authorDiscover the Best Books Written by Hauani-Kay Trask
Haunani-Kay Trask (October 3, 1949 – July 3, 2021) was a Native Hawaiian activist, educator, author, and poet. She served as leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and was professor emeritus at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was a founder of the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and served as its director for almost ten years.
Haunani-Kay Trask was born on October 3, 1949, to Haunani and Bernard Trask. Trask and her family are descendants of the Piʻilani line of Maui and the Kahakumakaliua line of Kauaʻi. She was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up on the Koʻolau side of the island of Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi.
Trask graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1967. Trask attended the University of Chicago but soon transferred to the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she completed her bachelor's degree in 1972. She earned a master's degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. in political science in 1981, both also from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her dissertation was revised into a book, Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1986.
Haunani-Kay Trask was a founding member of the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She served as its director for almost ten years and was one of its first tenured faculty members. During her time at the university, Trask largely helped to secure the building of the Gladys Brandt Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, which would become the permanent center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
In 2010, Trask retired from her director position but continued to teach about native political movements in Hawaiʻi 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.
In 1986, Trask hosted and produced First Friday, a monthly public-access television program highlighting political and cultural Hawaiian issues. Trask co-wrote and co-produced the award-winning 1993 documentary Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation. She also authored the 1993 book From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, which Cynthia G. Franklin and Laura E. Lyons described as a "foundational text" about indigenous rights.
Trask published two books of poetry, the 1994 Light in the Crevice Never Seen and the 2002 Night Is a Sharkskin Drum. Trask developed We Are Not Happy Natives, a CD published in 2002 about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Trask represented Native Hawaiians at the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva. In 2001 traveled to South Africa to participate in the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance.
In March 2017, Hawaiʻi Magazine recognized Trask as one of the most influential women in Hawaiian history. 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 Mānoa philosophers in the past.
During her time in Chicago, while studying for her undergraduate degree, Trask learned about and became an active supporter of the Black Panther Party. While studying at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Trask also participated in student protests against the Vietnam War. Because of these experiences, Trask wrote that, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she began to develop theories about how capitalism and racism sustained each other. During her time studying politics in her graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Trask began to engage in feminist studies and considered herself to be a feminist.
Later in Trask's work, she denounced her role as a "feminist" because of the mainstream focus on Americans and whiteness, herself being more aligned with transnational feminism. "Now that I was working among my people, I saw there were simply too many limitations in the scope of feminist theory and praxis. The feminism I had studied was just too white, too American. Only issues defined by white women as 'feminist' had structured discussions. Their language revolved around First World 'rights' talk, that Enlightenment individualism that takes for granted 'individual' primacy. Last, but in many ways most troubling, the feminist style was aggressively American."
