Noenoe K. Silva

DIVAn historical account of native Hawaiian encounters with and resistance to American colonialism, based on little-read Hawaiian-language sources./div

Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism

Aloha Betrayed

In The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen Noenoe K. Silva reconstructs the indigenous intellectual history of a culture where—using Western standards—none is presumed to exist. Silva examines the work of two lesser-known Hawaiian writers—Joseph Ho‘ona‘auao Kānepu‘u (1824–ca. 1885) and Joseph Moku‘ōhai Poepoe (1852–1913)—to show how the rich intellectual history preserved in Hawaiian-language newspapers is key to understanding Native Hawaiian epistemology and ontology. In their newspaper articles, geographical surveys, biographies, historical narratives, translations, literatures, political and economic analyses, and poetic works, Kānepu‘u and Poepoe created a record of Hawaiian cultural history and thought in order to transmit ancestral knowledge to future generations. Celebrating indigenous intellectual agency in the midst of US imperialism, The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen is a call for the further restoration of native Hawaiian intellectual history to help ground contemporary Hawaiian thought, culture, and governance.

Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History

The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen

Noenoe K. Silva creates a model indigenous intellectual history of a culture where using Western standards none is presumed to exist by examining the work of two lesser-known Hawaiian language writers from the nineteenth-century whose prolific output across many genres created a record of Native Hawaiian cultural history and thought."

Noenoe K. Silva

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