Why Haunani-Kay Trask is an amazing indigenous woman

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:

“This word is one of the few surviving Hawaiian language descriptions in common use in Hawai’i. And it has survived despite official suppression of my Native Hawaiian language by an all-haole, English-speaking American government in 1900. Indeed, Mr. Carter follows in the footsteps of his American haole compatriots who came to Hawai’i in the 19th century demanding that Hawaiians convert to the haole ways of behaving. Now, Mr. Carter demands that we stop using our own land. 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.” -Source


She called a white student a settler and then got promoted.