Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 12, 1 Kekemapa 1993 — Book review: Nā Kūkui Pio ʻOle [ARTICLE]

Book review: Nā Kūkui Pio ʻOle

Nā Kūkui Pio 'Ole: The Inextinguishable Torches. The Biographies of Three Early Native Hawaiian Scholars, Davida Malo, S.N. Hale'ole and S.M. Kamakau. First PeopIe's Productions, Honolulu, 1993. Illustrations, bibliography, 27 pp.

Modern students of nā mea Hawai'i owe a debt of gratitude to Hawaiian historians of the past. They began collecting and publishing information about the past in the 1830s and continued throughout their lives. Their work has given us mueh, if not most, of our remaining knowledge of the Hawaiians' point of view of their own society. Historian and cultural scholar Maleolm Naea Chun presents their "revised biographies" and includes their accomplishments as well as the "hardships" of their lives and their human frailties. He has produced an excellent work that fulfills his objective. He writes about their research and publication work, their use of interviews as a research method, and about their abilities to transform their work to the written form. He emphasizes their intense devotion to the need to preserve knowledge of the past and to tell the Hawaiian view of their own past. He notes their activities in government service, elective office, education and business. Chun has also included new material. At the end of eaeh biography he lists articles written by the subject in the Hawaiian language newspapers. This reference is especially useful for the student. Until there is an index of those newspapers, all bibliographic help is weleome. But there is more. He tells us that Malo was well aware of the potentials for error in works based on oral research. He reports that both Hale'ole and Kamakau were criticized by their peers on the accuracy of their written information. He notes that both Malo and Kamakau were close to the King

and chiefs as respected advisors; yet both were penalized by their government. Malo lost his land in the 1840s because it was thought he had eontributed to the severe criticism of the government. Kamakau was charged and fined in 1876 for defaming the supreme court. There are other gems. Chun read a statement of Malo's that it was actually Keopuolani who had announced in 1819 that the Kingdom was to be left to Ka'ahumanu. He discusses the ideas of Malo and Kamakau about the contemporary world in Hawai'i. Both advised the chiefs that the islands would have to change if they wished to keep eontrol of their society. Both were vigorous supporters of the American Protestant missionaries who were their teachers and supporters. Malo was suspicious of the secular English and Americans in the islands, but he did not lose faith in his teachers before his death in 1853. By the 1860s Kamakau wrote that the missionaries of that time had turned to selfish interests and away from helping the Hawaiians. Perhaps Kamakau best represents the dilemma that Hawaiian intellectuals were in. He lauded progress and modern technology and hoped that new advances would promote the well-being of Hawaiians. He was proud of the achievements of the Kingdom and Hawaiians especially in comparison with the backwardness of European countries and peoples. At the same time he feared that many aspects of modernism were not helping Hawaiians. This book has only one fault. It is too short. by Pauline N. King University of Hawai'i-Mānoa Nā Kūkui Pio 'Ole is avaiiable only by mail order from: First People' s Productions, 1620 Halekoa Dr., Honoluiu, Hawai'i, 96921 -1 127. Enclose $7.50 per order. Price includes tax, handling and postage.