- Haunani-Kay Trask
Haunani-Kay Trask (born
October 3 ,1949 ) is aNative Hawaiian academic ,activist , radical,militant , documentarist andwriter . She was born in California. Trask is aprofessor ofHawaiian Studies with the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at theUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa and has represented Native Hawaiians in theUnited Nations and various other global forums. She is anauthor of several books ofpoetry andnonfiction , "Light in the Crevice Never Seen", "Night Is a Sharkskin Drum", "Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory" which is a revised version of her Ph.D. dissertation and "From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii" which is a collection of essays on theHawaiian sovereignty movement . Trask produced the award-winning film, "Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation". She also has a public-access television program called "First Friday".Trask comes from a politically active family.
Mililani B. Trask , her younger sister, is an attorney on the Big Island and was a trustee of theOffice of Hawaiian Affairs created by the1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention to administer lands held in trust forNative Hawaiians and use the revenue to fund Native Hawaiian programs.Arthur K. Trask, an uncle, is an active member of the Democratic Party and a supporter of Hawaiian rights. David Trask, Jr., another uncle, was the head of Hawaii's white collar public employees' union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, an affiliate of AFSCME, and an early proponent of collective bargaining for Hawaii's public employees. Trask's grandfather, David Trask, was a member of the legislature of the
Territory of Hawaii for twenty-six years as a democrat and the first Hawaiian sheriff of Honolulu County.Trask graduated from
Kamehameha Schools in 1967. She then attended theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison , earning her bachelor's degree in 1972, a master's degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. inpolitical science in 1981. Her dissertation was revised into a book entitled "Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory" and was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1986.Trask has at times been an outspoken and visible leader within the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She opposes the tourism industry and the
United States military presence in Hawaii. She identifies with other activists and leaders, most notablyMalcolm X ,Franz Fanon and the Kenyan writerNgugi wa Thiong'o . She also maintains a friendship withWard Churchill ,Angela Davis andAlice Walker . More recently Trask has spoken against theAkaka Bill . [http://www.moolelo.com/akakabill-hktrask.html]As a poet, Trask believes in and utilizes the “art as an anvil” approach in her writing. Believing that native Hawaiians have been shunted off to the margins of society, she employs the words of her works as weapons against what she perceives to be the oppressor. [http://www.asianweek.com/2002_08_23/arts_haunani.html] An example of this can be taken from her work "Racist White Woman", featured in "Light in the Crevice Never Seen", begins:
racist White Woman
I could kick
Your face, puncture
Both eyes.
You deserve this kind
Of violence.References
External links
* [http://www.haunani-kaytrask.com/ Official site]
* [http://www.sovereignstories.org/voices.htm#haunani Brief biographical note]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/TraskBio.html Biography and book reviews] compiled byKenneth R. Conklin , a sharp critic of Trask's
* [http://mypage.direct.ca/e/epang/InterviewHaunani.html A 1996 interview] with an otherwise unidentified Canadian publication
* [http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/bio/bio271p222.pdf Franklin, Cynthia and Laura F. Lyons. "Land, Leadership, and Nation: Haunani-Kay Trask on the Testimonial Uses of Life Writing in Hawai'i", "Biography", 27: 1, Winter 2004.]
* [http://www.asianweek.com/2002_08_23/arts_haunani.html "Trask Still Beats the Drum of Resistance", August 23, 2002, Asianweek.com]
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