“Voting is your civic duty.”

It’s a phrase we’ve heard ever since we were in elementary school. From a young age, we are taught to participate in our elections to ensure our voices are heard and to incite change. 

However, as a Native Hawaiian, I’ve been begging the question: how can our voices be counted if they weren’t meant to be heard in the first place?

Hawai’i is a settler neo-colonial landscape. The history of our islands is rarely taught in American high schools, so it is important to have a brief summary in order to provide context for the reader. 

• Captain Cook made contact with Hawai’i on Jan. 18, 1778.
• The first Protestant missionaries arrived in 1820 with the goal of “civilizing” the Native people. 
• American citizens began moving to the islands and established sugar plantations. 
• A group of American businessmen, backed by American militarized interests within the island chain, overthrew Queen Lili’uokalani (pronounced Lee-lee-u-o-ka-lah-ni) on Jan. 17, 1893. 
• Hawai’i was officially annexed in 1898 before becoming the 50th state in 1959. 

As a citizen of the United States, my duty is to vote. As a citizen of Hawai’i, of my islands, I feel my responsibility is to protest, to fight for our land and our freedom. Hawaiian sovereignty is a complex topic within the Hawaiian community, but I strongly believe in fighting for sovereignty not just for my people, but for all of those in the Pacific Islands who battle American imperialism and colonialism. 

Like many people on Nov. 5, I stayed up for a good portion of the night monitoring the election. But as I stayed awake, all I could think about were my siblings in Pasifika. Now more than ever, it was clear to me that for Indigenous people globally, the outcome of this election would have catastrophic effects regardless of who won. 

This isn’t to say I accepted former president Donald Trump’s victory with a simple glance. I was disappointed, confused, and spent the day walking in the uncanny hot weather of Nov. 6. But a hard reality to confront as an Indigenous person of the lands the United States has colonized is that no matter the outcome of the election, we were never considered. 

This isn’t to say that the experience of Indigenous peoples on this land should invalidate the experience of millions of lives—including immigrants and those living in the Middle East—which will be irrevocably changed by the president-elect. This win represents a time when women’s autonomy, immigrants’ rights, and the bodies of BIPOC individuals are at risk. 

Now more than ever, community must be formed. Community can take on various dimensions and forms, but transnational activism and collective action must be at the forefront of our thoughts. American citizens are often taught to be hyper-individualistic, the lasting effects of which are extremely hard to dismantle. But this election cycle has seemed to reveal now more than ever the position of America within our globalized world and the collective need felt by globally marginalized communities to stand with one another. 

As Native Hawaiian activist and scholar Dr. Haunani Kay-Trask put it, we must “kūʻē!” This Hawaiian word, which means to fight and protest, has been running through my mind all week. Dr. Trask has built the foundation for many Hawaiians of what it means to seek sovereignty. And her answer? “Politics, politics, politics.” 

Creating change starts with changing discourse, building community spaces, and inciting action. Without widespread protest and movement, without divestments and without strikes, change will not be incited. 

This is the goal of sovereignty—of decolonization. To not only change the narrative of our people, which seems presupposed with trauma but to also change the course of our communities. As Indigenous people, we must “aloha kekahi, i kekahi.” 

This olelo noeau, a Hawaiian proverb, means to care for, and love one another, in spite. Stating it in English makes the phrase appear simplistic, but it means we must stand together when it is most needed. That even in minute tasks, in our everyday lives, we work together as a community with aloha, love, on our minds, constantly.