Na Mele o Hawai'i at KDRT

29/10/2025

For the first time in more than 20 years, the Hawaiian crow is flying free again.
These crows disappeared from the wild in 2002. People thought they were gone forever. But thanks to years of hard work, five ʻalalā were finally released into the forests of Maui.

Workers from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Hawaii raised the crows together and helped them learn how to live in nature — how to find food, stay safe, and care for each other.

The ʻalalā are very smart. They help the island by spreading seeds when they fly from tree to tree. Those seeds grow into new trees, which give food and shelter to other animals.

For Hawaiian people, the ʻalalā are more than just birds. They are symbols of hope and family — believed to carry the voices of ancestors and protect the land.

Now, after so many years, their song is heard again in the forest. It reminds everyone that with care and patience, life can always return.

28/10/2025

Aloha Nūhou Monday! Dear Reader, Prince Kūhiō’s racing canoe will once again find its place upon the great Pacific, on Saturday, November 8, 2025. In commemoration of Henry Weeks, the canoe maker of Kainaliu, here are newspaper articles and other items from the Bishop Museum Library & Archives related to him.

[Excerpt from this week's blog* post.]

A newspaper article from 1867:

"Something new in Kainaliu.—A single-masted ship that is four feet or so in length is being assembled. The body all around the ship is complete, and the deck atop is also complete. The carpenter who is building it is H. Weeks. It is being done in most lands. It is something new for those here in Kainaliu and for those here in the Kona districts.

M. Lumaawe.
Kainaliu, May 30, 1867."

*Visit our blog to read the rest of the story, plus view additional images of the original Hawaiian language newspapers: blog.bishopmuseum.org/nupepa. He Aupuni Palapala, a project to digitize Hawaiian language newspapers, is a partnership between Bishop Museum and Awaiaulu. Mahalo nui loa to Kamehameha Schools and Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority for their support of our project.

Prince Kūhiō’s racing canoe, the A, recorded on this photo as, “Kona canoe.” ca. 1907. Bishop Museum Archives. SP 224561.

Image-sharing on social media is welcome. For all other uses please contact Archives [at] BishopMuseum [dot] com.

Come see the Aʻa return to water on Saturday, Nov. 8! For more information and to register for the free event, please visit BishopMuseum.org/Aa.

26/10/2025

On this day in 1897, Princess Kaʻiulani and her father, Archibald Cleghorn, arrived in San Francisco on their way home to Hawaiʻi. While there, she was interviewed by journalist Miriam Michelson for The San Francisco Call.

Michelson described her: “Her clothes said Paris. Her accent said London. Her figure said New York. Her heart said Hawaii.”

In the interview, Kaʻiulani spoke about her ease in learning languages, noting, “It was easy for me to learn German. Of course, I don’t speak it perfectly by any means. But if I have a talent for learning languages. French was easy.”

When the conversation turned to the political situation in Hawaiʻi, Kaʻiulani reflected on her aunt, Queen Liliʻuokalani: “Even the enemies of my aunt, or the Queen, will tell you that all through her suffering, all through her hard treatment she conducted herself with the utmost dignity.”

Kaʻiulani’s words remind us of the grace and strength with which she represented Hawaiʻi during a time of great political change.

Image credit: The San Francisco Call

21/10/2025

16/10/2025

Don't miss this living legend!
Davis and Yolo folks, this is in your backyard!

14/10/2025

Kaina Makua, the kalo farmer who became famed actor in Chief of War, carries the same sense of purpose on screen into his work off-screen. Within the past decade, he’s poured his mana into growing his nonprofit, expanding from 10 to nearly 100 acres of restored agricultural ʻāina across four sites on Kauaʻi and Oʻahu.

More than 3,500 ʻōpio have taken part in its ʻāina-based education programs. Through its commercial brand, Aloha ʻĀina Poi Co., the group processes and distributes more than 70,000 pounds of fresh poi across Hawaiʻi each year.

A Path of Purpose by Moanikeʻala Nabarro at kawaiola.news/hoonaauao/a-path-of-purpose.

12/10/2025

Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and His Majesty King Kalakaua “on Bungalow lanai” (about 1889).

RLS was a prolific writer and authored Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), & a poetry collection A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). In Waikiki Stevenson finished The Wrong Box (1889), The Master of Ballantrae (1889), and the poems of Ballads (1890), The Bottle Imp (1891), and began to write The Ebb-Tide (1894).

Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850 and died in Apia, Samoa in 1894.

Photo by A.W. Richardson: HSA PNL-179-05721