We’re all connected.
I was reminded of that when a neighbor mentioned he’d read my story for Alta Journal about traveling to the Arctic Circle last fall.
One sentence leapt out at him: “Nothing seemed fixed: water, stars, sky, or people. It was all changing and rotating and moving in a dance governed by randomness.”
I knew I’d found a soul sister who also loved research when I clicked onto Amy Stillman’s blog and found her posting, “Adventures in Archives.”
For the past three years, I’ve been making trips to the treasure trove of Hawaiian historical archives located in Honolulu. Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman, a Harvard-educated associate professor of music and American culture at the University of Michigan, likewise had just arrived on the islands and couldn’t resist making a trek to the Hawaii State Archives, with a long list of things just to “spot check.”
Amy Stillman (photo: Honolulu Magazine)
The last queen of Hawai‘i’s best known composition is Aloha Oe, which is heard in the soundtrack of everything from Elvis Presley’s “Blue Hawaii” to the Disney movie “Lilo and Stitch.” But the one that brought tears to my eyes this morning was “The Queen’s Prayer,” a hymn she wrote when she was imprisoned for eight months following a failed insurrection against the 1893 overthrow of the independent kingdom of Hawai‘i.
A tribute to Queen Lili‘uokalani at the Kawaiaha‘o Church
Every Sunday, congregants at Honolulu’s Westminster Cathedral, the Kawaiaha‘o Church, sing this hymn, known as Ke Aloha O Ka Haku, in alternating verses of Hawaiian and English. It is a reminder of the last Hawaiian monarch’s faith and her ability to forgive her enemies. During the year, the church holds a few “Ali‘i” services to remember the Kingdom of Hawaii’s high chiefs, usually on the Sundays before their birthdays.
Today was the “Ali‘i Sunday” dedicated to Queen Lili‘uokalani, who was born on September 2. She was born in 1838, the same year that the Cherokees were forcibly relocated from their homelands to Indian Territory along the Trail of Tears, and she died in 1917, long after Hawaii had been annexed to the United States. But she remains deeply alive to Hawaiians. So I decided to learn more about how some Hawaiians feel about their last queen at today’s service.
