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On July 3, 2021, the Hawaiian people lost one of our most important leaders in our movement for sovereignty. Haunani-Kay Trask passed away at age 71 in Honolulu. A writer, speaker, scholar, and poet, she was an uncompromising leader and the Director of the Department of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai驶i at M膩noa, now known as the . 

In her life and work, she was fierce and articulate about the evils of American Empire and the need for Hawaiians to fight against its presence here. Now that she is gone, it is hard to imagine Hawai鈥榠 without her. Back in the day, when Hawaiians were still living as Hawaiians, and someone died, part of our mourning ritual included the uwe, or kanikau. It is a wailing cry, and in old times it included a recitation of people and events in that person鈥檚 life. But that is not what this is. My words are too small.  

To me, she will always be Haunani-Kay, a person I admired and came to know well, someone whose kindness and friendship was her way of mentoring me鈥攁 diaspora Hawaiian who came home and threw in with the movement. She always gave me interviews and was generous with her time. I was blessed to have laughed and argued politics with her, drinking too much wine when she took me to restaurants I could never afford. Cruising with Haunani-Kay was like riding shotgun with Aretha Franklin. No matter where we went, as we followed the ma卯tre d to the table, everyone turned to look at her. If they didn鈥檛 know who she was, they wanted to. 

Haunani-Kay modeled for us how to analyze the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, our material reality, and American hegemony in the same frame.

Haunani-Kay remembered all the hewa (wrongs) done to generations of us. She was skilled at explaining the politics of greed, hypocrisy, and moral vacancy that motivated it. She embodied the righteousness of Hawaiian anger and resentment against settlers like a maestro, giving shape to the substance, encouraging insurgency, imploring Hawaiians at every turn to remember of ourselves that which has been dismembered by . And the way she did it鈥攚ith no trace of the polite and submissive Native Hawaiian that haole (White people) had grown to expect鈥攕hook the colonial establishment to its core. 

Haunani-Kay鈥檚 defense of the word 鈥�haole鈥� is excellent illustration of her uncompromising defense of Hawaiian rights. When a student at UH M膩noa wrote in the campus paper Ka Leo that the word 鈥�haole鈥� was equivalent to the 鈥淣-word鈥�  set off a firestorm. Her suggestion that the student could always leave Hawaii led to the university president, the faculty senate, and the philosophy department calling for her removal as director of Hawaiian Studies. 

She elevated Hawaiian Studies precisely because of her willingness to fight with the institution and the state. It went from a niche program working out of a few small offices to the Center for Hawaiian Studies, a beautiful set of buildings, next to a 濒辞鈥榠 kalo on its own part of the campus, and now offers a graduate degree.  

In her book, , Haunani-Kay took on the  and the 鈥減rostitution鈥� of Hawaiian culture, the desecration, and ecocide committed by the  on Hawaiian land, and the haole-settler-colonial systems of power and economy.  

None of our resistance discourse or protests would ever have taken place had she not done what she did.

She spoke out against a litany of abuses perpetrated against us, such as banning  (Hawaiian language), congressionally determined identity via blood quantum rules, and the transformation of a place that had once sustained millions of Hawaiians over millennia into being  on imported foods. She highlighted the shorter  of Hawaiians, higher  rates, and our obscene over-representation in , poverty, and .

More broadly, Haunani-Kay modeled for us how to analyze the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, our material reality, and American hegemony in the same frame. Hers was a political mind formed by the anti-Imperialist movements of the 1960s and 鈥�70s: the movement to end the Vietnam War, the Black Power Movement and Pan-Africanism, the Polynesian Panthers, and the American Indian Movement. Her close friendships with Albert Wendt, Angela Davis, Epeli Hau鈥榦fa, Ng农g末 wa Thiong’o, and her decadeslong relationship with her life partner, professor David Stannard, also shaped her. She proudly kept a poster of Malcolm X in her office, and loved the Basques, the Irish, and the Palestinians, who she saw as heroic fighters for liberation from their oppressors. 

To speak of Haunani-Kay and her impact on the Hawaiian people without recounting these political-historic markers would be like discussing Mohammad Ali without the words 鈥楬eavy Weight Champion of the World.鈥� And like Ali, Haunani-Kay was a fighter and a poet. Her first book of poetry, , was the first such book by a Native Hawaiian to be published in North America. Filled with a vivid Hawaiian cultural and spiritual aesthetic, and fearless criticism of haole Americans in particular, the average non-Native reader might actually feel like they鈥檙e in the ring with Ali鈥攚hich is why so many people reviled her. But for every one of them, a hundred Hawaiians revered her.

When I first learned of Haunani-Kay鈥檚 death, I was stunned, and that struck me as an odd reaction. Where was the relief I expected to feel? She had been in a care home for quite some time, and years before that she had withdrawn from public life. Though she did not discuss it openly, those near her knew during the decade before her retirement that something beyond her control was stealing her from us鈥攁nd from herself鈥攐ne memory at a time. 

What are we, her people, to make of this space where our beloved leader once stood?

During the past 10 years, whether the subject was the fight over Mauna Kea or how to pressure the United Nations to intervene with regard to U.S. violations of our rights, I often wondered, 鈥淲hat would Haunani-Kay say?鈥� And I asked other activists the same thing. None of our resistance discourse or protests would ever have taken place had she not done what she did. Even in her captive state, she was our true north, her illness mirroring the Hawaiian people鈥檚 experience: a devastatingly relentless process of being disappeared by a force we haven鈥檛 managed to stop.

When Haunani-Kay spoke in public, she floated up to the microphone like a beautiful butterfly, unleashing words that stung settlers like a million bees. Hers was the voice that once heard, no one could forget. In her most enduring speech given at 鈥業olani Palace on Jan. 17, 1993, on the 100th anniversary of the U.S. overthrow of Hawaii, , 鈥淲e are not American! We are not American! We are not American! Say it in your hearts. Say it when you sleep! We are not American! We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be American!鈥� 

Thinking of her life as a whole, it is impossible to distinguish the extremes of how she lived and died from the metaphors in her poetry, the anti-colonial defiance of her politics, and her solidarity with her people. K膩naka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and 辫补别&苍产蝉辫;‘腻颈苍补&苍产蝉辫;(Hawai鈥榠), the people and the land, were inseparable in her mind, heart and soul. We meant everything to her. Indigenous nationalism, she said, in 鈥楴ative Daughter, 鈥渋s born not of a predatory consumption nor of murderous intolerance, but of a genealogical connection to our place, Hawai鈥榠.鈥� 

Haunani-Kay鈥檚 younger sister , who was her co-engineer in many of the most important aspects of the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement, posted one of her late sister鈥檚 poems from her book , on Facebook after her death. It begins with the words, 鈥淚nto the light I will go forever,鈥� and ends with: 鈥淚nto the 飞补鈥榓 of Kanaloa, voyaging moana nui. Into our sovereign suns, drunk on the mana of Hawai鈥榠.鈥� I want that vision of Haunani-Kay, sailing Oceania filled with the divine strength of her homeland, to become my new memory of her. 

What are we, her people, to make of this space where our beloved leader once stood? I wonder what Haunani-Kay would say.

Together, for her, all we can say is, uwe. Uwe. Uwe. Uwe.