Dr. Ty Tengan is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa whose work emphasizes ethnic studies in relation to Hawaiian identity and masculinity, sovereignty, land, and militarism. His activism and work extends to running oral history field schools, cultural workshops, water rights and burial site protection. In this conversation, Melissa and Clay talk about Tenganʻs work in native Hawaiian repatriation, and the profound significance of ʻiwi kupuna burial practices perpetuating indigenous worldview. We discuss the “forced amnesia” of colonization and the re-learning and re-membering Hawaiian traditions and practices, especially those around Hawaiian masculinity.

We continue our two-part conversation with Dr. Ross Cordy, Pacific Island Hawaiian-Pacific studies at University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu. Trained as both an archaeologist and ethnohistorian, Dr. Cordy’s specialty is reconstructing the history of Hawai‘i as told from multiple data sources. In the second half of our discussion, we consider settlement patterns across the Hawaiian archipelago, as well as the rise of countries and kingdoms within the islands themselves. We also talk about the significance of cultural jewels like Wai‘anae and Kukaniloko on O‘ahu and the histories of places in Micronesia.

Trained as both an archaeologist and ethnohistorian, Dr. Ross Cordy is a renowned scholar of Pacific Island Hawaiian-Pacific studies at University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu, specializing in reconstructing the history of Hawai‘i as told from multiple data sources. Beginning with his study of the Hawaiian coastal village of Lapakahi in Kohala, his career in Oceania spans fifty+ years–from Huahini, Aotearoa, and Micronesia to the Hawai‘i State Historic Preservation Division where he undertook the challenging task of cultural site protection. In this two-part series, we first look at the voyages and settlement patterns of people across the Pacific to Hawai‘i. Dr. Cordy also addresses what is known and what is not known about long distance voyaging between Hawai‘i and elsewhere.