This Community Voice was originally submitted as an entry in Civil Beat’s Emerging Writers Contest. 

It didn’t take long in my college career, studying indigenous history and social movements, to understand that I was objectively, statistically doomed — ­­doomed to be doomed, and doomed to inflict doom on my community.

I am a recent college graduate­­ — a first-generation woman who completed a four­-year degree in two and a half years, in fact.

Yet, despite being brought up in the supposed “Everyone Gets a Trophy” generation, my reality as a Kanaka Maoli is ever­ losing, and the history here precedes itself.

We talk today about the homelessness crisis. Native Hawaiians account for one third of that population, the eyesore of human suffering, and the proverbial rug under which we must sweep the ills of society. And like many who have come before me, my rug is a magic carpet, one that will take me to better tomorrows, existing in a state of perpetual, sorrowful survival. Slowly, I am coming to grips with the fact that as a Hawaiian who is making the choice to move to the mainland to escape the pressures of Hawaii’s high cost of living, I am contributing to the cycle of further Hawaiian hardship.

Hawaii is made up of many collectivist cultures­­; it’s probably why we’re known as the “Aloha State.” We feed, we give, we care. In the spirit of John Dunne, we are no individual island, entire of itself; when our sands erode to the sea, we are all less. As such, when our foundation leaves, what’s left of our support is far from stable. We become a time bomb, waiting to collapse.

For Kanaka Maoli, the pressure is greater than for migrants to this land, ­­however long they have called Hawaii home. The time bomb has been ticking since the initial arrival of Westerners, and with each new peoples to settle this aina, something has had to give. And what is lost is often what had formerly always been.

Historically, we have lost our structures of society that were created to support the masses, such as the ahupuaa and agriculture­-based system that made many fruits for the many hands that labored. We lost our laulima, maybe not completely, but in its purest form. Today, we implement laulima, along with other Hawaiian values, in spite of the Western forces around us; without it, we cannot survive; and like us, these values, too, fight to thrive in our everyday lives. These values fight to keep us who we are.

The extended family unit is what brings the six degrees of separation down to two or three in Hawaii. When we fall as individuals, there is family far and wide to catch us. When we as a family fall, we support each other with what we have; our love does not falter.

But when tourism keeps the cost of living high, and Hawaiians are forced to relocate from their one hanau, it is not just those who move who are affected. I stand as a grain of sand. Though not the first to wash away, nor likely to be the last foundational grain, my move affects everything.

I am sorry to my kupuna, my hoa and the keiki who follow me, that you are homeless in a land that is your home. I am sorry that you are told that you are wrong for existing, for being seen, when they do not want to see you. I am sorry that I cannot protect you, offer you a couch to sleep on, give you as much as I want to. When I wash away, I never stop thinking about what, and more importantly, who I leave behind.