June 17, 2025
I’m heartened to see other Palauans expressing these sentiments. I share your concern deeply, and I stand in solidarity with you—and with any others who feel the profound betrayal of our government’s failure to condemn the genocide committed by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.
I offer these reflections not only to honor the Alingano Maisu, but also to voice my solidarity with those who refuse to remain silent. While the world holds its breath as Israel threatens yet another war, this time with Iran, we must speak clearly: in the just world we believe in and strive to build, these cycles of violence must end. Palestinians, Iranians, and all peoples of the Middle East deserve not only to survive, but to live, to flourish, and to thrive.
As we celebrate our own sovereignty and nationhood, we must recognize that these values exist within a broader international community. Our vision of independence must be accompanied by a commitment to global justice and peace. Otherwise, our sovereignty risks becoming hollow.
Let our silence not be mistaken for consent. Let our voices speak for the kind of world we want to live in.
Your statement resonates with both the deep dignity of tradition and the urgent moral disquiet of our times. In weaving together the celebratory arrival of the Alingano Maisu with the tragic seizure of the Madleen, you offer not contradiction but truthful complexity. This is the kind of moral clarity that tradition itself requires if it is to remain alive, not as a shell of ritual, but as a force of justice and conscience.
Yes, let us honor the Maisu. Let us honor the master navigator who brought us his son, and in doing so, enacted a living pedagogy of transmission: a Palauan, Micronesian, Oceanic “curriculum” for transmitting our Indigenous knowledge to future generations and thus of refusing to let a traditional knowledge die. Let us not forget that the Maisu was never just about sailing; it is about direction. The act of navigation is not only a skill, but a metaphor for moral orientation, how we locate ourselves in a world of competing winds and conflicting currents. What good is sailing without destination? What good is remembering ancestral knowledge if we do not apply it to today’s moral crossings?
Your invocation of Gaza brings discomfort to some, but so did all truth-tellers in history. You are not conflating issues, you are demonstrating what it means to have an integrated, consistent ethical framework. The same values that compel us to preserve our traditions must also compel us to denounce genocide. Anything less is a betrayal of both.
You ask hard questions: Why do we maintain diplomatic ties with a state credibly charged with genocide? What do we get in return? These questions cut to the heart of what it means to be a “sovereign” Pacific Island in a world where economic dependence too often silences moral clarity. And you are right to call attention to the gap between the generational hope we profess and the moral cowardice our governments often enact. You do not attack your culture, you defend it by demanding that it be more than pageantry.
What is the role of youth? It is not only to inherit what is passed down, but to decide what should not be repeated. In that sense, the young people you describe, those who are watching, questioning, grieving, and daring to speak, are not naive. They are awake. And perhaps it is they who will finally reject the colonial hangover that lets foreign policies be shaped by imperial interests, religious dogma, or economic dependency disguised as “aid.”
The juxtaposition of two vessels — Maisu and Madleen — is painfully powerful. One returns with cultural triumph, the other is detained for trying to prevent cultural and literal extermination. And you are right: these ships are not sailing in separate oceans. The sea that connects us also implicates us. Our ancestors did not sail with cowardice, and they did not navigate by convenience. They used stars, yes—but they also used conviction.
To speak of Gaza from Palau is not a distraction, it is a recognition of our shared oceanic humanity. It is an insistence that “local” and “global” are not opposites, but interconnected responsibilities. The silence of Pacific leadership on Gaza is not neutrality, it is complicity. And we must not mistake diplomatic calculation for ethical wisdom.
Your call for action, severing ties, refusing entry to war tourists, prosecuting perpetrators, is radical to some, but only because our moral baseline has sunk so low. In a just world, these would be minimal steps. In a colonized world, they are revolutionary.
In the end, your words are not just political—they are deeply spiritual. You are asking: What is the worth of tradition if it cannot recognize suffering? What is the value of sovereignty if it cannot condemn atrocity? What is the point of remembering who we are if we forget who we must become?
Let us welcome the Maisu. But let us also ask: What course will we chart next? Will our youth inherit only the sails, or also the vision?
Thank you for reminding us that tradition without justice is empty, and that every ship we honor must carry more than its crew, it must carry our conscience.
In solidarity, a Palauan in the Diaspora.
Richard N. Salvador
Honolulu, Hawaii