today is July 5, 2014. yesterday was american independence day. hawaiian independence day is nov. 28. i live in kailua on oahu. every third house on the block and the blocks around the street where i live flies an american flag. i suspect it's because people need a material reminder that they are americans, hence they fly the flag. or maybe they feel like hawaii is not really america, so displaying the flag is to remind us hawaiians that america owns us. or maybe they're just feeling patriotic and want everyone to know how proud they are to be americans IN america. i hate that! hmmm...these are the folks who don't know the history of america and may not want to know. they live according to the dream of what america should be/should have been. i think i've seen maybe 5 hawaiian flags flying in the area called coconut grove. that makes me happy, except when a house has two flags flying and one of them is the hawaiian flag flying underneath the american flag. i suppose that some folks feel we need to be reminded of our subordination to the americans in our own homeland. i think kekuni would have something to say about that, lol. i'll ask him next time i see him. yesterday afternoon, because the house i live in is so close to the marine base, we got to see airplanes doing loops in the sky over the base and watch the fireworks without having to go to the beach. the kids were happy about that. i couldn't help but think back to when i was growing up in kapahulu and how my grandpa and uncles, who were so fond of fireworks, spent tons of money buying and exploding the biggest bombs they could find. i swear they spent almost their whole pay checks on bombs and fireworks that you couldn't find today unless you bought them in china. as a kid, i loved it. didn't get my hands blown up, of course, but some close calls. when i grew older and realized the amount of pollution caused by fireworks that polluted the air and firecracker papers that ended up in the ala wai canal, i began to rethink what it meant to hang on to cultural (local culture, i mean) practices that were harmful to the environment. even though my grandma (and everybody else's grandma on the street) made us sweep up the mess we made the next morning, we didn't mind. we made the mess, so we had to clean it. i stopped wanting to pop firecrackers and watching fireworks displays. none of that stuff was worth it because the harm done far outweighed the momentary pleasures of watching exploding lights. things changed for me when i became aware, because i knew we really couldn't clean it. the harm, as i said early, really did outweigh the small thrills we got as kids. when i started this blog, years ago, i started it as a rant. i wasn't sure what i was ranting about. but the years have made me wiser and i notice more and more the relationship between my experiences of life and the future i envision for the hawaiian nation. hence the change in title from 'rants' to 'on the road to (national) recovery'. we really are on the road to recover, and it's that that i want to write about. how do i know we're on the road to recovering our nation, our country, our sense of who we are as a people? well, i got a chance to sit in on some of those DOI (dept. of interior) meetings that were held throughout oahu since june 23. i attended the meeting in heeia. i watched some of the livestreaming of meetings held elsewhere. and what struck me about the testimonies that were submitted was how knowledgeable people seemed to be about our history. yes, there was ranting, raving, crying, yelling, etc. i'm used to that every big meeting should build in time for those kinds of responses. but in addition, there were some wonderful, knowledgeable testimonies from folks who had done their homework and who questioned why the hell the DOI, as opposed to the US state dept. was here in hawaii. well, we all know why. kamanaopono crabbe wrote a letter (and mahalo to his coaches, whoever they are) to john kerry asking about hawaii's status relative to the u.s. what a wonderful, gutsy thing to do. no one really expected an answer. why would the u.s. answer, anyway? but in some cases, no answer IS an answer. so the US's answer was the DOI in hawaii holding these hearings about whether or not they should chance the rules governing their operating procedures so that hawai could then be recognized as a tribe. of course! this gave hawaiians (and others) on all islands a chance to share their knowledge about hawaii's history with the u.s. and why 'tribe' was nowhere on the horizon of most hawaiians (by nationality, as well as blood), except for those who already considered themselves both american AND tribes, and who already got their piece of the american pie in the form of homesteads. loyal and true americans, for the most part, and not many of those want to upset the status quo, since they already got theirs. so, recovering our nation is also about recovering our history. and many of those who testified at the hearings talked of a recovered history. good on them. what kind of response could those DOI folks have in response to learning a history they didn't know about? do they care? probably not. they came to get us in line so that when the tribal status comes, we'll be all happy about it and not surprised! it became clear, listening to testimonies, that most people reject the idea that the turning point in our history and the potential for our independent nation relies on our being placed back on the list of non-self-governing territories through the process established by the UN following WWII. we can go back to that OTHER fork in the road in 1893 and recovery that history and the illegal taking of our nation, our country, by a bunch of traitorous shitheads, who happened to be haole, and who used the US military might to back their play. how can we forgive that? we can't. they caused harm to our queen and to our country and, at some point, we ought to even the playing field in such a way that it is both just and pono. balanace--we seek balance and rightness. as uncle tommy maunupau would have said, "he pono no."