The Kāhili: Hawaiian Royal Standard & My Father’s Bones

kāhili 1 - Hawaiian royal standard
paper cutting

I had the very best of intentions for kāhili 1, but I'm afraid I sorely failed to meet my own expectations. Instead of a wound column of feathers, my standard looks like a strange 1960s potted plant atop a barbershop pole. And this was actually the third attempt tonight; tore the first two. Growl....

I'll try again, though next time, I'll make finer feathers, a slenderer wrap at the base, a narrower staff, and thinner stripes in the staff pattern. And, I'll omit the signature.

Interesting facts about the kāhili:

• In ancient times, the kāhili was carried by the attendants of the ali'i (ruling class) to herald their approach, much in the same way banners were carried to announce the approach of a noble in many other cultures. The taller the kāhili, the farther away they could be spotted, allowing the commoners time to prepare for the nobles' arrival.


• A single kāhili might require thousands of bird feathers. Yellow feathers were harvested from the tufts of the mamo and 'ō'ō (honey creepers) bird species, which were primarily black. Both species are now thought to be extinct.


• Kāhili were made large and small. The largest versions were over thirty feet tall; the smaller versions were hand-held and used to fan away flies.


• Today, The Kāhili Room at Bishop Museum in Honolulu houses the "'Ele'eleualani" kāhili ("Black Rain of Heaven") which was passed down to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop and given to the museum by her widow in 1889.


• The tall kāhili are still used ceremonially in Hawaiian cultural events, including the opening ceremony of the Merrie Monarch Festival Hula Competition, during which the kāhili are carried in with the festival royal court.

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During the appointment tonight, I considered...might I hide behind study and facts and reconstruction? Like my strange affection for ironing--smoothing out all the wrinkles in fabric, because I can't smooth out the wrinkles in my head.

Questions, hypotheses, research, collection, evaluation, dismission, acceptance, and understanding of broad, far-reaching subjects from inaccessible eras. Digging up the bones of people who are long gone and trying to piece together their remains in order to resurrect some beauty and nobility that is otherwise dead. Trying to capture the fading voices, to grasp and comprehend whatever might be their dying words. Fighting time for possession of knowledge that is draining away with the years of the last of those who remember.

Because I failed to do the same with Dad. And now he's gone, along with his voice and his words and what it was that he understood of the world.

And because I am living my own history, and I doubt I'll ever come to an understanding of the woman I am, the woman I'll be when I die. Which is why I eke and scratch every fleeting thought and emotion, through images, through words, scrambling to create a record of each moment of my life so when I'm gone, something of me will be left for someone to understand. Maybe they'll see something wonderful that I never have. Maybe they'll understand things I never could. Maybe they'll learn from my mistakes and find themselves spared certain brands of heartache.

To understand a people or a legacy is to know them intimately--their grief, fear, ambitions, beliefs, inspirations...the strengths of their discoveries, the weakness of humanity. It is to accept their inheritance of generations of knowledge, and the richness of their cultures. This, I have never been able to accomplish with my own people, my own family, my own father.

Regret, for all I never asked him, for all he tried to teach me that I never heard.And an eternal yearning, because all the research I could possibly conduct throughout the remainder of my lifetime will not bring him back and will not afford me the opportunity to tell him how much I loved him, and that if given the chance, I would try so much harder to understand him and embrace his dreams.

Maybe this is a reason, or part of a reason, why I search so ardently, why I dig until I hit a rocky bottom. I haven't found his bones, but I've found thousands of tiny shatterings that reassure me he was indeed here.