‘Onipa‘a ka ‘Oia‘i‘o: Long ignored voices challenge the historiography of Hawai’i Nei

Ronald Clayton Williams Jr, Pacific Island Studies

On June 28, 1894 amid great political turmoil and with a newly declared provisional government desperately seeking support, Waine‘e Church in Lāhainā, Māui burned to the ground. The way in which this event and many others like it were eventually recorded and then printed as official history, brightly illuminates the ease with which much of Hawai‘i’s history has been created based on an incomplete, one sided discourse.

    The colonizer simply removed native voice from the historiographical process by suppressing and then banning the language. The more that the supplanted foreign language of English dominated and eventually nearly eliminated the Native Hawaiian, the greater the disconnect between the recorders of history and the testimony of Native voices became. Numerous times, primary accounts of historical events were not researched at all because these accounts were written in the Hawaiian language. In the past, the vast majority of those publishing “Hawaiian” history could not read the language. Hawaiian language scholars and students are changing this dynamic by researching primary accounts of Hawaiian history through the vast collection of Hawaiian language newspapers. In doing so they are giving voice once again to long silenced testimony of native Hawaiians who spoke prolifically about their own history. These researchers are often uncovering not only a “different” history, but also the amazing ease with which the colonizer has created the poorly sourced and often false history that we all live with today.