Whenever Kuha‘o Zane dances with Halau o Kekuhi at the Merrie Monarch Festival’s ho‘ike, he always thinks about the Hilo stadium’s namesake — his grandma, Edith Kanaka‘ole.
Although Kanaka‘ole died a few years before Zane was born, he said he feels like he knows her through the stories he hears from family members and the community. She is always on his mind, he said, but even more so during the annual Merrie Monarch. This year’s festival gets underway on Monday.
“With her name being on the stadium, it definitely has transcended beyond her, and it represents our overall family and the work that our family does,” Zane said. “When we’re going out to dance, it’s a moment of carrying the kuleana of the family and having that opportunity and knowing that there have been generations previous to us that have put in this work.”
The late kumu hula, teacher, chanter, composer and leader is one of five female trailblazers chosen as honorees of the 2023 American Women Quarters program, the U.S. Mint announced last month. The program is recognizing notable women posthumously in civil rights, government, humanities, science, the arts and more by featuring five each year on the flip side of the quarter from 2022 through 2025.
So far, Kanaka‘ole is the only Native Hawaiian and the sole woman from Hawaii among the honorees.
The other four women who will be featured on the quarter next year are Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American female pilot; Jovita Idar, a Mexican American journalist, activist and teacher; Eleanor Roosevelt, U.S. first lady and the first chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights; and Maria Tallchief, who is Native American and the nation’s first prima ballerina.
In Hawaii and beyond, Kanaka‘ole is recognized as a key leader in the Hawaiian Renaissance movement of the 1970s. She also helped pave the way to indigenize higher education and make it more inclusive to all.
As an instructor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and Hawaii Community College, she developed courses on ethnobotany, Polynesian history, genealogy and Hawaiian chant and mythology. UH Hilo’s humanities building is named after her.
The Keaukaha native, who died in 1979, also established Halau o Kekuhi, a legacy of hula practices and traditions that continues through Kanaka‘ole’s family. The internationally acclaimed halau helps to perpetuate her legacy by teaching genealogy, culture, Hawaiian language and history through chants and dance.
Additionally, her family established the nonprofit Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation in 1990 to build on the teachings of Kanaka‘ole and her husband, Luka.
“To bring Grandma back to life at this point in time, it’s a chance for us to remember all that she did,” said Huihui Kanahele- Mossman, the foundation’s executive director. “To be honored in this way and to be on coinage, we never expected it. It’s a shock yet an honor. It’s a chance for us to confirm that that’s where our motivation to preserve language, to honor nature and to really be grounded in aina comes from. It comes from her.”
Growing up, Kanahele- Mossman said her grandmother was nurturing, caring and humble. She spent many days at her grandparents’ house in Keaukaha with her cousins, learning about mele, hula and the aina.
During the Hawaiian Renaissance, Kanahele- Mossman recalled, many community leaders came to the house and talked with her grandmother about how to elevate Native Hawaiian knowledge and culture. She said Kanaka‘ole would take them across the street to fish and teach them which plants to gather in the forest for food.
She added that when Halau o Kekuhi performs at Merrie Monarch, “it’s a form of coming home for us.”
“Her grandchildren were everything to her. Of course, we liked to go to Grandma’s house because we got away with everything,” Kanahele- Mossman said with a laugh. “Family was above all a must, and being able to take care of your land and your community because that’s what will feed you, those were important to her.
“What Grandma did was she pointed the way. She gave us an opportunity to not only choose that path but be able to ground ourselves in the place we grew up and take that interpretation of culture and move forward.”
Taupouri Tangaro, director of Hawaiian culture and protocols engagement at UH Hilo and HCC, agreed that Kanaka‘ole’s lessons and values still resonate with him and the community.
Tangaro, who is married to Kanaka‘ole’s granddaughter, Kekuhi Keali‘ikanaka‘oleohaililani, said he tries to build on her work at the university to incorporate Indigenous values and make higher education more inclusive.
Although he met her only once, Tangaro, like Zane, said he hears stories about Kanaka‘ole everywhere he and his wife go. He hopes this national recognition by the U.S. Mint will help to advance Native Hawaiian and Indigenous knowledge and push more people to learn about Kanaka‘ole and her generation.
“We’re all beneficiaries of the work that Edith and the people of her generation did. They believed that their culture was good for the world. She was at the vanguard of this,” Tangaro said. “I’m just in awe of a woman like her. She’s just as alive now as she’s ever been.”
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Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
