Gazellah Bruder, September, 2024, Vunairoto, Rabaul (photo: courtesy of the artist, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Gazellah Bruder is a highly accomplished and internationally-known artist of Tolai and Mekeo ancestry who lives and works in Papua New Guinea (PNG). She is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, book illustrator, and textile artist, and has also worked in film and television. Her work focuses on social issues, gender, sexuality, and environmental change and she uses her art to promote dialogue about these critical issues.

Bruder is particularly concerned with women’s inequality and domestic violence in Papua New Guinea. Much of her art expresses her insights into women’s experiences and their journeys in life. Countering Euro-American stereotypical depictions of the people of Melanesia—a region of Oceania that extends from Papua New Guinea and West Papua to Fiji—that long represented them as “primitive,” exoticized or eroticized caricatures, or as anthropological “types,” Bruder’s representations of Papua New Guinea women capture their personalities, experiences, and resilience. Her work has received national recognition and in 2020 the PNG government selected her and four other artists to participate in the United Nations’ initiative to produce advocacy materials to prevent and respond to violence against women. [1]

Gazellah Bruder, Goddess I Am, 2019, acrylic on canvas, approximately 90 x 60 cm (photo: courtesy of the artist, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Gazellah Bruder

Goddess I Am

The previous year, in 2019, the Sir Brian Bell Foundation, a health and education organization in Papua New Guinea, awarded Bruder a Timothy Akis and Georgina Beier National Art Prize. This arts program aims to energize culture and heritage and recognizes the important role art plays in maintaining and preserving PNG traditions in dynamic ways. It promotes the arts as a form of communication and expression, a way of addressing trauma and challenging living conditions, and a means of furthering health and healing. Partnering with the “Grass Skirt Project,” which is dedicated to advancing gender equality, eliminating gender-based violence, and empowering girls and women through sports to cultivate strong and resilient communities, Bruder painted Goddess I Am as part of her work for the National Art Prize. [2]

Bruder presents an image of strength, decisiveness, and self-determination through the powerful body of a woman. Although her upper body is unclad and exposed, she is not the passive “dusky maiden” or exotic Melanesian “type” that appears in many Euro-American commercial and anthropological depictions of Oceanic women. She turns her back to our gaze, so as not to be objectified. Her hands are solidly placed on her hips in a stance of self-assuredness. The woman’s body occupies the full space of the painting, with her hair, legs, and right arm extending beyond the edges of the canvas as though to suggest that her presence is not contained or constrained.

Bruder uses color in an expressionist, rather than naturalistic, way. Various shades of blue accented with white, yellow, green, and red, executed in broad, energetic brush strokes, outline the body and define musculature and areas of softer flesh. Bruder’s palette contributes to interrupting the viewer’s expectation of seeing an eroticized body and instead focuses on the strength, substance, and beauty of the “goddess” portrayed. The artist describes the figure’s red blindfold as a “purely . . . subjective representation of ʻturning a blind eye’ and not focusing on what the world thinks of us.” [3] The painting is a demand for women to stand tall, value themselves, and take ownership of their own sense of self. Placed against a bright orange and yellow background that is activated by dynamic brush strokes and flashes of color, the woman stands out vividly in the forceful, energy-filled space she creates for herself and those around her. Goddess I Am “is about loving yourself, and not allowing the world to define or validate you. It is about embracing your womanhood and your sexuality. It is about embracing your every curve.” [4] The painting aptly served as the design for a women’s rugby team jersey as part of the Grass Skirt Project’s 2020 Hevea Cup and Wellness Expo. [5]

Gazellah Bruder, Goddess I Am as the design for a Grass Skirt Project women’s rugby team jersey, 2020 (photo: Grass Skirt Project, courtesy of the artist)

Feeding the Gods of Melanesia

In another painting by Bruder, Feeding the Gods of Melanesia, a woman stands amid lush foliage and holds a wooden bowl containing clusters of green bananas and stalks of taro root. Her presence is monumental; her figure fills and extends beyond the full vertical space of the painting, and the thick application of paint adds to her bodily substance. The woman’s stance is tall, stable, and strong, but not passive or stiff. The curves in her hair, arms, and body (accentuated by the slight arc in the design on the side of the dress) relay a dynamic posture that enlivens the figure and suggests active movement and agency in an otherwise somewhat still composition.

Gazellah Bruder, Feeding the Gods of Melanesia, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 90 x 60 cm (photo: courtesy of the artist, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Gazellah Bruder

The bright yellows, oranges, and reds of her clothing emphasize the vibrance of her presence. Rather than a light from another source reflecting off her, the bright tones have the effect of making it seem as though the light emanates from her, illuminating her surroundings. And, although the woman stands out in front of the foliage, Bruder uses color to intimately connect her to the environment, whether the natural surroundings or the personal spaces of home and work. The bright and dark greens in the woman’s bowl echo the large leaves around her; the reds in her dress link to the red accents of color on both sides of her body; her skin tones resemble those of the banana and taro stems; and the rectilinear design in her dress is rendered in a similar color to the taro (and both the taro and the dress design share a similar curve). Overall, Bruder’s palette in this painting evokes brightness, life, and connection.

Describing this painting, Bruder states: “The visual idea of a wooden bowl filled with banana and taro takes you back to those simpler times when the Queen (mum) would prepare dinner. My mother made cooking a beautiful task, not tiresome and static. There was singing, stories and love, all infused with coconut milk.” [6] The viewer perceives a sense of the figure’s interiority; she gazes upward into the distance and offers a slight smile, as if occupied with her thoughts.

Empowering women through art

In Goddess I Am and Feeding the Gods of Melanesia, Gazellah Bruder presents portraits of strong women who are self-possessed, respected, and integral parts of their larger social and cultural communities. The artist states: “Appreciate yourself more than anyone else can. When you love yourself, you only invite what adds value to exist in your life. You empower yourself to rid your life of any form of toxicity.” [7] Bruder’s work aims to create empathetic relationships and further understanding between her, the figures in her artwork, and viewers.

Ahilapalapa Rands, still from Lift Off demo, 2018, single channel digital video (photo: courtesy of the artist) © Ahilapalapa Rands

If you could use your imagination to change something about today, what would it be? This provocation is a simple one, to use that part of our brain that we have been working since we were children, your imagination. However, sometimes we are so deeply embedded in our everyday lives it can be difficult to imagine something different because we are resigned to what exists right now in front of us. Imagination is a core element of Ahilapalapa Rands’ 2018 artwork Lift Off.

National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, aerial view of Maunakea, 2020 (photo: Richard Wainscoat and the Gemini Observatory, CC BY 4.0)

Reclaiming a sacred place

Lift Off includes a three-channel film that lasts for three minutes and 25 seconds, with two channels showing satellite footage of Maunakea, a dormant volcano on Hawaiʻi Island. [1] The culturally significant mauna (mountain) is a whopping 4,207 meters above sea level, which makes it one of the highest peaks on earth. For Native Hawaiians Maunakea is known as being home to Wākea, the sky god, and is a wahi kapu or sacred place, hosting significant environmental features like Lake Waiau, one of the highest lakes in the United States, and the burial site Puʻu Mākanaka. Maunakea is also significant to astronomers. Since the 1960s, they have noted the value of the mauna’s elevation for astronomy and have built telescopes on the summit. These telescopes also feature in Rand’s Lift Off until they gyrate their way into oblivion.

Kumu Hula (detail), Ahilapalapa Rands, Lift Off, film installed at Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 2022 (photo: courtesy of the artist) © Ahilapalapa Rands

In the third channel of the video, and also sitting on the mauna, is an animated Kumu Hula (master hula teacher) who plays a beat recorded by Rand’s own Kumu Hula, Auliʻi Mitchell (and remastered by Nikolai Mahina). The Kumu Hula sits the full height of the projection, with her hair creating its own mountainous shape that nearly fills rest of the screen. The telescopes pale in comparison to her stature as she takes up space reclaiming her mauna. The ‘ike, or Indigenous knowledge, held and played by the Kumu Hula in the form of an ipu (gourd percussion instrument) is as significant as the wahi kapu of Maunakea. It’s fitting that to her beat the telescopes in the video begin to hula themselves and before long they explode off Maunakea, leaving our view of the summit free from intrusion, something that people have not seen since the late 1960s. It is Indigenous knowledge that Rands offers as a solution to “lift off.”

Ahilapalapa Rands, stills from Lift Off demo, 2018, single channel digital video (photos: courtesy of the artist) © Ahilapalapa Rands

The vision of Maunakea clear of telescopes (see below) is especially prescient considering the long protest against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proposed for Maunakea which would be its largest yet. While resistance to the use of the site as an observatory has always existed, images of high-profile protests spread globally particularly in 2014, 2015, and again in 2018 and 2019. People flocked to the mauna to help protect it, but for Native Hawaiians in diaspora physically turning up isn’t always so easy, as was the case for Rands. In 2018, Rands was living in London, and there she used her skills as an artist both in terms of making work but also in terms of imagining and envisioning. Envisioning a summit free from telescopes, where the telescopes themselves are removed through the Indigenous knowledge of hula projects an Indigenous future for Maunakea.  Lift Off art offers a long-term vision of  the goal of political activism. It creates an optimism that can be hard to hold onto in everyday clashes.

Installation with tinsel wall at left (detail), Ahilapalapa Rands, Lift Off, installed at Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 2022 (photo: Christopher Rohrer, courtesy of Hawaiʻi Contemporary and the artist) © Ahilapalapa Rands

There is a final component to Lift Off, which is a five-layer blue and silver tinsel wall that moves and flickers as the audience moves or when no one is there, to the breeze of the air conditioner. The presence of tinsel suggests a festive atmosphere and connects to a feeling of enjoyment present throughout the work. It also references the glistening of light or the spray of water in the ocean or lakes or even as it falls from the sky as rain. Andrea Low’s essay about Rands’s 2024 solo exhibition called Across the Sea, noted that the title comes from their shared kupuna (ancestor) Ernest Kaleihoku Kaai’s song of the same name. The song and exhibition also point to being in diaspora across the sea from Hawaiʻi. Perhaps the glistening sea wall made of tinsel in the above installation image of Lift Off is also a reference to Rands herself being “across the sea” in London when she made that work and in Aotearoa where she grew up and now lives. But being across the sea doesn’t mean one can’t participate in grounded protest movements and Indigenous expressions. As Andrea Low writes: “Activism and art have always gone together and in the turmoil of our contemporary world, with the aid of digital and social media distribution networks, popular forms of protest are multiplying and providing important means of resistance and assertions of Indigeneity.” [2]

Still showing Maunakea with no telescopes. Ahilapalapa Rands, still from Lift Off demo, 2018, single channel digital video (photo: courtesy of the artist) © Ahilapalapa Rands

While Rands couldn’t have known it, at the time she was envisioning Maunakea free of telescopes, in May 2024, the first telescope was removed from Maunakea. While plans to construct the TMT are still moving forward, part of doing so includes the decommissioning of University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s Hōkū Keʻa Observatory built by the U.S. Air force in 1968. An additional four telescopes will also be decommissioned and land restored by the time that the TMT is operational. So, while the vision of a telescope-free Maunakea is not yet fulfilled, the presence of telescopes has reduced since Rands’s imagining of an Indigenous future.

About the artist

Ahilapalapa Rands is a multidisciplinary artist of Kānaka Maoli/Indigenous Hawaiian, iTaukei/Indigenous Fijian, Pākehā/ Settler European descent who lives and works in Aotearoa New Zealand. Rands is known for her collaborative work establishing a variety of art collectives including as founding member of New Zealand based art collective D.A.N.C.E. art club alongside Vaimaila Urale, Tuafale Tanoa’i aka Linda T, and Chris Fitzgerald and London based In*ter*is*land Collective alongside Lyall Hakaraia, Jo Walsh and Jessica Palalagi. She is also co-founder of Moana Fresh, a marketplace and community space celebrating Pacific and Māori artists, creatives and authors indigenous to Moana Nui a Kiwa.

William Kuamoʻo Helelani Kealoha Kapuni, Pōhaku Kuʻi ʻAi, c. 2000, carved vesicular basalt, 27 x 15 x 13.5 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 29/9627; Gift of Victoria G. Kapuni in Memory of her Beloved Husband William K. Kapuni)

Hele no ka ʻalā, hele no ka lima
The rock goes, the hand goes.
To make good poi, the free hand must work in unison with the poi pounder.[1]

One of the most ubiquitous Hawaiian objects found in museums and private collections worldwide is the humble poi pounder, known in the Hawaiian language as pōhaku kuʻi ʻai or pōhaku kuʻi poi. Ranging in size, color, and texture, they are carved from ʻalā (dense waterworn basalt) found on beaches, streams, and in rivers into elegant utilitarian tools. Paired with a papa kuʻi ʻai (poi-pounding board), the poi pounder is used in pounding kalo (taro, Colocasia esculenta) and other starchy vegetables such as ʻulu (breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis) and ʻuala (sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas) with water into a nutritious sticky paste called poi. Kalo is the primary staple crop of Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians) and is considered to be a manifestation of Hāloanakalaukapalili, a premature child born to Wākea and Hoʻohōkūkalani whose earthly remains became the first taro plant. Their second child, also named Hāloa, is considered to be the progenitor of Kanaka ʻŌiwi. [2] Thus, kalo is regarded as an ancestor by many. The pōhaku kuʻi ʻai, the primary instrument used in creating poi, is imbued with deep significance for Kanaka ʻŌiwi, representing a classic example of the union of functionality, form, and symbolism in Hawaiian art and design.

Left: Pōhaku kuʻi poi, pounder with upper terminal knob; center: Pōhaku puka kuʻi poi, pounder with perforated arched handle; right: Stirrup pounder (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

Types of poi pounders

There are three poi pounder types that developed in the Hawaiian Islands. The first and most common consists of a rounded convex base, a shaft, and an upper terminal knob (pōheoheo) which prevents the hand from slipping upward. The second type consists of an elliptical base and a perforated arched handle and is primarily used and manufactured on the island of Kauaʻi. These pounders are referred to as pōhaku kuʻi ʻai puka (perforated poi pounder), or pōhaku puka for short. [3] The third type, also from Kauaʻi, is the stirrup pounder; it has no perforations and features a flat front surface and a hollowed back.

“A Hawaiian couple making poi,” c. 1900–1923, photographic print (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

Making poi

Historically, the act of pounding poi on a poi board was a common sight throughout Hawaiʻi. The following quote describes a typical scene of poi making in the densely populated area of Lahaina, Maui, prior to the arrival of westerners to the islands: 

E ike mau ia ana malalo o na lau laau, iloko o kekahi wahi kuono malumalu, na papa koa ku’i poi a me na pohaku oia hana, a e ike mau ia ana no hoi ke kino puipui a me na lima oolea o ke kanaka Hawaii, e kui ana i na kalo ono, e hoehoene ana ke pohapoha o ka pohaku kui ai a ke kanaka.

It was a common sight to see under the trees, in some shaded nooks, poi boards made of koa wood and poi pounders used in that activity; it was also common to see the stout bodies and strong hands of Hawaiians pounding delicious taro, accompanied by the delightful smacking sound from people’s poi pounders.[4]

To make poi, the corm of the kalo plant was harvested, steamed, peeled, and placed on a poi board for processing. The poi pounder was then used to break down the kalo into smaller pieces until a hard mass known as paʻi ʻai or ʻai paʻa was created. [5] At this stage, the mashed taro could be wrapped in ti-leaf and stored for future use. When it was ready to be eaten, water was gradually added to the paʻiʻai until it formed smooth poi. Once completed, the poi was transferred to an ʻumeke (bowl, calabash) for storage and consumption.

Piʻi no ka poho, kani kohā!

Up comes the palm—and bang!

A good smack. The pounder is moistened by a dampened hand before it is brought down on a mass of hard poi.[6]

“Pounding Poi—preparing dinner, Hawaiian Islands,” c. 1896, stereograph card, 9 x 18 cm (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

James Gay Sawkins, Making Poi from Kalo, 1852, watercolor on paper, 26.5 x 18.3 cm (National Library of Australia, Parkes)

A watercolor image of two men producing poi, created by James Gay Sawkins in 1852, offers an example of the many images and descriptions of poi making that were produced by foreigners visiting and/or settling in Hawaiʻi in the 19th century. Travel narratives, missionary accounts, and other foreign representations of Hawaiʻi oftentimes mentioned kalo as the “staff of life” for Kanaka ʻŌiwi, with varying tones of distaste or excitement directed towards the traditional way of eating poi, which was typically scooped up with the index finger and middle finger from a shared ʻumeke. By the early 20th century, scenes of pounding poi were widely circulated through postcards, magazine articles, stereograph cards, and other visual mediums to promote tourism in the islands. These images varied from staged scenes depicting subjects in an idealized pre-contact setting, to candid photographs of men and women pounding poi at their homes.

“Old Hawaiian Making Poi,” c. 1905–15, postcard (Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University)

Solomon Robert Nui Enos, Pōhaku Ku‘i ‘Ai 3, 2021, oil on bristol board, 9 x 12 inches (private collection) © Solomon Robert Nui Enos

Poi as a symbol of Kanaka ʻŌiwi life

Although poi consumption and the manufacture of pōhaku kuʻi ʻai declined during the 19th and 20th centuries, the first decades of the 21st century have witnessed a resurgence of these activities, largely due to the efforts of various Native Hawaiian organizations and individuals. Courses, workshops, and other community events organized throughout the islands are providing individuals and their families with opportunities to create their own pōhaku kuʻi ʻai and papa kuʻi ʻai to encourage the reintegration of poi making practices as part of everyday life in Hawaiian households. Beyond the practice of making poi, pōhaku kuʻi ʻai continue to be celebrated in other forms of material culture such as paintings, stickers, and t-shirts, signalling this object’s continued importance as a symbol of Kanaka ʻŌiwi life and culture.

Estria Miyashiro, John “Prime” Hina, and others, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives), 2011, Honolulu (photo: Mārata Tamaira)

For Kānaka Maoli, as for other Native communities throughout the Pacific (and indeed the globe), the ability to self-represent through the contemporary arts has been a crucial means through which to revive and celebrate their histories and cultural traditions as well as assert grievances relating to the colonization of their homelands.

Murals in particular have functioned as a valuable mode of representation because they are squarely located in the visual panorama of everyday life, appearing on concrete motorway barriers and underpasses, construction fences, on the walls of industrial-commercial neighborhoods, schools, bus stops, and so forth. They function as sites for creative production that is at once affirming of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and resistant to ongoing colonialism, particularly as it relates to the relentless drive for development and the degradation of Hawai‘i’s precious natural resources, such as water. In “Missionary Graveyard,” Haunani-Kay Trask writes,

graveyard Hawai‘i Nei:
coffin buildings, concrete parking lots,
maggot freeways
smell of death
smeared across the land/killing in the heart. [1]

Trask’s poem is a keen lamentation for the loss of Hawaiian lands and waterways that have disappeared under tourism, overpopulation through the steady flow of transplants to Hawai‘i’s shores, and, most prominently, development. Of all the places in Hawai‘i that have perhaps been most discernibly affected by this “killing in the heart” is Honolulu. Encompassing the tourist centers of Waikīkī and Ala Moana, Honolulu is the proverbial “concrete jungle,” populated by towering high rises and permeated by roads that are perpetually congested with traffic.

Kokea Street with a view of the mural, Honolulu (underlying map © Google)

Kokea Street in the Kalihi-Pālama district of Honolulu is a striking example of the city’s industrial-urban sprawl with its rows of warehouses, retail stores, and low-income, low-rise apartments. The only evidence of nature in this dry, asphalt-laden neighborhood are the trees that were planted in a vain effort to beautify the area, a narrow drainage canal of brown water, and a muddy bank that is littered with old tires, plastic bottles and bags, and other discarded trash. Presented with this scene of environmental degradation and industrial pollution, one would be forgiven for not knowing that the area at one time was populated by at least forty-five lo‘i (taro fields), all of them fed by the once-healthy and free-flowing Kapālama Stream. Kokea Street seems an unlikely place to find visionary artistic enterprise, yet just past a packed parking lot and a large expanse of cleared land marked for development, a wall of vibrant artistry looms into view.

Completed in 2011 and measuring two stories high and almost two hundred feet long, the graffiti writing mural Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives) constitutes the third mural in the ten-mural Water Writes series. Organized under the auspices of the Estria Foundation, Water Writes is a community-building, social justice initiative that addresses, through the medium of public art—specifically graffiti-writing—environmental issues relating specifically to water sustainability in cities throughout the globe. [2] Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua was a collaborative effort that involved a multicultural cohort of twenty graffiti writers in total, including Kanaka Maoli artists Estria Miyashiro and John “Prime” Hina, who co-steered the project. [3] The mural took one month to complete and required 600 cans of spray paint and 30–40 gallons of house paint.

“Pioneer Mill Company, Upper Lahaina Pump Ditch & Makila Reservoir Ditch, Land of Launiupoko, Lahaina, Maui County,” c. 1933 (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

Water under threat

In Hawai‘i, water has long been the subject of intense and ongoing debate. Beginning in the mid-19th century, streams and rivers across the Islands were diverted from their natural courses into ditch systems that carried water to initially feed the burgeoning sugar plantations of the 19th century and later to supply emerging suburban communities, businesses, and resorts.

Workers cutting cane on a sugar plantation, Hawai’i, n.d. (California Historical Society Collection, University of Southern California Libraries, Los Angeles)

Today, despite its status as a public trust resource that is protectable under the Hawai‘i State Constitution and the state’s Water Code, water remains under threat. On the island of O‘ahu alone, the Waiahole Ditch system diverts up to 12.7 mgd (million gallons of water per day) to the drier leeward side to provide not only potable water for human consumption, but as well non-potable water for golf course irrigation, corporate agriculture, housing and resort development, and recreational landscaping. As Earthjustice attorney Kapua‘ala Sproat notes, “despite laws on the books, large companies—former plantations included—continue to . . . treat public water resources as their private property. Our management system has been reduced to might makes right.” [4] Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua presents an empowering vision of how things could be if the natural flow of the waters was restored and responsible Native-based stewardship of the ‘āina (land) was practiced across the Islands.

Ahupua‘a with three resource zones (detail), Estria Miyashiro, John “Prime” Hina, and others, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives), 2011, Honolulu (photo: Estria Foundation)

Flow mountain to sea

The brightly painted mural comprises three principal sections. On the right-hand side, the homeostatic system of a traditional ahupua‘a (land division stretching from the mountains to the ocean) is shown, each resource zone—kalo terrace, fishpond, and dryland agricultural field—being represented in discrete visual “stills” that are cleverly consolidated into the overall composition. The water from the mountains gushes through the different zones before emptying out into the ocean.

He‘e (octopus) (detail), Estria Miyashiro, John “Prime” Hina, and others, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives), 2011, Honolulu (photo: Estria Foundation)

Native marine fauna from the various aquatic habitats of stream, shoreline, and deep water are also depicted, such as o‘opu (gobie), oama (goatfish), he‘e (octopus), and honu (turtle).

Ahupua‘a of the future (detail), Estria Miyashiro, John “Prime” Hina, and others, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives), 2011, Honolulu (photo: Estria Foundation)

This representation of past land and water stewardship is complemented on the left-hand side of the mural with images of what an ahupua‘a of the future might look like. A bird’s-eye view of a futuristic Honolulu reveals solar panel–roofed buildings, the walls of which are covered with living plants. Rather than dominate the skyline in a dreary hue of concrete grey, these verdant green mounds crouch unobtrusively on the landscape. The buildings share the space with present-day “green” technologies, such as wind and water turbines, and a catchment water system that feeds a communal garden. In a more whimsical imaging of the future, the artists also include anti-gravitational vehicles, which are operated by their human pilots.

Present-day realities are not precluded in this affirmative vision of environmentally balanced, self-sustainable living. Above the city-scape, ‘Īao Stream—one of four streams on Maui that have for over a century been diverted for commercial agricultural interests—is represented in the same kind of “still” used to frame the various ahupua‘a zones. Since 2003, Native Hawaiians have been engaged in a legal battle to have Nā Wai ‘Ehā (The Four Streams) of Maui, which includes ‘Īao Stream, restored and returned to the people. [5] In the visual representation of ‘Īao Stream, the grill through which the water is diverted is clearly apparent. However, what is equally unmistakable is the torrent of water that courses unimpeded through a giant tear in the image. The message is that these waters will not be held back, despite the political tactics of powerful corporate enterprises to control their flow. The words “Flow Mauka to Makai” (“Mountain to Sea”) that stream across the length of the mural function as a cohesive element that ties the entire composition together. Spoken out loud, the words are like a mantra willing the waters to once again flow unimpeded from the top of the mountains to the ocean. Hawaiian cultural values of cooperation and collective well-being are also invoked in the written ‘ōlelo no‘eau (Hawaiian proverbs) located on the left and right-hand side of the mural, respectively:

‘A‘ohe hana nui ke alu ‘ia
(No task is too big when done together by all)

Queen Lili‘uokalani (detail), Estria Miyashiro, John “Prime” Hina, and others, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua (As the Water Lives, the Earth Thrives), 2011, Honolulu (photo: Estria Foundation)

Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the Kamehameha dynasty that ruled the Hawaiian kingdom, c. 1891, gelatin silver print, 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

Unrelinquished Native sovereignty

Native sovereignty is a central theme in the mural and it is most conspicuously cited in the larger-than-life figure of Queen Lili‘uokalani, who is stationed at the center of the mural, between the past and the future. The image is based on a black-and-white photograph taken of the Queen at the beginning of her reign, which lasted from 1891–93. In the photograph, she is shown seated on her royal throne, over which is draped an ahu‘ula (feather cloak). In the mural, the cloak is artistically reconceptualized as a lush valley comprising Crown lands—lands that were confiscated during the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy—through which surges a rushing stream that cascades over the Queen’s right shoulder and across her heart to become her royal sash. Miyashiro notes that the orientation of the royal sash over the Queen’s heart was not only in keeping with the photographic source but also strategically positioned to indicate that “she’s still pouring her heart out to help us.” [6]

The deliberate inclusion of Queen Lili‘uokalani as the central figure in Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua may best be understood in the context of what anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner describes as a grammar of “summarizing symbols” or “objects of attention and cultural respect.” [7] In the case of the mural, the principal symbol of attention and cultural respect is the personage of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s last ruling monarch. Queen Lili‘uokalani’s image bears critical meaning for Kānaka Maoli who revere her as an icon of resistance and unrelinquished Native sovereignty. For instance, during sovereignty marches and protests her image is often used on flyers and posters along with her famous motto ‘onipa‘a, a Hawaiian term meaning steadfast, firm, and resolute and which was used by Queen Lili‘uokalani to fortify her people when the Hawaiian Kingdom was forcibly and illegally overthrown. For Hina and Miyashiro, the emphasis on the Queen is reflective of their own political conviction that the Hawaiian Kingdom was never terminated and remains in existence to the current day. From Miyashiro’s perspective, the image of Lili‘uokalani “reaffirms for people that are looking at it: I am Hawaiian and we are a Kingdom.” [8]

Thus, the Queen’s image functions as a contemporary rallying point for the affirmation of sovereign Hawaiian identity, a symbolic counterpart to the more concrete claims that are being made by Kānaka Maoli in the areas of law and politics.

Royal Hawaiian Guards keeping watch over Queen Lili‘uokalani’s image, 2011 (photo: Paula Ota)

As a symbolic display of Native sovereignty the mural was further enhanced at the unveiling—which took place 7 July 2011 and included a blessing, hula performance, and an appearance by singer-songwriter Palani Vaughan—by the presence of the Hawaiian Royal Guard, who were stationed in front of the Queen’s image for the entire event, despite the intense summertime heat. For Miyashiro, it was a lesson in how seriously Kānaka Maoli viewed the mural and how the Queen continues to resonate as a symbol of Native pride and identity.

The unveiling of the mural not only revealed the strong feelings of fidelity Kānaka Maoli continue to have for their sovereign, but it also exposed a resolute resistance to U.S. colonialism. In a show of Indigenous national pride, Palani Vaughan performed the Hawaiian patriotic song “Kaulana Nā Pua” (“Famous Are the Flowers”). Written in 1895 by Ellen Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast—a good friend of Queen Lili‘uokalani—in opposition to the illegal annexation of the Islands to the United States, the song was a statement of rebellion that pledged loyalty to the Queen and denounced the schemes of the haole (white) annexationists. [9]

John “Prime” Hina (left), Palani Vaughan (center), and Estria Miyashiro (right) stand in front of Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua during the mural’s unveiling ceremony, 2011 (photo: Paula Ota)

In one particular photograph, Hina, Miyashiro, and Vaughan are shown standing in front of the Queen’s image during the unveiling celebrations. Flanking the trio are two standard bearers holding flag banners that read, “Hawaiian Independence.” The photograph illustrates in a profound way the intersection between Native art and politics in Hawaiʻi.

A call to collective engagement

Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua serves as a testament to the strategic use of art by Kanaka Maoli practitioners in their bid not only to uplift their own people with visual affirmations of Native sovereignty but to also hail non-Kanaka Maoli living in the Islands as part of a broader call to collective responsibility and action. As Miyashiro states:

When we paint outdoors, hundreds of thousands of people see it in a week. Millions of people see it in a year. You know, academics talk about taking the art—and not just visual art, but dance and performance, and what have you—taking all of those art forms out of the institutions and going into the community where the people are. [10]

Indeed, in its inclusive call to collective engagement, Ola Ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua may succeed where political rallies and other high-profile sovereignty initiatives have been unsuccessful. It opens space for the viewing public to be transformed in profound and, one might hope, lasting ways—conscientized as Paulo Freire would say, raised to new levels of awareness. This is not just the case at the collective level, but as well the personal. Prime and Estria both describe the mural as a landmark moment in their lives because it helped them realize the significance of what they were doing, not just as individual artists but also as artists who are part of a collective effort to assert Hawaiian sovereignty through art: “This is our journey as artists, as people [who are] upholding the culture. And it’s a heavy burden. Not really burden. It’s a heavy honor.” [11]

Fatu Feuʻu’s four decade-long career encompasses the emergence of the burgeoning Pacific art scene in Aotearoa New Zealand from the 1980s to the 2020s (and he continues to regularly exhibit). He is regarded as one of the first Pacific artists to establish himself professionally in Aotearoa and has been described as the Father of Contemporary Pacific Art. His paintings, sculptures, prints, and ceramics draw on a range of customary Samoan art forms including siapo (decorated barkcloth), tatau (tattoo), and carving. They are also redolent with metaphors of navigation and journeying, reflecting his own migration from his homeland of Sāmoa to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1966.

Map showing some of the Pacific Islands (underlying map © Google)

The 1950s and 1960s saw large numbers of Pacific people migrating to Aotearoa. Like many of them, Feuʻu started out working in factories until settling in Auckland, home to the largest Pacific community, in the mid 1970s. There, he gradually established himself within the local artists community. His earliest works were primarily in the mediums of painting and lithography, however he soon developed broader interests which ranged across a wide and diverse number of media including painting, glasswork, carpet, ceramics, installation and monumental sculpture, poetry, and printmaking.

From the late 1980s, Feuʻu also played an active role in supporting his fellow artists, as well as mentoring younger New Zealand-born Pacific artists. He regularly included them in his exhibitions and organized group shows that contributed to the development of a platform from which a generation of artists would emerge to dominate the New Zealand art scene across the 1990s. Feuʻu also founded the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust in the mid-1990s, a collective that continues to support Pacific artists.

Fatu Feuʻu, Faʻaola Mo Taeao Conserve for Tomorrow, 1990, oil on canvas, wood, barkcloth, pigment, and ceramic (Feuʻu Marsh Trust collection) © Fatu Feuʻu

Referencing Faʻa Sāmoa (the Samoan way)

Faʻaola Mo Taeao Conserve for Tomorrow is a mixed media work produced in the early 1990s. It comprises three paintings and four wooden sculptural forms, and epitomizes Feuʻu’s signature painting style across this decade. The paintings feature the artist’s highly recognizable bright colors and grid composition that echo the structure of Samoan siapo (barkcloth) design, along with his stylized flower, mask, and frigate bird motifs. This visual aesthetic would come to signify “Pasifika”  for many, in a decade that saw the establishment of the first Pasifika festivals, fashion, and design in Aotearoa. These events celebrated Pacific Islander cultures and artforms with a particular focus on the innovations and expressions of migrant communities based in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Unidentified artist, Siapo mamanu, 1890s (Sāmoa), tapa (bark) cloth, 142 x 136 cm (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington)

Feuʻu’s Conserve for Tomorrow also features mixed media elements. Juxtaposed within and around the three canvases are wooden sculptures that draw on outrigger canoe forms and digging sticks used for tending gardens. These references celebrate centuries-old practices of navigation and sustainable practices of working the land. They were inspired by the artist’s childhood memories growing up in the village of Poutasi, Sāmoa, where he would watch his mother, grandmother, and aunties making and designing barkcloth. Feuʻu drew on and developed these stylized patterns and designs to create a series of works, which would often reference aspects of the Faʻa Sāmoa (the Samoan way) such as faʻaaloalo (respect and reverence), alofa (love and compassion), and tautua (service and obligation).

Conserve for Tomorrow also reflects Feuʻu’s ongoing concern for the environment and the need to protect it for future generations. While the overall visual aesthetic of the work  reflects an affirming array of familiar Polynesian patterns and motifs, they are also encoded with references highlighting the importance of caring and preserving the environment—its plants and animals, along with its ancient histories and customs that are intimately connected to the natural world and ancestral genealogies. These concerns are addressed in a number of his paintings, which highlight issues like the dangers of driftnet fishing, among other unsustainable practices.

It is important to understand that in the early 1980s, when Feuʻu was developing his art practice, there was no community of Pacific artists regularly exhibiting in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the now familiar Pasifika style and aesthetic did not exist. In contrast to the prevailing politicized protest art that dominated much of the work of Māori artists at that time, Feuʻu was struck by the lack of other Polynesian cultural references, and felt strongly that he needed to represent something of his own Samoan culture. [1] His experience and development as an artist who was born and raised in Sāmoa was different than the majority of Pacific Islander artists who were born in New Zealand. While many of them explore and critique issues of identity, tradition, and the migration experience by developing a counter-practice—what has been termed representation or identity politics—Feuʻu chose not to do this. In contrast to Jim Vivieaere’s (a New Zealand artist of Cook Islands Māori descent) often quoted reference to the plight of Pacific artists as being in a “three-legged race,” Feuʻu instead chose to see the diasporic experience differently, stating, “I wanted to stand firm, as a Samoan here in New Zealand and [represent] who I am.” [2]

Fatu Feuʻu, Faʻaola Mo Taeao Conserve for Tomorrow, 1990, oil on canvas, wood, barkcloth, pigment, and ceramic (Feuʻu Marsh Trust collection) © Fatu Feuʻu

Another key thematic that can be seen across Feuʻu’s vast body of work highlights important connections between generations and the role that grandparents and parents can play in supporting their families and transmitting cultural knowledge and values. Alongside the bright yellow flower forms in Conserve for Tomorrow, which have been described as frangipani, are stylized mask motifs that allude to pre-colonial religious practices. Frigate bird forms also feature in the composition to the lower left, and mid-right sides of the panels, signaling ancestral presences and highlighting the important relationships between the long-distance flying birds and navigators who would track their flight paths.

The carved sculptural forms to the far left and right of the painted panels create a visual metaphor of travel through their references to canoe outriggers. These types of canoes are traced back to the early Lapita voyagers and settlers of the Pacific Ocean (beginning as early as 1600 B.C.E.) and into the present, as Feuʻu also evokes present-day migration of Pacific people to Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. The continuum of voyaging and travel across time—from the ancient Polynesian settlers guided by their master navigators, known in Sāmoa as tautai, into the present—is an ongoing reference in Feuʻu’s work.

The siapo cloth that is wrapped around the central area of the sculptures reflects the importance of the textiles, made by women, in relation to customary exchanges and gifting. This practice highlights the rank and mana of those who adorn themselves with the cloth, as well as foregrounds intimate connections between Pacific people and the environment, as the textiles are made from the inner bark or skin of the uʻa (paper mulberry tree). It also evokes the practice of wrapping textiles around people and objects on important occasions.

Fatu Feuʻu, Alofa Tūnoa (Ancient Love), 2024, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 29.5 x 29.5 inches (Courtesy of Bergman Gallery) © Fatu Feuʻu

Sustainable futures

In the mid-1990s, Feuʻu’s painting practice changed. As his reputation grew locally and internationally, he took on more responsibilities within his family and community. Feuʻu holds three chiefly titles: the Tulafale Orator title of Siʻa from Poutasi; Lesa, a sacred aliʻi (chiefly) title; and Papaaliʻi, from his mother’s family. Perhaps as a reflection of his complex understanding of cultural obligations and practices, his palette became darker and he began to incorporate text, including Samoan sayings and concepts, poetry, biblical passages, and songs from the Mau movement for Samoan independence. New motifs were also incorporated, including the paddle, handprint, and “kissing fishes.” Into the 2000s, his distinctive grid gave way to a now familiar “I” form which has become a central motif around which the artist structures his compositions. This form references the first letter of the Samoan ritual of ifoga, a collective expression of asking for forgiveness and seeking reconciliation.

Conserve for Tomorrow remains an important work within Feuʻu’s oeuvre as it not only signals the development of his early practice emerging from the 1980s, but also reflects key concerns that he continues to explore and develop over time. Respect, love, responsibility, and service are all key aspects of the Faʻa Sāmoa that continue to offer Indigenous responses to and solutions for sustainable relationships and futures.

Expertly woven jaki-ed (mats) have become a powerful symbol of Marshall Islanders’ resilience in the face of military activity, colonial occupation, and rising sea levels. Historically used as clothing, their production dramatically decreased in the beginning of the 20th century as missionaries, colonial administrations, and merchants introduced cotton cloth that quickly replaced woven textiles made from local materials like pandanus leaves. During World Wars I and II, the islands were successively occupied by German, Japanese, and United States militaries. Supply routes were severely disrupted during World War II, limiting access to trade cloth and providing an opportunity for Marshallese women to begin weaving their customary textiles again.

Ashken Binat, Jaki-ed (fine mat), 2010, Wūnmaan̄ (pandanus leaves), dye, string, 18 x 30 inches (photo: T. Greenstone Alefaios) © Ashken Binat

The expert weaver Ashken Binat made this jaki-ed in 2010. It demonstrates the revival of Marshallese weaving since the early 2000s, when a number of workshops and apprenticeship programs helped to recover the intricate knowledge required to produce these fine mats. In Binat’s work, alternating strands of deep black and creamy white form geometric patterns around the edge. Older mats in museum collections, such as the example below from the 19th century, use a wider range of reds and browns to achieve even more complex designs layered in successive bands that surround the undecorated center. Despite the centuries separating these two jaki-ed, both follow a standard form that hints at the continuity and intergenerational connection that woven textiles have enabled over time.

Marshall Islands artist, “Costume mat,” c. 19th century, pandanus, plant fibers, 35 x 35.4 inches (Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington)

Preparing pandanus

Making a jaki-ed (and other woven works like canoe sails, fans, and baskets) begins with preparing the leaves of the pandanus tree (Pandanus tectorius, called bōb in Marshallese). These leaves, called wūnmaan̄, are large, thick fronds with small spikes that line the edges. To prepare the leaves for weaving, the spikes are first removed with a sharp blade such as a knife or, historically, hard shells. The leaves are then left to dry in the sun, becoming pale in color. The dried fronds are beaten with heavy wooden pounders (dekã in nin) to make them more pliable and then torn into thin strips. Next, the strips are dyed to create darker shades of brown, red, black, and even a deep shade of purple. Customarily, the natural dyes were made of different plant roots, fruit, bark, and soot. Today, these natural dyes are combined with synthetic colors to make even brighter and more elaborate designs.

Dekã in nin (pounder) used to beat dried rolls of wūnmaan̄ (pandanus leaves), Marshall Islands (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)

Jaki-ed are woven by women who each create their own mat. And yet, most women do not work in solitude, but rather conduct their weaving in groups where they can share their knowledge, discuss current events, and support one another. Women acquire the knowledge and skills to make woven objects at an early age, learning from their elders and then developing their own aesthetic as they become more experienced. Each jaki-ed is therefore a product of the matrilineal heritage embodied by the artist and her mat.

Symbols of ancestry

The surface of each jaki-ed is made of separate parts: the jouj, or heart, is woven first, and makes up the majority of the mat’s surface. An undecorated square always appears in the center of the jouj and is framed by bands of complex designs called kemejmej. In Ashken Binat’s piece, each corner of the jouj is occupied by a black square flanked by thin, alternating rows of white and black strands, as if the designs are pulsating and radiating outward. Along the length of each side are repeating motifs made up of chevrons and diamonds that appear three-dimensional because of the artist’s expert use of both colors. More thin rows separate these motifs from the central square, which reveals the natural hues of the pandanus leaves as they undulate between different shades of white and beige.

Corners of the jouj and lengthwise chevron and diamond motifs (detail), Ashken Binat, Jaki-ed (fine mat), 2010, Wūnmaan̄ (pandanus leaves), dye, string, 18 x 30 inches (photo: T. Greenstone Alefaios) © Ashken Binat

The mat from the 19th century features even more layers of designs, beginning with the alternating white and reddish-brown squares cut through with star-like Xs, which are separated from the next row of alternating black and white U-shapes by thin, zigzagging lines. The masterful play of positive and negative space within each of these patterns creates a dynamic surface that would have been made even more impressive when wrapped around a person’s body, as it was worn at the time of its manufacture.

Two patterned rows separated by zigzagging lines (detail), Marshall Islands artist, “Costume mat,” c. 19th century, pandanus, plant fibers, 35 x 35.4 inches (Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington)

In both examples, the jouj is attached to a decorated border that is woven separately, called the īnīn. This border is often decorated in a similar manner as the jouj, with geometrical patterns and zigzagging lines that echo and reinforce the interior motifs. The īnīn is attached to the jouj with a thick seam called the bo̧kwōj, which is often made of a different, thicker fiber made from tree bark. Attaching the īnīn to the jouj is a critical last step in the production of jaki-ed, for it makes the piece whole, uniting the two parts and, in doing so, making the mat stronger. The bo̧kwōj is often braided and understood to literally weave together the artist’s matrilineal and patrilineal ancestry, creating “a parental embrace safe-guarding the bonds of love, peace, and harmony among members of a jowi (clan).” [1]

Jaki-ed are thus steeped in symbolic meaning, from the motifs to their manufacture. The undecorated core is often associated with purity (perhaps an outcome of the archipelago’s relationship with Christianity resulting from missionary activity beginning in the 19th century), while the motifs around the border indicate the weaver’s ancestry. Some motifs have names passed down as they are taught to younger generations, such as the design on Binat’s mat, which represents the marks that hermit crabs leave in the sand. Other motifs are more abstract in meaning and align the artist with a particular claim to land, status, or title. The repeating designs are often said to represent the children who descend from their ancestors and who will inherit the rights to those lands, while the border designs often refer to the chiefs and clan leaders who protect and embrace the social fabric that keeps Marshallese communities together.

A symbol of vitality & resilience

Jaki-ed continue to be a source of meaning for Marshall Islanders today, especially in the face of external threats to Marshallese culture, bodies, and lands. In the 19th century, customary clothing like nieded—two pieces of jaki-ed wrapped around one’s body—was soon replaced with cotton garments that were obtained through emerging trade networks that brought European and American merchants to the islands. Protestant missionaries also influenced local dress, as conversion was often made visible by wearing dresses, shirts, and trousers that covered the body more fully.

But the most drastic disruptions to Marshallese culture and ways of life occurred in the 20th century, when the islands became a key arena for German, Japanese, and U.S. military activity in the first and second world wars. In the cold-war era following World War II, the United States used the Marshall Islands as a testing site for their nuclear weapons technology, detonating 67 nuclear bombs between 1946 and 1958.

Crater left by a nuclear test on Runit Island, Enewetak Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands (photo: © Google Earth)

The devastation of these tests cannot be overstated, as gaping craters replaced the coral atolls that were crucial to the archipelago’s ecological systems, and radioactive waste infiltrated freshwater sources. Marshall Islanders were forcibly relocated by the United States military in advance of the tests, but nevertheless suffered from radiation poisoning and the trauma of being displaced from one’s ancestral home. Today, Marshall Islanders continue to suffer from high rates of cancers related to radiation exposure, and rising sea levels are causing the nuclear waste sites that litter their islands to leak and cause future damage.

In the face of this continuing injustice, Marshall Islanders are using their cultural heritage as a source of recovery and resilience. Jaki-ed mats and the knowledge of pandanus weaving is particularly powerful because of its metaphorical and symbolic meaning attributed to strengthening community ties and maintaining one’s ancestral knowledge in the face of violence and displacement.

Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner performing Lorro: Of Wings & Seas at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, 25 November 2018 (photo: Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art)

In 2017, the Marshallese poet, artist, and climate activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner used jaki-ed weaving as a metaphor in her performance Lorro: Of Wings & Seas, in which she recounts learning how to pull together strands, missing a spot, and trying to fill in the gaps that emerge from her own ignorance. In her spoken word performance, that lack of knowledge aptly describes the inability of global powers to adequately address the climate crisis. “I missed a strand,” she says. “I missed a strand and now could we be unravelling?” In this performance, jaki-ed symbolize the strength of ancestors, chiefs, descendants, and clans as well as the global social fabric that is being threatened by climate violence.

Installation of Jaki-ed mats at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, 24 November 2018–28 April 2019 (photo: Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art)

During this performance—which took place at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, for the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2018–19—Jetñil-Kijiner was surrounded by contemporary jaki-ed that were produced in 2017 during a three-week workshop aimed at revitalizing Marshallese weaving. The weavers span multiple generations, ensuring the knowledge of how to prepare the pandanus and weave specific motifs would continue into the future.

Participants of the Jaki-ed weaving workshop for the the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial at the University of the South Pacific campus in Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands, September 2017 (photo: Chewy Lin)

In addition to these workshops and the production of new mats, historical jaki-ed in museum collections are a vital source of knowledge and a symbol of the exceptional artistry and strong culture of ancestors in the past. Many jaki-ed were collected by European and American travelers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries during a time when ethnographic collections were growing in overseas museums. Now, this important record of customary weaving is dispersed across the globe, providing challenges for Marshallese artists to access their heritage. In 2013, the Jaki-ed Program at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji created the Virtual Museum of Marshallese Fine Weaving, a digital tour that allows the global public, no matter where they are, to see the finest jaki-ed in museum collections across the world. Just like Marshall Islanders living in the global diaspora, these historic pieces are crucial means by which people can remain connected to each other, to their heritage, and to emerging generations who will continue to transform and mobilize this knowledge into the future.

Kapulani Landgraf, ʻAuʻa, photograph installation, 2019, installed at the Honolulu Museum of Art, 2019 (Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Kapulani Landgraf, courtesy of the artist

Kanaka ʻŌʻiwi (Native Hawaiian) artist Kapulani Landgraf uses photography to document and communicate layered ideas related to Hawaiian history, culture, and political struggles. In 2019, she created a series of 108 black and white digital portrait photographs titled ʻAuʻa that was exhibited as a photographic installation at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2019 and again in 2024. The portraits are of Native Hawaiian people who work in a variety of fields and represent multiple generations but are united in their commitment to Indigenous lifeways that have been long impacted by the U.S.-assisted overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

Three portraits with the center portrait depicting Haunani-Kay Trask (detail). Kapulani Landgraf, ʻAuʻa, photograph installation, 2019, installed at the Honolulu Museum of Art, 2024 (Honolulu Museum of Art; photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Kapulani Landgraf, courtesy of the artist

Facing Hawaiʻi’s colonial history

One of Landgraf’s portraits honors the influential Native Hawaiian scholar, activist, and poet Haunani-Kay Trask. Trask, through her academic and political activism, was a leader in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. The movement focuses on self-determination and independence from the United States, which illegally annexed the Hawaiian Islands as a territory in 1898. Her writings, speeches, and advocacy are revolutionary critiques of U.S. imperialism and colonialism in Hawaiʻi. In the photograph, Trask defiantly looks out past the viewer in a pāʻū (a wraparound garment or sarong)—she does not wear any Euro-American clothing that might indicate an allegiance to the U.S. By featuring Trask, Landgraf evokes the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and its fight for Native Hawaiian rights and culture in response to the effects of colonialism, tourism, overdevelopment, and militarization of Hawaiian lands.

Haunani-Kay Trask (detail). Kapulani Landgraf, ʻAuʻa, photograph installation, 2019, installed at the Honolulu Museum of Art, 2024 (Honolulu Museum of Art; photo: Nicole K. Furtado) © Kapulani Landgraf, courtesy of the artist

The repeated phrase, “WE ARE NOT AMERICAN HE HAWAII AU MAU A MAU,” printed in capital letters, appears in small print across her entire image. “He Hawaii Au Mau A Mau” translates as “I am Hawaiian, forever and ever.” Continuously repeating the combined phrases throughout her image, as well as in all the other portraits in ʻAuʻa, communicates persistence and unrelenting dedication to restoring Native Hawaiian self-determination. The text envelops Trask, as if to indicate that she and the movement are one and the same. The words are derived from one of Trask’s most famous speeches delivered at a protest march on January 17, 1993—the 100-year anniversary of the illegal overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian monarchy. In front of ʻIolani Palace—once Liliʻuokalani’s seat of rulership and later the site of her imprisonment—in Honolulu, Trask famously declared, “We are not American. We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans.” Her words are a call to revitalize Hawaiian identity and reckon with the struggles caused by U.S. settler colonialism.

The same textual provocation appears across the 108 portraits, joining all the individuals who agreed to participate (and who are diverse in age and vocation) in challenging ongoing colonization, asserting Hawaiian national identity, and collectively committing to effect lasting change. Image and text are layered together as though to emphasize the human, personal embodiment of the words. The repeated phrase urges the viewer to recognize Hawaiʻi’s colonial history and truly “face” it—emphasized by the larger than life-size-scale format of the prints and the direct gaze of the sitters—and contend with it in our present moment. The title of the installation, ʻAuʻa, adds depth to the declaration because it can mean to withhold or deny something, or to refuse to part with something. The participants in Landgraf’s work can be understood as united in withholding their citizenship from the United States and refusing to part with their Hawaiian national identity.

James Kirkpatrick, Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1945 (National Air and Space Museum Archives, Chantilly)

Multiple layers of meaning

Presenting the portraits in black and white also has layered significance. It recalls an era predating the invention of color photography—the time of the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the 19th century more generally, when the foundation for settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi was established and quickly advanced. The black and white format reminds viewers that Kānaka ʻŌʻiwi have endured cultural trauma and pain and have also fought to defend their sovereignty for nearly two centuries. Landgraf’s stylistic choice also offers a stark contrast to the omnipresent color-saturated photography deployed to draw tourism, especially since the post-World War II advances in transportation and explosion of visitor accommodations and services in Hawaiʻi. Vibrant, multi-hued photographs advertising a fantasy of Hawaiʻi’s pristine, untouched beaches, without a trace of Indigenous inhabitants, or smiling and welcoming “hula girls” entice tourists (many of whom settle in Hawaiʻi). These types of images mask the violence of colonial displacement, efforts to eliminate Hawaiian language and culture, and the exploitation of land and labor. Landgraf’s photographic collectivity of community leaders forcefully counter these seductive representations. The majority of the people featured in the portraits confront viewers directly and solemnly, except for the notable exception of Trask who gazes into the distance—into the future perhaps. The size of the portraits signals their presence, the textual declaration unifies them, and the black and white format evokes the long history of the struggle and their enduring dedication to correct historical and present-day wrongs enacted on the land and people of Hawaiʻi.

The aesthetic device of skillfully layering meanings in Hawaiian visual and material culture, poetry, literature, and performance is called kaona and elicits multiple, simultaneous, and interrelated stories and ideas. As with her other major artworks, Landgraf’s ‘Auʻa invites viewers to engage multiple layers of meaning. She accomplishes this through the formal and conceptual elements described above, and also through other aspects of the installation. For both the 2019 and 2024 exhibitions of ‘Auʻa, she presented all of the wall labels in both ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) and English and played looped audio recordings of Trask’s speech and a song (mele) related to the theme of the installation, ‘Auʻa ‘ia, performed by Kaleo Trinidad and Aaron J. Salā. For the 2024 installation, Landgraf added a large bilingual wall text reproducing a name song (mele inoa) honoring Kama, a famous Maui chief, who refused to surrender his land.

Installation with Pili Ma Nā Kūpuna (detail), Kapulani Landgraf, ʻAuʻa, photograph installation, 2019, installed at the Honolulu Museum of Art, 2024 (Honolulu Museum of Art; photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Kapulani Landgraf, courtesy of the artist

Pili Ma Nā Kūpuna

For this later installation, Landgraf also created a new work in 2023, Pili Ma Nā Kūpuna, that took the form of a chain barrier supported by metal stanchions that serve to physically protect the portraits by keeping viewers at a distance. This had the additional benefit of not having to mount the photographs with plexiglass that could reflect the exhibition lighting and impede clear viewing. Landgraf constructed the chain of zip ties, which are often used by police forces to restrain protestors and, in the context of the installation, can be seen as suppressing Hawaiian sovereignty. At the same time, the barrier can be understood as safeguarding the community as they stand their ground, which is visually and spatially emphasized by the installation design that presents the photographs in a long single row on each of the gallery walls.

Chain inscribed with the names of participants’ ancestors (detail), Kapulani Landgraf, Pili Ma Nā Kūpuna, 2023, nylon zip ties, pig naʻau, ink, exhibited as part of ʻAuʻa, installed at the Honolulu Museum of Art, 2024 (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) © Kapulani Landgraf, courtesy of the artist

The zip ties are covered in a membrane of pig naʻau (intestines) that harden when dried. Landgraf inscribed the surface of the naʻau stretched over the loops of the zip ties with the names of kūpuna (ancestors) offered by the project participants. Placed on the links of the chain, the names form an unbroken historical and genealogical connection between Kānaka ‘Ōʻiwi, past and present, and suggest their unyielding solidarity. Drawing on the function of the barrier to protect and keep away those who might cause harm (to the artwork, and more broadly to Kānaka ‘Ōʻiwi and their cause), the community leaders’ ancestors guard them and their work as they shape the future. Like the black and white format of the photographs, the chain barrier provides an historical reference and signals the persistent struggle of the sovereignty movement. As Landgraf states, “even though there are just 108 people represented, there are thousands there, representing generations upon generations of our ancestors and future descendants.” [1] Naʻau is also an important Hawaiian concept that not only means “gut” or “intestines,” but also refers to “intellect, feeling, and moral sense” and “of the heart or mind” (somewhat akin to the phrase “gut feeling” or “trusting your gut”), and adds another layer of meaning to the piece. [2] Together, ʻAuʻa and Pili Ma Nā Kūpuna encourage viewers—whether they be Native Hawaiians, settlers, tourists, or others—to open their hearts and minds to learn about Kanaka ʻŌʻiwi relationships to their lands and the histories of Hawaiian struggles while acknowledging multi-layered and meaningful connections to place.

Likely New Georgia Island artist, Nguzunguzu (canoe prow figurehead), late 19th–early 20th century (Solomon Islands), wood, paint, shell, 13.3 x 5.7 x 9.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

When large tomako (war canoes) took to the open oceans of the western Solomon Islands, small figureheads (nguzunguzu) were lashed to the base of their prows, skimming the surface of the water as the vessels cut through the waves. Nguzunguzu served a protective function for the canoe and those within it, though the exact nature of their interactions with the spirits and environment remains debated. The figureheads’ distinctive form was once associated with the cycles of ritual warfare and headhunting that maintained the balance of society. In more recent years they have transformed into a contemporary cultural icon emblematic of national pride and identity in the independent nation of Solomon Islands.

Solomon Islands (underlying map © Google)

Adorning canoes in Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands are a double chain of islands lying to the southeast of New Guinea. The art of the islands reflects life lived in close interdependence with the birds, animals, and spirits of the ocean. Among the most impressive elements of visual culture in the western islands of New Georgia, Choiseul, and Santa Isabel, are the large war canoes that once carried men on headhunting raids to other islands and villages. Stored in canoe houses that also served as repositories for treasured valuables, the vessels could reach fifty feet in length and carry more than thirty warriors. Their tall prows dwarfed the small nguzunguzu (known as toto isu in the Marovo Lagoon region) at their base.

Note the nguzunguzu at the base of the prow. Ingava standing in front of a thatched canoe house, with Gemu and two other men standing in front of a canoe, Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands, photographed by Charles Woodford, c. 1887, albumen print (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

An image of the canoe and canoe house belonging to Ingava, a prominent leader from Roviana, in the 1880s shows how the figureheads were attached. Above the nguzunguzu, canoes were also decorated with large egg cowrie shells arranged along the height of the prow and carved figures atop the prow and stern. Nguzunguzu from the 19th century typically have a lug at the back with holes drilled that allowed them to be tied to the prow. Being lashed rather than carved as an integral part of the canoe prow meant that the figures could be removed from vessels captured in warfare or exchanged as high-status items and may have been used to adorn several canoes in their lifetimes. [1]

Likely New Georgia Island artist, Nguzunguzu (canoe prow figurehead), late 19th–early 20th century (Solomon Islands), wood, paint, shell, 13.3 x 5.7 x 9.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s example is typical of the known corpus of nguzunguzu and features a human face with wide open eyes set above an elongated dog-like jaw. It has no lower body and instead reaches out from the canoe as a head with arms pressed together below the chin. The wood has been stained with a mixture of soot and oils to create a rich, matte black that contrasts with the shimmering brightness of the nautilus shell inlay used to render the eyes, ear adornments, and spirals around the eyes that that replicate facial paint worn by warriors. Its extended earlobes inlaid with a series of shell “Z” and “O” shapes reference the large ear plugs that were once worn by both men and women in Solomon Islands.

Indeed, there is a close relationship between the adornment of the human body, that of the figurehead, and the decoration of canoes themselves in Solomon Islands. The canoes “wore” the large egg cowries as decoration alongside pendants similar to those worn by warriors. Like the nguzunguzu, tomako were stained black and inlaid with nacreous nautilus shell, cut in small pieces to create repeating patterns. The luminosity of this shell inlay against black wood is a distinctive aesthetic of Solomon Islands art that signals vitality and ancestral presence. Fully dressed for war, canoes had the power to dazzle and intimidate an opponent while also ensuring the support and protection of ancestors and spirits for those undertaking treacherous ocean journeys.

Origin stories

There are numerous stories of the origin of nguzunguzu as well as several explanations for their distinctive features. According to one origin story from Roviana Lagoon recounted for Te Papa Tongarewa by Oka Nepia Sae, the nguzunguzu is carved in the image of Tiola, an ancestor who took the form of a dog. [2] Tiola taught the people of Roviana to build the first tomako, suggesting that the canoe should be made in the shape of his body with his upturned ribs forming the frame that secured the planks. The likeness of Tiola’s head and hands at the prow of the canoe led the boat and allowed him to fight enemies and protect those inside. Other accounts relate the form of the nguzunguzu to that of Kesoko, water spirits that are usually portrayed as mischievous or malevolent, capable of influencing the winds and the waves to overturn a canoe if they are not properly appeased. Early European accounts suggested that the prow ornaments served to ward off Kesoko to ensure safe passage on the water. Writing in the 1970s, Roviana man Geoffrey Beti identified the nguzunguzu as an embodiment of Kesoko itself, acting as a pilot for the vessel. [3]

New Georgia Island artist, Nguzunguzu holding a head between its hands, early 20th century (Solomon Islands), wood, black dye, nautilus shell inlay, 32.5 x 23.0 x 14.0 cm (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney)

Kesoko is said to have the body of a man and the head of a frigatebird, a species recognized through the Pacific for its skills as a hunter and navigator. [4] This association between birds, prowess in war, and navigational aid is emphasized in other nguzunguzu carvings shown holding a bird between their hands. Another common motif can be seen in figureheads shown clutching a head between their hands in a probable reference to headhunting.

Headhunting and visual power

Headhunting was a form of ritual warfare, practiced in the western and central Solomon Islands, in which organized parties, governed locally by strict protocols, would undertake raids with the aim of obtaining heads that would be displayed inside the canoe house as a symbol of the community’s strength. The head is the center of an individual’s power; the capture of heads was a way to acquire the spiritual authority of the deceased that could, in turn, be channeled into the consecration of war canoes, and the overall protection and health of the village. Thus, the act of death was also generative and creative. Headhunting came with great risk both in battle and on the open ocean. The nguzunguzu helped ensure a successful mission and a safe return. Though the practice of headhunting ceased by the end of the 19th century, following interventions by missionaries and British colonial authorities, the visual references to its potency in Solomon Islands art has remained.

Solomon Islands $1 coin

A contemporary cultural icon

In the decades following Solomon Islands’ independence from the United Kingdom in 1978, the nguzunguzu has taken on an iconic role as cultural symbol in Solomon Islands’ Western Province, with artists continuing to draw on the figureheads as inspiration. Printmaker Ralph Ako features the image as a recurring motif in his woodblock prints. Its image is also featured on the country’s $1 coin, and many of the carvings are sold in craft stores and markets.

Today, artists create nguzunguzu not only in matte black but also polished and unpainted wood. Unhindered by the need for lightness and speed on the ocean, many are made at a greatly increased size. Though no longer used to guide warriors setting out on tomako, the figures’ historical associations with headhunting are retained in contemporary renderings as a connection to their ancestral power.

ʻIolani Palace, Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, built 1879–82, photographed 2024, plastered brick and iron with concrete (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

An emblem of Hawaiian history and national sovereignty, ʻIolani Palace has been an important fixture in the political and cultural landscape of Hawaiʻi. The palace served as the monarchical seat from 1883–93 during the reigns of King Kalākaua and his successor Queen Liliʻuokalani. It later functioned as the legislative halls and executive offices for the white-led provisional government that overthrew the Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) monarchy in 1893 and established the Republic of Hawaiʻi in 1894. The structure continued as the administrative building of the Territory of Hawaiʻi upon annexation by the United States in 1898. When Hawaiʻi became the fiftieth American state in 1959, ʻIolani Palace remained the political center until the new State Capitol Building was erected nearby in 1969. In the 1970s, the palace was restored and opened to the public as a historic house museum. The building persists as a key symbol of Kānaka ʻŌiwi history and culture—the center of sovereignty movements and commemorations of Hawaiian royalty.

The palace exemplifies the relationships between Indigenous agency and global dynamics in the shaping of visual and spatial forms that imagined the future of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the late 19th century. Through the functions and purposeful location of his palace, as well as its design, embellishment, and technological innovations, King Kalākaua projected his vision of himself as both an internationally recognized ruler and an exalted political and religious authority in Indigenous terms. [1]

ʻIolani Palace, Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, built 1879–82, photographed c. 1880s, plastered brick and iron with concrete (Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu)

ʻIolani Palace as national and international symbol

Built of plastered brick and iron with concrete block trimmings, ʻIolani Palace is a heavy rectangular structure (ground plan, 120 x 140 feet) of two main stories plus attic and basement levels. Four towers, each approximately sixty feet high, flank the deep verandas that encircle the colonnaded second and third stories, and towers eighty feet high rise above the front and rear entrances. A six-foot-wide trench resembling a moat encloses the bottom floor, providing the basement with light and air.

King Kalākaua and his supporters considered the palace of utmost national importance and worthy of great expenditure. It was, in part, intended to celebrate the success of the prospering Hawaiian nation and convey its modernity and cosmopolitanism to international observers. Kalākaua celebrated the accomplishments of his kingdom through the ostentatious palace and the extravagant display of expensive decorations and interior fittings. Its profusion of gold leaf, expensive fabrics, fine china, polished woods, and gifts from King Rama V of Siam (Thailand), Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, and other rulers contributed to this effect.

The Throne Room of ʻIolani Palace in 2022. The photograph shows some of the Hawaiian and foreign royal orders in oval gilt frames as well as some of the original palace furnishings and examples of King Kalākaua’s and Queen Kapiʻolani’s wardrobes (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Adding to the palace’s global character was the inclusion of foreign royal orders. The state heads of Japan, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Venezuela, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Thailand, and many other nations bestowed these signs of respect and friendship on Kalākaua. [2] Insignia and ribbons comprising the foreign orders were mounted on escutcheons in gilt frames on the walls of the Throne Room, displayed with the Hawaiian Royal Orders to indicate equal sovereignty.

The State Dining Room of ʻIolani Palace in 2022. Two of the portraits of European rulers are visible on left wall (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Similarly, portraits of rulers and notable individuals from foreign countries—such as Rear Admiral Richard D. Thomas, Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), and William Gladstone of Great Britain; Alexander II of Russia; Napoleon III and Louis Philippe of France; and Frederick William III of Prussia adorned the palace walls, along with portraits of Native Hawaiian royalty. [3] King Kalākaua’s combination of images of foreign leaders and those of his family and chiefly predecessors worked to establish him as an equal and legitimate member of the international ruling community.

Two of the royal Hawaiian portraits hanging in the Grand Hall of ʻIolani Palace. On the left is a portrait of Queen Kamāmalu, spouse of King Kamehameha II, attributed to John Hayter and made while she was visiting London in 1824. The king’s portrait, on the right, was painted by Eugene Le Brun in 1826 after drawings by John Hayter (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Kalākaua also incorporated technical innovations and modern inventions such as the use of sheet glass, a telephone system, modern indoor plumbing, and electric lighting (ʻIolani Palace had electric lights before the White House). Garnering favorable attention in the international press, the palace proved its place as a political center in a modern city and modern state, indicating its future in the world order and making the Hawaiian nation visible to all.

Hale ʻĀkala, on the ʻIolani Palace grounds, c. 1880s. The roofline is trimmed with pūloʻuloʻu. Kalākaua and Kapiʻolani are standing to the right (Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu)

Chiefly structures and sacred spaces

While the palace could boast of its international style, urbane furnishings, and modern fabrication, it nonetheless was a Hawaiian chiefly structure. The palace compound resembled a kauhale, a chiefly building complex often surrounded by a fence or wall. In addition to the homes of chiefs and retainers, kauhale included buildings with specialized functions: temples, separate men’s and women’s eating houses, sleeping houses, work structures, etc. The ʻIolani building complex was similarly comprised of multiple buildings enclosed by a high wall. One of the buildings, named Hale ʻĀkala, assumed the function of a traditional sleeping house, and provided the king and his queen, Kapiʻolani, with a comfortable private residence. [4]

Pūloʻuloʻu motifs on the second story veranda railings, ʻIolani Palace, photographed 2024 (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Iron lamppost cast with pūloʻuloʻu motifs (detail), ʻIolani Palace, photographed 2021 (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The palace building itself adapted some of the roles of both the men’s eating house (hale mua) and temple (heiau) found in earlier kauhale. The size of a hale mua indicated a chief’s rank and served as an audience chamber and a space where men prepared and ate their foods. Markers called pūloʻuloʻu—sticks or spears surmounted by a cloth-covered ball that warned passersby against trespass—distinguished the hale mua as a sacred (kapu) space. Like an eating house, ʻIolani Palace’s considerable size and the rows of pūloʻuloʻu capping the second story veranda railings, which were designed by King Kalākaua, designated the restricted and sacred nature of the building, intended for formal audiences and official functions. Kalākaua added more pūloʻuloʻu in the form of cast-iron lampposts flanking the front and rear entrances to the palace (see top image for full view of lampposts). Each topped by three glass globes, the lamps resemble pūloʻuloʻu and have pūloʻuloʻu motifs cast around their shafts. Large spheres crowning the gateway posts in the walls of the ʻIolani compound extended these kapu symbols to the limits of the palace grounds. These multiple markers of kapu space visually and spatially insisted on the king’s sacred rank and privilege.

ʻIolani Palace in the mid-1880s. Hale ʻĀkala is located in the background left and the ʻIolani Palace Barracks can be seen to the right in the distance. The compound was contained by an eight-foot-high plastered coral block wall. The spherical caps on the gateway posts resemble large pūloʻuloʻu (State Archives of Hawaiʻi, Honolulu)

The main palace building also took on the character of a temple (heiau). The way it was oriented between the mountains and the ocean and its location on and near the site of several important early heiau correspond to the customary planning of certain high-level temple structures. ʻIolani Palace’s directional orientation along a northeast–southwest axis also suggests it was a modern translation of a heiau. Noted archaeologist Patrick Kirch posits an interpretation of heiau orientation, especially facing east, north, and east-northeast, that accords with the reckoning of time, the rising and setting of the sun, and major Hawaiian deities. [5]

Traditionally, Hawaiian paramount chiefs were trained ritual specialists who were required to perform the necessary temple rites securing the productivity of the land and people. Chiefs were the intermediaries between people and the gods, and the welfare of all depended on them. Kalākaua himself was a recognized priest (kahuna), known for reviving Indigenous religious practices, which were in decline due to the impact of Christian missions. In erecting ʻIolani Palace as a temple linked to sacred sites, Kalākaua continued the practice of building sacred structures for the chiefdom’s (the nation’s) welfare.

Arched (hoaka) vestibule and entrance of ʻIolani Palace in 2024 (photo: Stacy L. Kamehiro, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Other architectural elements portrayed the king as a sacred chief. Like the post-and-arch doors of traditional chiefly homes, the palace’s entrance vestibules consisted of columns capped with arches, flanked by two additional smaller arches. The arched form was called “hoaka” and was intimately associated with chiefs; it denoted “brightness” and “splendor” in Kānaka ʻŌiwi verbal and visual language, offering a poetic metaphor for the revered and divine genealogy of chiefs. Hoaka figured prominently in other visual forms connected with chiefs, such as feather cloaks and helmets, finely decorated barkcloths, temple drums, and sculpture. Given the nativist and nationalist sentiments evoked by the palace, it is not surprising that a 19th-century Hawaiian dictionary supplied this additional translation of hoaka: “Glory, as of a people, i.e., their liberty; freedom.” [6]

Central transom window, entry door to the Grand Hall of ʻIolani Palace (photo: courtesy of The Friends of ʻIolani Palace)

The imagery in the etched sheet-crystal transom windows of the front and rear portals echoed conceptions of the king as the foundation of a thriving existence. Clusters of kalo (taro) leaves, a key staple in the Hawaiian diet and kin to Kānaka ‘Oiwi, flank the kingdom’s coat of arms. The kalo leaves reference the chief as the source and guardian of life. The scroll at the bottom of the coat of arms bears the national motto, “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono” (“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”), emphasizing the “rightness” or “righteousness” (pono) of Hawaiʻi’s rulers to maintain the life and sovereignty (ea) of the land and nation (ʻāina). The taro motif and coat of arms are surmounted by an arch, hoaka; they are meaningfully juxtaposed, together formalizing the chief’s divine ancestry (hoaka) and proper leadership necessary to maintain the prosperity of the land and people (taro).

The palace symbolized the sacred rule founded in deep history, as attested to by the structure’s placement among ancient temple sites and its cosmic geographical orientation, and also marked a critical juncture in projecting the future of the kingdom in the context of 19th-century colonial pressures. Its Euro-American form and technological innovations and the very existence of the building testified to Hawaiʻi’s modernity, but in Indigenous terms. ʻIolani Palace could dazzle international audiences, as well as resonate with the hopes and values of the Kānaka ʻŌiwi population. It was an authentically modern and traditional Hawaiian symbol of the state of the nation that spoke to its future.

James Bamba, Guagua’ (basket), 2016 (Guam), coconut palm leaf (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington) © James Bamba

Present-day Chamorus, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands (Guåhan [Guam], Luta [Rota], Tinian, and Saipan), own businesses, are social media influencers, and run cultural organizations that often feature tinifok (pieces that are woven) as a celebrated part of our Chamoru cultural identity. In 2023, for instance, fundraisers for typhoon relief in the Mariana Islands included social media posts from weavers selling gold hoop earrings meticulously woven in åkgak (pandanus leaves) to those living within the archipelago and in our diaspora. Posted images of tinifok tuhong (woven hats) created from hågon niyok (coconut leaves) invite viewers to join classes to learn new mamfok (weaving) techniques while also practicing fino’ Chamoru (the Chamoru language). Weaving has been an essential part of Chamoru life for millennia, and while its utilitarian usage for daily life has shifted to more artistic expressions, it remains a critical part of Chamoru material culture. In order to understand the importance of weaving within the Mariana Islands, a wider look at Micronesia highlights a region known for its strong weaving practices.

Chamoru weavers from Lanchon Antigu, formerly in the village of Inalåhan, Guåhan (Guam Museum, a division of the Department of Chamorro Affairs, Hagåtña)

Weaving in Micronesia

Micronesian weaving traditions reflect the richness of textile practices throughout all of Oceania and its subregions (Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia). The various climates, plants, and cultures of Micronesia’s over 2,000 islands make for an array of unparalleled artistry and technical skills in weaving practices. Weaving involves the use of natural materials such as leaves and fibers from coconut, palm, bamboo, banana, hibiscus, or pandanus trees. Micronesian woven pieces are highly valued because of their connections with the environment and family genealogies. Worn with pride and prestige, they often fulfill a symbolic role as crucial items for cultural ceremonies and as ways to communicate social and political power. Woven items are revered for their practical use and durability, may be understood as indicators of wealth, and continue to be exchanged among Micronesian communities worldwide.

Map of the Micronesia region and its island nations (Mapsland, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Traditional pandanus sail woven by master weaver of Lamotrek, Maria Labusheilam, her daughter Maria Ilourutog, and twenty apprentices (photo: Jesi Lujan Bennett, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Women are often the weavers in Micronesia and their skills and artistry were and continue to be seen in most facets of life, including sails for canoes, mats to sit and sleep on, containers to meet daily needs, and clothing to protect and adorn the body. For example, women in Chuuk, Yap, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and the Marshall Islands use banana stalk fibers and hibiscus tree bark to create cloth through loom weaving. The cloth typically has intricate geometric designs and decorative shell elements that a weaver will incorporate depending on the occasion or significance of the woven work. In Pohnpei, large tor (sashes worn by high-ranking men) are created with a backstrap loom using banana fiber that are woven with complex designs and patterns that are connected to particular families who have the sole right to wear them. These designs are so highly prized and significant that they are also reflected in Pohnpeian tattoo motifs. Together, woven cloths and tattoos signify the wearer’s genealogy, social rank, and other identity markers.

Weavers, Lia Barcinas and Martha Tenorio, of Guåhan creating a guagua’ together (photo: Lia Barcinas, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Colonial and environmental impacts on guagua’

Guagua’ are widely known as woven baskets made from coconut leaves and used by fishermen to securely hold their catch. Chamoru weavers understand guagua’ to be a specific type of double rimmed basket style made by experienced hands. The creation of this type of vessel is labor-intensive, using both sides of the coconut frond in a complicated pattern to ensure an extremely strong, durable, reinforced, and hardwearing base.

Bottom and top views of the distinct double-rimmed style of guagua’ woven by James Bamba, 2016 (Guam), coconut palm leaf (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington) © James Bamba

Some weavers prefer a particular leaf count, while others use the number of leaves provided by the branch. Regardless of preference, these skilled hands will use more than twenty leaves to complete the basket. Today the expertise needed to make this intricate basket style is hard to come by, and finding healthy, identical leaves is almost as difficult.

The usage and availability of guagua’ have transformed over time for Chamoru people with restrictions imposed by colonial powers, such as Spain, Japan, Germany, and the United States. These colonial waves changed the tide of our political histories as well as our relationships to tinifok by enforcing strict assimilationist restrictions that were often in conflict with Chamoru cultural heritage and expression. Plants required for weaving guagua’ are now harder to find, especially in Mariana Islands’ largest island, Guåhan. The ability for weavers to make guagua’ is crucially impacted by the vulnerability of coconut trees to introduced diseases and invasive species, the mismanagement of natural resources, and environmental degradation attributed to impacts of the U.S. military within the Mariana Islands.

Weaver, Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco, wearing his woven tuhong (photo: Michael Torres, courtesy of Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Chamoru weaving (mamfok)

In the Mariana Islands, mamfok played an important role in daily life for Chamoru people and a multitude of plants were used to create everyday goods. Åkgak takes substantial preparation before it can be woven. The edge of the leaf must have its sharp thorns stripped. It is then boiled and scraped before being dried in the sun. Once dried, the leaf is rolled and left in the sun again to cure. Hågon niyok, hågon nipa (native palm), piao (bamboo), and pågu (hibiscus tree) are also widely available and strong options for tinifok. Weavers used these various types of leaves to create dogga (shoes) and tuhong (hats) as physical protection from the ocean, jungle, and mountainous terrain.

Left: Chamoru woman helping weave a thatch roof in 1945; right: Man fishing with a talaya and wearing a guagua’ on his hip (both: Guam Museum, a division of the Department of Chamorro Affairs, Hagåtña)

They made guåfak (mats) for sleeping, funerary needs, floor mats, and to dry crops on. Baskets and boxes were also essential to daily life; complexly woven containers were made in different shapes and sizes, often with straps and lids. Saluu (specialized plaited boxes) were made with latches and served as containers for pugua (betel nut). The imagination and skills of a weaver enabled them to create whatever the family needed, including thatched roofs, talaya (fishing net), and fagapsan (baby cradles). There were no limitations as long as the leaves were available.

Guagua’ and sovereign futures?

For generations, mamfok was a common skill for most Chamoru people. Children learned how to mamfok by observing their family members make woven pieces used for daily tasks, such as katupat, a woven pouch for carrying food items like rice. Following World War II, there was a sharp decline in the number of weavers because of the introduction of American household goods that replaced the need for woven goods for many Chamoru families. Nevertheless, mamfok remains an important part of our cultural contexts and continues to be a valued element of our island traditions. Starting in the 1960s, an artistic revival and celebration of our cultural practices coincided with the growth of Chamoru political self-determination and wider movement of decolonization throughout Oceania. In Guåhan, new government agencies led by Chamorus (e.g., Chamorro Language Commission) created projects that helped to revitalize and promote our arts, traditions, and language. Movement towards a decolonial future was closely aligned with a reclamation of Chamoru cultural heritage.

Lucia Fernandez Torres, the first Chamoru to be awarded the Master of Traditional Arts (Guam Museum, a division of the Department of Chamorro Affairs, Hagåtña)

Our celebrated master weavers leave lasting legacies by training the next generation of weavers and generously sharing their skills as knowledge holders. For example, Lucia Fernandez Torres was the first Chamoru to be awarded the Master of Traditional Arts in 1989 and Maga’lahi (Governor) Art Award in Special Recognition for Lifetime Cultural Contributions in 1997. In 1976, Elena Cruz Benavente represented Guåhan at the Festival of the Pacific Arts (FESTPAC) in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and she was twice awarded the Maga’lahi Art Award for Lifetime Cultural Achievement as a master artist, in 1989 and 1991. In 1997, the Council on the Arts and Humanities Agency (CAHA) in Guåhan formally recognized Floren Meno Paulino as a Master Weaver for her skills and participation in cultural events in and beyond Micronesia.

Similarly, in 1988 Tan Dolores Flores Paulino represented Guåhan in FESTPAC in Australia and CAHA later recognized her as a Master of Chamoru Culture for tinifok åkgak (woven pandanus). These enduring practices serve as powerful symbols of cultural knowledge and pride for many Chamoru in the contemporary context.

Left: Miniature katupat made into a necklace and earring set (photo: Lia Barcinas, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); center: Lia, Rita, and Arisa Barcinas, woven hammerhead sharks and Chamoru legendary mermaid, Sirena (photo: Jesi Lujan Bennett, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); right: Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco wearing their woven design for their drag persona, Sin Amen (photo: Roldy Aguero Ablao, courtesy of Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In the 2020s, generations of Chamoru weavers, such as the Barcinas sisters (Lia, Rita, and Arisa) extend understandings of traditional woven goods, such as a katupat, to create novel forms like miniature versions that adorn earrings. They also create sculptural works, such as hammerhead sharks, bringing new artistry to mamfok. As a member of the queer, interdisciplinary Chamoru art collective, Guma’ Gela’, “Rockin Roquin” (Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco) weaves one-of-a-kind pieces that Indigenize the contemporary fashion landscape. Roquin’s work has graced runways from London, England, to Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand). Mamfok in its modern forms are also celebrated and expressed in digital spaces and social media sites that communicate ongoing intimate relationships between Chamoru people and their natural environments and weaves connections among Chamoru diasporic communities worldwide. Mamfok represents the ability to thrive despite colonial and environmental shifts in the Mariana Islands. In spite of these complex issues, contemporary cultural practitioners continue to push mamfok to be multifaceted as cultural, sculptural, and artistic forms that are relevant for Chamoru lived experiences today.

This royal portrait and cape convey the power of the Hawaiian monarchy and the tensions around the momentous historical events of 1898.

William F. Cogswell, Queen Liliʻuokalani, 1891, oil on canvas, 243.8 x 182.9 cm (Hawai‘i State Archives, Honolulu) and Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena, ʻAhu ʻula (The Kalākaua Cape), late 19th century, red ʻiʻiwi feathers, yellow and black ʻōʻō feathers, and olonā fiber, 76.2 x 193 cm (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.). Speakers: Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, and Dr. Beth Harris in the exhibition “1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions” at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Carved of dense volcanic rock, the moai tower over the viewer.

Rapa Nui moai cast in the Pacific Galleries of the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, made during the 1934–45 AMNH expedition to Rapa Nui

View of the northeast of the exterior slopes of the quarry, with several moai on the slopes, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), photo by Katherine Maria Routledge, c. 1914–15, 8.2 x 8.2 cm, lantern slide (photograph) (© Trustees of the British Museum)

The moai of Rapa Nui

Easter Island is famous for its stone statues of human figures, known as moai (meaning “statue”). The island is known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui. The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 C.E. until the second half of the seventeenth century. Over a few hundred years the inhabitants of this remote island quarried, carved and erected around 887 moai. The size and complexity of the moai increased over time, and it is believed that Hoa Hakananai’a dates to around 1200 C.E. It is one of only fourteen moai made from basalt, the rest are carved from the island’s softer volcanic tuff. With the adoption of Christianity in the 1860s, the remaining standing moai were toppled.

Three views of Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1200 C.E., 242 x 96 x 47 cm, basalt (missing paint, coral eye sockets, and stone eyes), likely made in Rano Kao, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), found in the ceremonial center Orongo (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

Moai Hava (“Dirty statue” or “to be lost”), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1100–1600 C.E., 156 cm high, basalt, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Their backs to the sea

This example was probably first displayed outside on a stone platform (ahu) on the sacred site of Orongo, before being moved into a stone house at the ritual center of Orongo. It would have stood with giant stone companions, their backs to the sea, keeping watch over the island. Its eyes sockets were originally inlaid with red stone and coral and the sculpture was painted with red and white designs, which were washed off when it was rafted to the ship, to be taken to Europe in 1869. It was collected by the crew of the English ship HMS Topaze, under the command of Richard Ashmore Powell, on their visit to Easter Island in 1868 to carry out surveying work. Islanders helped the crew to move the statue, which has been estimated to weigh around four tons. It was moved to the beach and then taken to the Topaze by raft.

The crew recorded the islanders’ name for the statue, which is thought to mean “stolen or hidden friend.” They also acquired another, smaller basalt statue, known as Moai Hava, which is also in the collections of the British Museum.

Hoa Hakananai’a is similar in appearance to a number of Easter Island moai. It has a heavy eyebrow ridge, elongated ears and oval nostrils. The clavicle is emphasized, and the nipples protrude. The arms are thin and lie tightly against the body; the hands are hardly indicated.

Bust (detail), Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1200 C.E., 242 x 96 x 47 cm, basalt (missing paint, coral eye sockets, and stone eyes), likely made in Rano Kao, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), found in the ceremonial center Orongo (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1200 C.E., 242 x 96 x 47 cm, basalt (missing paint, coral eye sockets, and stone eyes), likely made in Rano Kao, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), found in the ceremonial center Orongo (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

In the British Museum, the figure is set on a stone platform just over a meter high so that it towers above the visitor. It is carved out of dark grey basalt—a hard, dense, fine-grained volcanic rock. The surface of the rock is rough and pitted, and pinpricks of light sparkle as tiny crystals in the rock glint. Basalt is difficult to carve and unforgiving of errors. The sculpture was probably commissioned by a high status individual.

Hoa Hakananai’a’s head is slightly tilted back, as if scanning a distant horizon. He has a prominent eyebrow ridge shadowing the empty sockets of his eyes. The nose is long and straight, ending in large oval nostrils. The thin lips are set into a downward curve, giving the face a stern, uncompromising expression. A faint vertical line in low relief runs from the centre of the mouth to the chin. The jawline is well defined and massive, and the ears are long, beginning at the top of the head and ending with pendulous lobes.

The figure’s collarbone is emphasized by a curved indentation, and his chest is defined by carved lines that run downwards from the top of his arms and curve upwards onto the breast to end in the small protruding bumps of his nipples. The arms are held close against the side of the body, the hands rudimentary, carved in low relief.

Back of head (detail), Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1200 C.E., 242 x 96 x 47 cm, basalt (missing paint, coral eye sockets, and stone eyes), likely made in Rano Kao, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), found in the ceremonial center Orongo (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

Later carving on the back

The figure’s back is covered with ceremonial designs believed to have been added at a later date, some carved in low relief, others incised. These show images relating to the island’s birdman cult, which developed after about 1400 C.E. The key birdman cult ritual was an annual trial of strength and endurance, in which the chiefs and their followers competed. The victorious chief then represented the creator god, Makemake, for the following year.

Back (detail), Hoa Hakananai’a (‘lost or stolen friend’), Moai (ancestor figure), c. 1200 C.E., 242 x 96 x 47 cm, basalt (missing paint, coral eye sockets, and stone eyes), likely made in Rano Kao, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), found in the ceremonial center Orongo (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

Carved on the upper back and shoulders are two birdmen, facing each other. These have human hands and feet, and the head of a frigate bird. In the centre of the head is the carving of a small fledgling bird with an open beak. This is flanked by carvings of ceremonial dance paddles known as ‘ao, with faces carved into them. On the left ear is another ‘ao, and running from top to bottom of the right ear are four shapes like inverted ‘V’s representing the female vulva. These carvings are believed to have been added at a later date.

Collapse

Around 1500 C.E. the practice of constructing moai peaked, and from around 1600 C.E. statues began to be toppled, sporadically. The island’s fragile ecosystem had been pushed beyond what was sustainable. Over time only sea birds remained, nesting on safer offshore rocks and islands. As these changes occurred, so too did the Rapanui religion alter—to the birdman religion.

This sculpture bears witness to the loss of confidence in the efficacy of the ancestors after the deforestation and ecological collapse, and most recently a theory concerning the introduction of rats, which may have ultimately led to famine and conflict. After 1838 at a time of social collapse following European intervention, the remaining standing moai were toppled.

© Trustees of the British Museum

Hand-drawn patterns fill the surface of these textiles made from bark from the Pacific islands of Wallis and Futuna.

Waist Cloth (Salatasi), Futuna Island, Wallis and Futuna, late 19th–early 20th century and Sash (Lafi), Wallis and Futuna, late 19th–early 20th century, bark cloth, paint (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Tin Meweleun (commissioned by Tain Mal), Slit gong (Atingting Kon), 1960s, wood and paint, 175.2 x 28 x 23.5 inches (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); speakers: Dr. Billie Lythberg and Dr. Steven Zucker

Artist Lee Bul reveals her thinking and inspiration behind her site-specific installation at the Turbine Hall of the Industrial Precinct on Cockatoo Island, titled ‘Willing To Be Vulnerable’ (2015–16) for the Embassy of the Real.

Meet Dale Harding, an artist exploring the history of his community in Queensland, Australia. “If the work doesn’t relate to your family and your community, then what’s the point?,” Harding asks. Harding was born in 1982 in Moranbah, Queensland. The artist is a Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal man who currently lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland. Harding works with a variety of techniques and traditions including painting, installation and sculpture. Recently, Harding has created wall-based art inspired by rock art sites in Queensland. “The landscape was the gallery that my ancestors knew,” the artist says. “Working directly on gallery walls is an acknowledgment and continuation of painting stories on sandstone walls.”

Meet Richard Bell, an activist and artist who challenges preconceived ideas about Aboriginal art. “I make art for other Aboriginal people,” says Bell. “I want [my art] to be empowering to them.” Bell is member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities and makes art that addresses contemporary issues around identity, place and politics. “I found out that I could say whatever the f**k I wanted to in art and not get arrested,” says the artist. In 2002 Bell published “Bell’s Theorem,” stating that “Aboriginal Art is not controlled by Aboriginal People.” Bell proposes that Aboriginal art is a white invention.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this film may contain images and voices of people who have passed away.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty, c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)

The Queen’s accession photograph 

On January 29, 1891, the USS Charleston appeared in Honolulu Harbor on Oʻahu and quickly dispatched a message to the shore, informing Liliʻuokalani, then acting as regent during her brother King Kalākaua’s absence, that the king was dead. The Charleston had brought his body home from California. That afternoon, Liliʻuokalani would ascend to the throne as Hawaiʻi’s new queen. She was stepping into this role with her power and authority already under threat by a white male oligarchy that had steadily been chipping away at Hawaiian sovereignty throughout her brother’s reign. [1] Reflecting upon this moment seven years later, Liliʻuokalani said, “I was so overcome by the death of my dear brother, so dazed with the suddenness of the news which had come upon us in a moment, that I hardly realized what was going on about me, nor did I at all appreciate for the moment my situation.” [2] This moment would be commemorated in both words and images, including an accession photograph showing Queen Liliʻuokalani seated in state. This photograph presents Liliʻuokalani as regal and confident, and dressed in royal finery. It was tied to Hawaiʻi’s international relations, representing the monarchy’s sovereign right to rule for local and global audiences. This was particularly important given European and American interests in gaining political and economic control over the kingdom because of its strategic location in the Pacific.

Photography in the Pacific Islands was often used to objectify and other Indigenous peoples in encounters with media that was typically controlled and defined by Euro-Americans and their visual traditions. Photography in the 1890s was not commonly seen as a mobile technology that was creatively integrated into Indigenous cultures. While this is true in many circumstances it is not the case in Hawaiʻi, especially during the nineteenth century. By mid-century, the demand for photography was so high that studios and galleries known as na hale paʻi kiʻi or “houses of photography” were prevalent throughout the island chain. References to photographic media were also common in Hawaiian language newspapers, which likened photography to a “good catch of fish,” suggesting connections between material wealth, good fortune, and photography. [3] The metaphoric link between photography and fish in a popular Hawaiian language news source indicates the widespread social, cultural, and political interests Indigenous Hawaiians had for this media. Queen Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph can be considered a conduit for such interests on both the local and global levels.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty (detail), c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)

The politics of the picture

Taken in 1891 using the popular silver-gelatin printing photographic process (likely with a glass negative, as film negatives were not in wide circulation and use until the twentieth century), the photograph shows Queen Liliʻuokalani ornamented in jewels and wearing a gown embroidered with seed beads and a sash crossing her body. The royal order of Kalākaua I is notably displayed: it is a Maltese cross, with a Kāhili or royal staff at the center, and is encircled by an inscription that reads “Kalākaua February 12 1874.” Four bracelets encircle each of her arms.

The warm tones of this image may be the unintended effect of age or the result of warm tone gelatin-silver paper. In either case, the tonal qualities render prominent contrasting textures such as the feathers of the fan that she holds and the luminous folds of her dress. Close scrutiny of her gown reveals delicate swirling volutes that combine to make a plant leaf pattern, recalling Hawaiʻi’s native flora. A jeweled flower broach emerges from a delicate patch of beadwork at her neckline. The throne on which she sits is draped in a feather cloak while her feet rest on a large fur rug.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty (detail), c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)

Like many other Hawaiian artistic expressions, Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph is rich in metaphor and layers of meaning, indicative of potent connections between the Queen as sovereign, her ʻāina (land), and place. For example, the decorative pattern on the Queen’s gown is reminiscent of taro leaves. Taro is an important food staple in Hawaiʻi. Its cultivation was threatened by colonial water management. 

ʻiʻiwi bird (photo: Marvin Kawano, Big Island Hawaiʻi, 2021)

The feather cloak draped across the throne is another object in the photograph with significant connections to place. Feathers, and featherwork objects including necklaces known as lei, royal staffs (kāhili), and cloaks materially manifested the link between local birds like the ʻiʻiwi and mamo, and the power and authority of Hawaiian elites. Objects like these were worn or displayed at important political events. [4] These featherwork objects were of social, political and religious importance.

Feather cape, probably before 1850 C.E., olona fibre, feather, 68.5 x 45 cm, Hawaii (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Mahiole (helmet), 18th century, vine, olona fiber, iiwi feather, honeyeater feather (Common amakihi), o’o feather, mamo, Hawaii (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Their display at events and in spaces of importance drew on older Hawaiian artistic traditions and practices. Prior to the nineteenth century, Hawaiian artisans produced large feathered sculptures representing specific deities and feathered helmets worn by chiefly men at important political and religious events. The appearance of the featherwork cloak in the accession photograph foregrounds the Queen’s sacred status and places it within the same artistic lineage of visual expressions of power and prestige—in this case in the form of objects of state, such as the mahiole (feathered helmets) from Hawaii. As such, we can read the inclusion of these objects in the photograph as a pointed statement about Queen Liliʻuokalani’s authority. 

Left: Queen Emma with the silver christening font for her son Albert Kamehameha, a gift from Queen Victoria, c. 1880, photographer A. A. Montano (Hawaiʻi State Archives); right: Queen Kapiolani, c. 1883, photographer J. J Williams (Hawaiʻi State Archives)

Rather than being an anomaly in nineteenth century Hawaiʻi, the Queen’s accession photograph also stands as one prominent example among many, of Hawaiian royalty using photography to create images that promoted Hawaiian sovereignty and self-determination. Other notable examples including a photograph of Queen Emma with a silver christening cup and Queen Kapiolani’s coronation photograph. Cultivating public images like these photographs directly refuted colonial narratives that presented Indigenous Hawaiians as childlike and stuck in the past. These photographic portraits became part of the royal family’s strategy for advancing the interests of the Hawaiian people and maintaining sovereignty. Photography became coupled to Hawaiʻi’s national and international interests, allowing for creative combinations between Indigenous visual forms and newly encountered ones.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty, c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)

Accession imagery, and power in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi

Queen Victoria, replica by Sir George Hayter (based on a work from 1838), 1863, oil on canvas, 285 x 179 cm (National Portrait Gallery)

Liliʻuokalaniʻs accession photograph derives some of its power by drawing on coronation or accession images common to European monarchies, though it does so in a uniquely Hawaiian way. Such images (both painted and photographed) present the monarch enthroned, bearing symbols of their state power and authority. In Queen Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph this was accomplished by adopting the posture and style common in portraits and photographs of European aristocrats and through careful curation of the mise-en-scène (a stage set that tells a story). [5] For example, Queen Liliʻuokalani’s is posed frontally, her head angled to the left and as she gazes out past the photograph’s frame, a posture that is similar to the one found in the coronation painting by George Hayter of Queen Victoria of England. As with Victoria, Liliʻuokalani is opulently adorned, the folds of her dress, the cloak at her back, and fur rug on the ground blurring the boundaries between her body and the throne and providing her figure with an increased appearance of solidity and strength. Finally, Queen Liliʻuokalani also appears with several objects of state, including the royal order of Kalākaua I and the featherwork cloak. 

The features of this photograph constitute far more than fashionable tailored choices. They are material expressions of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s royal authority and responsibility to her people and land. [6] This visual statement is crucial given that two years later, on January 17, 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani’s reign would end in a successful coup by foreigners, including Sanford B. Dole, a prominent descendant of American missionaries and cousin to James Dole (the founder of Dole Food Company).  

Kūpaʻa ma hope o ka ʻāina (ever loyal to the land) [7]

Far from being an ending, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 would mark a new phase of advocacy on the part of Queen Liliʻuokalani to restore control of her homeland from U.S. settlers to the Hawaiian people. Her accession image would help to shape these efforts and be shaped by them. For example, in 1916, twenty-three years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and eighteen years after Hawaiʻi was officially annexed to the United States, Queen Liliʻuokalani gave a copy of this photograph to Joseph Daniels, then U.S. Naval Secretary. The timing and chosen gift are apt; Liliʻuokalani certainly had dozens of other photographs of herself to choose from but settled on an image that reaffirmed her unrelinquished right to rule, a message that pervades everything within the photo from the choice of medium and composition to the display of material wealth. Her legacy continues today with the accession photograph taking on renewed potency and finding new life in contemporary art, on items of popular culture such as t-shirts, and within spaces like the 2020 Onipaʻa Peace March and protests against the Ten Meter Telescope. In one 21st-century re-interpretation of this photograph by the mural artists Estria Miyashiro and John “Prime” Hina, they explicitly draw connections between the Queen and land, with her throne transforming into the landscape itself, complete with terraced loʻi kalo (taro patch). 

This unique archaeological and ethnological reserve, located in the Northern Territory, has been inhabited continuously for more than 40,000 years. The cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites record the skills and way of life of the region’s inhabitants, from the hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times to the Aboriginal people still living there. It is a unique example of a complex of ecosystems, including tidal flats, floodplains, lowlands and plateaux, and provides a habitat for a wide range of rare or endemic species of plants and animals.

Some of the oldest rock art is located at Ubirr in Kakadu. Figures there were created in what has been called x-ray painting. This spot also provides excellent views of Arnhem Land.

Chief Roi Mata’s Domain is the first site to be inscribed in Vanuatu. It consists of three early 17th century AD sites on the islands of Efate, Lelepa and Artok associated with the life and death of the last paramount chief, or Roi Mata, of what is now Central Vanuatu. The property includes Roi Mata’s residence, the site of his death and Roi Mata’s mass burial site. It is closely associated with the oral traditions surrounding the chief and the moral values he espoused. The site reflects the convergence between oral tradition and archaeology and bears witness to the persistence of Roi Mata’s social reforms and conflict resolution, still relevant to the people of the region.