ABOVE: Native scholar Emma Nakuina tirelessly advocated for the preservation of Native knowledge and culture. She worked for the Hawaiian Kingdom government as "curatrix" of its national museum and later as a judge.
Emma Nakuina wasn't one to suffer bullies. For instance: On a weekend afternoon in February 1897, she and a few women were sitting on the lawn of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, watching military drills, when a museum employee approached and told them to leave. Emma refused, and in one account of the incident, she tossed a lawn chair, barely missing the office window of the museum's curator, William Brigham. The women eventually packed up and left, but Emma returned the following morning to file a complaint charging Brigham with "gross incivility and insulting treatment."
Call it chutzpah, moxie, spunk or just plain intolerance for BS, but Nakuina's determination made her not only a force for overly officious museum staff to confront, she became one of nineteenth-century Hawaii's most formidable women, one whose name is rarely mentioned among other female luminaries of the Hawaiian Kingdom but who left a legacy of learning and the preservation of knowledge that has lasted to today.
Emma Kailikapuolono Metcalf was born in Manoa, Oahu, on March 5, 1847, to alii wahine (chiefess) Kailikapuolono and an American ship captain and sugar baron, Theophilus Metcalf. Her parents' status afforded her the highest level of education in the Islands—both Native and foreign. From her mother, Emma learned Polynesian traditions and history, while her father's connections helped her secure a spot in the elite Western-style Oahu College. Emma received instruction in seven languages, including Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and she was fluent in French, German, English as well as her first language, olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian language). Her extensive training in the ways of the Hawaiian world caught the attention of the kingdom's leaders, who brought her into their evolving constitutional monarchy as a "Custodian of Laws." Nakuina became an expert on the legal history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, serving moi (kings) Kamehameha IV, Kamehameha V and David Kalakaua over three decades.
Nakuina was among the first Kanaka Oiwi (Native Hawaiians) to attend Oahu College, considered the top Western-style educational institution in the Islands.
In 1874, at the age of 27, Nakuina was named curator of the Hawaiian National Museum and Library. The museum had been founded two years earlier under Kamehameha V, but at the time it was more an aspiration than actual museum. The new monarch, Kalakaua, embraced cosmopolitanism as a way to heighten global awareness of Hawaii's status as an independent nation. This meant an expanded budget and mission for the National Museum under Nakuina, who insisted that her title be changed to "curatrix."
The new curatrix spearheaded an aggressive drive to procure not only Hawaiian artifacts but also related ike (knowledge) that would help ground Hawaii's future in its past. The Hawaiian National Museum under Nakuina housed many of the most historically significant and invaluable items from "Ka Wa Oiwi Wale," the Native-only Era, that is, before contact with the West. One such treasure was the Kaei Kapu o ka Lani Liloa, a stunning, eleven-foot-long feather cordon with human teeth sewn into its ends. The dramatic piece, crafted in the early fifteenth century, symbolized the right of its owner to rule. It had been passed by the Hawaii Island alii nui (high chief) Liloa to his son Umi. In the late eighteenth century, Kamehameha I obtained the Kaei Kapu, and almost a century later Kalakaua had the piece displayed in the Hawaiian National Museum. Alongside the feather cordon was the sharkskin pahu o Laamaikahiki (the drum of Laa-from-Kahiki), one of the last great Polynesian navigators. In 1889, in a significant development, businessman Charles Reed Bishop founded a new museum just outside of downtown Honolulu in honor of his recently deceased wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi, a descendant of the Kamehameha line. In 1891 a majority of the contents of the National Museum were transferred on loan to Bishop's museum. The kingdom's royal portraits remained in government custody and are displayed to this day at Iolani Palace. In 1898 the Republic of Hawaii Legislature transferred ownership of the contents of the National Museum to the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, notably "without pecuniary consideration." Not one to take a back seat to someone less knowledgeable than herself—and especially not a Boston-born outsider like Brigham—Nakuina left the museum world and turned to other venues in which she could work for the preservation of Hawaiian knowledge.
The Hawaiian National Museum under Nakuina held some of Hawaii's most sacred artifacts, including several lei nihoa palaoa, the whale ivory pendants strung upon a lei of human hair.
Nakuina tirelessly challenged Kanaka Oiwi (Native Hawaiians) to achieve what many non-Hawaiians claimed were beyond their inherent racial abilities. In doing so, she fearlessly confronted some of the most respected institutions of the day. In 1917 the Kamehameha Schools were beginning their fourth decade educating young Kanaka Oiwi. Nakuina was part of a three-member committee—along with two male attorneys—tasked with reporting on whether the institution were fulfilling its founding mission. Their report was heavily critical, noting that many staff of the School for Boys suffered a "terrible malaise," which the report blamed on the fact that "it seems that whenever the higher positions in the schools become vacant, the trustees fill the vacancies from persons on the mainland."
In addition, Kamehameha Schools had adopted a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program early in its creation, and the committee observed that "too much time and attention was given to the performance of military drills and not enough to academic work. ... [A] military institution was not provided for in the will of the princess and the establishment of such institution does not come within the scope of the trustees' duties as defined in the will." In a final criticism, especially troubling to Nakuina, the report noted, "Your committee saw no effort being made in the boys' school to teach Hawaiian history." While the report rocked the campus and the community, the school's then-current priorities aligned with those of powerful elites remaking America's new island territory into a more familiar place. Once the immediate furor subsided, the school proceeded as before.
In the midst of this troubling investigation of Kamehameha Schools, Nakuina again came to loggerheads with Brigham. A prominent guest had arrived in the Islands—wealthy businessman Benjamin Keolaokalani Pitman—and Bishop Museum trustee William Owen Smith asked Nakuina, the foremost expert on the museum's collection, to guide Pitman and his party through centuries of Hawaii's past.
Among the treasures in Nakuina's care was this feather cordon from the fifteenth century, the Kaei Kapu o Liloa, now in Bishop Museum. Constructed of feathers of the iiwi and oo birds along with human teeth, it afforded its possessor the right to rule. Curating such objects was no small kuleana (responsibility), as from a Hawaiian point of view they carry the mana (spiritual power) of their current and former owners.
After a greeting on the museum's front steps, where Brigham shook Smith's hand but snubbed Nakuina's, the party met Pitman and a group of about twenty. Brigham drew out treasured ahu ula (feathered cloaks), explaining the construction and provenance of each. At several points Nakuina leaned over to Pitman and whispered her own explanation of the cloak in question, often contradicting Brigham. According to the complaint Smith filed after the incident, Brigham became enraged, saying, "I wish no other person to talk or make explanations while I am explaining these matters." He repeated the demand looking directly at Nakuina and adding, "especially by such a person." Smith reported, "His manner and tone were angry and offensive and attracted the attention of all present." Nakuina left, followed by Pitman, who offered her one of his cars to take her home.
Brigham's account, told to the museum trustees, didn't much differ from Smith's, except to add that Nakuina was "an old hag" who had "contradicted everything I said to Mr. Pitman." He further described her as "someone I despise" and wrote, "If my duties force me to shake hands with every moral leper who forces herself in, then the sooner they cease the better."
The museum's board wrote to Brigham expressing their "regret that so many similar complaints" had been filed about him. "As Trustees of an institution founded in honor of a Hawaiian woman, we cannot be so unfaithful to our trust, or act so inconsistently with our obligations, as to vilify or antagonize those whose good name we are pledged to guard: nor can we countenance such conduct in one occupying your position." In response to being fired, Brigham wrote to his friend, Sanford Dole, that he was looking elsewhere for a position—in a white man's country.
Nakuina's book on Hawaii was filled with ancient stories of the Native people. Published by the Hawaii Promotion Committee in support of tourism to the Islands, it exemplified her belief that understanding Hawaii's past was essential to ensuring its people's future.
In 1920, at 73, Nakuina's mission to promote Native knowledge was still reaping rewards for her people. The Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa—one of the few to survive into the 1920s—reported the news of her being hired at the University of Hawaii's Teachers' College. In a column titled "He Mau Moolelo Hawaii Imua o ke Kula Kumu" (Hawaiian Stories Presented at the Teachers' College), the paper explained, "I waena o na hana ma ka papa kuhikuhi no ke Kula Kumu, o keia makahiki o na moolelo kahiko kekahi o Hawaii nei, a o Mrs. Emma M. Nakuina ka mea nana e hoakaka kau ana." (Inside the syllabus of the Teachers' College this year are ancient histories of Hawaii nei. And it is Mrs. Emma M. Nakuina who is teaching them.) Her course covered ten histories, including "Ko Kakou pili o ka lahui Maori o Nu Kila" (Our ties with the Maori of New Zealand); "Na mea i pili ia Pele ame kona mau kaikaina ame Hiiaka" (Things relating to Pele and her younger sisters and Hiiaka); and "Ka hanau ana, na mea ano mai amen a hana a Kamehameha I" (The birth, the important things and accomplishments of Kamehameha I).
Change was the overarching theme that dominated the Hawaiian Islands during Nakuina's lifetime. Embraced by some and opposed by others, it was inevitable to Nakuina. She dedicated her life to learning and sharing tools to ready her people to survive what was to become of them. "Drawing from the strength of her bilingual and bicultural education, Emma Nakuina greatly expanded the audience for Hawaiian intellectual thought within traditional stories and histories written in a language this broader audience could access—English," says Kuualoha Hoomanawanui, a Native scholar, poet, artist and professor of Hawaiian literature at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "In doing so, she was one of the first to combat the negative stereotypes of our people as backward savages."
Aliiolani Hale has been home to the Hawaii Supreme Court since 1874. The coral and cement building, dedicated by Moi (King) David Kalakaua, was also the site of the Hawaiian National Museum under curatrix Nakuina. Today, the famous statue of Kamehameha I fronts the building.
Nakuina shared her final story in 1929, passing away at the home of her son, Frederick W. Beckley Jr.—the University of Hawaii's first Hawaiian—language instructor-and her nine grandchildren, on April 27. Today, almost a century later, those inspired by her life still make pilgrimages to Oahu Cemetery in Nuuanu to pay their respects and assure that this dedicated woman's legacy and kuleana (responsibility) will be carried on by the next generation of Native scholars.
