Hawaiʻi - General Research

Brief essays providing the historical, social, economic, and political backgrounds of issues facing Hawai'i, in 2010 and continuing to today. Education, Environment, Hawaiian Issues, Tourism, Arts, Political Culture, Law, Labor, U.S. Military, Transportation, Homelessness. Also available online.

"Continuing the conversation of The Value of Hawai‘i: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future, this new collection offers passionate and poignant visions for our shared futures in these islands. The fresh voices gathered in this book share their inspiring work and ideas for creating value, addressing a wide range of topics: community health, agriculture, public education, local business, energy, gender, rural lifestyles, sacred community, activism, storytelling, mo‘olelo, migration, voyaging, visual art, music, and the ‘āina we continue to love and mālama."

"Offers multigenerational visions of a Hawaiʻi not defined by the United States. Community leaders, cultural practitioners, artists, educators, and activists share exciting paths forward for the future of Hawaiʻi, on topics such as education, tourism and other economies, elder care, agriculture and food, energy and urban development, the environment, sports, arts and culture, technology, and community life."

"Provocative, well-reasoned attack against the rampant abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination, [that] has generated heated debates in Hawai'i and throughout the world." This 1999 updated version of the original 1993 version includes, "brief introductions to each of the previously published essays" that "situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion."

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"Lyrical evocation of Hawaii by a Native poet whose ancestral land has been scarred by tourism, the American military, and urbanization. Grounded in the ancient grandeur and beauty of Hawaii, this collection is a haunted and haunting love song for a beloved homeland under assault."

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"In this brilliant reinvention of the travel guide, artists, activists, and scholars redirect readers from the fantasy of Hawai‘i as a tropical paradise and tourist destination toward a multilayered and holistic engagement with Hawai‘i's culture and complex history. The essays, stories, artworks, maps, and tour itineraries in Detours create decolonial narratives in ways that will forever change how readers think about and move throughout Hawai‘i" (publisher's website).

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"Chronicles the political struggles and grassroots initiatives collectively known as the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Scholars, community organizers, journalists, and filmmakers contribute essays that explore Native Hawaiian resistance and resurgence from the 1970s to the early 2010s."

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"Documents the political lives of four wāhine koa (courageous women): Moanike‘ala Akaka, Maxine Kahaulelio, Terrilee Keko‘olani-Raymond, and Loretta Ritte, who are leaders in Hawaiian movements of aloha ‘āina. They narrate the ways they came into activism and talk about what enabled them to sustain their involvement for more than four decades. All four of these warriors emerged as movement organizers in the 1970s, and each touched the Kaho‘olawe struggle during this period."

"Centers on the personal and embodied articulations of aloha ʻâina to detangle it from the effects of colonialism and occupation. Working at the intersections of Hawaiian knowledge, Indigenous queer theory, and Indigenous feminisms, it seeks to recuperate Native Hawaiian concepts and ethics around relationality, desire, and belonging grounded in the land, memory, and the body of Native Hawai’i."

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"Anthology is the first to navigate the interconnections between the rhetorics and aesthetics of the Pacific. Like the bright and multifaceted constellation for which it is named, Huihui: Rhetorics and Aesthetics in the Pacific showcases a variety of genres and cross-genre forms—critical essays, poetry, short fiction, speeches, photography, and personal reflections—that explore a wide range of subjects, from Disney’s Aulani Resort to the Bishop Museum, from tiki souvenirs to the Dusky Maiden stereotype, from military recruitment to colonial silencing, from healing lands to healing words and music, from decolonization to sovereignty."

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"Examines the dynamics between race, ethnicity, and indigeneity to challenge the primacy of ethnicity and cultural practices for examining difference in Hawai‘i while recognizing the significant role of settler colonialism. This original and thought-provoking volume reveals what a racial analysis illuminates about the current political configuration of the islands and, in doing so, challenges how we conceptualize race on the continent."

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"Significant update to the highly influential text People and Cultures of Hawaii: A Psychocultural Profile. Since its publication in 1980, the immigrant groups it discusses in depth have matured and new ones have been added to the mix. The present work tracks the course of these changes over the past twenty years, constructing a historical understanding of each group as it evolved from race to ethnicity to culture.Individual chapters begin with an overview of one of fifteen groups."

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"Examines the roles of Asians as settlers in Hawai‘i. Contributors from various fields and disciplines investigate aspects of Asian settler colonialism to illustrate its diverse operations and impact on Native Hawaiians. Essays range from analyses of Japanese, Korean, and Filipino settlement to accounts of Asian settler practices in the legislature, the prison industrial complex, and the U.S. military to critiques of Asian settlers’ claims to Hawai‘i in literature and the visual arts."

"In this era of late liberal settler colonialism, cartography as a methodology is critical to rearticulating our radically contingent relationships with the living lands, seas, and skies. Kanaka Maoli and critical settler cartographies in Hawai'i reveal the ways that climate change is bringing about the demise of capital, making way for Indigenous economies of abundance that ask, how will the earth recognize us? Kanaka Maoli mapping practices emphasize the continuities of lands across waterways and ecosystems."

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A must read for anyone using Hawaiʻi newspaper sources in their research as this "charts the role Hawai‘i’s newspapers played in shaping major historic events in the islands and how the rise of the newspaper abetted the rise of American influence in Hawai‘i."

"Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau (1815–1876) was one of the prominent Native Hawaiian scholars of the nineteenth century. Kamakau’s series on Hawaiian history and culture originally appeared in the weekly Hawaiian-language newspapers Ke Au ʻOkoʻa and Ka Nupepa Kuʻokoʻa from 1866 to 1871. In Ka Poʻe Kahiko, Kamakau documents the fundamental principles underlying the daily activities of Hawaiian life. Kamakau discusses the organization of Hawaiian society as a whole and describes each class, focusing in particular on the spiritual and religious aspects. Kamakau delves into the history of ʻanāʻanā (true magic) and hanaʻino (sorcery) and provides historical examples."

"In this volume, Kamakau examines the material culture of his ancestors, with a particular eye on the customs of the common people. He describes the cultivation of food and other plants used by the Hawaiians, such as ʻolona for nets and rope, and hue ʻawaʻawa (bitter gourds) for containers. The book documents the rich Hawaiian tradition of fish farming, as well as the elaborate rituals of canoe making, kapa (bark cloth) making, and house construction. The accounts bring to light both technical detail and Hawaiian philosophy."

"Completes a trilogy based on a series of articles Kamakau wrote in 1868 and 1870 for the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ke Au Okoa." "In this final volume, Kamakau takes the reader on a tour of the islands, stopping along the way to tell tales associated with various sites. The stories, some full of mischief, bring to life the ancestral chiefs and gods of Hawai‘i. Kamakau describes the origins of Hawai‘i and its people, taking pains to trace the genealogies of the chiefs."

Definitive resource on Hawaiian material culture. Meticulously detailed and well illustrated, former Bishop Museum Director Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter H. Buck) guides reader through major elements of Hawaiian arts and crafts. Contents: 1. Food, 2. Houses, 3. Plaiting, 4. Twined baskets, 5.Clothing, 6. Canoes, 7. Fishing, 8. Games and recreation, 9. Musical instruments, 10. War and weapons, 11. Religion, 12. Ornaments and personal adornment, 13. Death and burial, 14. Index. Earlier editions here: 1957, and 1964.

"Originally published in 1972, Native Planters in Old Hawaii is the fruit of a brilliant collaboration between Pacific anthropologist, E. S. Craighill Handy, his wife, Elizabeth Green Handy, and the beloved expert on Hawaiian language and culture, Mary Kawena Pukui. Today, this classic work remains invaluable to scholars and practitioners alike as both a precious ethnographic resource on Hawaiian planting practices and as an in-depth examination of Hawaiians’ relationship to land. The book discusses basic patterns of Hawaiian planting culture, the gods worshipped, class and land divisions, water rights and irrigation techniques, tools, crafts, and general horticultural skills. It includes an examination of how people shaped their cultivation practices to the varied Hawaiian environment, and documents various myths and rituals connected to planting."

"David Malo (ca. 1793–1853) stands with Samuel Kamakau and John Papa ‘Ī‘ī as one of the three most significant Native Hawaiian historians of the nineteenth century. Malo’s Hawaiian Antiquities is considered a classic and deserves a place in the library of any serious student of Hawaiiana. Raised among chiefs, priests, artisans, and scholars in the court of Kamehameha I, Malo provides one of the few authentic sources of information on the ancient beliefs and practices of Hawaiians. Malo was among the Hawaiians to study reading and writing with the missionaries. Although he was influenced by Christian teachings, he had been brought up under the traditional Hawaiian kapu system and his writings closely embody Hawaiian patterns of thought. Hawaiian Antiquities is a singular account of Hawaiian culture and society in pre-Christian times. This engrossing study, completed in 1839, tells us of the material world of Hawaiians, as well as their origins, myths and beliefs."

Available Online Here. "Traces Hawaiʻi's history from ʻUmi, high chief eight generations before Kamehameha I, to the death of Kamehameha III in 1854. Covers the arrival of Captain James Cook, the consolidation of the Hawaiian kingdom by Kamehameha I, the coming of the missionaries, and the changes affecting the kingdom through the reign of Kamehameha III."

"Compilation of writings by John PapaʻĪʻī selected from articles he wrote for the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa between 1866 and 1870. ʻĪʻī wrote with authority on a broad range of historical and cultural subjects as well as on matters of the greatest concern to Hawaiians of his day. He presents personal experiences as well as an abundance of details about events and customs. His writings are a unique and invaluable record, describing life under the Kamehamehas with the authority of a firsthand witness and revealing the events of Hawaiian life as they actually happened."

"Drawing on Hawaiian-language texts, primarily newspapers produced in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, Silva demonstrates that print media was central to social communication, political organizing, and the perpetuation of Hawaiian language and culture. A powerful critique of colonial historiography, Aloha Betrayed provides a much-needed history of native Hawaiian resistance to American imperialism."

"Discusses the complex ways in which the ruling ali‘i of the Hawaiian Kingdom engaged with foreign powers, crafting a sophisticated blend of traditional Hawaiian governance with ideas from the west."

"Tells the complex history of the unsuccessful efforts of deposed Hawaiian queen Lili‘uokalani and her subjects to resist annexation, which eventually came in 1898. Coffman describes native Hawaiian political activism, the queen's visits to Washington, D.C., to lobby for independence, and her imprisonment, along with hundreds of others, after their aborted armed insurrection."

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"Reinterprets the major events leading up to and following statehood in 1959: U.S. annexation of the Hawaiian kingdom, the wartime crisis of the Japanese-American community, postwar labor organization, the Cold War, the development of Hawaii's legendary Democratic Party, the rise of native Hawaiian nationalism."

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"Overview of the Japanese investment spree of the late 1980s, the impact of national economic restructuring on the tourism industry in Hawaii, the continuing crises of local politics, and the Hawaiian sovereignty movement as a potential source of renewal."