Invitations of a Struggle: J.T. Miguel Acido, PhD
Kaibigan ng Lahaina (KNL) is painting visions of a liberated world.
The fire burned down old structures and a long with it the naivety of colonial dissonance and the stubborn amnesia one has to induce in order to eke out a living in the diaspora, particularly in the American project.
Whatever embers remain from the fire only serves to illuminate a vision that is flexed from our ancestral imagination of abundance.
What has stood strong is the Laem of Lahaina, the living room, the inner sanctum of the Amianan soul, where the stories of the ancestors find continuity in our journey to rebuild our selves today. This Laem is carried through the work of KNL.
They have the blueprint to build this liberated tomorrow.
KNLs architecture of liberation uses SAWALI, feeding individuals and housing families most in need; AMIN seeks to call our spirits back and care for the mental health and well-being; WAYA fights for economic sovereignty, more agency to determine socio-economic pathways; ILI restores the spiritual umbilical cord to the Land and resumes the continuity of our indigeneity.
Members of the Maui Cordilleras Dancers perform a dance of the Igorot people at the last Lahaina Palengke Night, on June 22, 2025.
An outsider like me will never understand so easily how the nakem (soul consciousness) of Filipinos in Lahaina operate. Having been invited to be part of the struggle of Lahaina they have allowed me to see in part what it means build this barangay (village) one panuli (pillar) at a time.
And in this struggle I have witnessed in several people of KNL an ethic of relationality rooted in the barangay of today and balangai (canoe) of the past.
This ethic of relationality expresses itself in Sieny Corpuz always open in arms and ready to share tears of liberation. I am inspired by Eric Paul Arquero’s vision of finding home in Lahaina as a brown Filipino-Ilokano boy. I am moved by the pedagogical project of Debbie Arellano’s insistence that education ought to emancipate and liberate. I am convinced by the charisma of Nestor Ugale to see the Filipino as more than an entertainer but a political being in charge of their future.
And I am healed by Tiffany Somera’s insistance to challenge the DSM’s pathologizing of our people—we are more than our personal trauma.
KNL has embraced our culture and rejected the manufactured silence and subserviency that has continued to uphold the economic, racial and indigneous apartheid of Lahaina.
KNL refuses to acquiesce to a culture that sees our brownness as only second, only a worker, only a renter, only a driver, only a cleaner–rather insisting that we must “unbecome” all of which we did not choose to be.
The staff of KNL reminded me that we were born the same color as the parched earth of the Ilocos, answering only to Apo Init, the fierce sun that rises over Lahaina; The Land is us–from mountain to ocean– we rode water buffaloes to new and old destinations, grew our own food, built our own home-–we did not punch in and punch out to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
To let go of the dependency of the coercive colonial hands that feed us means we need to envision and embody an economy and community that honors the gifts of our people. It means to dream of Lahaina that we may not have ever experienced, yet. That is what it means to break through the spiritually crippling apartheid that silently operates in Lahaina. We need permission for a loud lamentation–one that has been bottled up for 118 years since the first Sakadas arrived. I felt this cry
through the KNL’s work. I am beginning to hear the Filipinos be loud in their greatness again.
In Biag ni Lam-ang (The life of Lam-ang), one of the oldest epic stories in the Philippines, illustrates the inherent power of our people. Lam-ang was born able to speak, their first words were “I am Lam-ang and no one names me but me”. Lam ang not only announced but demanded to be called by their name. KNL is insisting that we name ourselves and name the world we want to live in.
Agbiag ti Lahaina!
