Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 11, 1 November 2007 — KANAKA PIONEERS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

KANAKA PIONEERS

Recounting the history of Hawaiians in the great Pacific Northwest

By Liza Simon Public Affairs Specialist

Shortly after author Tom Koppel took up residence in Salt Spring Island just off the coast of British

Columbia, he happened into the Kanaka Inn, where a blurb on the back of the restaurant menu explained the region's unique history of Native Hawaiian settlement. During the 1 800s, a number of Hawaiians, who referred to themselves as Kānaka, migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. They left many descendants in the area, including at least 12 families who still reside on Salt Spring Island. Koppel was so intrigued by this little-known story that he spent four years researching it, culminating in the 1996 publication of his first book, Kanaka, whieh he will be presenting during a talk this month in Honolulu (see information box). "I've always been fascinated by stories of human journeys, because they highlight a sense of adventure and courage,"

says Koppel, who recently won aeelaim for his book that examined the role of fuel cells in space travel and has also just released a new publication that explores oeean tides. Iourneys emerge as a persistent theme in all of his four books, a direction that he says was first inspired by questions raised by the compelling Kānaka story. "I had pictured life in Hawai'i as being idyllic, so I wanted to know why anyone would willingly leave for the hard life of a Pacific Northwest frontier town," he says. In search of answers, Koppel went to the University of Manitoba library and combed through the preserved handwritten records of the London-based Hudson's Bay Company, whieh onee did a brisk business trading animal furs from the Pacific Northwest for silks and other goods from China. Koppel says the records describe in painstaking detail how the company made mid-ocean stopovers in the Hawaiian Islands to recruit Native Hawaiians for their skills as seafarers and warriors, while also indicating that Hawaiians were eager to undertake the new opportunity. "The Hawaiian Kingdom had been undergoing plenty of change in the wake of its contact with westerners," says Koppel, "so when the Hudson's Bay Company eame along, their promise of contract work offered the unprecedented ehanee to make forays into a strange, new world. While life in the Pacific Northwest proved rough for the European traders, Koppel says the records indicate it was likely even rougher for the Kānaka, who also had to contend with

a system of daily wages and sparse work eamp conditions so different from the eonununal culture they had left behind. "Over and over again, the Hudson's Bay records credited the Kānaka for helping them to survive in the New World," he says, "though it's also clear that many Kānaka yearned for what they left behind. Some did go back. Some got into trouble with the law, but most showed great powers of resilience in adjusting to their new life." Koppel found only one account by a Native Hawaiian - a letter written by a missionary who eame to the Pacific Northwest to start a church. So for more on the Hawaiian perspective, he turned to the Kānaka descendents who are his neighbors. Many live on lands that their ancestors had eome to own, a result of the Canadian government's late 19th-century policies extended to all "new world settlers" - a far cry from the American frontier to the south, where the new U.S. government denied civil liberties to non-Europeans. Many of the Kānaka who responded to the Canadian eall also inter-mar-ried with Indians. The result, says Koppel, ean be seen in the unique Salt Spring lū'au celebrations that persist today,

where both hula and Indian dances are performed together. It was at a Salt Spring lū'au that Koppel heeame acquainted with a group of elderly residents who were able to share their childhood memories of their long-ago departed grandmother named Maria Mahoy, believed to have been the daughter of a Kānaka father and an Indian mother. "They recalled someone who could paddle a eanoe through terrible thunder storms. They say she would eall out to special nature spirits for help," says Koppel, who concedes that the descendants weren't entirely clear if their grandmother's unique traits eame from her Hawaiian or Indian side. "But they are proud to be Kānaka," he says - a word that they associate with bravery and resilience. I

NĀ PUKE • B00KS

FREE TALK Author Tom Koppel will be giving a free talk on his books, including Kanaka, as well as his latest book about oeean tides: Where: Outrigger Waikīkī When: Sat., Nov. ī 7 Time: 9 - 10:30 a.m. Email: koppel® saltspring.com

~ JotrnManct,-wife 9fid soH,-early -l-860s. Native. Hawaiian John Kahana, who eame to the Northwest LoasT with the"HutJson's Bay Company, and his Lummi (lndian band) wife, Mary Skqualup and step-son Robert Bull._Photo taken on Saitduarrlsland. Washinaton. - Photo: Center for Horthwest Studies, Western Washington University.