Honolulu Civil Beat has published a feature review of Nā Hunahuna ʻIke Hawaiʻi: Hawaiian Insights, the 557-page collection of John Papa ʻĪʻī’s writings translated and compiled by Puakea Nogelmeier. Columnist Kirstin Downey attended the book launch at Bishop Museum last month and spoke with Puakea about what the volume opens up. Read the full review at Civil Beat →
Downey’s piece centers on something we have been saying since this project began: ʻĪʻī wrote from inside the court, and that vantage point changes the picture. In his account, Kamehameha and the aliʻi around him are the ones making decisions and setting direction. Foreigners move through the story, some useful and some not, but they are not the ones steering it. Nogelmeier told Civil Beat the writings “shatters those mindsets” that cast Hawaiian rulers as directed from outside.
The review also does not look away from the harder material. ʻĪʻī recorded the workings of kapu, the consequences of breaking them, and the ceremonies at heiau in more complete detail than any other source we know of. Downey highlights his account of his own brother’s death at court, and the guidance his mother gave him when he asked, reasonably enough, why he should go there at all.
For readers coming to ʻĪʻī for the first time, the review is a good doorway. For readers who know him only through Fragments of Hawaiian History, the 1959 condensation translated by Mary Kawena Pukui, it makes the scale of the difference clear. This volume gathers what ʻĪʻī wrote across decades of Hawaiian-language newspapers, including work published under a pen name, on politics and social questions as well as culture and history.
Puakea has estimated that only about three percent of the material written in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi during that era has been translated. Everything in this book came out of that remaining ninety-seven percent. It is one volume out of an archive that is still, for the most part, waiting.
That is the work Awaiaulu was built for: training translators, digitizing the newspaper record, and bringing these sources into circulation for the people they belong to. The Kamakau project continues alongside this one. Nā Hunahuna ʻIke Hawaiʻi was a detour, and we think you will understand why once you have it in your hands.
Mahalo to Kirstin Downey and Civil Beat for the careful attention, and to DeSoto Brown, ʻĪʻī’s great-great-grandson, who introduced Puakea at the Bishop Museum launch.
