Translated as either “calm bay” or “sheltered harbor,” Honolulu is, after Auckland, New Zealand, the second largest city in Polynesia; it has been since 1845 the capital of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and it is by far the most populous of the state of Hawai‘is metropolitan areas with just under 1,000,000 residents.[1] Honolulu has the distinction of being the only state capital in the United States that was the seat of government of a nation overthrown and annexed against the wishes of its monarchy and people.[2]

I have been thinking about Honolulu since the fall semester of 2001. I was a PhD student at the University of Arizona and had, in one of my classes, many of the members of the university’s Hawai‘i Club, an organization for students with connections to Hawai’i and other Pacific Island nations and cultures . A quest to teach U. S. history from the perspective of Hawai‘i to benefit those students that semester has led to something of a personal quest to learn about the culture of our most unique state. My observations below have as their basis a tour I made of much of the city of Honolulu while riding a 68 centimeter-long Hawaiian koa wood Arbor Pocket Rocket mini-cruiser skateboard.

Visually, Honolulu is an unusually beautiful American city, set on the lush southern coast of the 3,900,000 year-old volcanic island of O’ahu.[3] Western parts of the city sit at the base of the Wai’anae Mountains, eastern sections extend in to the canyons of the Ko’olau Mountains, and the city’s center sections encircle its harbor and the extensive bay called Pearl Harbor. The sole thing that most mainlanders know about Honolulu, and Hawai’i for that matter, is the coverage their middle and high school textbooks provide about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor not quite seventy six years ago.[4] The distinctive curvilinear 1962 memorial that hovers above the submerged U. S. S. Arizona is Hawai’i’s single most frequented tourist site. Political Scientists Kathy Ferguson and Phyllis Turnbull describe it as “a significant national memory site,” which allows visitors to see oil seeping from the tomb of hundreds of sailors and marines in the water below and to contemplate the subsequent effort to win World War II, one of the defining moments in American history.[5] Equally poignant are the many signs of kamikaze pilots’ bullets visible on the exteriors of hangars and the walls of officers’ houses at Hickam Air Force Base, now Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.[6]

People arriving in Honolulu for the first time are often surprised when they learn that the city has interstate highways. About ten miles east of the Arizona on Interstate Highway H1 is the section of the city where most of the tourists stay, Waikīkī. The hotel industry in Waikīkī is large enough to be responsible for something like 8% of Hawai‘i’s gross state product every year, and is represented by a seemingly endless stand of high-rise buildings with windows straining to offer guests a view of the Pacific.[7] Waikīkī is one of the surreal spaces in our country in which the difference between what is and what was are so drastic that an observer is left incapable of believing they are in the same place. As Gaye Chan and Andrea Feeser note in Waikīkī: A History of Forgetting and Remembering, this section of Honolulu was popular with Polynesians because its streams offered fresh water, and as a result, early Hawaiians established a thriving community in which they grew taro, built homes, religious temples, and fish ponds, and surfed.[8]

In early photographs of Waikīkī, one can follow the idyllic beach, with its gentle wave, to the volcanic cone Lē’ahi, or Diamond Head, at its end.[9] But about a hundred and ten years ago, the beachfront began to transform into a place of recreation and escape for mainlanders. Surfing historian Joel Smith has written of Alexander Hume Ford, who in 1909 began the Outrigger Canoe Club to promote surfing in Waikīkī.[10] Jack London shared his surfing and leisure experiences at Waikīkī with readers around the world in his book The Cruise of the Snark, and the famed Native Hawaiian multi-Olympic sport gold-winning athlete Duke Kahanamoku joined the Outrigger Canoe Club in 1917.[11] During this era, financiers constructed a number of elaborate hotels designed to appeal to wealthy tourists seeking a tropical paradise. The Moana, which opened in 1901, and the Royal Hawaiian, built in 1927, helped to permanently transform Waikīkī, a bucolic village Native Hawaiians inhabited for generations, into the tourist and resort center of Honolulu.[12] The white beaux-arts exterior of the Moana, now the Moana Surfrider, and the pink Moorish exterior of the Royal Hawaiian still stand, although it is difficult to make them out because the bright white high-rise hotel towers that now line nearly the entire 2.5 kilometer length of Waikīkī’s beach dwarf them.[13]

A fascinating spot for understanding the history and culture of Honolulu and Hawai’i is the intersection of Punchbowl and South King Streets in the city’s center. Directly to the west is the 1883 statue of Kamehameha the Great, a chief and warrior from the Island of Hawai‘i who through military conquest of the islands of Maui, Molokai‘i, and O‘ahu, and diplomatic agreement with Kaua’i, became the unifier and first monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1810 and lived nearby from 1810 until 1812.[14] Kamehameha instituted the kapu system of laws in Hawai’i, developed international relations between his kingdom and other nations, and with his outstretched arm, feathered cloak (‘ahu ‘ula) and headdress (mahiole), and spear (ihe), has since served as a symbol of the Hawaiian people.[15] The statue stands directly in front of the 1874 Ali‘iolani Hale, which served as offices for the Kingdom’s government and now is the Hawai’i Supreme Court, which in 1993 made national history by being the first American state supreme court to declare that denying gay couples the right to marry constituted discrimination.[16]

Behind the Ali’iōlani Hale sits the Hawai’i Attorney General’s Office, from which have emerged some of the strongest arguments against the current president’s policies on immigration. One block further is the modernist 1977 Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana’ole Federal Building and U. S. Courthouse, where in April 2017 courtroom decisions elicited the U. S. Attorney General’s comment that “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”[17] About six blocks to the northwest of the Ali‘iolani Hale is Honolulu’s Chinatown, which developed as a center of Chinese community and commerce in the mid-19th century as the terms of Chinese sugar laborers ended and they sought other financial opportunities in Hawai’i.[18]

Most of the present buildings post-date the large conflagration of 1900 that destroyed much of the neighborhood in an effort to end an outbreak of the bubonic plague, but the area remains a center of civic pride in a city and state that celebrate their remarkably long-lived ethnic integration.[19] As University of Hawai‘i Music Professor Frederic Lau has noted, mid-nineteenth century agricultural laborers and commercial workers arriving from China, Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, and elsewhere in Polynesia intermarried with Native Hawaiians, African Americans, and haoles, or white Americans, resulting in “Hawai‘i’s rainbow [multicultural] society” in which “many local-born children are known to be descendants of mixed-race marriages that often include three or four ethnicities.”[20] The result is the notable menu feature of many of Honolulu’s and the Hawaiian Islands’ restaurants; as Geographer Ines Miyares explains:

Most plantation workers were poor and would bring tins containing one or two items of simple fare for the midday meal. Despite their differences, workers would share bits of their meals, sometimes introducing each other to new foods. The Chinese introduced rice, chicken, and duck; the Japanese, various forms of fish and the use of teriyaki; the Koreans kimchi; the Puerto Ricans, pork and various spices such as saffron; the Portuguese, sweet bread and doughnuts. The sharing of food evolved into a tradition among plantation workers and became known as the “mixed plate” or the “plate lunch.”[21]

One of Honolulu’s storied restaurants noted for this mélange of cuisines, ‘Ono Hawaiian Foods, will serve its last plate lunches in August after fifty-seven years of business near Waikīkī.[22]

Turning left at Punchbowl and King, to the south one sees a distinctively New England style religious edifice erected in coral, the 1842 Kawaiaha‘o Church, from which the Congregationalist missionary Hiram Bingham led his quest to Christianize the Native Hawaiian population.[23] His arrival in 1820 occurred just after the abandonment of the kapu system in 1819, the result of Kamehameha’s son’s violation of a major kapu just six months after ascending to leadership of the Kingdom.[24] The impact of Bingham’s and other missionaries’ efforts was deep and devastating for Native Hawaiians as Christians, teamed with American business leaders, spent much of the rest of the nineteenth century leading efforts to rid Native Hawaiians of their land, religion, worldview, language, lifestyle, foodways, and customs, including hula and surfing.[25] Just behind the church sits the New England-style building complex constructed by other Protestant missionaries between 1821 and 1840, today used as the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Museum.[26] Turning east and then to the northeast, there appear a series of government buildings—first the Honolulu Mayor’s Office, the Honolulu City Hall, the Hawai‘i State Library, and the Hawai‘i State Archives. Looming largest in this complex is the Hawai‘i State Capitol, a modernist 1969 design by architect John Warnecke, with whose work, including John F. Kennedy’s grave, Stanford University’s Meyer Library, and the mathematics-science complex at the U. S. Naval Academy, mainlanders are likely familiar.[27]

Finally, directly to the north of the intersection of King and Punchbowl sits the ‘Iolani Palace, which holds perhaps the deepest meaning of all of these buildings for Native Hawaiians. Completed in 1882 under the oversight of King David Kalakaua, its telephone, electricity, lighting, and plumbing made it in a technological sense the first “modern” building in Honolulu.[28] Kalakaua’s reign had great impact: he brought widespread literacy to the Hawaiian people, he signed the Reciprocity Treaty that gave the United States operations in Pearl Harbor in exchange for duty-free Hawaiian sugar exports to the U.S., and he made substantive efforts to revive hula, surfing, and other cultural expressions that had suffered for five decades under missionaries’ influence.[29] Kalakaua’s commitment to the perpetuation of Native Hawaiian culture is recognized by the annual Hilo-based Merrie Monarch Festival, which showcases competitive hula dancing.[30]

Kalakaua’s rule was also notable for the numerous efforts of American planters and entrepreneurs, among them Sanford Dole, to wrest control of the Hawaiian Kingdom and to convince the United States to annex the islands for their financial gain.[31] After Kalakaua’s death in 1891, his sister Lili’uokalani ascended to the throne and lived in the ‘Iolani Palace under similar pressures from whites. Lili’uokalani spent much of her rule defending her monarchy, the independence of the kingdom, and perpetuating elements of Hawaiian culture.[32] In 1893, some American businessmen colluded with U.S. Marines to occupy the ‘Iolani Palace grounds, effectively deposing Lili’uokalani and creating a pseudo-government of their own leading.[33] The next year, Dole declared Hawai‘i as a republic under his leadership, and Lili’uokalani was arrested in 1895 after her supporters tried to restore her to her throne; she lived in the ‘Iolani Palace for eight months as a prisoner.[34] In 1896, whites banned the teaching of Hawaiian language in the kingdom’s schools, a long-lived scar on the soul of Hawaiian culture.[35] On August 12, 1898, from the windows of Washington Place, a royal home just 250 feet from the ‘Iolani Palace, Lili’uokalani watched Americans unfurling patriotic bunting and celebrating the official, and illegal, annexation of Hawai’i by the United States.[36] Washington Place remained her home, from which she wrote defenses of her monarchy and the Native Hawaiian people, until her death in 1917; inside one if its rooms, Lili‘uokalani, a trained musician, completed perhaps the most celebrated classical composition in the Hawaiian songbook, “Aloha ‘Oe.”[37]

‘Iolani Palace also holds great meaning for many Japanese American Hawaiians. As in other Pacific-bounded locations in the United States during World War II, the U.S. government set up internment camps in Hawai‘i, and 24 kilometers from the ‘Iolani Palace sit the remains of the Honouliuli Internment Camp, which had a wartime population of 4,000 Asian and Asian American residents. Former Honolulu resident, President Barack Obama, declared it a national monument in 2015.[38] However, the ‘Iolani Palace was the site of one of the great moments of Asian American pride when, on March 28, 1943, before a crowd of 20,000 onlookers assembled on the palace grounds, 2,600 Japanese American men took the oath of office as members of the United States Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team and went off to Europe to fight in the war; they remain the most decorated military unit in American history.[39]

Just two blocks southwest of the ‘Iolani Palace, the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit is constructing the Downtown Station—the eighteenth of twenty-one planned stops on the city’s 32-kilometer elevated light rail system.[40] Although since the project’s inception the goal has been to ease traffic on the city’s freeways, light rail construction has faced a similar issue as building those freeways: the disturbance and destruction of ancient Native Hawaiian burials.[41] As a non-Native Hawaiian student of Hawaiian culture and language, I have begun to learn about the significance with which Native Hawaiians treat all aspects of the natural world and the reverence Native Hawaiians demonstrate toward their kupuna, or ancestors. I have also come to understand that nearly all places in the Hawaiian Islands are inextricably bound with the sacred Hawaiian past, including religious sites, homesteads and village sites, locations of agriculture and aquaculture, places noted in proverbs and chants, and locales with close associations to the natural and spiritual worlds. It is of little surprise, then, that any construction in Honolulu, let alone a public transit project necessitating digging in the ground, will inevitably disturb cultural, religious, and burial sites. Paulette Kaleikini, a self described “activist for our kingdom,” raised the issue of the light rail’s disturbance of ancient graves along its route before the Supreme Court of Hawai’i, prompting the court to order a halt to construction while the state and archaeologists investigated further disturbances along the planned route.[42] Kaleikini also protested a construction project back at the intersection of Punchbowl and King because that area, too, sits above ancient burials.[43]

Kaleikini’s efforts represent just one of a myriad of examples of the Native Hawaiian cultural revival that has had many facets, including an active Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement,[44] the reestablishment of teaching Hawaiian language in schools across the islands,[45] a resurgence in Hawaiian music in both composition and instrumentation,[46] and, like Kaleikini’s steps, a wider recognition, acknowledgment, and protection of Native Hawaiian sites.[47] One of the institutions at the center of both the celebration of Hawaiian culture and the protest against the appropriation of that culture’s artifacts is the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, a campus of buildings 4.8 kilometers northwest of the King Kamehameha Statue. There are few places on the planet at which one can learn more about Native Hawaiians and other Polynesian groups through photographs, manuscripts, and cultural objects which the museum curates and displays. However, many Native Hawaiians consider the holding of cultural artifacts and human remains to be a violation against their ancestors, and have utilized the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to challenge the Bishop Museum’s continuing to curate sacred objects and human remains.[48]

One of the most anticipated days of 2017 for tens of thousands of Honolulu residents was directly connected to Native Hawaiian cultural revival: the June 17 return of the canoe Hōkūle’a to the city’s harbor, its home port. In 1973, anthropologist Ben Finney, waterman Tommy Holmes, and artist Herbert Kane created the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu and set about building the Hōkūle’a, an ocean voyaging canoe.[49] Finney later recalled that with sailing skills learned from Caroline Islands traditional navigator Mau Pialug, Hōkūle‘a’s first “voyage from Hawai‘i to Tahiti and return in 1976 helped to inspire what has become known as the Hawaiian renaissance.”[50] During the past 41 years, Hōkūle‘a has proved that Polynesians were capable of deliberately sailing long distances across the Pacific and settling previously uninhabited islands. The project has also led other Polynesian cultures to build and sail similar traditional canoes, prompted cultural revivals among other indigenous peoples, and inspired native peoples in every port in to which it has sailed.[51]

Hōkūle‘a is also deeply connected to two other primary agents of the Hawaiian Renaissance. Immortalized on a small plaque on board the canoe is Eddie Aikau, a big wave surfer and the first lifeguard at O‘ahu’s Waimea Bay, who died after Hōkūle‘a capsized in 1978 off of the island of Lāna‘i; Aikau sought help by paddling to shore on his surfboard, but disappeared, prompting Hōkūle‘a’s navigator, Nainoa Thompson, to note that “at a deeper level, Eddie tried to rescue not only the crew of the Hōkūle‘a but the symbolism and dignity of the canoe because he knew it carried the pride of his people.”[52] Surfer Mark Foo, commenting that Aikau enjoyed engaging particularly large swells, noted that “Eddie would go,” a phrase which has become inspirational to Native Hawaiians that one will find on bumper stickers and tattoos, and in graffiti, around Honolulu.[53]

Hōkūle‘a also has a unique connection to Honolulu native Israel Ka‘ano‘i Kamakawiwo’ole, a noted ukulele player who initially rose to fame as part of the music group Makaha Sons Of Ni‘ihau. Although Iz propelled himself to international acclaim as a solo artist with his one-take melding of Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World,” it was his recording of the song “Hawai‘i 78,” in which Iz asks how the monarchs would feel seeing condominiums and freeways on their sacred Honolulu lands, struck a cord with many Native Hawaiians and helped to propel his album, “Facing Future,” to its status as the best-selling Hawaiian music album in history. When Iz died at age 38 from complications due to his obesity in 1997, the state ordered flags flown at half-mast, and Iz’s body was laid in state in Hawai‘i’s Capitol Building.[54] After his body was cremated, Honolulu residents gathered along the city’s beaches. Iz’s producer Jon de Mello, who was on board the Hōkūle’a, recalled that “all the big semi-trucks on the island of O’ahu had their air horns blowing. And from the ocean we could hear the echo, the bounce off the mountain ranges.”[55] Then, from the Hōkūle‘a, Iz’s ashes were thrown into the Pacific and the winds offshore of his hometown.

Hawai‘i’s is a state of unique towns, such as Hanalei on Kaua‘i, Hale‘iwa and Makaha on O’ahu, Kalaupapa on Molokai’i, Lahaina and Hāna on Maui, and Hilo and Kailua-Kona on Hawai‘i Island. Together they collectively offer a sense of the kingdom’s, and state’s, culture, history, and natural beauty. But only Honolulu is a true urban center, a place contested in its meanings, confronted with many of the ills and challenges of other American and global cities, but truly unique among the world’s centers of population. I highly recommend a skateboard as a means of seeing the city on an intimate scale. Of course walking or cycling would be great too, as would a traditional Polynesian canoe or a surfboard.

H. Gelfand is Associate Professor of History, Honors, and Interdisciplinary Studies at James Madison University. He teaches courses on topics such as sports, the environment, and San Francisco, and his current research focuses on surfing and the environmental movement and on Robert F. Kennedy’s civil rights advocacy. Gelfand is also the chair of the Bergen County (New Jersey) Historical Society Historic Preservation Committee, and since June 2016 has been a student of Hawaiian language.

[1] Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986); United States Census Bureau Statistics for Honolulu County, Hawai’i, 2016, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/honolulucountyhawaii/PST045216 (accessed 22 June 2017).

[2] See, for example, Haunani-Kay Trask, From A Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999).

[3] David Sherrod, “Hawaiian Islands, Geology,” in Rosemary Gillespie and David Clague, Encyclopedia of Islands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), p. 406.

[4] Carolyn Anderson, Television Histories (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), pgs. 143-144.

[5] Michael Tsai, “Oil Continues To Flow From The USS Arizona,” Honolulu Star Advertiser, 30 November 2016; Michael Ruane, “After 74 Years, Bones From Pearl Harbor Tomb Ship May Be Identified,” Washington Post, 6 December 2015; Kathy Ferguson and Phyllis Turnbull, Oh, Say, Can You See: The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai’i (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

[6] Shane Cuomo, “Hickam Quiet On This December 7,” Air Force Print News, 7 December 2005.

[7] “The Economic Contribution of Waikiki,” State of Hawai’i Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, 2003.

[8] Gaye Chan and Andrea Feeser, Waikīkī: A History of Forgetting and Remembering (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), p. 5.

[9] “Two Natives With Outrigger Canoes At Shoreline, Honolulu, Hawai’i,” photograph, 1920, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/93500256/ (accessed 28 June 2017); Photograph of Native Hawaiian Surfer, photograph 1, in Claire Martin, “Surfboard Design, Catching A Wave From Old Hawai’i,” New York Times, 21 December 2013, Business Section p. 3.

[10] Joel Smith, The Illustrated Atlas of Surfing History: Wave Riding from Antiquity to Gidget (Waipahu: Island Heritage Publishing, 2016), pgs. 85-88.

[11] Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark (New York: Macmillan, 1911); Smith, The Illustrated Atlas of Surfing History, pgs. 90-91. On Duke Kahanamoku, see Gary Osmond, “‘Modest Monuments’: Postage Stamps, Duke Kahanamoku, and Hierarchies of Social Memory, Journal of Pacific History (Vol. 43, No. 3, December 2008), pgs. 313-329.

[12] Chan and Feeser, Waikiki, p. 84; Derek Paiva, “A Look Back at Hawai’i’s Earliest, Most Historic Hotels,” Hawai’i Magazine (online version, 23 December 2016, accessed 3 July 2017).

[13] “Royal and Moana Hotel at Waikiki Beach,” photograph, 1935, in “Aloha Hawaii Scrapbook,” University of Hawaii at Manoa Hawaiian Rare Photograph Collection, http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/hawaiianalbum/Pages/viewtext.php?s=search&tid=36&route=basicsearch.php&sterms=waikiki&s=browse (accessed 26 June 2017).

[14] Glenn Wharton, The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), pgs. 81-86; Gavan Daws, “Honolulu In The Nineteenth Century: Notes on the Emergence of Urban Society in Hawai’i,” The Journal of Pacific History (Vol. 2, 1967), p. 77.

[15] Jennifer Thigpen, Island Queens And Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawai’i’s Pacific World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), pgs. 10-29.

[16] The Hawai’i Supreme Court case is Baehr v. Miike, Supreme Court of Hawai’i, 910 P.2d 112 (1996), 80 Hawai’i 314.

[17] Alexander Burns, “Hawai’i Sues To Block Trump Travel Ban; First Challenge To Order,” New York Times, 9 March 2017, p. A13; “Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana’ole Federal Building and U. S. Courthouse,” General Services Administration, https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/204031

(accessed 29 June 2017); Charlie Savage, “Sessions Dismisses Hawai’i As ‘An Island In The Pacific,’” New York Times, 21 April 2017, p. A15.

[18] Gavan Daws, “Honolulu In The Nineteenth Century: Notes on the Emergence of Urban Society in Hawai’i,” The Journal of Pacific History (Vol. 2, 1967), p. 81.

[19] Gary McDonogh and Cindy Wong, “Beside Downtown: Global Chinatowns,” in Marina Peterson and Gary McDonogh, eds., Global Downtowns (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), p. 278; James Mohr, Plague And Fire: Battling Black Death and the Burning of Honolulu’s Chinatown (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[20] Frederick Lau, “Serenading The Ancestors: Chinese Qingming Festival in Honolulu,” Yearbook for Tradtional Music (Vol. 36, 2004), pgs. 130-132.

[21] Ines Miyares, “Expressing ‘Local Culture’ in Hawai’i,” Geographical Review (Vol. 98, No. 4, October 2008), p. 524; Samuel Yamashita, “The Significance of Hawai’i Regional Cuisine in Postcolonial Hawai’i” in Ku Robert Ji-Song, Manalansan Martin, and Anita Mannur, Eating Asian American: A Food Studies Reader (New York City: New York University Press, 2013); Rachel Laudan, The Food Of Paradise: Exploring Hawai’i’s Culinary Heritage (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996).

[22] Lorin Gill, “After 57 Years, ‘Ono Hawaiian Foods Is Closing For Good,” Honolulu Magazine, 28 June 2017 http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/Biting-Commentary/June-2017/One-Last-Laulau/

(accessed 28 June 2017).

[23] John Andrew, Rebuilding The Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), pgs. 151-170.

[24] Jennifer Fish Kashay, “From Kapus To Christianity: The Disestablishment of the Hawaiian Religion and Chiefly Appropriation of Calvinist Christianity,” Western Historical Quarterly (Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2008), pgs. 19-27.

[25] Elizabeth Buck, Paradise Remade: The Politics of Culture and History in Hawai’i (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pgs. 101-120; Isaiah Walker, Waves Of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), pgs. 26-27.

[26] Laurel Spencer Forsythe, “Anglo-Hawaiian Building in Early Nineteenth Century Hawai’i,” Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture (Vol. 6, 1997), pgs. 161-173.

[27] Rosa Lowinger, “Conserving Otto Piene’s Kinetic-Light Sculptures in the Hawai’i State Capitol,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology (Vol. 42, No. 2/3, 2011), p. 39.

[28] Charles Peterson, “The Iolani Palaces and the Barracks,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Vol. 22, No. 2, May 1963), 91-103; Randall Biallas, “Building Automation System at Ionali Palace, Honolulu, Hawai’i,” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology (Vol. 13, No. 1, 1981), pgs. 7-8.

[29] Jon Van Dyke, Who Owns The Crown Lands of Hawai’i? (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), pgs. 96-99, 118-120; Adrienne Kaeppler, “Festivals Of Pacific Arts: Venues for Rituals of Identity,” Pacific Arts (No. 25, December 2002), pgs. 12-14; Ben Finney, “Surfing In Ancient Hawai’i,” Journal of the Polynesian Society (Vol. 68, No. 4, December 1959), pgs. 330-331.

[30] Amy Stillman, “Hawaiian Hula Competitions: Event, Repertoire, Performance, Tradition,” Journal of American Folklore (Vol. 109, No. 434, Autumn 1996), pgs. 357-380.

[31] Carol MacLennan, Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), pgs. 233-236.

[32] Miriam Fuchs, “The Diaries of Queen Lili’uokalani,” Profession (1995), pgs. 38-40.

[33] Lydia Kualapai, “The Queen Writes Back: Lili’uokalani’s Hawai’i’s Story By Hawai’i’s Queen,” Studies in American Indian Literatures (Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 2005), pgs. 32-62.

[34] Jon Van Dyke, Who Owns The Crown Lands of Hawai’i? (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), p. 178.

[35] Sam Warner, “ ‘Kuleana’: The Right, Responsibility, and Authority of Indigenous Peoples to Speak and Make Decisions for Themselves in Language and Cultural Revitalization,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly (Vol. 30, No. 1, March 1999), pgs. 70-74.

[36] Virginia Price, “Washington Place: Harboring American Claims, Housing Hawaiian Culture,” Buildings And Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (Vol. 16, No. 2, Fall 2009), pgs. 48-72.

[37] Lili’uokalani, “My Own Nation,” in Daniel Cobb, ed., Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America Since 1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), pgs. 13-18; Jim Tanquanda and John King, The ‘Ukulele: A History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), pgs. 28-33; Malcolm Chun, No Ma Mamo: Traditional and Contemporary Hawaiian Beliefs and Practices (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), pgs. 42-45.

[38] Molly Solomon, “Once Lost, Internment Camp In Hawai’i Now National Monument,” “Code Switch,” National Public Radio, 16 March 2015.

[39] Gregg Kakesako, “65 Years, 1 Legacy: Weekend Activities Honor the World War II Service of Japanese Americans,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 30 March 2008, p.1.

[40] Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit Route Map, http://www.honolulutransit.org/ride/route-map (accessed 30 June 2017).

[41] “Plans For Hawaiian Highway Hit Snag Over Ancient Burial Ground,” New York Times, 25 November 1985; Adam Nagourney, “After 40-Year Battle, Train May Roll For O’ahu,” New York Times, 4 January 2012, p. A10; Adam Nagourney, “Hawaii Struggles To Keep Rail Project From Becoming A Boondoggle,” New York Times, 21 March 2016, p. A10.

[42] Tiffany Hill, “Meet Paulette Kaleikini: The Woman Who Stopped The Rail,” Honolulu Magazine, 25 June 2013 http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/December-2012/Meet-Paulette-Kaleikini-The-woman-who-stopped-the-rail/?cparticle=2 (accessed 28 June 2017); Mark Abramson, “Hawaii Supreme Court Overturns Ruling On Burials Along Honolulu Rail Route,” Pacific Business News, 24 August 2012 https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2012/08/24/hawaii-supreme-court-overturns-ruling.html (accessed 28 June 2017); Mischa Wanek-Libman, “Hawai’i Approves Transit Archaeological Survey; Construction Could Begin In A Month,” Railway Track And Structure News, 10 August 2013 http://www.rtands.com/index.php/passenger/rapid-transit-light-rail/hawaii-approves-transit-archaeological-survey-construction-could-begin-in-a-month.html

(accessed 28 June 2017). The court case is Paulette Ka’anohiookalani Kaleikini v. Wayne Yoshioka et al, 24 August 2012, Supreme Court of Hawai’i, No. SCAP-11-0000611.

[43] Tiffany Hill, “Meet Paulette Kaleikini: The Woman Who Stopped The Rail,” Honolulu Magazine, 25 June 2013 http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/December-2012/Meet-Paulette-Kaleikini-The-woman-who-stopped-the-rail/?cparticle=2 (accessed 28 June 2017).

[44] See, for example: Janis Magin, “Occupation Of Palace Area Invigorates Native Hawaiian Movement,” New York Times, 3 May 2008, p. A14; John Titchen, “Anniversary Stirs Hawaii Sovereignty Movement,” New York Times, 18 January 1993; Haunani-Kay Trask, “Feminism And Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism,” Signs (Vol. 21, No. 4, Summer 1996), pgs. 909-916.

[45] See, for example: Laiana Wong, “Authenticity And The Revitalization Of Hawaiian,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly (Vol. 30, No. 1, March 1999), pgs. 94-115; Suzanne Romaine, “Signs Of Identity, Signs Of Discord: Glottal Goofs and the Green Grocer’s Glottal in Debates on Hawaiian Orthography,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (Vol. 12, No. 2, December 2002), pgs. 189-224; Chieko Tachihata, “Hawaiian Sovereignty,” The Contemporary Pacific (Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 1994), pgs. 202-210.

[46] See, for example: Stephanie Teves, “Tradition And Performance,” in Stephanie Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle Raheja, eds., Native Studies Keywords (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), pgs. 257-269; John Troutman, Kika Kila: How The Steel Guitar Changed The Sound Of Modern Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), pgs. 200-206; Fay Akindes, “‘Na Mele Paleoleo’ (Hawaiian Rap) As Liberatory Discourse,” Discourse (Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2011), pgs. 82-98.

[47] See, for example: Greg Johnson, “Caring For Depressed Cultural Sites, Hawaiian Style,” in Lindsay Jones and Richard Shiels, eds., The Newark Earthworks: Enduring Monuments, Contested Meanings (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), pgs. 262-276; Davianna McGregor, Nā Kua’aina: Living Hawaiian Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007); Scott Fisher, “Hawaiian Culture And Its Foundation In Sustainability,” in Jennifer Chirico and Gregory Farley, eds., Thinking Like An Island: Navigating A Sustainable Future In Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), pgs. 7-27.

[48] See, for example: Greg Johnson, “Ancestors Before Us: Manifestations Of Tradition In a Hawaiian Dispute,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Vol. 71, No. 2, June 2003), pgs. 327-346; Greg Johnson, “Naturally There: Discourses of Permanence in the Repatriation Context,” History of Religions (Vol. 44, No. 1, August 2004), pgs. 36-55; Greg Johnson, “Social Lives Of The Dead: Contestation and Continuities in the Hawaiian Repatriation Context,” in Marc Ross, Culture And Belonging In Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pgs. 45-67.

[49] William Grimes, “Ben Finney, Anthropologist Who Debunked Theory On Island Settlement, Dies At 83,” New York Times, 18 June 2017, p. A23; Douglas Martin, “Kawika Kapahulehua Dies; Hawaiian Seafarer Was 76,” New York Times, 27 May 2007, p. A32.

[50]Ben Finney, “The Sin At Awarua,” The Contemporary Pacific (Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 1999), p. 6.

[51] Ben Finney, Sailing In The Wake Of The Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2004); Nainoa Thompson, “Hōkūle’a’s Voyage Of Hope,” 28 March 2017, Patagonia Books, http://www.patagonia.com/blog/2017/03/malama-honua-hokuleas-voyage-of-hope-part-4-right-direction/ (accessed 30 June 2017).

[52] Isaiah Walker, Waves Of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), pgs. 115-122.

[53] See, for example: Stuart Coleman, Eddie Would Go: The Story of Eddie Aikau, Hawaiian Hero (New York: Random House, 2004); Brook Sutton, “‘Eddie Would Go’ Is About So Much More Than Sending It,” “Adventure Journal” Blog, 14 July 2016 https://www.adventure-journal.com/2016/07/eddie-would-go-is-about-so-much-more-than-sending-it/

(accessed 30 June 2017).

[54] Jim Tranquada and John King, The ‘Ukulele: A History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), pgs. 157-158.

[55] Renee Montagne, “Israel Kamakawiwo’ole: The Voice of Hawai’i,” National Public Radio, 9 March 2011.