Trask v. Fujikane on the term "Local"

Going off of Rob's suggestion to distinguish the differences between Fujikane's "Local" and Trask's "Local," I thought I'd pick out a passage from each article to elucidate the two women's differing perspectives.

On page thirty of "Between Nationalisms," Fujikane states: "Local identity is predicated precisely upon the fact that it is not a Native identity, and although Locals have a long history in the islands, their narratives are often marked by an uneasiness over the ways they claim an identity based on what is very specifically a Hawaiian homeland. This critical point of conflict between Native Hawaiians and Locals over land is often obscured by the ambiguity of the term 'Local,' which includes Native Hawaiians and was founded, as I've mentioned before, on alliances between Locals and Native Hawaiians."

To Fujikane, locals are inherently not related to the native Hawaiians. She highlights the fact that local identity is problematic because it does not want to capitalize on the Hawaiian homeland. Instead, locals are caught in a liminal space between wanting to identify with the land but also realizing that natives have a right to claim the land as their own. It is such a dilemma that ignites the ambiguity of a "local" Hawaiian. Furthermore, natives are technically locals as well. They struggle, then, to distinguish between which community to align themselves with. Fujikane writes, "Native Hawaiians often find themselves in the position of having to choose the identity that most urgently needs to be represented."

Ultimately, Fujikane urges the two factions to resist the imagined notions of the nation of Hawaii and to forge alliances in order to overcome deep-seeded oppression. For her, negotiations and dialogue between the two contending groups will be necessary if either wishes to regain their true identities.

Trask, on the other hand, has a more strikingly antagonistic voice about the term "local." In a particularly enraged passage, she writes: "If Hawaiians have a pre-contact, pre-invasion historical continuity on their aboriginal territories -- that is, on the land that had been ours for two thousand years -- 'locals' do not. That is, 'locals' have no indigenous land base, traditional language, culture, and history that is Native to Hawaii. Our indigenous origin enables us to define what and who is indigenous, and what and who is not indigenous. We know who the First Nations people are since we were, historically  the first people in the Hawaiian archipelago. Only Hawiians are Native to Hawaii. Everyone else is a settler."

As opposed to the "ambiguity" examined throughout Fujikane, Trask's take on the term "local" is fiercely oppositional. She, as a native, establishes a dynamic and unstable binary between locals and natives. To her, anyone who is not of Hawaiian descent is a "settler." Locals do not have the same connection to the rich and lush history of Hawaiian life. And so they should not pretend to take on the identity of "native." Trask's argument is much more plainly divided and critical. While Fujikane takes on the complexities and nuances of the term's heated debate, Trask takes an emotionally outraged stance that clearly outlines the separate identities. For Trask, any alliances between the two communities would be antithetical to those natives who perceive "locals" as impostors to the Hawaiian legacy.

-Jon Vorpe