Iam Tongi made Hawaii proud by winning “American Idol,” but more importantly, he helped a large audience understand one of Hawaii’s most difficult challenges in a quick rhetorical exchange with Lionel Richie.

Richie asked Tongi the question too many of us with roots in Hawaii, living outside of Hawaii, have had to answer: “Why on Earth would you leave Hawaii?” 

Tongi gave the perfectly precise answer: “Priced out of paradise.”

The inconvenient truth of how hard it is for people from here to make ends meet isn’t part of the normal sun and surf narrative. Sometimes it sneaks into the American cultural mainstream, like the opening monologue of “The Descendants.”

The problem has been the subject of articles for decades, including a front-page story in The New York Times on Sunday, the same day that Tongi was named the winner of the popular national song contest.

It’s not a new story for us, but it’s a surprise to many on the mainland. I’m glad to see a wider audience being exposed to the difficulties of affording life in “paradise.”

Hopefully, Tongi’s win paves his path back to the islands from Washington state, but he would be the exception to the rule. There are 300,000 other Polynesians from Hawaii who won’t have the Cinderella story millions of people saw Tongi grasp. They’re living away from their homeland and an easy return is unlikely.

For my ohana it took a generation or more: My dad was one of those priced out of paradise 55 years ago.

Just before Tongi won on Sunday, my ohana gathered to celebrate my dad’s 84th birthday and my parents’ 53rd anniversary. 

We should have all been here in Hawaii surrounding him with aloha. Instead we were on FaceTime from six different places. My parents were in Texas with photos of Mauna Kea on the walls behind him while I could look out the window at the real Mauna Kea.

I think of the photos hanging in my parents’ dining room as “Windows to Hawaii.” I’ve seen them in every Native Hawaiian home on the mainland that I have been in. Before moving here, mine was a framed piece of kapa, or barkcloth, from my dad, a photo my mom took of my son’s shoes tucked into mine at Kalapana and a happy snap of my wife at the Waipio Valley Lookout. 

These “Windows to Hawaii” are the bittersweet connections of a people trying to stay rooted to their homeland. 

That’s why I’m saddened to hear news about one person after another making the choice to move to Las Vegas and other points on the mainland. I sympathize with the situation and I know they’re not “giving up” like the last governor said of people leaving Hawaii. Once you leave for places like Las Vegas, the odds are heavily stacked against a return. 

Once they get settled, I know they’ll hang their “Windows to Hawaii” and hopefully begin a journey on the mainland that may allow them to eventually afford a return to Hawaii.

In the meantime, a connection from Hawaii is trying to be made next month in Las Vegas: the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is choosing to hold its conference in Nevada.

A convention in Las Vegas is not novel, but the practical reasoning from the CNHA is: “For two decades, the Native Hawaiian Convention has served as the largest gathering of Native Hawaiians to discuss issues facing our community. It’s only fitting that we take the convention to the continental United States now that the amount of Native Hawaiians living there has surpassed the number residing in our ancestral homeland.”

The relationship between the Native Hawaiians in Hawaii and the diaspora hasn’t always been harmonious and the CNHA is trying to build bridges and align groups separated by geography. 

However, a gathering of Hawaiians outside of Hawaii is like showering with socks on. There will be no rainbows, trade winds or salt water. I’ve been to more luau outside of Hawaii than in Hawaii and while it’s always a wonderful time, it’s still an unrooted experience that doesn’t quite feel like the real thing. 

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul,” wrote the French philosopher Simone Weil. “A human being has roots by virtue of his real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future.”

It is a tragedy that half of the Native Hawaiian population has been uprooted from Hawaii. I hate to think of all those households with those “Windows to Hawaii” hanging on their walls in California, the state with almost the same exact number of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the 2020 census as Hawaii (157,000) to Vermont, the state with the fewest Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (181).

That Native Hawaiians have to gather in Las Vegas to discuss the state of Hawaiians is a reflection on the inequality, loss and lack of leadership Hawaii has suffered through decade after decade. It’s long past time for the face of leadership to change here in Hawaii in favor of people and processes that help Hawaiians maintain and grow their roots. 

The outmigration will continue until that change comes.