NEW DOCUMENTARY CENTERS PROTEST, POETRY & THE FIGHT FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY
Vogue - February19, 2021
This Is the Way We Rise begins under the cover of darkness with eight Native Hawaiian activists huddled together against the bitter Mauna Kea cold, against the state enforcement agents barreling towards them. The activists were protesting the proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawai‘i valued for decades by the astronomical community for its unhampered view of the universe. If built, the TMT would be the largest visible-light telescope on the mountain, dwarfing the 13 other telescopes already occupying Mauna Kea’s slopes.
For Hawaiians, Mauna Kea is more than just a mountain. It is a sacred site, the piko or center of where Wākea (the sky father) and Papa (earth mother) meet, a solemn place not only in Hawaiian cosmology but in the stories of cultures all across Polynesia. The eight activists—or kia‘i (protectors), as they are often called—were there to make a statement. As long as they remained standing, the TMT would not be built.
Among the kia‘i that day was Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, the poet and activist at the film’s center. A decade earlier, at just 18 years old, Osorio was heralded as a voice for the next generation of Native Hawaiians. Her poems, delivered in her now characteristic cadence of vulnerability and strength, vividly captured the experience of being queer and kanaka maoli, or Native Hawaiian, in a political climate that was often hostile to both parts of her identity.
The veracity of her poetry won her accolades and applause. It captured the attention of prominent audiences, including President Barack Obama and an enraptured first family during the White House’s inaugural Poetry Jam. But by the start of the film, poetry and performing had lost their luster for Osorio, who by then had not written a poem for three years.
“Not only did it feel like a chore and even, like, a pressure to produce for other people,” Osorio recounts in the film, “but I felt like I had run out of things to say.”
In This Is the Way We Rise, which was chosen to be screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Osorio’s internal conflict is set against the backdrop of the fight to protect Mauna Kea, a protest that at its height drew thousands of demonstrators to Hawai‘i’s highest peak. As we watch the growth of this movement, so too do we witness Osorio reclaim her voice.
I speak with Osorio and director Ciara Lacy, who this year became the first female Native Hawaiian to be shown at Sundance, about this cross section of creativity and activism, the longstanding effects of colonization, and how Native peoples can help save us from the current climate catastrophe....
