Actually, im part cherokee native, but im a mainland writer. And so my the time i will have to speak in hawaiian is thick. Well talk a bit about the hawaiian language. But the first thing i need to do is make some disclaimer of humility. Because captive paradise is intended to explain the essentials of how the United States, how we got our hands on the place. Ive never gotten such good well, im used to getting good reviews. But the reviews that i got from wall street journal all the way to honolulu magazine were just extraordinary. Really wonderful reviews. Which did not prepare me for the anger that i saw in the native independence blogs. They hated it. And hated me just another damn halely trying to make monday off our history. Parentally they think people make money off history which tells you something about their understanding of the publishing business. The there was on one of these hawaiian history and culture blogs a native xlor wscholar wh, yeah, hes whut, ite, he should have written i i bought a copy and i read it. Its really not that bad. Heres mainstream american publisher and a somewhat well known writer who agrees with us. Dont you think we should be able to use this . Well, she was shouted into silence within 20 minutes that people like me arent supposed to poke their nose into their business. Now, the first thing i need to say in their defense is that this is not anything like political yektnecorrectness run because its not. The combat over who gets to talk about the narrative is not new at all. In fact, the very first native language history of hawaii was written by samuel [ inaudible ] i practiced. And in fact, when i made this Research Trip to hawaii, ill tell you about that, oh, a lot of their Research Facility are privately owned and if they dont like you, they dont have to help you. But i even memorized the name of that famous fish, its the longest fish name in the world, the dreaded [ inaudible ] it impressed nobody. But when they published the history of hawaii, the reaction was furious. Our story is sacred. This can only come from the priests. Youre telling it throughout to everybody. The country people and the Common People, they dont have a right to know our story. There is a little some of that, i think, still today. This is an active war zone. Lets put that way. I come from doing Texas History for about 40 years and, believe me, of the degree to which Political Correctness has seized Texas History and people who are heroes for 120 years are suddenly, you know, these drunken land grabbing slave beating colonialists in bhawaii its eight times worse because we took their country. I understand that. Example, before i went over there, i was having wlunlunch wa professor friend of mine on the topic whether i wanted to come back to his university and finish many i phd in history. And he asked me how are you doing with the hawaii book . And i said, well, im not changing anything finding anything to change my opinion that the overthrowin 1893 was just a nasty piece of work. There is no defending it. It was just awful. But i am also becoming really troubled by the amount of oppression and violence against the Common People by their own chiefs and kings before we even showed up. And i gave him some examples of this. And he said, yes, thats very true. But, of course, if you write your book that way and you dont, his dont his word position the natives as victims of american race iism, he said, t wont help you get back into grad school. Well, i marinated in this for a few seconds, and i said, yes, well, that must be what they mean by academic freedom. So, i had the opportunity to go do research, and i discovered very quickly the local phenomenon known as stinkeye. This is the look you get from natives who find you researching their history, or otherwise, nosing into their culture. In fact, there was one lady, she was a dosenent kilauea. My Research Assistant let it drop that i was writing a book, and she gave me that look. And she said, well, of course, you realize youre not the person who should write it, but if you insist on it, the first thing you should do is submit yourself to the kupuna, the elders, and if they approve of you, then go to the Bishop Museum and ask their help, because theyre the ones that know the story the best. And i thought, well, lady, ive won the spirit award twice and the spirenbach award twice, and i dont really submit myself to anybody, but thank you. And the next day we had lunch with an Earth Science professor and he said to be in hawaii today and to be fired from the museum is a badge of honor. Active war zone. Now, having i also thought, if there is a native researched and there are increasingly more and more native language resources coming to the surface that need to be explored. And when somebody produces that book, i will be first in line to buy it, but theyve had 120 years. So, my whole take in captive paradise was to explain to a mainland audience how it is we got our hands on the place. And so, tonight were going to look at the life of i cant really call her liliuokalani before she was named that. She grew up as lydia. Well talk about that. But in a larger sense, were also going to talk about how her culture shaped her and how that should affect our understanding of her and the country. Now, i know that in a biography series, we really need to spend most of the time on the biography, but we have no hope of understanding liliuokalani without going a bit into the culture, so we just have to do some contexting here or we wont get it. So, i have prepared a powerpoint. Now, this is longer than the powerpoint that i did last year and ill have less than a minute on each of these slides. Dr. Crawley, where are you sitting . When i start getting to ten minutes, you need to give me a sign, because ive been accused many times you stand up to talk about history, ill keep you here until next tuesday. And its entirely true. So, modern hawaii began with kameha kamehai. He was a member of the alii, call the estimation of population 400,000 with about 400 chiefs. He was one. And when captain cooke stopped on the west coast of the big island at kalakaua bay, he was with him and looking around and everybodys trading and look at all the interesting things they have. He was checking out the cannons. Understand there was no iron in hawaii. A nail was worth a big pig, you know. They had no iron. And he thought, man, if i had these weapons, i could conquer the whole place. Kamehameha actually means the loneliness of a god and he was off by himself thinking of how he could do this. He asked the kahunas, the priests, how can i go about conquering the place . And they said you have to build a temple to the war god. And he built this, 100 feet wide, 220 feet long, up to 20 feet high. The lava blocks were passed by hand from the palolu valley, which is 14 miles away. It was a luakini heiau, which means that was a place where human sacrifices were performed. I hear gasps. A lot of us are unaware that human sacrifice was part of the kapu religious, but it was. In fact, when captain cooke got there in 1779, it was at the end of the makahiki season, which they fight, they war for eight months, then they have four months of peace and celebration. Thats called makahiki. And he got there at the end of that, and a lot of the polynesians thought that he was the storm god, lono. The end of makahiki, they had a big ceremony, and the end of it was when the priest first ate the eyeball of a tuna. And when that was done, he ate a human eyeball from a fresh sacrifice. Thats just what life was back in those days. So, he built this huge heiau to the war god. The hawaiian language is a dialect of polynesian, so what is t in tahiti is k in hawaii. So, if this was in tahiti, these would be tikis, like tiki torches, except these are kiki. Thats what they were worshipping before the missionaries came along. Now, it took him 30 years to conquer the place. He was kind of a middling successful warrior, lots of mayhem, lots of butchery. Tens of thousands of people died. Some escaped, including this fella. When he got to new england, they couldnt pronounce his name, so they called him henry obookiah. Now, he had seen his family butchered in a parade by some of the command soldiers. He jumped into the water, swam to an american ship, got away, went all the way around the world, settled in connecticut, went to yale, went to congregationalist seminary, and was imbued with the mission of spirit. Now, we did not send missionaries to hawaii because were americans and thats what they do. It took him years of yelling at them if you people really believe all this jesus stuff, you would send missionaries to my country and end this horror. It took him, i think it was seven years, and they finally said okay, okay, all right. So, they opened a mission school, and he started translating the bible. And they said, well, do you really know english that well . Who needs english . He went from hebrew to hawaiian. Because he said, there are grammatical and structural similarities that made hebrew very easy for him to his native language. These are smart people. Well, he got typhus and died. He never got to go back, so everybodys so sorry. We put together a mission that got there in 1820. While he was over here studying and translating the bible by the way, when i was at the Hawaii Historical Society in honolulu, i found his work where he actually started create a hawaii English Dictionary at the end. It was really quite moving. Well, while hes over here, kamehameha died, and his queen, who was the favorite of his 19 whilz he was not the favorite wife, but she was very sociable, very smart, very forceful. She got tired of this kapu religion for two reasons. The first one, she could see it didnt work, because all the prohibitions of kapu werent working. Women would be thrown off a cliff for eating a banana. Theres one punishment under kapu, thats deaf. Well, she could see all these western sailors coming to hawaii. They would break kapu left, right and center and the volcano didnt blow up, theres no typhoons. So, this isnt working. And my people, they had started dying of western diseases. So if its not working, why are we keeping this religion . Also, after he died, she would have gone to the back of the room. She had no intention of going to the back of the room. So, she ended kapu. She had the temples burnt, she had the idols pulled down. And there was a spiritual vacuum in hawaii that by the time we sent missionaries and this is hiram and sybil bingham, with the first contingent. Everyone in america thinks we sent missionaries and they destroyed the local religion. No, they sailed into the vacuum. The hawaiians are very spiritual people and they took very readily to christianity. In fact, there are well, there are stories i can tell you, but theres no time and its too polite in the audience. When they discovered what a wideopen place the pacific was, they were aghast. But the hawaiians took to it. In fact, this church that they built, it was built on a spring that belonged to a high chiefist, so its the waters of. Surprised of half blocks of coral cut by hand from the bottom of the Honolulu Harbor by the natives and lifted up by hand. So, kind of like the medieval peasants in europe who built the great cathedrals. Well, remember we showed you the heaou that this also built by hand, so theyre kind of used to this. Anyway, so, there was this period of transition between kapu, human sacrifice, women getting thrown over the cliff for eating a banana, all that, to american congregationalist way, very boston ways of doing things. That is what lydia was born into. These are her birth parents, Analea Keohokalole and cesar capoue. They think they gave them western diseases and took their fertility. Actually, the best thing you could do was marry your sister and they did this for centuries. Now, this is her birth parents. She was not raised by them. Among the hawaii ali i, a relative raised the kid. They had a kid, they gave it to you. Its called hanai adoption. And she grew up at the home of her hanai parents, abner paki and laura konia, who were very highly born, very high up. She loved this house. She always wrote very fondly of this house. She became the hanai sister of Bernice Pauahi, who was one of the last two kamehameha disrespect descendants. She and bernice were very close. They both married about the same time, different people. But Bernice Pauahi is the founder of the bishop foundation, Bishop Museum, the crownlands that wind up funding the kamehameha schools, the museum and all this. Now, one of lydias well, i guess i should explain her name. She was born and i know i wrote this down. This is what you get for giving me wine at your dinner. She was born as she was baptized as lydia, but in those days, the kohenanui, a high office in the kingdom, sort of a combination of Prime Minister and almost the coruler, but that was the half sister of the king, who named this child well, i have to find it. My hawaiian is too clumsy. But kenahu had an eye infection that was very painful, so she named the baby painful, tearful, sore eyes. Because if im going to suffer, by god, everybodys going to suffer. Here it is liliu, smart, loloku, painful, walania wewehi sore, kamakaeha, sore eyes. So, she was lydia liliu loloku walania wewehi kamakaeha, but baptized as lydia. Right. Now, this guy is one of my heroes. Forgive me if i start bawling. Kenahus half brother, kamehameha iii was the last son of the conqueror. He was born under immense privilege. He had lifeanddeath power over everybody, but he was torn between two worlds. He tried to commit suicide when the missionaries prevented him from marrying his sister. Now, to the native people, it would have been a brilliant match, because their mother was the product of a halfsister marriage and the granddaughter of another fullsister marriage, and if he and nahienaena had had a child, it would have been next to the gods, because they already had the falling down ka pp kapu and she had to stay out of the sunlight because she was so holy. Well, he tried to kill himself and settled for the high chiefest of malawi. And the missionaries by the time well, he became a very dedicated christian. His mother became an even more dedicated christian. And they dragged him kicking and screaming into the church. But by the time he was broken to the traces, he gave his people a declaration of human rights, he gave them a constitution, he gave them a legislature, and he surrendered half of his own lands so that the Common People could own land. I mean, he was a great, great king. Very close to liliu. He was aware of the lack in heirs. In fact, he and kalama were not that close. They had babies that died in ifsy. And here was a lesson for young lydia. He executed her grandfather, high chief kamanaii for high murder, which was unthinkable for a high chief. Her father, grandfather, wanted to get a divorce, and the missionaries wouldnt let him get a divorce until he was single again, so he said, fine, and he killed her. Well, he found out that you cant and he signed the death warrant. And so, there was a very stark lesson in the new morality for young lydia and her siblings, including her older brother, kalakaua, who became king. So, he also realized, okay, were not having kids and the throne has to go somewhere, so he enlarged the circle of succession. Now, liliu and her family were not born into the kamehameha royal. They were ascended from kamehamehas cousin, so he accepted them into the group of people who were eligible for the throne, and he founded the royal school to educate them in ways that the western world would expect of royalty. It began as the chiefs childrens schools. This is a later picture. You see that crowd up there on the ban cony . What was up in the attic was what they called the boston parlor. The missionaries all contributed their very best stuff furniture, silver, dishes, so that they could learn polite society. And well discover later in what go good stead that put them. As i was at the Mission House museum, i looked through some of the workbooks of the students at the royal school, and one of the things they did to learn english and i like this theres an exercise on english words ending in tion. And this is all written out. Mary moderations answer to timothy observation. Sir, i perused your oration with much deliberation and with no little consternation at the great infatuation of your weak imagination to show such veneration on so slight foundation. But after examination and serious contemplation, i suppose your admiration was the fruit of recreation. It went on and on and on. It was just hysterical. But another exercise that just floored me was that the students also learned and copied out the louisiana bell. In louisiana, dats the state where massa eba dwell. He had a lovely colored gal called du louisiana bell. What on earth . They thought the hawaii ali i children would ever have to do with louisiana bell or they also learned black jupiter. It must have come from the common assumption that the polynesians were african. They discovered to their cost, and it has a lot to do with why how they came to regard the United States. Thats the only explanation i could come up with. And here we have lydia at a very young age at the royal school. She was immensely bright. Now, she had three brothers. Her two older brothers were there. One died and then kalakaua became king. She was especially gifted in poetry. Now, you have to understand hawaiian poetry. It is not roses are red, violets are blue. The Hawaiian Culture produced an extraordinarily High Standard of chant that preserved their whole culture. Their whole story was conveyed in chant. And she mastered this. Now, one thing about the hawaiian language that makes it so difficult is that there is not every word has about three meanings. There is the exact meaning of what youre talking about, and then there is the kauna, the hidden meaning. In public speaking, i would be saying what im saying, but i would also be using hidden classical illusions that float somewhere way above that only the hawaiians would get. And somewhere down below it, theres some thoroughly irreverent sexual raspberry, because theyre polynesians and they make sex jokes out of everything. Lydia masters now, the hawaiian language by the way, it was the missionaries who gave them a written language, and they went from virtually a stoneage soci