By Brenda Norrell
The film captured Best Documentary Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival, 2008 and is the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Festival International du Film Documentaire de Oceanien, Tahiti, 2010.
Joleen Oshiro of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin said, "It conveys knowledge that resonates in the heart as well as the mind."
Albert Wendt, Maori artist and author of Sons for the Return Home, also praised the film. “Noho Hewa is a brilliant, incisive, and complex exposé of colonialism (American and other) and its devastating effects on Kanaka Maoli, the indigenous people of Hawaii, and their land," Wendt said.
"After you see this film you will never again believe the lies and myths perpetuated about Hawaii by successive American governments, non-Hawaiian historians, writers, filmmakers, the tourism industry, and others.”
Noho Hewa is the first Native Hawaiian produced film of the 21st century to document the Hawaiian resistance to the U.S. occupation of their country. Produced and directed by independent journalist and filmmaker, Anne Keala Kelly, it looks at desecration of sacred sites and burials, and how the U.S. policies, via the military, the GMO industry and tourism use desecration as a colonial tool of ethnic cleansing.
I don't know much about the colonisation of Hawai'i - time to find out.
ReplyDeleteI had some Maori friends who went a few years ago and were continually asked (harassed) by American tourists "are you Hawaiian?, we're trying to find some Hawaiians"
What gross a objectifaction of people as tourist curiosities.
Before someone criticizes the inclusion of this, it can be mentioned:
ReplyDelete1) The indigenous Hawaiians are "Native Americans" of a sort, even if not American Indians at all. But much more importantly:
2) Any discussion of the US government's treatment of the indigenous Hawaiians will doubtless bring to mind the situation with the Natives in US territory on the North American continent.
(This being said, censored news, project censored and all other such efforts have silly names, since most everything they report isn't censored and they have a pretty easy time of reporting it, too).
Oh, believe me, Jaine, there's an assumption that all Polynesians are Hawaiian or Samoan. And all Asians are Chinese or Japanese. Phenotype stereotype, anyone?
ReplyDeleteYes, I had heard the all Asians are Japanese or Chinese one. I guess as a New Zealander I hadn't extended my phenotype stereotype awareness to Polyneasians because they have strong voice here. I hadn't considered it for white people either but as a whitey in Korea - I'm either English or American apparently.
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