MEDIA RELEASE

Hawaiian language professor Noenoe K. Silva will discuss how Hawaiian language newspapers and documents change the view of our kupuna’s (ancestor’s) world in an upcoming Eia Hawaii presentation in Hilo and a Puana Ka Ike lecture in Kona.

Her lecture, “Recovering the Moolelo (stories/literature) of our Kūpuna,” is noon-1:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14, in Campus Center (CC) 301 at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and again 5:30–7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, at the Keauhou Shopping Center, Suite 140, in the inner courtyard next to Bianelli’s — a change of venue.

Silva will describe the vast and rich archive of writing left by our recent ancestors — including some of the most important of the writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

“From the 1820s on, they translated not only moolelo from the oral tradition for us, but worked tirelessly to create new works of history, literature, geography, and so on,” Silva said. “They also wrote down their own experiences and political analyses of the events of the 1893 overthrow and their many attempts to prevent the 1898 annexation.”

Silva was born on Oahu, with roots in Kalapana. Raised in California, she returned to Hawaii in 1985, and is now professor of Hawaiian language and indigenous politics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has authored Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism and numerous journal articles.

For more information on this presentation, contact Joy Cunefare at (800) 842-4682, extension 25340, or e-mail info@kohalacenter.org. For lecture schedules and webcasts of previous lectures, visit http://kohalacenter.org/puanakaike/about.html or www.keauhouresort.com/learn-puanakaike.html.

The lectures are sponsored by Keauhou-Kahaluu Education Group, Kamehameha Schools, The Kohala Center, University of Hawaii at Hilo, Kipuka Native Hawaiian Student Center, and the Keauhou Shopping Center.