A college course won’t teach you how to find that cultural balance in Hawaiʻi. You just need to live here.

Eric Stinton’s recent Civil Beat column, ”Can Settlers Ever Be Pono?” covered a lot of ground, but a key question remained:

How does the righteousness of pono impact everyday lives in Hawaiʻi?

The column explored sweeping concepts like settlers, history and culture, and addressed controversial questions like, “Can haoles be pono?” “Are they all settlers?” And for that matter, is “settler” a proper term?

The pono teachers in the column sound like college professors. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was proudly one for a long time.

But we profs have our quirks and bad habits. One of them is talking at such a high level that the discussion confuses rather than clarifies. It w

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