Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 14, Number 3, 1 March 1999 — He lei mae ʻole o ka ʻāina [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

He lei mae ʻole o ka ʻāina

Elizabeth Nālani Merseberg Ellis, the senior member of OHA's kupuna team, turns 95 on March 20, but she has the memory of a teenager. Born just six years after Annexation, she belongs to a generation of Hawaiians who grew up in close contact with the lanel, nature anel a traditional worldview. At the same time, the cross-cultural encounters of the past century were hardening into a pattern of haole dominance, and these small children bore the brunt of the adjustment. Most Hawaiians know the theme well; the perspective Kupuna Ellis shares makes this page from history more vivid. PHOTO: SIMONE OVERMAN

As told to Poula Durbin ii \ k I was ^om on the plantation of 1 Ē I Pā'auhau in 1904, 1 was hānai-ed by my HH grandparents on my mother's side. They W W didn't know a single word of English, not i I even to say hello, so Hawaiian was my first language. I learned to read and write by watching my grandmother point to the words in the Bible and read during Bible sessions in the morning before we went to school and at night before we went to bed. "I never heard the word annexation while I was growing up. We lived in the bush and that word was never brought to us. I knew Queen Lili'uokalani had been deposed because grandma had little pictures of ali the ali'i. Grandma would say Hawaiians admire a heavy woman. She would point to Princess Ruth as the most beautiful. "We got our water from a stream. Before we went to school we brought water to fill up a barrel so grandma I . i', . I "3E : > .f4: '5V ■ ' ~~

could wash the clothes and elean. When we eame home from school, the barrel was empty, so we had to bring water again. That was the worst thing, and I hated it. "We raised most of our food. I never ate beans or carrots because there was no such thing in those days. We planted bananas, sugar eane, pineapple; we had mango trees, pear trees, peaeh trees. At school, we had only sweet potatoes and taro for luneh. The Portuguese children had their bread and the Japanese ehildren ate rice balls. When the Portuguese called us kanakas, I would say, "If I'm kanaka, you're codfish," because that's what they ate most. We never ate candy, and I think that's why I have always had good teeth. "My mother sent things from the plantation store that we couldn't buy because we had no money: Salmon, flour, sugar, condensed milk. Grandma would share these things with our neighbors. Sometimes mama would send beef. One time, grandma said to the neighbors, 'My daughter didn't send any beef.' , But I said, 'No, Kūkū, you asked

me to take the beef to the safe.' She said, 'Did I? Well, go get it.' So she had to cut it up and give everybody their beef. And when they were gone she said, 'You have given away your portion. There will be no beef for you!' "I started school at six. Hawaiian was my only language because we only heard English when we went to visit our parents at the plantation. We were forbidden to speak Hawaiian, but we did, and we were punished if we were reported to the teachers. I was reported all the time by the Japanese or Portuguese children for speaking Hawaiian to my Hawaiian friends on the playground. We were made to write out a hundred times, 'I must not speak Hawaiian.' "It was a terrible thing because we were made to feel ashamed of being Hawaiian, really ashamed.

We felt that our culture was not good, that it was full of superstition and not worth anything. We ate poi and lived the Hawaiian way. We didn't accumulate things, you see, so our houses were very plain. Some people were still Iiving in grass huts. That made us feel inferior. "But the years have gone by, and now that our eulture is in its renaissance, we are proud again. Our language and culture are superior in many ways, but I have learned that both ways are fine. I ean be a Hawaiian and be proud and be a haole and be proud. I don't know whether I raised my children the Hawaiian or the haole way, but I raised them to be kind, to be loving, to respect the old." Kupuna Ellis returned to her parents when she was eight. Since graduating from Hilo High School, and then normal school, she has dedicated her life to education and to her 'ohana: her late husband Richard Ellis, two children, five grandchildren and ten greatgrandchildren. In 1998, herfull schedule of eommhments included judging the Kamehameha Schools song contest, planning OHA 's 'Aha Kūpuna and training the OHA staff. ■

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Nālani Ellis, eight years old, sits in the center in the back row among five of her seven brothers and sisters. Photo courtesy: Kupuna Ellis.

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