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Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

[{"text":"No need post bail, when cell phones exist in jail.","type":"text"}]

Firefly funny illustration of a bald man in prison giving advice on a cell phone 125937

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: A comedy crime saga in two parts</title>

Today's social posts come from howsdisguy: Part one and two of talking story with your roughboy philosopher relative.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: A comedy crime saga in two parts

No need post bail, when cell phones exist in jail.  

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

Stand-up comedian Tumua is doing crowd work somewhere on the Mainland, and 

 from the audience. The guy is from Kauaʻi, not born and raised, but “flown there, grown there.” He hasn’t lived there in nine years. While Tumua works the crowd, the guy shouts “chee hoo.” Tumua says, “That’s a solid chee hoo, man.” He does it again. Tumua has to shush him.

It’s a small moment, and Tumua plays it off with dry affection. The guy is playing out what he remembers of a place he left nine years ago. Much of the crowd never lived there at all.

Frank De Lima didn’t have that problem performing locally. Most of his audience hadn’t left. They were in the room — sharing the same plate lunch memories, cringing at the same accents, laughing because every joke was an inside joke. This wasn’t an introduction to local culture. It was a reminder, a celebration, even a reinforcement.

The plantation village was a truly different kind of place — shared land, shared labor, ethnic groups pressed close together with no way out. Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Hawaiians were all crowded into the same neighborhoods and schools. What came out of it — the food, the humor, the pidgin — came from people who couldn’t opt out of each other.

Even as that world was dissolving, people reached back for its symbols. By 1978, a political movement called Palaka Power had taken the plantation worker’s cloth as its name — a clear link to the past. The Palaka Power 

 said so plainly. The writers also noted, in the same breath: the ILWU was declining, sugar and pine would soon be gone, the Democrats of the ‘54 Revolution had mostly left the arena. They chose the symbol precisely because the reality was already receding. The myth was always partly constructed. But it was backed, then, by people who had actually 

The built world that replaced the plantation village included public housing, suburbs, and apartments. The Mainland has all of those. And then came radio, television, the internet, smartphones, and eventually TikTok.

Stand in the Sandy Beach parking lot on a Saturday. A kid near the lifeguard stand is hitting a vape and dancing to a song trending in Atlanta. The shaka sticker on the bumper is working harder than it used to. But social media didn’t cause any of this. It arrived to find the flattening of culture mostly finished and has been tracking it ever since.

The audience for local content skews diaspora: Aunties in Vallejo, Kalihi kids now in Las Vegas, people holding onto something they can’t quite name.

Nostalgia is real. But it runs in one direction. You can package a memory and ship it to Fresno. What you can’t do is put it back. A friend put it plainly: are we our own cover band?

Distinct cultures are not accidents. They grow from particular people living side by side. The plantation village wasn’t a brand. It was a neighborhood. The shaka sticker can travel, but the neighborhood can’t. Something real is lost when a place becomes content.

. He’s reaching for something he actually had, once. What is it, exactly? The memory of a place, a people. The kind of memory that swells within and erupts in shouts — or tears. It’s the memory that many hold of Hawai‘i, even those who visited only for a week.

Nostalgia can become sinful when we deceive ourselves. It’s easy to romanticize farm labor from the comfort of air-conditioned offices, but the plantations were not a paradise. And neither is Hawai‘i. The past is worth a visit, but no place to make a home. 

That’s a solid chee hoo, man — but once is enough. Shush.

Pineapple Plantation housing 16x9 Large

<title>What's in a chee hoo?</title>

Generations removed from the plantation era that forged it, local culture is in danger of becoming a nostalgia-fueled performance of itself, writes ASD columnist Sterling Higa.

What's in a chee hoo?

Adam manalo camp

Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp

Viewpoints

Hawaii History

From the early political struggles of the Hawaiian Kingdom to the wide network of cultural advocates today, the story of Hawaiian civic organization is one of continuity, strategy and kuleana over generations.

In the 19th century, organizations such as Hui Kālaiʻāina and Hui Aloha ʻĀina mobilized tens of thousands of Kānaka Maoli to defend constitutional governance, national sovereignty and the authority of the Hawaiian Kingdom. These groups understood politics as a responsibility. Petitions, public meetings and newspapers were tools for collective survival. Even after the overthrow, this political consciousness did not disappear.

In 1914, that lineage continued with the formation of ʻAhahui Puʻuhonua o nā Hawaiʻi, known in English as the Hawaiian Protective Association.

Organized under the leadership of Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, alongside other Native Hawaiian political leaders, the association sought to protect Hawaiian welfare during the early Territorial period. It addressed education, health, land loss and economic marginalization, and it helped lay the groundwork for the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act.

More than a policy group, it was an assertion that Kānaka Maoli would continue to organize themselves, speak collectively, and advocate for their people even within a colonial system imposed upon them.

By 1917, Kūhiō recognized another crisis unfolding alongside political dispossession: Hawaiian language and cultural practice were rapidly fading.

English-only schooling, urbanization and social pressure had disconnected many Kānaka Maoli from ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, traditional knowledge, history and one another. Kānaka Maoli were navigating a society that devalued their identity while demanding their assimilation.

Kānaka Maoli, including himself, were feeling invisible in their own homeland. Kūhiō understood that political advocacy without cultural grounding would not be enough. The survival of the lāhui required institutions that could restore confidence, transmit knowledge, and cultivate leadership rooted in Hawaiian values.

In 1918, Prince Kūhiō and his colleagues established what became the first Hawaiian Civic Club. The vision was intentional. The clubs would be nonpartisan and nonsectarian.

Judge Alexander G.M. Robertson recounts that “... He [Prince Kūhiō] wanted Hawaiians to be educated. He wanted them to elevate each other. He wanted to instill in and promote the economic, intellectual, social status, and wellbeing of Hawaiians in his community and he wanted sincerely to see Hawaiʻi’s culture to be forever preserved, not only for the Hawaiian but for all Hawaiʻi.”

The Hawaiian Civic Club movement was meant to be a place where Kānaka Maoli could learn how government worked, practice leadership, and stand accountable to their people. In other words, these clubs were created so Kānaka Maoli would not disappear from public life, but would be seen, heard and uplifted.

Many Hawaiian Civic Clubs have also grown into welcoming spaces where non-Hawaiians, particularly those with Hawaiian family ties or a sincere commitment to learning, can engage respectfully with Hawaiian history, values and cultural practices.

More than a century later, that vision endures. Currently, the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs includes about 60 clubs and nearly 4,000 members across Hawaiʻi and the continent. Clubs provide scholarships, mentor youth, steward wahi pana, restore loʻi and fishponds and host cultural education programs. They organize conventions, commemorations, teach protocol, and create spaces where Hawaiian language and practice are lived rather than archived.

On the continent, civic clubs anchor diaspora communities, offering Kānaka Maoli far from home a place to gather, remember, and act together as Kānaka Maoli.

This work takes place inside a political system created through the illegal overthrow and maintained through occupation. Civic engagement within that system does not negate the reality of Hawaiian nationhood. But it is a strategy for survival, harm reduction, capacity building and self-government.

Informed political participation allows Kānaka Maoli to protect land, language and community while preparing leaders who understand law, policy and networking.

From Hui Kalaiʻāina to ʻAhahui Puʻuhonua o nā Hawaiʻi to the Hawaiian civic clubs of today, Hawaiian political organization has always been an expression of kuleana. The Hawaiian civic clubs carry that responsibility forward. They care for place, for people, for language and for memory.

They remind us that no matter the form of government, Kānaka Maoli have never stopped governing ourselves, organizing our communities and shaping our future.

This article is reprinted with permission from 

OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "Civic engagement does not negate nationhood" by 

, in its February 2026 issue, Vol. 43 No. 2. Read more at 

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Representative Hui Aloha Aina

<title>Community Voices: Civic engagement does not negate nationhood</title>

In the 19th century, organizations such as Hui Kālaiʻāina and Hui Aloha ʻĀina mobilized tens of thousands of Kānaka Maoli to defend constitutional governance, national sovereignty and the authority of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

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Authors

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