Journal of Asian American Studies

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Haunani-Kay Trask lived her life as a brilliant and fierce leader of the lāhui Hawai‘i, the nation of Hawai‘i. Descended from the Pi‘ilani line of Maui through her mother and the Kahakumakaliua line of Kaua‘i through her father, Trask grew up on the Ko‘olau side of the island of O‘ahu, and she made her home at He‘eia Uli. This particular area near Kualoa and the cliffs of Palikū is known as the ancestral lands of the akua (deity or elemental form) of Haumea, who embodies the natural processes of birthing and regeneration. One of Haumea’s manifestations is Papahānaumoku, she who is the foundation birthing islands. In the mo‘olelo (storied history) of Haumea and her kāne (man) Wākea, she stands before her ancestral cliffs of Palikū against the army of the chief Kumuhonua. At this time, she multiplies herself into the kino wahine lehulehu o Haumea, her multitudinous women bodies, thousands of beautiful women who flicker between their kanaka (human) and mo‘o (reptilian water deity) kino lau (bodily forms).¹ The women include the beloved mo‘o Hauwahine and Meheanu of the windward Ko‘olaupoko district, and as they pack the plains, they choose as their weapons kukui nuts, from whose oils burn the light of knowledge. Kumuhonua’s army marches across the plains of the Ko‘olau, and his men underestimate these beautiful women. As they laugh at the “pretty faces,” the women attack by launching kukui nuts at the warriors, striking the men on their foreheads and killing each warrior. The line of fierce women protecting their kulāiwi (plain of bones or ancestral lands) reminds me of the thousands of daughters who have been birthed under Trask’s instruction and leadership. In her own poem “Sons,” Trask embodies Haumea as she spoke of being “slyly reproductive,” birthing books, history, politics, and ideas, carrying the daughters who lead the lāhui.²

Trask’s work has had a powerful impact on reframing the research that we do in Asian American studies, birthing new grounds for our research on Asian settler colonialism. Before I turn to that, I want to share some of her history and the beautiful ways that her own people have honored her. After working in the 1970s with the Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana to protect the island of Kaho‘olawe from bombing by the US military and standing with the Kalama Valley farming communities in their struggles against eviction by Bishop Estate and developers, Trask was hired in 1981 by the American Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i, where she came to challenge the deeply ingrained racism and heteropatriarchy in her department and in the broader discipline of American studies. In From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i, she describes the roots of American studies at the University of Hawai‘i in Cold War geopolitics, the department having evolved out of the federal government’s East-West Center and the chair of the department being formerly employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.³ At that time, the American Studies Department was racist, procapitalist, and proempire, and she describes the absence of the Black civil [End Page 132] rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the women’s movement in the department’s curriculum. By 1984, she had charged the department with sex and race discrimination, and she was supported by the faculty union. This led to the birth of the Hawaiian studies program with Trask as its founding faculty member. In 1987, Trask and her sister Mililani Trask founded Ka Lāhui Hawai‘i, the largest sovereignty intiative, which led the January 17, 1993 march of 15,000 Kanaka Maoli and their supporters to commemorate and protest the American overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom 100 years earlier.

Trask said that her proudest accomplishment was the construction of the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies that would further birth new generations of Kanaka Maoli scholars working toward Hawaiian political independence. Trask...