A "come home" moment!
Surfing’s grand Olympic debut is now very much behind us but the impact of the historic day is still reverberating through hearts and minds. Italo Ferreira, plucky Brazilian all-star, won gold in the men’s division and Carissa Moore, Hawaiian-American, won gold in the women’s.
The Associated Press had made news ahead of the games by laying bare to our Sport of Kings, declaring it was culturally appropriated by California whites and deeply unchill. Bill Maher, days later, blasted the AP for pushing its “woke Olympics,” while singling the surfing coverage out as deeply unsettling, going so far as to doubt that it had been appropriated from Hawaiians because Hawaiians likely did not even invent surfing, saying, “How do we know that they were the first to stand on a board on water? It seems like its something that any person near any ocean would eventually do.”
Rude, no?
The AP, undaunted, is now reporting that surfing has officially been re-appropriated from the appropriators by Hawaii, due Moore’s win.
Moore has now become a realization of Kahanamoku’s dream, at once the symbol of the sport’s very best and a validating force for an Indigenous community that still struggles with its complex history.
“It’s a reclaiming of that sport for our native community,” said Kūhiō Lewis, president of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, which convenes the largest annual gathering of Native Hawaiians.
Lewis said all the locals he knew were texting each other during the competition, glued to the TV and elated, even relieved, by Moore’s “surreal” win. He called it a “come to home moment” for a community that may never reconcile its dispossession.
After centuries of colonization by various European settlers, Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898 after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by U.S.-backed forces in 1893.
“At times, we’re an invisible people. We’re lumped in to other ethnic groups. Our sport is being defined by other groups. This puts it into perspective,” Lewis said. “It feels like an emerging of a people, of a native community that has been invisible to many.”
Beautiful, no?
Is cranky ol’ Bill Maher going to take another swing?
Moore as the story develops.
Hey T Neilson and the rest of you idiots on here. Your remarks show that you did not grow up in Indigenous culture, Hawaiian or otherwise. If you had you would recognize that most of your family has been affected by colonization which has either killed them off, made their health poor, and living a marginalized existence not even able to afford to live on their own lands because of greedy ignorant people who take everything they can and give nothing back except stupid remarks like are on this comment line.
I am Mexican/ filipino/Chinese and Native American.. I love surfing.. Am I stealing there culture??
Anyone whi believes this garbage is straight up Ret%#&*÷
Yeah it’s all so laughable even though the woke fuckers are serious. Going on about how Hawaii winning gold is taking surfing back – at the Olympics, perhaps the biggest fucking appropriation in the entire world of sport! Greek history matters…
I’m starting a campaign to wrest weed-smoking and pastiche reggae from Jahwaiians and repatriate it to Jamaica.
You’re on fire!
I mean
Youre on wind and solar!!
Ancient Egyptians invented skateboarding while building the pyramids.
Like the intentional quashing of most worldwide indigenous history and the genocide of its peoples and cultures, Hawaii was no different. Schools in Hawaii followed the path of most western educational institutions in whitewashing atrocities and encouraging false narratives. It is getting better and schools have begun to teach unvarnished facts and previously ignored truths. The social-political period of history in Hawaii from first western contact to about 1900 is tragic yet fascinating.
You might be right.
Hmmm, confusing. So Carissa’s Olympic gold means surfing has now been reappropriated? What about her world titles? They meant fuck all to the Hawaiians?
And fuck me if that ain’t shitting on your own like Sunny Garcia and Derek Ho and John John and Andy and all the battles they fought and won.
The Olympics, the event the surfing community prolly gives the least fucks about, is now declared as the official gold standard in the reappropriation race and all those other world titles over the last however many decades were all for nuffin! Haha poor, poor wozzle.
I’m so confused.
It’s all agenda-driven, like almost everything in life today. Best just to sit back and watch the world burn.
I fucking hate fire. Singes the fuck outta my arse hair
yawn…nothing really relevant today, beachshit?
https://youtu.be/637aV3BzeqM
Carissa who?
Here’s a sad but true factoid:
Before the illegal overthrow and occupation, the imminent heir apparent to the Queen and Hawaii’s constitutional monarchy was Princess Ka’iulani, a hapa Hawaiian. Her father, Archie Cleghorn, was a full blood Scot.
The Princess was well traveled, spoke 4 languages and was educated in Hawaii and England. Two years after her return to Hawaii she tragically died at age 23, entirely dispossessed by the thieving Americans.
Ka’iulani was an avid surfer since birth on the shores of her home in Waikiki. Her 7 ft, 4 inch alaia surfboard made of koa is preserved at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
British agriculturalist and the founder of Downton Agricultural College, John Wrightson, regarded as the first surfer in England, reported in correspondence surfing with Ka’iulani at Brighton beach in 1891.
From Wrightson’s Wikipedia page:
In September 1890 at Bridlington, under the guidance of two expatriate Hawaiian princes, Princes David Kawānanakoa and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, who were studying under Wrightson at Downton, Wrightson donned woolly bathers to reputedly become the first British surfer.
Cheers my Kiwi brother. Well said.
Fast Eddie is not Hawaiian.
They should sacrifice a virgin like they used to.
Show me the “Welfare rolls” for these Hawaiian Islands, and these “professional surfers” Mommy’s/Daddy’s. That money didn’t come from your sugar/pineapples!
Hawaiian-American? Hawaiians in Hawaii don’t use that term. America is is a foreign nation occupying Hawaii. Foreign as Japan, China, Russia, etc. The Kue Petition of 1897-98, a protest declaration by the vast majority of Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli), sent to President McKinley and the Senate of the United States of America objecting to a Treaty for the Annexation of Hawaii submitted by Non-Hawaiians. The U.S had treaties with Hawaii. In the Treaty of Reciprocity of 1876, Hawaii gave exclusive rights to Pearl Harbor to allow tariff free sugar import to the United States. Which means the Independent Kingdom of Hawaii would have had the naval forces of our allies, the United States in Pearl Harbor in 1942, dispelling the argument some else would have taken Hawaii. It is simply our Ally and friend stabbed the Hawaiians in the back.
Did you give a listen the whole way through? When he breaks down every venue he was the stage, they all closed, every one. Closed. Impressive run of misfortune.
Frank: “I’m the closer. Gonna kill it.
Judging by your surname, your ancestors experienced colonial oppression and systematic racism!