Hawai'i is a small place on a large planet; Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous people of the islands, today comprise just 20% of the total population within the state, and less than 1% of the total U.S. population across the nation (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). Yet Hawai'i, promoted for centuries as an exotic tourist destination, and Hawaiian culture as…

Until American Calvinist missionaries created a Hawaiian alphabet and writing system after their arrival to the Hawaiian islands in 1819, all Kanaka Maoli literature was oral. By inventing a Hawaiian alphabet, the missionaries were able to teach Kanaka Maoli reading and writing; by the early 1830s the first missionary-controlled printing press was…