The mission of the Hawaiian National Archive is to collect, mālama, and share contemporary genealogy
of Hawaiian national identity.
The collections currently in the care of the HNA include over 1,200 cubic feet of a wide variety of ephemera from contemporary history relating to Hawaiian national identity. This publicly accessible community archive has the potential to generate a variety of inter-disciplinary and collaborative opportunities, where it can play an important role in reviving Hawaiian understandings of history and provide tangible continuity of the genealogy of ʻŌiwi activism.
Ka Lei Maile Aliʻi’s work has involved many years of collaborative relationship building among cultural practitioners, activists, academics, and institutions with the aim of raising Hawaiian national consciousness and nurturing relationships to ʻāina and people, both locally and abroad, toward a progressive and culturally grounded global future. Our years of organizing have helped make visible shifts in both public and institutional discourse and programming inside and outside of Hawaiʻi on Hawaiian history, cultural activism, de-militarization, and the fundamental connections between peace and justice in Hawaiʻi and indigenous sovereignty abroad. The Hawaiian National Archive is a natural evolution in broadening and deepening the scope of this work.
The HNA has the potential to tap into countless inter-disciplinary tracks where it can play an important role in reviving Hawaiian understandings of history, and in giving us international and aloha ʻāina-centric contexts and tangible continuity of the genealogy of ʻŌiwi activism. The Archive also helps document the important historic moments where solidarity among native, Black, and brown communities has linked struggles across the U.S. and beyond. By remembering our history and bringing that legacy of cultural activism into the present, we actively re-build native diplomacy for the healing of all lands and peoples. This work is revolutionary in helping us recover our sense of self, our sense of duty to recognize and to own our history, and our collective imagination for how the Lāhui can and must rise and thrive.
We must be the keepers of our own history.
What's in
the Archive?
As our digital database develops, we are doing extensive cataloguing of metadata to provide accessibility and search-ability of these materials. Topics featured in this ever-expanding archive include:
Hawaiian Movement
(Hawaiʻi Ecumenical Coalition; Kahoʻolawe; Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Plebiscite; Office of Hawaiian Affairs [OHA]; water rights; militarism; Mākua Council; Stryker Brigade EIS; Pacific Missile Range Facility EIS; Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea; Akaka Bills; "Statehood"; People’s International Tribunal Hawaiʻi; Council of Regency; etc.)
Health & Wellness
(Native Hawaiian health; Pacific & Asian American health; human genome; Anahola Valley; Halawa Valley; Papa Ola Lōkahi; Health & Disease Magazine, Hawaiʻi Observer, Hawaiʻi Heritage News, Kamehameha Schools Magazine, Pacific News Bulletin, Hematology, and other health publications; etc.)
Global Solidarity
(World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education [WIPCE]; Koori Nations [Australia]; Aotearoa; Alaska Natives; Puerto Rico; Guam; international law; human rights; Nuclear-free and Independent Pacific [NFIP]; United Nations; land defense and legal papers; etc.)
Paraphernalia
Bulletins, newsletters, books, photos, photo negatives, T-shirts, tote bags, banners, artwork, maps, posters, and newspaper clippings dating as far back as the 1970s.
Lynette Hiʻilani Cruz
Kupuna-in-Residence
Dr. Lynette Hiʻilani Cruz (she/her) is a lifelong Kanaka Maoli activist, educator, and community organizer born and raised in Hawaiʻi. She earned degrees in Pacific Island Studies and Anthropology and spent nearly 30 years as a lecturer and coordinator of service-learning at the University of Hawaiʻi and Hawaiʻi Pacific University. Through her decades-long leadership in multiple grassroots organizations, including Ka Lei Maile Aliʻi, Dr. Cruz continues to build international cross-cultural coalitions of activists, cultural practitioners, academics, and institutions dedicated to peace and justice work.
Emilia Kandagawa
Project Director
Emilia Kandagawa (ʻoia/they/them) is a Hawaiian national of African-Native American descent. They are a popular educator, researcher, cultural practitioner, and transformative justice advocate. Emilia has been an officer of Ka Lei Maile Aliʻi since 2008 and has earned degrees in Political Science, Anthropology, and Land-Based Indigenous Education. Their work is dedicated to nurturing the cross-pollination of social, environmental, and political liberation movements across the Hawaiian Kingdom and abroad.
About the Hawaiian National Archive Illustration
This illustration was lovingly woven together by Kanaka Oiwi multi-media artist Alisha Kahealani Mahone, inspired through a series of soul-bearing imaginings and ancestral futurism talk stories with Emilia Kandagawa. Each of the elements were channeled here to invoke the purposeful vision behind the Hawaiian National Archive — and the intergenerational and global ties that actively bind these collections and memories together for the liberation of all peoples and aina.
A person beyond gender holds their hands in front of their heart, connecting each fingertip. The hands appear large, symbolizing the true weight of the work of our own hands and the turning of them to the earth. As the olelo noeau tells us, “Aia no ka pono – o ka hoohuli ka lima I lalo” (71). The significance of our efforts is felt not only materially, but also spiritually through the weight of our prayers. We’re worshipers, and we’re farmers. What we activate in the spiritual and celestial space is able to materialize by virtue of us turning our hands to those in need of our care.
A long lei of crown flowers hangs from the person’s hands and encircles the rest of the image in frame. Behind the person are the prismatic dimensions of the Koʻolaupoko mountain range of Oahualua, which rise up behind ʻIolani Palace and Queen Liliʻuokalani’s residence at Washington Place.
The sky above depicts the setting sun with its rays stretched across the sky as the night stars begin to peak through. Makalii is rising behind the mountains, signaling the time of peace, deep reflection, profound shedding, and the rebalancing of foundations. The moon in its hilo phase also rises – the first day in the Hawaiian lunar month. The hilo moon is the hookele, “celestial navigator.” Bringing the first light that illuminates the path forward from the darkness, potency, and creative realms of Po. The duality and harmony of the moon and the sun accentuate this time of collective innovation and re-grounding of relationships.
Wisps of ea, of breath, flow out from the person’s nose and connect to the landscape and shifting skies. Ea, as the life giving principle, echos and cycles throughout the generations, continuously giving rise to pono. On Sept 22, 1897, Aima Nawahi said to the crowd of people gathered at the Salvation Army Hall in Hilo protesting annexation, “O ka leo o na kanaka, o ka leo no ia o ke akua.” The voice of the people is the voice of god. This kupuna understanding of ea has endured to today, and it informs the community-driven mission of the Hawaiian National Archive.
All of these images thread together an empowering vision of righteous struggle and memory work. They inspire us to embody the principles of justice, liberation, and hulihia (revolution) that we can see continuously reflected and affirmed in the patterns of the natural world. These images also remind us that aloha is a call to action that ultimately comes from Po, from the very origins of the universe. It drives humanity’s innate reverence for the land, as well as our sense of kuleana (responsibility; privilege) to preserve and activate memory. That activation, in turn, connects us to our place in the larger global history of freedom struggles, and unites us all, not only in solidarity, but in kinship.
