 The original Polynesian people came across the sea to the Hawaiian Islands hundreds of years ago. How do we trace those origins and family lines? How significant is this history to the present day native Hawaiians? My guests today are Kali Hanes and Manny Matos. Kali is a manager of historical data and knowledge at OHA, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Manny is a craftsman of traditional Hawaiian weapons with a personal interest in Hawaiian genealogy. Today we're going to talk about the importance of the past to the present and the future and how Hawaiian history is preserved and empowers native Hawaiians. Aloha gentlemen. Aloha. Aloha Mark. Good to have you here. Thank you for having us. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you both. Manny, let me start a little bit with you because I know you want to talk about this. Aloha first of all. Aloha boy invited me back. Good to have you. What is the importance of Hawaiian genealogy to you personally? Tell me a little bit about your own feelings about it and then I want Kali to talk a little bit about what it means for the past. Well as far as native Hawaiian genealogy for me is because my wife is native Hawaiian and her family was born and raised in Wonunwa and I found that there really is a gap or a kind of a lack of interest in their genealogy so I did some inquiring and investigating and I found they have a lot of information you know different genealogical background but two things they don't know how to gather that information or to do research on it and secondly is to talk about it. We have about three of the older generations, one is 86, one is 85 and they don't have the interest you know I don't think they realize how important it is for their generations. So I began investigating and I also have a lot of questions for Kali here and so that's how it affects me from a Hawaiian side. Let's ask Kali now. Kali what is the background of Hawaiian genealogy study and what's the importance of it and what's the meaning for it and bring it forward to us a little bit. There's always a thing you have to know where you come from before you move forward you know there's a actually a Hawaiian saying that says my kakikikaloika oha right so that means if the stem of the kalo is really good then it's going to grow into a good kalo so that's if the parents are good if the generations before are good and been able to perpetuate not only traditional practices but you know just just being a good person showing the good aloha being a good respectful person of Hawaii then you know hopefully that will pass down to the generations. I also can really relate to you uncle because I used to ask my tutu all the time oh tell me about life in Kohala you know and she would say oh that's something we don't we never talked about yeah right oh I want to know about my great grandfather you know great great grandmother and they said that's something we never talked about so really with so much information available nowadays through internet through the digitization of health records and different legal documents you know a lot of that information has become readily accessible through the state archives through the Bishop Museum and actually at oha we've been doing a lot of work with our public data base in making Hawaiian newspapers accessible as well as the Mahelei records which is documents the privatization of land of course in the 1850s. And that has a lot to do with lawyers right in law which oh I'm glad always glad to hear about that but you know you brought up a couple interesting things and both of you kind of mentioned I don't know if it's a lack of interest or a lack of ability to find information maybe you understand what I'm saying. So actually that can be kind of related to what uncle has brought today right. What is it. Yeah I'm glad you brought I'm a this is something crude that I made you know in the last couple of days but correct me or expand on it is the really the keeper of the flame Kahiku the great storyteller. Were you telling me uncle that you know you would set this up I guess yeah and the family would sit around it right. Yeah the great knowledge of people that we have that passed down information the keeper of the flame were the young generation that were sitting behind them because in the evening all the kupuna would gather around the elders and they would tell stories and the younger generation their job was to keep the kupuna flame lit it that's all there that job was to be on the outskirts of the of the circle of the gathering and there was an area where they could get into the circle so that they can pass and this is well they had numerous ones because they had to keep the light so they were the keeper of the flames but what what was so significant about this is being in the background they were able to learn generations and generations and generations of knowledge that was being discussed around that kind of stopped at some point and it did and you know and uncle brings up a great this whole art piece that he's created and not only has a functional value but it if you liken the kukui to and how it burns kukui nut is always related to insight knowledge because of the the flame that it burns and it has many different uses you know we get the oil to burn of course you use the nut you shave it roasted shave it down for Inamona which I'm sure we all know and then but that that's that light is very significant to help knowledge is passed down so if the light goes out if the younger generation doesn't take care of it the light goes out that can be very significant and kind of analogous to somebody's genealogy or the knowledge of that that line kind of dying off and make makes the kind of the break that shows you know Manny had a hard time nobody nobody knew about it or nobody knew the history of the family okay but are they interested are native Hawaiians interested today I think they are I think they are because ever since the 1970s you know when the Renaissance came up Renaissance came about there's been just a strong pull for people to really go back to native Hawaiians especially to go back to who they were that self-identifying character has been so important and strong in defining not only who we are as people but where we want to go where we want to take this Hawaiian movement right and it starts with passing on the knowledge this flame can be really lit similar to how the Hokulea and the the voyaging techniques of Ninoa you know it can be really lit I like that analogy yeah and it's so important but get to see like I'm Portuguese so how did I first get involved in genealogy well it came suddenly on the internet one day maybe about 10 years ago I was typing in mottos genealogy mottos and pops on a screen according to the Catholic Church of Spain mottos is a Sephardic Jew name Jewish name so almost fell off the chair I had no idea that it was a Jewish surname I don't think my father my grandfather you know they knew about it so that kind of set me off wow I mean I might be Jewish in my ancestral welcome to the club oh thank you and then exclusive club so that cut me interested and it kind of made me think well maybe that's always why I think like this why I reason like this so it kind of started me off with in that direction of genealogy and cully is this what maybe the new flame is this the internet or the documents and stuff and what is what is all you can say the internet is kind of like the fuel for you still need the spark so in a lot of ways as I mentioned earlier of documents right newspapers especially a lot of people don't know the value of newspapers I mean and specifically with the Hawaiian language newspapers that I've been working very closely with these ones these newspapers run from about 1834 to about 1938 42 but as opposed to newspapers as we know them now these Hawaiian newspapers were popular populated by the community so in a sense it was a first form of social media first form of Facebook well because you had people writing in on all different things from celebrating somebody's birth to three different accounts or four different accounts of a certain event so they're cross-collaborate of kind of verifying each other's stories to even genealogy some people would write long genealogies in there when somebody has passed you know that remind me of uh I don't even remember Don Ho's statement when he when he first met saw his Tahitian wife he's walking through the kitchen he saw this young Tahitian girl washing dishes so he looked at her and he went up to her and he asked her one simple question who you mother who you father yep yep that's all he said who you mother who you father it's just oh my father is kidney popo and my mother was a Tahitian right of the bat he drew the connection with kidney popo so he said you're not from tomorrow on you're not working at you working on my show but he asked very simple questions because he was actually born and raised in Kakaako by mother Walter in Park but he has no important question which we all did at that time who you mother who you father and we still do we still do that's why we say what school you went yeah yeah yeah yes and I would ask that last night as a matter of fact let me let me ask what is oh has role in all of this now what what I mean we have several you brought up really interesting to me we have several roles so um one of the things that we we actually have um a number of resources that we've been working on creating as cutting-edge electronics so as a Papakilo database is number one that's kind of like our our big baby that we have that is a collection of different databases that we've been able to partner with Bishop Museum the state archives uh Kauai Historical Society the University of Hawaii and just make all of these connections to databases that normally would not be available unless you physically walk into the the brick and mortar structure that they're housed so that's one of the things we do that's where the newspapers are we've been able to tie in with um Ulukau which is a great electronic Hawaiian electronic library located in Hilo and they have um they have genealogy documents such as birth marriage and death certificates and so on and so forth um we also have our Kipuka database which is more land-based and for people that work a lot better with viewing things on the map and finding it then they use that to tie into the land the Mahelei records the land title stuff and then what we did was we kind of put them all under a house called Halei of course means house but Noelo means to seek or to search so within this this physical structure we identified the things that people were kind of looking for the most you know the date or the what they needed they needed um to be taught how to research their genealogies they needed a place to access the genealogies and at last they needed to be able to come in and record their genealogies so we kind of coupled all those different things to be a one-stop shop for not only genealogy but research in general so you can have access to free access to ancestry.com we'll provide genealogy technical assistance where we teach you how to research your genealogies you can actually come in and record an oral history like we're probably going to do with Uncle Manny and then you can um just a number of things we you can bring in something like Uncle Manny brought in a very beautiful um picture frame a bunch of pictures of your Ohana yeah so we could take that and actually digitize that. Are we able to put that on the screen? Well that's on my Portuguese side but since we're you're on that I have some genealogy records of my wife's side okay but I noticed after five generations it only goes to one name so how would we get access? Hold on guys we're oh we're just gonna that right there now is the uh is a 1926 Portuguese fechta in Kakaako and uh back in 1883 then it was the first Portuguese arrived but they had no no records prior to that so they created this fechta that they brought from Portugal and the Azores and every year for about six weeks seven weeks they would get together at Holy Ghosts what they call in Kuala Kalihi uh Punch Bowl and all the Portuguese people about a thousand I remember as a young boy back in the 50s everybody would get together we sit on the oh this your cousin this your auntie this your uncle and you had no idea what these people were so you would sit down and you you would talk. So first thing I would do uncle is I would you know help you digitize this so that it's because you have it in a laminated thing that's you know and I had I have more pictures like this so we would want you to be able to digitize it we wouldn't take a copy for ourselves but we kind of teach you how to you know be able to pass this information on throughout your family the second thing we would do is I would take you to the Hawaiian newspapers and say okay let's look up 1926 you know find out whatever month and see if there were any stories written about the Portuguese fechta. We're going to take a break right now and then I want to come back and ask what the spark is Kalihi won't you to tell me what the spark is to get this thing going yeah okay thank you take a short break right okay. This guy looks familiar he calls himself the ultra fan but that doesn't explain all this. He planned this party planned the snacks even planned to coordinate colored shirts but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house so don't do it in your team's house know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. But I have a story and I don't know where to start. I feel alone in the crowd. I can't sleep. I feel overwhelmed. I don't even know who I am anymore. I still have nightmares. I can't live like this anymore. I'm really not so good but are you ready to listen? We are back my name is Mark Schclav host of Law Across the Sea and today we are talking about Hawaiian genealogy and resources of OHA and how to maybe trace your roots. I'm here with Kali Hanes, Manny Matos, gentlemen. Good to see you again after our break. Thank you. Kali. Yes. We have here maybe an early form of knowledge our way to pass knowledge and you were talking about that. You were talking about the spark. Right. How do we get the spark and what does that mean? So you know we are talking about how potentially the spark can go out you know and what it takes to reignite the spark is a number of different things. It all depends on the individual situation but in this case we're talking about the spark as that urge that desire to reconnect so it can be as simple as what shall I name my baby's name you know I want to do put a family name on there. Another thing would be one of the big things legalized is Kuliana tax exemption you know if you have if you're a descendant of the original land claimant on Kuliana land you can receive a significant tax break on your property tax. And we've all read the news lately about some things that happen on other islands too. Right. Right. And the list goes on and on whether or not you know you qualify for wine homelands or if you want to get your child or if you want to your grandchild into Kuma Mea schools you know there's all these processes that or different motivations that can reignite this spark to be reconnected to your genealogy. Okay now Manny brought some. Yeah two things I noticed and maybe I can elaborate on is I notice on my wife's grandmother's aspect of it they would repeatedly name their children after their ancestors. Right. It was it looked like it was a cultural thing they would perpetuate that name those names on their ancestors which would keep their genealogy easy to follow right because if you go back five six generations there's only one name. In the Portuguese culture the women when they would marry the man the husband their mating name would become their middle name say like my grandmother was Filomena Rocha Matos Rocha was her maiden name so that's how the Portuguese in a very simple way would keep the woman's genealogy in line with the man but you know if you look at this if you go back so many generations there's only one name so how do you I mean and that's why one of the reasons why names are repeated or names are added on so if you take a name like Liloa and then his son Umia Liloa yeah yeah so just tying in those different connections as each generation goes whether you add a little bit to it or subtract it all goes back to just knowing where you come from and Manny brings his wife in how how do you how do you deal with yeah she's totally how do you help uh loss in a sense of so what we would do is so Uncle Manny you have this this all this information out on this paper yeah and it's great so what we would do is we take the the most recent name and then we'd like enter it into ancestry.com or or just even sometimes a simple google search will reveal um so much information uh there's a great free website called findmygrave.com and it helps to tie in people because it has pictures of all these different handstones so despite the fact that you know you may be looking at a death certificate which may be handwritten it's so easy to to mis uh misread what what's written over there so sometimes you get a death certificate that's different than than the headstone you know two different dates so that that's when it gets exciting but your work is really yeah yeah it's it becomes more intriguing you know it the more I look at it the more I don't understand so the more the more supporting documents you can get to verify all of this stuff because sometimes you know you get oh this is so-and-so's son but he's actually was born from you know the sister and raised by the uncle and so how do you disseminate that information that's that's the problem I think a lot of people would get yeah and and that's one of the you know things that Hawaiian sometimes didn't talk about as much you know it's just like everybody knows but they don't where did that concept come from don't say nothing don't talk about this don't talk about one of my uh my wife's auntie she's the oldest she doesn't want to talk about the past at all she doesn't where did this concept come from where did this mentality come from it was just one of those things where you just open your eyes you watch and shut your mouth that was it always like that yeah well that's that's one of the ways that we learned yeah you just listen yeah you open up your ears you open up your eyes and you watch and you let the older people talk and you listen yes and we've lost that a lot of time that's what I was going to say there appears to be like a cutoff at some point oh yeah that maybe you're starting now at oha to regenerate your light to spark again well I think what we're trying to do is uh reconnect people to credible information okay and that's you know once the internet came out and people started I'm very happy to say I went through all of high school without the internet and email and any of that and so I learned a little bit differently I I'm also a musician so when I learned how to do songs I go seek out and go out to the composer and I talk story with the composer you know and get their blessing on how to do the song and so on and so forth once the internet came out there was a the world just got a lot noisier and filled with things that provided a platform for both credible and non-credible you know you said something very interesting before we started to do the genealogy or with with the family I wanted to do the proper protocol yeah so I talked to olohi michael eilis and olohi what's the protocol to regenerate or start the genia genealogical with with the with the family he says go to the oldest living male yeah and ask permission yeah so we went to his name is huge bradley he's the oldest male he's 85 and a couple of his nieces and my wife they went down and they simply asked him uncle do we have your permission to regenerate the genealogical research uh because one of the purposes of this it brings the mana back into the family well it regenerates or you explain that a lot better so the reason why you do this because that eldest living person of the family has to be the male according to has the closest connection to everything else prior you know so you get that blessing and we're very spiritual people Hawaiians are you know and things happen for a reason so you can see that in the different forms of almakua you know that that we talked about a little bit earlier and so just getting that blessing kind of releases and provides it opens up the floodgates in a way question on that too as as far as native Hawaiian practices uh maybe people become Christians they become catholic they become christianite they they feel what they shouldn't be involved in native Hawaiian practice the way to be be deal with entities this and uh i i my wife's grandmother was able to blend those two together because there's a story right that uh she was having some problems with with her children they all met and she told one of her children to bring a pig head okay and but she'd been a devout catholic was able to bridge that gap can we do that can we can we mix these cultures and i i think you know everybody has their own situation some families choose to either go one way or another i i can't speak to any definitive what is the best way that works it's gonna work a pig head may have worked in that sense or something else because it represents a demigod in in a sense right right right and that might have been the the whatever message that she wanted to send at that time well some like if that were my family we would not have a pig head because that's not how we grew up right so we would do something else yeah yeah yeah so it it depends on the on the family and this and that leads to another very uh good um Hawaiian saying which means not all knowledge is taught from one school oh i like that i like that okay okay uh you know you you mentioned uh Hawaiian language papers and my question is i just came over with captain cook okay okay i don't understand right Hawaiian language do i have to know the Hawaiian language how is oha gonna bridge that so it's a long process because we're we're talking about over about 58 000 pages of Hawaiian newspapers um and so what we're doing is it's all about building collaborations within the community similar to kind of building collaborate um building connections with your ohana you know we're working with University of Hawaii we're working with Bishop Museum we're starting to work with other volunteering uh entities schools and so on so forth to not only make sure that the what is digitized is correct because there is no 100 way to OCR or provide optical character recognition on the images that are provided which makes the newspaper searchable but in addition to that to provide translation as well it's a slow process but we're starting that and you know it's sort of like you're kind of like a detective in a way it sounds yeah to me okay now we are at the end of our program i'd like Kali to give us some more words of wisdom advice or what what can people do that would like to get a hold of you or oha or one of your groups to learn more about their own backgrounds you know what what what what would you tell well i i would say first you know write out a simple family tree start with yourself say okay this is where i am then say list your siblings and then your your parents and just try and go as far back as you can and something is like i said earlier something as simple as a google search can reveal so much and after you've done some detective work on your own you know come in and see us we are you can do a search on Hale Noelo or Papakilo database and come in and see us and we can we can definitely help make sure you're on the right path and oha's goal as i understand is to empower Hawaiians and we have many different goals and one of them is reconnecting empowering Hawaiians by reconnecting them with their genealogies and just knowing who you are as a person a lot of a lot of that got lost in the past yeah it did and even with our Portuguese culture same thing you know uh but we have venues we we can go to they have Portuguese cultural clubs where you can inquire because uh a lot of the Portuguese community they really don't realize how important it is for them gentlemen we've got to relight the flame here and i think we're doing it so thank you both for being here