ago to build an organic café and event space along the gorgeous shores of the Boso peninsula in Chiba prefecture, later going on to the island of Ishigaki in Okinawa, where she is now in the midst of creating a retreat and healing center. “My hope is that more and more people will become connected with the natural world, which will have positive repercussions for society on the whole,” she said, sharing her own personal story of becoming deeply inspired to change her life after filming television documentaries that featured swimming with dolphins in Hawaii and aboriginal communities in Australia.

Ikue Masudo

Sunday’s event, while unmistakably holding a vision for a better world, was most certainly not exclusively idealistic. Kathie Inoue, vocalist and ukulele player for the Hawaiian/reggae band Inoue Ohana, utilized the time in-between the band’s upbeat set to urge attendees to take action by adding their voices to citizen movements to end nuclear power and advocate alternative energies—including a recent worldwide petition urging Japan not to restart its nuclear reactors.

“There are many tools, including social networking sites like Facebook, that we can use to share information with each other and encourage positive social change,” she said, also echoing Laurel and Masuda with her message of simple living.

Kathie and Keni Inoue performing a chilled-out acoustic version of their song "Touch the Sun"

Alicia Bay Laurel and the full Inoue Ohana band play Yokohama Thumbs Up on June 21^st, and Kunitachi Chikyuya on June 22^nd. Laurel’s complete Japan tour schedule may be found on her website. In addition, this article provides a lovely introduction to her work and her long-standing connection with Japan.

--Kimberly Hughes

Nuclear-Free Activist & Artist Mayumi Oda speaking at the 2011 Moana Nui Conference

Longtime nuclear-free activist and artist Mayumi Oda reveals dark, obscured interconnections between Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima in this moving talk given at the 2011 Moana Nui conference in Hawai'i.

Known to many as the “Matisse of Japan,” Mayumi Oda has done extensive work with female goddess imagery. Born to a Buddhist family in Japan in 1941, Mayumi studied fine art and traditional Japanese fabric dying. In 1966 she graduatied from Tokyo University of Fine Arts. Mayumi’s unique apprenticeship dying fabric for kimonos influences the color and composition of all of her work.

Mayumi has spent many years of her life as a “global activist” participating in anti-nuclear campaigns worldwide. She founded Plutonium Free Future in 1992. On behalf of her organization, Oda lectured and held workshops on Nuclear Patriarchy to Solar Communities at the United Nations NGO Forum and the Women of Vision Conference in Washington DC.

Notes from her speech:

I'm 70-years-old now. I was born the year right before Pearl Harbor. For 70 years, I've been struggling with nuclearism. I was 4-years-old when my country was detonated with atomic bombs...

The shadow image of people without any body left stuck in concrete walls...just absolutely scared me as a child.

When my sister country, Korea, had a war, and people crossing over in the cold, it just made me so anxious, I grew up with this kind of fear of....As a child, I thought it was a kind of stupidity, how could people get involved with this.

Now with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, I feel like Japanese were born to deal with this incredible legacy of nuclear development...

Nao Somo Kuokere (The Work is Unfinished): Considering the Ainu lanugage

I did not understand the Ainu words that she spoke, but both the joy and pain that she felt was transmitted to me through the sound of her voice. The pain from hiding her identity for so many years, the joy of sharing her culture, the pain from the discrimination she endured for years, the joy of being able to acknowledge her identity, the pain from facing the possibility that her culture and her language might be lost forever if nothing is done to prevent it. A deep sadness enveloped the room as Akiko painted a picture of her life as an Ainu living in Japanese society at a seminar on “Ainu Culture in School Education” organized by the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture in Tokyo, Japan on January 29th, 2009.

As early as the 15th century, Japanese colonizers started dispossessing the Ainu people of their ancestral homeland in Hokkaido. Received Japanese history would paint the colonization of the Ainu as a heroic and peaceful venture for economic development. This completely overlooks the hardships that the Ainu faced and still struggle with today.

Dressed in traditional Ainu kimono, Akiko portrayed her life growing up in an Ainu household with her Ainu-speaking grandmother. Fearing that Akiko would be discriminated against, her mother would peek into the window of the schoolhouse to make sure everything was alright. Akiko shared with the audience how after years of discrimination in Hokkaido she eventually fled from her native Ainu lands to blend in with Japanese society.

Many Ainu people find themselves as silent refugees within Japan, hiding their identity as an Ainu. Akiko noted that some of her family members also fear exposure as an Ainu. Japanese governmental statistics show that 300,000 people consider themselves Ainu, but if the Ainu in hiding are taken into consideration, perhaps their numbers could be up to one million.

As Akiko spoke of her people’s struggles, she also spoke of a hope that there could be a new day when the Ainu people will once again be able to tell their own story. Mutsumi, who gave a workshop on how to teach Ainu culture at elementary schools on that same day, demonstrated how children who at first declared that they hated Ainu people grew to appreciate the Ainu culture and people through her classes at elementary school. Rather than reinforcing the image of Ainu people as promoted by the government for tourism purposes such as bear carvings, she taught children Ainu songs and dances, and how to stitch and interpret the meaningful patterns found on Ainu clothing.

Groups such as the musicians who call themselves the “Ainu Rebels"  have contributed greatly to the movement to reclaim their Ainu heritage. Their mission statement expresses that they “hope to transform our society into one where Ainu people can be proud to be Ainu…[by] learning traditional dancing and singing...[to] work on producing new ways of expressing our identities and culture.” Infusing traditional music with modern hip hop, the Ainu Rebels have found a way to relate to younger generations while raising awareness of the issues that Ainu people face and rejoicing in their dynamic culture.

Yesterday, I was speaking to an international student studying at Kyoto University. While he was ever careful to acknowledge that he was uncertain of the truth of the statement, he told me that he had read that there are now only 10 people that speak the Ainu language. I often hear such opinions on the status of the Ainu language. Depending on the source, there are anywhere from 5 to 1,000 speakers of Ainu at present, many of whom are impeded from speaking the language on a daily basis. There may even be more as governmental and organizational statistics are not 100% reliable.

What I believe must be taken into consideration more than the official numbers of "speakers of Ainu" are the many institutionalized obstacles that prevent young people who desire to learn Ainu from emerging to acquire and perpetuate the language. For instance, even though there is an abundance of international schools that conduct classes entirely in English throughout Japan, the Hokkaido government is resistant to adopting similar Ainu language programs in its schools. In Japan, Zainichi Koreans face a similar problem as the Japanese government will not accredit schools that do not conduct classes entirely in “standard Japanese”. Exceptions are made however for returnee Japanese students who studied in schools in English-speaking countries. Schools tailored to their needs, teaching in English, are accredited.

Some people who desire to learn the Ainu language have found ways to get around the governmental barriers. According to a February 2009 Expert Meeting on Ainu Policy there has been a significant increase in the numbers of people under 30 years old learning the Ainu language, and more and more people under 35 aspire to become teachers of the Ainu language. Of course, this does not mean that the Ainu language should be forced upon the Ainu people creating a new form of marginalization, but the option to learn the language should be made available. Use of the Ainu language must also be made economically viable.

Aspects of the Hawaiian language revitilization program that is considered to by some to be one of the world’s most successful indigenous language revitalization programs could be taken into consideration. Many comparisons can be drawn between the experiences of Ainu under Japanese colonization and the Hawaiian people under U.S. occupation. Both societies endured great strife that is often unaccounted for in the hero-colonizer account of history that tends to paint a rosy picture of how the land was conveniently “discovered” and transformed into economically viable territories. What is often missing is how colonizers murdered the indigenous population by force and by disease, usurped their autonomy, and installed restrictive governmental systems that deprived them of their land, rights, and language. Upon colonization, the Japanese government prohibited the use of the Ainu language in schools and in governmental business, as did the U.S. in respect to the Hawaiian language. Tove Skuttna-Kangas has termed this forced language shift, “linguistic genocide”:

If people are forced to shift their languages in order to gain economic benefits of the kind which are in fact bare necessities for basic survival, this is a violation of not only their economic human rights, but also their linguistic rights.

The economic and social environments the Hawai’ians and the Ainu faced had devastating impacts on their heritage and language.

In Hawai’i, however, at the landmark 1978 Hawai’i State Constitutional Convention, mandates were passed that provided for the teaching of Hawaiian in public schools and that Hawaiian become the official language of Hawaii along with English. This movement gave birth to language revitalization. Inspired by the Maori language immersion preschools in New Zealand, Kōhanga Reo, the NGO ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, the Language Nest, was born. At the start of the initiative, there were less than 50 children who spoke the Hawaiian language. Now it has grown to over 11 Pūnana Leo schools that serve 2000 students annually, effectively creating a new generation of Hawaiian speakers. In a state where Hawaiian was almost completely eradicated, it is now possible to pursue a PhD completely in the Hawaiian language. I was fortunate to be able to visit this four of the language nests in March 2009.

Another groundbreaking program is the Kūpuna program, where kūpuna or elders visit schools and introduce the children to Hawaiian music, provide an oral history of life in Hawai‘i, and explain aspects of Hawaiian cosmology. The program is a step in the right direction, but the nature in which it is implemented allows for an oppressor’s view of history to dominate, as the elders are not respected by the teachers in the schools as holders of indigenous knowledge. For example, the most widely used textbook is the ill-informed, non-Hawaiian written textbook, The Hawaiians of Old. Hawaiians are depicted as brutal savages, thus providing an excuse for colonizers to dominate over the Hawaiian people in order to save them:

The Hawaiian had many wars… They fought often with each other. The chiefs seemed to enjoy fighting… But these wars were… hard on the maka‘āinana who had not even started the war… Wars were awful for most of the Hawaiians.

Even though the elders are meant to portray the real version of their history, Hawaiians and non-Hawaiian students end up echoing the ideas instilled in them from the textbooks and biased non-Hawaiian teachers. As public school teacher Julie Kaomea explains, “such disrespectful use (and misuse) of Native Hawaiian elders and cultural experts serves to reinforce the unequal power dynamic between Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians, and undermines our Native right to assume authority over our Native culture.” As long as these programs are not run by Hawaiians, they will never serve the Hawaiian people’s interests.

The Japanese government portrays Ainu as a “dying race” which furthers their subordination as an inferior people. Ms. Kyono explained that one of the most shocking questions she had ever been asked was ironically during the Indigenous People’s Summit held in Ainu Mosir in July 2008, just prior to the G8 Summit in Hokkaido. One audience member asked, “Are there really any Ainu left?” That clearly demonstrates how Japanese people are still led to believe that the Ainu are gone despite the fact that they do live on.

Scholars, governmental officials, and linguists often blame the Ainu for not passing on their language to future generations. This neglects socio-historical hurdles that colonization has erected which prevent this transmission. Darrell Kipp of the Pigean Institute of the Blackfoot Nation, elaborates that it is not ignorance that caused indigenous people not to pass on their languages, but an act of love so their children could lead “normal” lives.

Finally, the key to the success of both the Ainu and Maori revitalization programs was allowing indigenous people to create programs on their own terms. At present, economic circumstances and racial discrimination prevent Ainu from embracing their language and culture. In fact, it was only just last year in July 2008 that the Japanese government even recognized the Ainu as indigenous, despite signing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) in September 2007. In the spirit of UNDRIP, the Japanese government must step back, and allow Ainu to lead their own programs, as they see fit. Impediments to teaching the Ainu language should be eliminated so that those who wish to learn the language can do so.

Within UNDRIP there are two important articles that provide that Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-determination and thus the right to control the teaching of their language and culture:

Article 13, Paragraph 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit for future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.

Article 14, Paragraph 1: Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

It is about time for the Japanese government to recognize the thriving Ainu people by allowing them to fully assert independence over their education as Japan promised with the signing of UNDRIP. In the spirit of the Ainu adage, Nao Somo Kuokere- “the work is unfinished,” but can be done.

Recommended reading:

lewallen, ann-elise (2008) "Indigenous at last! Ainu grassroots organizing and the indigenous peoples summit in Ainu Mosir," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 48-6-08.

MORRIS-SUZUKI, T. (1999). "The Ainu: beyond the politics of coexistence," Cultural Survival Quarterly, Winter: 19-23.

SIDDLE, R. (1996). Race, resistance, and the Ainu of Japan. Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge series. London, Routledge.

SIDDLE, R. (2002). "An epoch-making event? The 1997 Ainu Cultural Promotion Act and its impact," Japan Forum. 14, 405-424.

WILSON, A. C. (2004). "Reclaiming our humanity: decolonization and the recovery of indigenous knowledge," in D. A. Mihesuah and A. C. Wilson (Eds.) Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

- Jen Teeter