Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 7, 1 Iulai 1995 — ʻAhahui Ka ʻahumanu [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ʻAhahui Ka ʻahumanu

by Kīna'u Boyd Kamali'i Trustee-at-large The 90th anniversary of the re-founder of the 'Ahahui Ka'ahumanu comes during a difficult time for Hawaiians and for Hawai'i. When the 'Ahahui was first founded by Princess Victoria Kamamalu (the sister of

King Kamehameha IV), there were so many Hawaiians dying from disease that a formal organization to care for their burial was a critical public health and social need. Describing the devastation, Kamakau wrote of 1854: "...The dead fell like dried kukui twigs tossed

down by Ihe wind. Day by day, from morning till night, horse-drawn carts went about from street to street of the town, and the dead were stacked up like a load of wood, some in coffins, but most of them just filled in, wrapped in cloth with heads and legs sticking out..." By 1905, when Mrs. Lucy Kaheiheimailie Peabody and a group of her friends met to reorganize the 'Ahahui, the Hawaiian population numbered only 40,000 — about one-tenth the populaūon when Cook had rediscovered the islands. Many feared that Hawaiians would disappear. The 'Ahahui hoped to at least offset the sometimes equally devastating cost of burial, and to provide a fonnal solace to those who were mourning. Today, with pre-paid medical and life insurance, there are fewer families for whom the death of a loved one also means the threat of financial ruin. And those who literally cannot afford a burial would never be left by the side of the road, and stacked like wood. So, why do so many of us still belong to and feel a need for the Ka'ahumanu Society?

First. there is tradition. The 'Ahahui provides a continuing link within families and within the larger community. Hawaiians onee compared their family lines not to the branches of a tree. but to a walking back and forth on the same path. Today, many of us are walking a familiar path. My mother was a Ka'ahumanu, and so

was my great-grandmother. For many of us, the 'Ahahui offers personaI continuity, and a sense of unchanging commitment and caring for eaeh other. Second, dressed in black and consciously associated with death. the 'Ahahui symbolizes the burden of the Hawaiian experience — tragie, but dignified; grief-strick-

en, but bearing the pain. As we grew up in homes where Hawaiian was either forbidden or abandoned, where the past was either forgotten or buried, and where the culture had declined to hapa-haole excesses of the "Cock-eyed Mayor of Kaunakakai," and eellophane skirts — still, we were explicitly taught to "be proud you're Hawaiian" by our grandmothers. For most of my generation, that pride was justified and embodied by the women of the 'Ahahui Ka'ahumanu. And that pride continues. The Ka'ahumanu Society inspires respect and instills courage. The 'Ahahui represents what it is to be proud of being Hawaiian at the most basic and profound level — not simply to survive, but to prevail. 1905 was the lowest point. In 90 years our population has recovered, and we are assured existence as a people. As such, the 'Ahahui bears wimess to our triumph — to our survival. On this 90th anniversary, the 'Ahahui Ka'ahumanu stands as a "life watch" for the Hawaiian people.