Haunani-Kay Trask

Haunani-Kay Trask (October 3, 1949 – July 3, 2021) was a Native Hawaiian activist, educator, author, poet, and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She was professor emerita at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she founded and directed the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. A published author, Trask wrote scholarly books and articles, as well as poetry. She also produced documentaries and CDs. Trask received awards and recognition for her scholarship and activism, both during her life and posthumously.

Early life and education

Trask was born to Haunani and Bernard Trask.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was born in San Francisco, California<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and grew up on the [[Koʻolau Range|KoTemplate:Okinaolau]] side of the island of [[Oahu|OTemplate:Okinaahu]] in [[Hawaii|HawaiTemplate:Okinai]].<ref name=":7">Template:Cite book</ref>

Trask graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1967.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She attended the University of Chicago, but transferred to the University of Wisconsin–Madison<ref name=":032">Template:Cite journal</ref> to complete her bachelor's degree in 1972, master's degree in 1975, and Ph.D. in political science in 1981.<ref name=":6">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her dissertation was published into a book, Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory, by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1986.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref>

Career

Trask founded the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.<ref name=":5">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":13">Template:Cite journal</ref> The center emerged as an evolution of the university’s American Studies program after Trask “charged the department with sex and race discrimination.”<ref name=":14">Fujikane, Candace. “In Memoriam: Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask.” Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, Feb. 2022, pp. 131–39, {{#invoke:CS1 identifiers|main|_template=doi}}.</ref> Trask protested the American Studies curriculum’s lack of racial, ideological, and gender diversity.<ref name=":14" /> She served as the center's director for almost ten years and was one of its first tenured faculty members.<ref name=":13" /> Trask helped secure the building of the Gladys Brandt Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, the permanent center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.<ref name=":13" /> In 2010, Trask retired from her director position but continued teaching native political movements in HawaiTemplate:Okinai and the Pacific, the literature and politics of Pacific Islander women, Hawaiian history and politics, and third world and indigenous history and politics as an emeritus faculty member.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Trask hosted and produced First Friday, a monthly public-access television program started in 1986 to highlight political and cultural Hawaiian issues.<ref name=":13" /> Trask co-wrote and co-produced the award-winning 1993 documentary Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation.<ref name=":13" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She also wrote the 1993 book From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in HawaiTemplate:Okinai, which has been described by Cynthia G. Franklin and Laura E. Lyons as a "foundational text" about indigenous rights.<ref name=":13" /> Trask published two books of poetry, the 1994 Light in the Crevice Never Seen and the 2002 Night Is a Sharkskin Drum.<ref name=":13" /> Trask developed We Are Not Happy Natives, a CD published in 2002 about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.<ref name=":13" />

Trask was a fellow at the International Institute of Human Rights in 1984, a research fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies in 1984, a Rockefeller fellow at the University of Colorado from 1993-1994, a "National Endowment for the Arts writer-in-residence" at the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1996, a fellow at the Pacific-Basin Research Center at Harvard University from 1998-1999, and a William Evans visiting fellow in Maori studies at the University of Otago.<ref name=":62">“Haunani-Kay Trask.” Gale In Context: Biography, Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, 2021.</ref>

Trask represented Native Hawaiians at the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva.<ref name=":13" /> In 2001, she traveled to South Africa to participate in the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance.<ref name=":13" />

Awards and recognitions

In 1991, Trask was named “Islander of the Year” by Honolulu Magazine and one of ten Pacific women of the year by Pacific Islands Monthly Magazine.<ref name=":62" /> In 1994, she was awarded the Gustavus Myers Award for her 1993 book From a Native Daughter.<ref name=":62" /> In March 2017, HawaiTemplate:Okinai Magazine recognized Trask as one of the most influential women in Hawaiian history.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2019, Trask was awarded the “Angela Y. Davis Prize” from the American Studies Association in recognition of her application of her “scholarship for the public good.”<ref>Haunani-Kay Trask Receives the 2019 Angela Y. Davis Prize From the American Studies Association. Women in Academia Report, 21 Nov. 2019.</ref>

Political beliefs

While earning her undergraduate degree in Chicago, Trask learned about and became an active supporter of the Black Panther Party.Template:Citation needed<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> While studying at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Trask also participated in student protests against the Vietnam War.Template:Citation needed Trask later wrote about how these experiences as a graduate student helped develop her theories about how capitalism and racism sustained each other.Template:Citation needed

During her graduate study on politics, Trask began to engage in feminist studies and considered herself to be a feminist.<ref name=":032"/> Later in her career, Trask denounced her identification as a "feminist" because of its mainstream focus on Americans, whiteness, and "First World 'rights' talk."<ref>Template:Cite journal.</ref> She later claimed to align more with transnational feminism.<ref name=":032"/>

Trask opposed [[Tourism in Hawaii|tourism to HawaiTemplate:Okinai]]<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the U.S. military's presence in HawaiTemplate:Okinai.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She personified paradise (HawaiTemplate:Okinai) as a woman, helping her claim that protective militarization relies on this sexist imagery.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 2004, Trask spoke out against the Akaka Bill, a bill to establish a process for Native Hawaiians to gain federal recognition similar to the recognition that some Native American tribes possess.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Trask believed this bill was an injustice to Native Hawaiian people because it allowed the United States government to control Native Hawaiian governing structure, land, and resources without recognizing HawaiTemplate:Okinai's sovereignty.Template:Citation needed She clarified that the bill was drafted ex parte and that hearings were withheld to exclude native community involvement.<ref name=":12">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> As a leader of the Aloha ʻĀina movement she advocated for Hawaiian sovereignty advocating at the United Nations and other forums for the return of Hawaii to the Kanaka Maoli.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Trask challenged the traditional understandings of the Asian American, particularly Japanese, experience in HawaiTemplate:Okinai.<ref name=":72">Template:Cite journal</ref> She believed the Japanese occupying HawaiTemplate:Okinai “like to harken back to the oppressions of the plantation era, although few Japanese in HawaiTemplate:Okinai today actually worked on the plantations during the Territory (1900–1959).”<ref name=":72" /> Trask’s critique of Asian settler colonialism is cited as a foundational development in both Asian American and decolonial justice studies.<ref name=":14" />

Personal life

Trask's longtime partner was University of HawaiTemplate:Okinai professor David Stannard.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Trask came from a politically active family. One of her two sisters, Mililani Trask, is a Hawaiian language immersion teacher, attorney, and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":8">Farris, Phoebe. “The Poetry of Politics.” Cultural Survival Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 2009, pp. 6–7.</ref><ref>Dennis, Yvonne Wakim, et al. “Tying It Up.” Native American Almanac: More Than 50,000 Years of the Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples, 1st ed., Visible Ink Press, 2016.</ref> In 1987, Trask founded [[Hawaiian sovereignty movement|Ka Lāhui HawaiTemplate:Okinai]], one of HawaiTemplate:Okinai’s largest and most prominent indigenous sovereignty movements with Mililani.<ref name=":7" /> Trask descended from the Kahakumakaliua line of Kaua‘i through her father, who was a lawyer, and the Pi‘ilani line of Maui through her mother, who was an elementary school teacher.<ref name=":14" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":122">Template:Cite journal</ref> Her paternal grandfather, David Trask Sr., was chairman of the civil service commission and the police commission in 1922, served as the sheriff of Honolulu from 1923 to 1926, and was elected a territorial senator from OTemplate:Okinaahu in 1932.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was a key proponent of HawaiTemplate:Okinai statehood.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Trask's uncle, Arthur K. Trask, was an attorney, an active member of the Democratic Party, and a member of the Statehood Commission from 1944–1957.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite news</ref> David Trask Jr., another uncle, was the head of the HawaiTemplate:Okinai Government Employees Association.<ref name=":2" />

Legacy

Trask died from cancer on July 3, 2021.<ref name=":4" /><ref name="nyt">Annabelle Williams: Haunani-Kay Trask, Champion of Native Rights in Hawaii, Dies at 71, nytimes.com, 9 July 2021</ref> In September 2021, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa issued a posthumous apology to Trask for attacks she received from the university's philosophers in the past.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In her obituary, the New York Times noted her fight for Indigenous sovereignty and cited her quote, “We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans.”<ref name="nyt" />

Selected works

Books

Source:<ref name=":62" />

• Fighting the Battle of Double Colonization: The View of a Hawaiian Feminist (1984)
• Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory (1986)<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" />
• Politics and Public Policy in HawaiTemplate:Okinai (Contributor, 1992)
• From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in HawaiTemplate:Okinai (1993)<ref name=":13" />
• Light in the Crevice Never Seen (1994)<ref name=":13" />
• Feminist Nationalism (Contributor, 1997)
• Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals (Contributor, 1998)
• Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific (Contributor, 1999)
• Literary Studies East and West, volume 17 (Contributor, 2000)
• Night Is a Sharkskin Drum (2002)<ref name=":13" />
• Kue: Thirty Years Of Land Struggles in HawaiTemplate:Okinai (2004)

Articles

• Settlers of Color and “Immigrant” Hegemony: “Locals” in HawaiTemplate:Okinai, Amerasia Journal 26:2 (2000)<ref name=":72" />
• Featured in Rampike Arts & Literary Magazine, Stanford Law Review, Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Hawaiian Journal of History, Critical Perspectives of Third World America, Ethnies: Review of Survival International, Contemporary Pacific, Pacific Islands Communication Journal, Pacific Studies.<ref name=":62" />

Visual Media

• Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation (documentary film, scriptwriter and co-producer, 1993)<ref name=":13" /><ref name=":62" />
• Haunani-Kay Trask: We Are Not Happy Natives (educational CD, 2002)<ref name=":13" />

Further reading

Books

Source:<ref name=":62" />

• Hereniko, Vilsoni, and Rob Wilson, editors, Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific, Rowman & Littlefield (Boulder, CO), 1999.
• Wood, Houston, Displacing Natives: The Rhetorical Production of HawaiTemplate:Okinai, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.

Periodicals

Source:<ref name=":62" />

• Bloomsbury Review, September/October, 1994.
• Booklist, June 1, 1994, p. 1763.
• Choice, February, 1987, pp. 911–912; January, 1995, p. 786.
• Hungry Mind Review, fall, 1994, p. 10.
• Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1986, pp. 857–858.
• Nation, October 4, 1999, Mindy Pennybacker, "Decolonizing the Mind," p. 31.
• Publishers Weekly, March 29, 1993, p. 46.
• Wasafiri, spring, 1997, pp. 94–95.
• Women's Review of Books, May, 1987, p. 17; November, 1999, p. 19.

External links

• Brief biographical note
• A 1996 interview with an otherwise unidentified Canadian publication
• Franklin, Cynthia and Laura F. Lyons. "Land, Leadership, and Nation: Haunani-Kay Trask on the Testimonial Uses of Life Writing in HawaiTemplate:Okinai", Biography, 27: 1, Winter 2004.
• "Trask Still Beats the Drum of Resistance", August 23, 2002, Asianweek.com