One of the first important efforts at foreign missionary work by American churches was the conversion of the Hawaiian Islands, or Sandwich islands as they were commonly called in the early days of their discovery, the first missionaries to the islands had heard reports from traders and whalers and accounts from native youths as to conditions in the islands, and from these facts they had imagined what would await them upon their arrival. When they arrived at the islands, they found great changes had taken place, such great changes that to the missionaries they could only be explained as "miraculous" and the "work of God." These changes had been brought about almost entirely from contact with foreigners who had visited the islands since their discovery.

This thesis examines poetry by Native Hawaiian activists written between 1970 and 2016 in order to develop a detailed understanding of the multi-faceted ways poetry incorporates, transmits and enacts contemporary political identity. Whilst fundamentally a literary analysis, my methodology is discursive, and draws on a range of critical approaches, archival research and interviews with poets, in order to address why poetry is such a powerful form of resistance to American hegemony. By reading contemporary poetry as an expression of deeply held cultural and political beliefs, this thesis suggests that writing and performing poetry are powerful forms of political resistance. Adopting a lens that is attentive to both the indigenous and colonial influences at play in Hawaiʻi, it elucidates the nuanced ways that traditional literary techniques enter contemporary Native Hawaiian poetry as vehicles for cultural memory and protest. Attention to the continuities between traditional Hawaiian epistemology and the ways those same methods and values are deployed in twentieth and twenty-first century poetry, means this thesis is a part of a growing body of work that endeavours to understand indigenous literature from the perspective of its own cultural and political specificity. The introduction establishes the historical and critical context of the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement and the Hawaiian Renaissance. It outlines the main developments in Native Hawaiian literary criticism since the late 1960s, including the reclaiming of traditional narratives and the privileging of indigenous epistemologies. Chapters One to Seven proceed chronologically, each addressing a particular collection, anthology or body of work. Chapter One focuses on Wayne Kaumualiʻi Westlake's radical rejection of Westernised Waikīkī, whilst Chapter Two explores the anthologies Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Water and HoʻiHoʻi Hou: A Tribute to George Helm and Kimo Mitchell, in relation to the Sovereignty Movement's dedication to Aloha ʻĀina (love the land). Chapters Three to Five deal with five poetry collections, two by Haunani-Kay Trask, and one each by Imaikalani Kalahele, Brandy Nālani McDougall and Māhealani Perez-Wendt. The chapters address how these poets articulate Native Hawaiian identity, nationalism and continuity through traditional moʻolelo (stories), which underpin the political beliefs of three generations of sovereignty activists. Chapters Six and Seven address contemporary performance poetry in both published and unpublished formats by Jamaica Osorio, David Kealiʻi MacKenzie, Noʻukahauʻoli Revilla and Kealoha, demonstrating how a return to embodied performance communicates aloha (love, compassion, grace). The conclusion, Chapter Eight, indicates projects that are already productively engaging Hawaiian epistemology in the areas of geography and science, and points towards developments in the digital humanities that could extend this indigenised methodology into literary studies, in order to further engage with the depth and multiplicity of storied landscapes in Hawaiʻi.

The Laysan teal, an endangered species, is restricted to a single population on Laysan Island, a remote atoll of the Hawaiian archipelago. Little is known of the Laysan teal's ecology, therefore, I examined food habits, habitat use, and population dynamics. These aspects of its ecology are fundamental to the species management and conservation. I described diel and nocturnal habitat use, home range, and foraging with radio telemetry in 1998-2000. Most individuals showed strong site fidelity during the tracking period, but habitat selection varied between individuals. Mean home range size was 9.78 ha (SE 2.6) using the fixed kernel estimator (95% kernel; 15 birds with >25 locations). Foraging was strongly influenced by time of day: birds spent only 4% of their time foraging in the day, but spent 45% of their time foraging at night. Time activity budgets from the island's four habitat zones indicated that the coastal zone was rarely used for foraging. The birds foraged 42% of the time they spent in the terrestrial zone at night, but foraged only 4-6% of the time they spent there during other times. Fecal analysis and behavioral observations revealed that the Laysan teal is not a 100% macro-insectivore as previously reported, but consumed seeds, succulent leaves, and algae, in addition to adult diptera, diptera larvae and pupae, ants, seeds, lepidoptera, coleoptera, and Artemia. I concluded that this species exhibits high plasiticity in foraging behavior. Laysan teal appear to opportunistically select abundant, high energy prey for the breeding season, due to constrained resources on Laysan Island. I also studied the parameters influencing the Laysan teal's population dynamics. Adult survival is high, but duckling survival on Laysan is low, and is a primary demographic parameter limiting population growth. Estimates indicate the population density was high (between 546-827) from 1991 until August 1993, prior to a population crash that occurred between September and December 1993. The most current population estimate (Sept-Nov 2001) is 444 (SE 181) adults. Additional populations (translocation), along with control of non-native mammalian predators, are needed to reduce extinction risks to the Laysan teal. / Ph. D.

This thesis traces the origins of a colonized and militarized Hawai`i, ultimately leading to the years of military rule, 1941-1945. It examines the ways in which the Hawaiian Islands differed from the United States mainland prior to and throughout the war years, and demonstrates that Hawai`i's history is much richer than the "Remember Pearl Harbor" framework acknowledges. Focusing on long time residents (Islanders or locals), rather than on the large population of migrant Americans also in the archipelago during the war, it addresses ways in which military rule controlled and Americanized the people of Hawai`i. Finally, it illuminates the ways in which local stories challenge national ones: How were America and Hawai`i different places in 1941? / Graduate

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Healthy coral reefs have become increasingly rare, and their continuous degradation has serious implications for loss of marine biodiversity. There is an urgent need to assess the strength of top-down versus bottom-up effects on reef communities, to better understand how food web alterations can change the structure and function of these vulnerable marine systems. In this study, I used fatty acid (FA) analysis to investigate the trophic and ecological relationships among potential key forage species of the critically endangered monk seal in the Hawaiian archipelago. A series of multivariate tests performed on groups of closely related and ecologically equivalent species of fishes and invertebrates using a restricted number of FAs revealed that FA differences among groups primarily reflected diet, but could also be related to habitat and ecology. The same groups were subsequently analysed using an alternate method in quantitative FA signature analysis (QFASA) simulations, which allowed for the effects of using various subsets of FAs to be evaluated. Overall, species groups were relatively well characterized using both methods. When present, overlap in FA composition principally occurred among groups with similar diet/ecology, and were more prominent at higher trophic levels. A last set of analyses which combined the multivariate and QFASA simulation methods revealed that despite taxonomical relatedness and similarities in trophic ecology, individual species of carnivorous fish could be reliably distinguished using FAs. Therefore, while increasing the number of FAs used in the analyses might be useful to refine the resolution of distinctions, using a restricted number of FAs can also result in reliable differentiation among species. My results suggested that despite tremendous diversity, finer scale variations in FA composition could be detected among groups, and among species which shared the same diet and trophic ecology. These findings have important implications for the study of food web interactions in the Hawaiian archipelago, as they provide the foundation for using the same species groups in diets estimations of monk seal, as well as other top predators in this ecosystem. Moreover, they provide a framework for using multiple approaches to link FA patterns to the foraging ecology of individual species.

No description available.