Teacher David Kawika Eyre was surprised to learn how little some of his Hawaiian students at Kamehameha Schools know about their school’s namesake.
Teacher David Kawika Eyre was surprised to learn how little some of his Hawaiian students at Kamehameha Schools know about their school’s namesake.
Sure, they knew a few stories, that Kamehameha I existed, that he united the Hawaiian Islands. But that’s about where their knowledge ended.
“As a writer, I had to fill in the facts of life, birth, death, war, yearning for peace,” Eyre said in a recent phone interview from his Volcano home. “He was a fierce fighter, but he was also a peacemaker.”
So Eyre delved into historical sources, particularly Hawaiian language newspapers, and crafted a piece of historical fiction around the known facts about Kamehameha. The story, “Kamehameha: The Rise of a King,” was published earlier this year and provides readers with a moving story filled with sometimes tense, sometimes humorous and sometimes tender stories that track the king from his birth in Kohala to his death in Kona, as well as his training and the many battles he fought in between.
Eyre’s goal was to “fill in the blanks in a culturally rich, culturally authentic way,” he said.
To that end, he focused on using Hawaiian descriptions, naming the winds and rains as Kamehameha and his contemporaries would have known them, and chose Hawaiian metaphors and descriptions over Anglicized and Americanized ones.
Eyre also wanted to describe a vivid and living world.
“Until 30 or 40 years ago, Hawaiian culture was museum culture, display cases, pictures of dead people” he said.
He wanted to combat that with his book. He also wanted to provide real details about life, birth, death and sex, in a way fourth-graders could understand.
“One of the things we don’t do well in America is the facts of life, birth, sexuality,” Eyre said.
He included what he described as a fairly explicit birth scene at the beginning of the novel. Adding to the tension as Kekuiapoiwa was delivering Kamehameha is the setting in which the future king was born — under guard, with a warrior waiting to take the newborn and run him to the safety of a Kohala valley.
The land is another key factor in Eyre’s story telling. He said it is important for children to read stories set in the lands they live in.
“Our kids need to grow up here and then reach out when they have that firm foundation,” he said.
Much of Hawaii’s culture has been lost over the last few centuries, some replaced by the cultures that have immigrated here, some by elders who refused to share their accumulated knowledge for a variety of reasons. Eyre said he still encounters families who believe they should not tell stories about their ancestors’ interactions with Kamehameha, for example. The stories are just too private.
Kamehameha’s life mirrors the archetypal hero’s journey, Eyre said. That journey typically begins with a prophesy of greatness, a child raised in humble circumstances and a time of training before becoming a heroic figure.
“These are images you find in all cultures,” he said. “Why aren’t we teaching this to all children?”
Master Hawaiian woodcarver and cultural practitioner Sam Kaai once told a story about growing up watching Daniel Boone and other American heroes, Eyre said. But, as the story goes, Kaai and other Hawaiians of his generation recognized that those men were not their heroes.
“He didn’t know who our hero was,” Eyre said.
Eyre hopes his story changes that for children today.
“If they’re playing games about the naha stone or pretending to fight the niuhu shark, if they have a knowledge of the stories … I’m happy as can be,” he said. “These are the stories of the land and they’re living (in the children). As a parent and grandparent, I would be thrilled.”