An Interview with Jamaica Osorio

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Notes

1 Dr Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio is a professor at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. He has developed and taught classes in history, literature, law as culture, music as historical texts, and research methodologies for and from indigenous peoples. His recent publications include The Value of Hawaiʻi: Knowing the Past and Shaping the Future, which he co-edited and authored, and Dismembering Lāhui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887. He is also a composer and singer and has been a Hawaiian music recording artist since 1975.

2 Haunani-Kay Trask is a Native Hawaiian academic, activist, documentarist and writer. She was a co-founder and first professor of Hawaiian Studies at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has represented Native Hawaiians in the United Nations and various other global forums. She is the author of several books of poetry and non-fiction.

3 Dr Lilikalā K Kame‘eleihiwa is a senior professor at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies and its current director. Trained as a historian, she is also an expert in Hawaiian cultural traditions and in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She was executive producer of the 2005 DVD Natives in New York, Seeking Justice at the United Nations and co-scriptwriter (with Trask) of the 1993 award winning documentary An Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation. Her books include Nā Wāhine Kapu: Sacred Hawaiian Women, He Mo‘olelo Ka‘ao o Kamapua‘a: A Legendary Tradition of Kamapua‘a, the Hawaiian Pig-God and Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā E Pono Ai?

4 George Jarrett Helm Jr (b. 23 March 1950 — disappeared 7 March 1977) was a Native Hawaiian activist and musician from Kalamaʻula, Molokaʻi, Hawai‘i. He went to St Louis High School on Oʻahu, where he studied under Hawaiian cultural expert John Kahauanu Lake and achieved mastery in vocal performance and guitar. Helm was one of the greatest Hawaiian falsetto vocalists and played fast, complex guitar parts. He was a powerful speaker, writer and ‘revolutionary’ philosopher who pioneered many Hawaiian sovereignty concepts. He was considered, as his posthumous album title suggests, a ‘True Hawaiian’ who surfed, fished, farmed, loved, sang, worshipped and thought in the ways of old. Today his musical recordings are still played regularly on all Hawaiian music stations. The popular song ‘Hawaiian Soul’ by Jon Osorio and Randy Borden was written in his memory.

5 Eleanor (or Ellen) Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast was born in Honolulu on 12 April 1865. She served as lady-in-waiting to Queen Liliʻuokalani and became her close friend. In her brief life (her death occurred in Honolulu on 5 December 1902), she was recognised as a haku mele [poet] of many songs, including a name song for Liliʻuokalani, ‘He Inoa no Liliʻuokalani’ and the famed ‘Kaulana Nā Pua’ [Famous are the Flowers/Children], a Hawaiian patriotic song written in 1893 for members of the Royal Hawaiian Band who protested the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian Kingdom. It is still popular in Hawaiʻi today, although it is not clear how many non-Hawaiian speaking listeners are aware of the song’s historical significance or the profound antipathy to US annexation in its words. The song could be viewed as an act of subterfuge since, to the non-Hawaiian speaking listeners, the lively melody gives no hint of the political intensity of the lyrics.