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Today's newsletter is the final installment in a series by Jasmine Michel exploring the voyages and history of bananas in the Caribbean and West Indian trade route (you can catch up on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here). Michel is a farm-to-table chef and writer who dedicates her work to the marginalized. An alumni of The French Culinary Institute and the Eco Practicum School of Ecological Justice, Jasmine's newest project, Dreamboat Cafe, is a small food platform of pop-up dinners and underground food journalism rooted in the effects of societal stigma and standards on minority mental health and liberation.
TROPICAL FRUITS CARRY THE STORIES...
of many ancient cultures that exist in equatorial regions.
It's what makes such hot-blooded produce wealthy in commodities yet drained by systems.
Hawai’i continues to restabilize in sovereignty since the American invasion of militarism and colonization. The transition of being displaced by colonial greed has sent not only Hawai’i into the cycle of restability but also Caribbean countries like Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the West Indies.
By forms of reclaimed autonomy we continue to stay connected. Harvests of taro, guava, mangoes, and bananas come in a dozen different languages, usually with origin stories that follow the same pattern: independence and abundance in the old ways of sustaining a people, the introduction of colonization to a land, and the exploitation in trade and labor for regaining the necessities that were stolen from the land and its people.
Fruit for native tropical people lends itself like the parts of an animal for different uses. For a lot of our problems, the answer tends to live at the intersection of someone else’s struggle. Often it’s not easy to find that intersection for those who live with more freedom, as contradictory as it may seem. Privilege can blur the ability to see someone’s struggle, but it doesn’t make it impossible to. As I like to remind myself, having the capacity to consciously remain ignorant to something is a form of privilege.
For marginalized communities though, we often live at these intersections sometimes waiting for someone with more access or literacy to help distinguish our common oppressing force. Or we work our entire lives recreating a form of liberation with what lack of access we had to freedom.
Over the last three weeks, we’ve looked into the history of fruit trade routes in the Caribbean and the many intersections it has within the conversation of decolonizing our food system. There are twenty-four canoe plants that sustained Polynesian voyagers on their way to finding the Hawaiian islands between 400 and 1000 CE. A huge portion of what plants were brought mimicked similar crops to Caribbean islanders. The banana is not just a fruit - to many it is in lineage to war and labor. Which led me to believe an intersection of our colonization must live in the similarities of our oppressor.
Traditional navigation guided voyagers through Oceania, with cargo like coconut, noni, ulu (breadfruit) and kalo (taro). This and the twenty one remaining staples on board continue to be the building blocks of diet and culture in Hawai’i. Land access for Native Hawaiians to preserve these plants remains stagnant with waitlists that have the potential to be years long. This treatment replicates itself within displaced minority communities seeking either racial reparations or agricultural aid.
In a culture so rich with ways to restore and protect native plants and all that accompanied the voyage from Polynesia, Hawaiians are still waiting on the return of ancestral land that’s been promised and never restored. Land that is pivotal in sustaining the crops once brought over in an almost impossible journey.
The colonization of Hawai’i through imperialism and exploited land lends a blended opportunity to further understand the struggle of island folks reclaiming independence. From the bottom is where it feels like we’re freeing ourselves, through the downfall of the sugar cane industry to the pivot of agro-tourism prioritized over Native preservation. Witnessing how deeply necessary sovereignty is in healing for many Hawaiians gave me an example of how I could do it for myself and my community. How to heal the parts of me that have been stolen.
LANDBACK is a movement, "that has existed for generations with a long legacy of organizing and sacrifice to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands." Their manifesto writes, "It is a relationship with Mother Earth that is symbiotic… It is recognizing that our struggle is interconnected with the struggles of all oppressed Peoples. It is a future where Black reparations and Indigenous LANDBACK co-exist. Where BIPOC collective liberation is at the core."
Collectively we have suffered, even from battles that we’ve won because it has only led us to continue defending. But with answers comes the power to reclaim our origins and the voyages that've been taken to get to where we are at right now. Kumu (teacher) hula, activist, and filmmaker Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu said in an interview with ‘Aina Momona, “Our people are multifaceted and multi-layered multi-tiered, extremely diverse people in terms of who we are and our understanding of our very own nature as Hawaiians…I acknowledge Hawaiʻi as my mainland. And everything that I do, everything that I engage in has to be oriented with Hawaiʻi.”
This further concretes the practice of understanding our waters and what fruit it bears in the routes to our collective freedom. I am still healing from my time occupying space in Hawai’i, recognizing my own forms of extraction through the familiar trauma and fruits that connected my Caribbean island heritage to that of Kanaka Maoli. I found rest in the mutual fatigue of white supremacy on an island that has more white landowners than Native Hawaiian ownership. I moved to Hawai’i because I didn’t need to explain why in my dark skin I was so angry. My anger was still ignored by most white people there but more respected than it was in the mainland. When I found my anger to be the last resource I had to offer the land, I knew remaining there would only contribute sickness to the very things I honored in Hawaiian culture. The mauna, moana, kūpuna and hula.
In deciding to leave Hawai’i I found the truest form of Kapu Aloha. The intimacy I share with a single fruit fuels the right to defend every fruit and their people, reverting my anger back to an ancestral form of purpose.
With what little room in my heart remains from the colonized world still exists a small seed for renewal.
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For more from Michel, check out these past instagram posts: Decolonize the Food Industry, Sustaining vs. Highlighting, Stopping our racist patterns..., and Understanding Colonization in the Food Economy.
We are thrilled and grateful to have collaborated with Jasmine through the Share Your Voice initiative, an ongoing effort inspired by the #sharethemicnow movement.
In food, justice, and food justice,
Tay + Dor
photo by Jasmine Michel
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