A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

academic departments began offering courses on Hawaiian history, geography, and wider
Polynesian topics. Bishop Museum staff members, such as the archaeologist Kenneth P.
Emory, and Samuel H. Elbert of Hawaiian-English dictionary fame, provided a repository
of expertise and were appointed as ‘affiliate faculty.’ The latter scholar bravely proposed
the creation of a curriculum in ‘Hawaiian Studies,’ which was finally started in 1970,
when the political climate fostered the establishment of ethnic studies programs
nationwide. In 1985, Haunani-Kay Trask transferred from the American Studies
Department to Hawaiian Studies, becoming its first full-time faculty member. Two years
later, she became chair of what was now called the Center for Hawaiian Studies in the
newly constituted School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Studies. The University of
Hawai’i at Hilo was the first to offer a graduate degree in the field with its Master of Arts
program in Hawaiian language and literature. It is the first and only Master’s program in
any indigenous language in the United States. Since 1999, after Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa
had become the new director of the Manoa Center, its oppositional thrust has retreated in
favor of cooperation and intellectual debate. In a newspaper article Robert M. Rees
diagnoses that the Center has ‘come of age,’ listing its plans to offer graduate degrees, its
faculty of five full professors and 120 students majoring in Hawaiian Studies, the
research and publications undertaken by its faculty members, and the housing of a
Hawaiian charter school in its confines. While Kame’eleihiwa asserts the ongoing fight
for Hawaiian rights and sovereignty, Rees ventures that “the center is becoming a model
for how to offer studies devoted to a single ethnic group without excluding either
scholarship or members of other ethnic groups.” 208
Just as important and closely connected to this is the development of the Center
for Pacific Studies. While initial interest focused on Asian countries on the Pacific Rim,
“out of this slowly evolved what became the nation’s premier Pacific Islands program.” 209
From the beginning, the interdisciplinary area-study master’s degree program has drawn
students mostly motivated by academic interest in the region. Tourism as well as
increasing cultural awareness and the relative scarcity of experts on Pacific matters
continue to provide its graduates with career opportunities. As mentioned in chapter 3.2,
the hiring of Vilsoni Hereniko, Rotuman playwright, literary critic, and Pacific Studies
208 Honolulu Advertiser, 04/01/2002.
209 Kamins/Potter 1998: 144.
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