We are island people. Our ohana is.

And islanders, whether we’re talking about Portlanders from Indonesia or Ireland, from Samoa or Cyprus, from Hawai’i or Haiti, have in our bones a stronger sense of place than communities comforted by the notion of moving elsewhere if the neighborhood goes busuk. The notion of moving on. Of moving out.

No matter what ocean we’re living in the middle of, papua orang are told and told by our ancestors and elders that "this is it." That this is aaall there is. There is no more.

"So sit still, anak anak manis." Dear children. "Listen quietly and look carefully, and thank god daily. Because everybody and everything you need is right here. Right now. Al’hamdulilaah."

And you know, all that holds true here too, here in River City.

This is an abundant place. We are an auspicious place, settled on the confluence of two generous river systems; 70 urgent salmon miles from that grand clockwise sweep of turgid sea that’s always made our city a meeting place of nations. Indian nations, Pacific nations, European nations.

So our family sat during the last week of August, then again during the first week of September — sat still and listened attentively — in front of our awesome Sanyo widescreen to the Republican and Democratic national conventions. We watched America’s leaders. We listened for someone wise to say something like our islander elders have always said.

But no bright city mayors, no articulate congressional delegates, and no candidates for the U.S. presidency, set it out as simply as our elders do. No one said: I’m sorry to say so, America. But I have to tell you, as a responsible leader, that it’s over. That there simply is no more to have. We are all we have.

Bitter medicine?

On the contrary, much was made about government getting smarter, about our economy getting bigger, about our country getting better. And while everyone in front of our TV understands this cultural narrative — the western one about greener pastures over the next hill, about grander oil deposits under the North Slope, about cooler technologies just around the corner — islanders recognize that rhetoric as okay among adolescent boys and nascent nations, but believe it’s not right for mature adults and governments. Not now. Not on our hungry little planet.

Of course for politicians it’s a hard sell. For working people it’s bitter medicine. But really, it’s over. The U.S. can no longer grab faraway nations’ resources, and we can’t borrow more from our downtown bankers, not to make ourselves bigger or better. This is all there is. We are all we have.

And you know, the sooner Americans adjust our thinking, then our footing, the sooner we’ll work it. Our resourcefulness, right now, right here among ourselves, is our exceptionality.

Here’s an example of what I’m seeing and hearing. There are many-many more.

On a Tuesday morning, around a tidy conference table, we were discussing what eats up enormous amounts of love, time, and money every time Portlanders of color gather — race relations. Specifically, what happens to any member of all our A-groups (Asians, Arabs, Africans, African Americans, Americano Latinos) when she or he walks into a workplace, a marketplace, or a classroom.

Said an American ethnic minority: I know I need to measure up for white folks there. To their expectations. In effect: I have to work out from under an assumption of inferiority. Intellectual, financial, social, inferiority.

On the other end of that long table, a new American, also a person of color, said he labored under no such assumption. Not for himself. Not from inside. In substance: maybe white Americans think little of me, but my family’s always assured our kids of our ancient culture’s muscularity and elegance.

Inside this anecdote, please let me propose, is an antidote for our energetic nation’s real and imagined needs. The answers are not under Saudi Arabia’s desert or Alaska’s tundra. They’re right here. Getting better does not mean getting bigger budgets for schools or cops, for public transport or housing; we don’t need bigger budgets for a stealthier air force or scarier navy. Better is smaller, quieter, kinder.

There is no bitter pill for leaders or followers to swallow.

Bad budget item

A lot has been said, after two decades of empirical research, about the cost of racism in the United States. The emotional costs, the health costs, the law enforcement costs, the costs in loss of productivity and loss of sales. Racism is very expensive.

University professors and policy thinkers now measure the treasury and the misery squandered on sustaining bigoted attributions of the kind we discussed around that Tuesday morning conference table. We can calculate the costs of both sides of ethnic and racial bias.

So what remains of this column is about dumping one big budget item (ethnic and racial bigotry), and inside the same breath: it’s about looking quietly among us, and nurturing what we already own. Embracing who we already are.

Compared to the cost of maintaining our city’s racialized ruts, the expense of embracing immigrant America’s cultural integrity is a real steal. New American families are fuelled by old understandings of how to work around every malady imaginable, how to work it together, and how to work it with very-very little. We got there on our Vespa, with our pop driving, me between his arms, baby brother between him and Momma, big brother behind her. Our free arms were for books and lunch pails.

America is nothing if not a nation peopled by new Americans just like your family and mine not so long ago. We are an immigrant nation. What hurts us is our expensive habit of talking about, and acting on, immigrant communities as if they’re needy. It’s a narrative etched deep into the Statue of Liberty. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses … wretched refuse." It’s a theme deeply grooved into red and white and black American history.

But the truth is, these wives and husbands, these daughters and sons, who left their beloved homelands, were those vigorous cities’ and little villages’ most ambitious. Most resourceful.

The truth is, their elders always told them: You guys rock. Go-go-go.

Smaller and kinder is better

And here’s the lay of the land in Stumptown, in Oregon, in the United States of America — the aggregate of those A-groups referenced earlier are today no longer a numerical minority. Borders slow but cannot stop the natural circulation of peoples and ideas across our earth’s well-worn face. Our families move like gray whale families move, we migrate like Chapman Elementary’s chimney swifts migrate. We all, always have.

Mothers Mexico’s and India’s and Africa’s ambitious and creative children are everywhere and don’t want to feel inferior. Not one of them want their children to.

Those racialized institutions in the habit of distorting these perennial migrations, those in the habit of disabling our optimistic and resourceful communities, simply have to go. Think of the savings.

America big and bigger is over. Smaller and kinder is better.

We’re all islanders now. Sharing our finite space and precious resources is essential to living well.

No matter how far from Kailua’s bright blue bay you live, we’re all neighbors on a green little planet spinning through all that icy and silent space. Dark and airless and loveless space. Forever.

Our ancestors and our elders assure and assure us, everybody and everything we need is here. Right here. Al’hamdulilaah.

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The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon

Al’hamdulilaah (Indo patois from Koranic Arabic): an exaltation of praise to the Creator, for something, some event, or someone.

Busuk (Indo patois): rotten. Really meaning overripe, so as not to offend island and Muslim sensibilities about all creation being precious.

Indo patois: a mixed language used in common among some of Indonesia’s very-very culturally different communities.

Kailua (Hawaiian): a city on O’ahu’s windward side. President Obama’s family’s winter-break residence. Kai (ocean or current) plus "elua" (two), for two currents running in Kailua’s bay.

papua orang (Bahasa Indonesia): islanders. Really: Papua mean island, as in the nation of Papua New Guinea. And orang means person, as in orangutan (man of the forest). Now you can speak Bahasa.

River City: Portland, probably because we are settled between River Willamette and Columbia.

Stumptown: Portland, probably because during our city’s settlement there were lots of tree stumps along our shores.