Vanessa Warheit, director of the film Insular Empire: America in the Mariana Islands just posted a new entry about her visit to Hawai’i and what she has dubbed the “Red Pill Tour”, a reference to the scene in The Matrix when Neo takes the red pill that awakens him to the violent and oppressive reality of his existence as he joins the resistance.

It was surreal standing over the map of the Pacific ocean in the Arizona Memorial visitor’s center, talking with Dr. Hope Cristobal a Chamorro leader from Guam, Lino Olopai, a Refaluwasch (Carolinian) master canoe navigator from Saipan, Terri Keko’olani and Vanessa about the “American Lake”, how the Pacific is depicted in the U.S. imperial imagination.  Then Lino struck up a conversation with “cousins” from Kiribati, who happened to be visiting the memorial. In beautiful contrast, it illustrated how peoples of the Pacific see Ka Moana Nui as the medium that unites peoples.