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Over the last three years, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa professor Noenoe Silva has combed through editions of Hawaiʻi’s "Ka Hoku O Hawaii," the last Hawaiian-language newspaper to be published in the 1940s. She discovered a handful of dedicated female columnists who stepped up to preserve ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi.
At the same time, the Wilkes expedition noted the native population was vanishing at a drastic rate . . . particularly the chiefs, and that the ancient manners and customs had nearly disappeared.
David Malo and Samuel Kamakau, two of the first native Hawaiian historians, were students at a missionary school who gathered knowledge of the past from the oldest generations and the most informed members of their communities. The first native Hawaiian to publish a historic account was David Malo.
This publication’s timing in 1861 coincided with the birth of the Hawaiian language newspapers, produced entirely by native Hawaiians. It was their first opportunity to publish cultural knowledge. The Menehune Ditch in Waimea was first mentioned on September 26, 1861, in this manner, “in the sprays of Kikiaola, the ditch of the Melehuna [Menehune] will flow…”