From CivilBeat.org: Native Hawaiian Educator And Activist Haunani-Kay Trask Dies

The Indigenous poet, author, scholar and teacher died in Honolulu at age 71.

Excerpted from CivilBeat.org, by Anita Hofschneider (July 3, 2021)

“We are not American!” she told a crowd in 1993 in front of Iolani Palace on the 100th anniversary of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. “We will die as Hawaiians, we will never be Americans!”

At the time of her passing, she was a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii Manoa, where she helped found the Center for Hawaiian Studies and taught for decades.

One of her former students, University of Hawaii political science professor Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, described Trask as “one of the most influential and prominent and internationally renowned Hawaiian scholars and activists of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.”

Trask inspired Pacific Islander poets and advocated against the destructive impacts of the military and tourism industries in Hawaii as well as colonization and white supremacy globally, Goodyear-Kaʻōpua said.

Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong said Trask also inspired her and many of today’s grassroots Hawaiian leaders. “I consider her to be one of the most staunch teachers and aloha aina advocates that Hawaii has ever seen,” Wong said. “Her work will remain one of the most honored in terms of how much inspiration and how much empowerment she gave us by all the things that she espoused and all the things that she taught.”

Her younger sister Mililani said Trask died peacefully around 2 a.m. in a Honolulu care home after years of battling Alzheimer’s.

Mililani Trask said her sister would have wanted to be remembered as a poet and teacher.

Read this article by Anita Hofschneider on CivilBeat here.

Urbanity celebrates Trask and her legacy.