Settlers enjoyed a seeming free permission: to dispossess natives at will of all the best land, turn them out of traditional fishing locations, disrespect elders, women, children and religion, leave whole communities without political representation and punish men for breaking laws which they could have no means of knowing existed. It was inconceivable that all
Haunani-Kay Trask, Champion of Native Rights in Hawaii, Dies at 71
She helped found the field of Hawaiian studies and pressed for Indigenous sovereignty. “We will die as Hawaiians,” she said. “We will never be Americans.”
Haunani-Kay Trask in an undated photo. As a professor, poet and activist, she pushed for the recognition of Hawaii’s Indigenous people. “I am not soft, I am not sweet, and I do not want any more tourists in Hawaii,” she said.Credit.Kapulani Landgraf
By Annabelle Williams
July 9, 2021Updated 9:05 p.m. ET
Haunani-Kay Trask, a scholar, poet and champion of sovereignty for the Hawaiian people who decried what she called the colonization and despoliation of her native land, died on July 3 in Honolulu. She was 71.
Haunani-Kay Trask (Photo credit: Kapulani Landgraf)
Hearts are heavy across Hawaiʻi and the world as many mourn the death of University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Professor Emerita
Haunani-Kay Trask. Loved ones confirmed the exemplary Native Hawaiian scholar died on Saturday, July 3.
Trask who retired in 2010, started her extensive academic career at
UH Mānoa in 1981 as an assistant professor in the American studies department with expertise in feminist theory and Indigenous studies. She is credited with co-founding the contemporary field of Hawaiian studies and went on to become the founding director of the
UH Mānoa Center for Hawaiian Studies.