Mary Abigail Kawena Pukui

Scholar

• Pronunciation: kah-VEH-nah POO-kew-ee
• Born: April 20, 1895
• Birthplace: Kau, Hawaii
• Died: May 21, 1986
• Place of death: Honolulu, Hawaii

A notable Hawaiian scholar and translator, Pukui worked with the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, from the 1930s through the 1980s. She is best known for publishing more than fifty books on Hawaiian language and culture, including Hawaiian Folk Tales, Hawaiian-English Dictionary, and Echo of Our Song: Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians.

Birth name: Mary Abigail Kawena Wiggin

Area of achievement: Scholarship

Early Life

Mary Abigail Kawena Pukui was born to Henry Nathaniel Wiggin and Mary Paahana Kanakaole Wiggin in 1895. Her father was from Massachusetts and worked as an overseer at a Hutchinson Sugar plantation in Naalehu, Hawaii, while her mother came from a family of Hawaiian priestesses. In accordance with Hawaiian tradition, Pukui lived with her maternal grandmother for much of her early childhood. From her grandmother, Pukui learned about Hawaiian language and culture, including traditional medicine, music and dance, and genealogy and history.

Fluent in both Hawaiian and English, Pukui attended public schools in several towns on the island of Hawaii. Following the family’s move to Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, she enrolled in Central Grammar School and later in Kawaiahao Seminary. She eventually graduated from Hawaiian Mission Academy. Her education, bilingual fluency, and firsthand knowledge of Hawaiian culture directed her toward a career as a scholar devoted to recording and translating stories and oral history and promoting the study of the Hawaiian language. In 1913, she married Kalolii Pukui. The couple later adopted two daughters, Patience and Faith, and in 1931 had a biological daughter, Asenath.

Life’s Work

Pukui began to work for the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in the 1920s, taking an official position with the institution in 1937. She worked as a researcher, translator, and ethnographer and began to contribute to scholarly publications in 1923, when Vassar College anthropologist Martha Beckwith and Bishop Museum anthropologist Laura Green published Hawaiian Stories and Wise Sayings with Pukui’s assistance. Pukui visited older members of the Hawaiian community and recorded stories about customs and lore, building a collection of notes and audio recordings housed at Bishop Museum. Beckwith encouraged Vassar’s publication of Pukui’s Hawaiian Folk Tales (1933), and together they translated the works of Hawaiian scholars such as John Papa Ii as well as newspapers and other documents written in Hawaiian.

Pukui’s research often paralleled her personal life, and her growing children may have inspired the writing of Hawaiian Beliefs and Customs during Birth, Infancy, and Childhood (1942). Scholarly and government interest in Hawaii and the Pacific increased during World War II, and Pukui worked with researchers such as Kenneth P. Emory, the first archaeologist to use carbon-14 to date Pacific archaeological sites, and linguist Samuel Elbert, who worked as an intelligence officer and created dictionaries of various Pacific languages. Pukui and her husband, who died in 1943, also worked briefly with the US Army Corps of Engineers to camouflage Hawaii’s military installations during the war. After the war, Pukui continued her Hawaiian language work with Elbert. Their scholarly collaboration produced books such as the Hawaiian-English Dictionary (1957), Place Names of Hawaii (1974), and Hawaiian Grammar (1979).

Over the course of her career, Pukui published more than fifty books, many of which were collaborations with scholars from a variety of fields. With anthropologist Green, Pukui published The Legend of Kawelo and Other Hawaiian Folktales (1936), and she coauthored Outline of Hawaiian Physical Therapeutics (1934) with anthropologists Edward Smith Craighill Handy and Katherine Livermore. For the latter work, Pukui drew heavily on her knowledge of traditional medicine gained during her childhood studies with her grandmother. Pukui collaborated with Handy again on The Polynesian Family System in Kau, Hawaii (1972), and she worked with Bishop Museum librarian Margaret Titcomb on the volume Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific, with Special Attention to Hawaii (1969).

While many of Pukui’s individual and collaborative publications focused on topics such as Hawaiian language and medicine, Pukui was also known for her expertise in Hawaiian music and dance. She composed more than one hundred songs and chants during her lifetime, many of which were later recorded, and cowrote the volumes The Echo of Our Song: Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians (1973) and Hula: Historical Perspective (1980). In recognition of her commitment to these aspects of Hawaiian culture, Bishop Museum held the first annual Mary Kawena Pukui Arts Festival in 2001, celebrating Hawaiian music, dance, and storytelling traditions.

Significance

A widely respected scholar of Hawaiian language and culture, Pukui received honorary doctorates from the University of Hawaii in 1960 and from Brigham Young University–Hawaii in 1974. She was awarded the State of Hawaii Order of Distinction for Cultural Leadership in 1974 and named to the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame in 1995.

Bibliography

Blair, Chad. “Kawena’s Legacy.” Hana Hou! Hawaiian Airlines, Aug.-Sept. 2007. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. Discusses Pukui’s early life, work as a scholar, and legacy in Hawaii.

Pukui, Mary. “Sharing from the Source.” Interview with Pat Pitzer. Honolulu 18.5 (1983): 109+. Print. Explains Pukui’s scholarly objectives in a lengthy interview.

Williamson, Eleanor. “Introduction.” Olelo Noeau, by Mary Pukui. Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1983. Print. Discusses Pukui’s scholarly work in an introduction to one of her volumes of proverbs.