Haunani-Kay Trask was a Native Hawaiian activist, educator, author, poet, and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
14 Facts About Haunani-Kay Trask
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Haunani-Kay Trask received awards and recognition for her scholarship and activism, both during her life and posthumously.
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Haunani-Kay Trask's dissertation was published into a book, Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory, by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1986.
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Haunani-Kay Trask served as the center's director for almost ten years and was one of its first tenured faculty members.
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Haunani-Kay Trask hosted and produced First Friday, a monthly public-access television program started in 1986 to highlight political and cultural Hawaiian issues.
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Haunani-Kay Trask co-wrote and co-produced the award-winning 1993 documentary Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation.
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Haunani-Kay Trask published two books of poetry, the 1994 Light in the Crevice Never Seen and the 2002 Night Is a Sharkskin Drum.
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Haunani-Kay Trask developed We Are Not Happy Natives, a CD published in 2002 about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
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Haunani-Kay Trask represented Native Hawaiians at the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva.
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Haunani-Kay Trask later wrote about how these experiences as a graduate student helped develop her theories about how capitalism and racism sustained each other.
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In 2004, Haunani-Kay Trask spoke out against the Akaka Bill, a bill to establish a process for Native Hawaiians to gain federal recognition similar to the recognition that some Native American tribes possess.
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Haunani-Kay Trask clarified that the bill was drafted ex parte and that hearings were withheld to exclude native community involvement.
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One of her two sisters, Mililani Haunani-Kay Trask, is a Hawaiian language immersion teacher, attorney, and a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
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Haunani-Kay Trask descended from the Kahakumakaliua line of Kaua'i through her father, who was a lawyer, and the Pi'ilani line of Maui through her mother, who was an elementary school teacher.