Haunani-Kay Trask

Haunani-Kay Trask (born October 3, 1949) is a Native Hawaiian academic, activist, radical, militant, documentarist and writer. She was born in California. Trask is a professor of Hawaiian Studies with the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has represented Native Hawaiians in the United Nations and various other global forums. She is an author of several books of poetry and nonfiction, "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 the Hawaiian 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 the Office of Hawaiian Affairs created by the 1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention to administer lands held in trust for Native 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 the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning her bachelor's degree in 1972, a master's degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. in political 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 notably Malcolm X, Franz Fanon and the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. She also maintains a friendship with Ward Churchill, Angela Davis and Alice Walker. More recently Trask has spoken against the Akaka 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 by Kenneth 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]