Haunani-Kay Trask

• Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
• Advocate of Hawaii’s independence from the U.S., and of the state’s deportation of all non-ethnic Hawaiians
• “The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

Haunani-Kay Trask is a radical feminist, indigenous rights activist, and Professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii. She is part of a movement of ethnic nationalists and racial separatists who contend that indigenous Hawaiians are entitled to enjoy political and economic supremacy over all the non-indigenous inhabitants of their islands.

Born in San Francisco in 1949, Trask attended the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1972, a master's degree in 1975, and a Ph.D. in political science in 1981.

A number of Trask’s family members have been active in Democrat Party circles. Most notably, her grandfather was a Democratic member of the legislature of the Territory of Hawaii for 26 years.

Trask contends that the Hawaiian people have been subjugated by the “racist, colonialist United States of colonial America,” whose “disease-laden racists ... took our government and imprisoned our queen” and continue to forcibly subjugate Hawaii by means of institutionalized racism.

In September 1990, Trask courted controversy when she publicly demeaned a University of Hawaii student named Joey Carter as a “haole,” a Hawaiian word meaning “foreigner” but generally used as a racial slur against Caucasians. After Carter had publicly complained about the incident, Trask responded by writing:

"Too bad, Mr. Carter, you are a haole and you always will be ... [T]his 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.

"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?"

At the time this incident occurred, Trask was the Director of her university's Center for Hawaiian Studies. Three years later, she was promoted to full professor and was given the honor of overseeing the construction of a new, multimillion-dollar educational facility earmarked specifically for her academic program.

At a January 1993 protest rally commemorating the 100th anniversary of Hawaii’s monarchy, Trask told those in attendance:

“Hawaii 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 [the actual year was 1893], and forcibly annexed our islands in 1898. With the overthrow, things Hawaiian were outlawed and things haole American were imposed.”

In the same speech, Trask expressed her view that white people are irredeemable racists who share the “common characteristic” of “not understand[ing] racism at all.” She elaborated:

“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.... That’s what the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of the United States intended, and that’s how American society operates today.... The hatred and fear people of color have of white people is based on that ugly history.”

Finally she declared, “I am NOT an American. I will DIE before I am an American.” (emphasis in original)

Also in 1993, Trask produced the documentary movie, Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation, about the 1893 arrival of the American ship U.S.S. Boston and the ensuing “treasonous coup d'etat against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom.”

Trask’s view of the 9/11 attacks is consistent with that of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who in 2002 received a warm welcome from Trask and her colleagues when he visited the University of Hawaii campus at the height of the controversy he had recently ignited (with his assertion that the 9/11 attacks were a manifestation of America's "chickens coming home to roost," and that the victims who had perished in the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns" who deserved their awful fate). Said Trask:

“Chickens have come home to roost.... What it means is that those who have suffered under the imperialism and militarism of the United States have come back to haunt in the 21st century that same government.... Why should we support the United States, whose hands are soaked with blood?”

At a Hawaiian political rally on the grounds of Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu on September 2, 2002, Trask delivered a speech which gave voice to her virulent hatred of America:

"Don't let anybody tell you not to be angry. We have every right to be angry ... because this is OUR country, and they took our government and imprisoned our queen ... And they banned our language. And then they forcibly made us a state of the racist, colonialist United States of colonial America....

"What we need to know is what really happened to our people. Who brought the disease? Who created private property? Who overthrew our queen?... Foreigners came. They conquered. They took our lands. They imprisoned our queen. And THEY divided us by blood quantum....

"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.”

During a September 6, 2002 appearance on the local Hawaiian television show First Friday, Trask expressed her bitterness over the fact that a non-Hawaiian colleague of hers, Kenneth Conklin, had been slated to teach a course on Hawaiian sovereignty. In Trask's calculus, Conklin, as a non-Hawaiian, was by definition unqualified to teach such a class. When Conklin cancelled the course in response to threats of violence that some indigenous rights activists had made against him, Trask said:

"Mr. Conklin. He's such a twit... he claims he was threatened, and therefore the course was dropped. And I think that's wonderful... 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."

In 2006 Trask joined Kathleen Cleaver, Winona LaDuke, and Mari Matsuda in endorsing a Kansas summit titled “The Latest Indian Wars: The ‘War on Terror’ Targets Critical Thinking,” which was held to show support for Ward Churchill and other professors “who think critically about the manifestations of colonialism and contemporary expansions of empire.”

Trask is the author of several books on feminist and political discourse. Her titles include: Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory (1986); Light in the Crevice Never Seen (1994); From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (1999); and Night Is a Sharkskin Drum (2002). In 2005 Trask co-edited the re-release of Ward Churchill’s book Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation, a collection of 18 essays “chronicling the genocide committed by European invaders.”

Trask also has published some collections of poetry rife with allusions to racial violence aimed at whites. For example, in her poem “Racist White Woman,” Trask writes:

"Racist White Woman
I could kick
Your face, puncture
Both eyes.
You deserve this kind
Of violence.
No more vicious
Tongues, obscene
Lies.
Just a knife
Slitting your tight
Little heart.
For all my people
Under your feet
For all those years
Lived smug and wealthy
Off our land
Parasite arrogant
A fist
In your painted
Mouth, thick
With money
And piety."