The story of Wānanalua: Stranded whales and contested marine sovereignties in Hawai‘i

This paper considers how systems of interspecies knowing and care in Hawai'i push against state-supported frameworks of liberal biopolitical governance. In 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a citation suing two Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) women under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, for unlawfully “tak[ing] and/or or transporting” a stranded melon-headed whale (“Wānanalua”). In the lawsuit, prosecutors deliberated on the legality of the traditional sea burial situating it within a broader context of cultural accommodations granted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From our examination of the lawsuit, we develop the argument that marine mammal care operates in Hawaiʻi as a regulatory device for ordering interspecies relations and for pacifying Indigenous demands for greater marine political authority. To combine these claims, we consider the relation between two governance logics: liberal “recognition,” wherein accommodations regarding culture are extended to previously disenfranchised social groups, and biopolitics, pertaining in the present case to care practices governing more-than-human actors and environments. Our arguments are supported by detailed case files and interviews with local informants, including the Kanaka women accused of mishandling Wānanalua. The “ruptures” marking the Wānanalua case suggest a liberal recognition framework whose failures are connected to the biopolitics it embraces, but with an added detail: The present story reflects on how an interspecies biopolitics—an attempted management of Kānaka-whale care practices—structures strategies of liberal recognition.

Last Aloha to Mother Pope, 1914

When Ida May Pope died unexpectedly from a stroke while visiting Chicago in the summer of 1914, it was front-page news in virtually every publication in Hawai‘i. Headlines proclaiming the death of “Mother Pope” caused a wail from island to island. The grief expressed spanned class and culture. Memorials were given on every island and covered extensively in newspapers. Her alumnae created The Ida M. Pope Memorial Scholarship Fund and to date, thousands upon thousands of Hawaiian women have acquired a college education through this fund. When women finally did get voting rights on August 26, 1920, Kamehameha graduates across the islands made the news when they competed with each other to earn the distinction as “ first in line” to register. Alice Stone Blackwell reported to the American press that Hawaiian women, who had been disenfranchised by the United States, were taking back the positions they held in “the days of the monarchy.” Ida created a cohort of firebrands.

Introduction

Great historical events often accompany great forces of nature: a hurricane, a tsunami, an avalanche. Traced back to their origins, such natural cataclysms start as a gentle breeze, a single drop of rain, a small pebble falling. They appear harmless, but trigger life-changing events. Similarly, a swath of Hawaiian history can be traced directly to an unassuming woman from Ohio who set into motion a series of events that would ultimately effect social change for Hawaiian women....

Taking Honolulu by Storm

Throughout her tenure at Kamehameha Schools, Pope continued her graduate work at the University of Chicago. Pope spent three separate semesters learning the latest educational methods from the most progressive leaders of the time in order to elevate education in Hawaii. She also traveled throughout the United States to consult with the brightest minds in the budding vocational education and social change movement. In turn, the movement’s leaders visited her. She was able to use her experiences to facilitate the first social survey of Honolulu, which contributed to the overhaul of labor laws, vastly improving working conditions for Hawaiian women. In 1910, Pope attended the first National Conference on Vocational Guidance in Boston. Educators, social workers, and corporate figures from 45 cities met to discuss how to improve the lives of immigrants by making sound vocational choices. Conference presenters and attendees included Jane Addams, Homer Folks, G. Stanley Hall, George Mead, Henry Metcalf, and Edward Thorndike. Pope joined these pioneers in the field of education and sociology for two days of stimulating discourse that ultimately ignited a national interest in public school career guidance. Pope advocated for a vocational bureau in Honolulu until her death.

Light in the Queen's Garden

Light in the Queen’s Garden chronicles the life of Ida Pope, a transformational type of leader in any era, who was handpicked to establish the Kamehameha School for Girls. This institution was established in 1894 by the estate of Princess Pauahi, the last of the royal Kamehameha line, and dedicated to the education of girls of Hawaiian ancestry. When twenty-eight-year-old Ida left Ohio to accept a “temporary” teaching assignment in Honolulu, she couldn’t have imagined it would become a lifelong career of service to Hawaiian women. Nor could she have envisioned she would become closely involved in the greatest political turmoil the Hawaiians had ever experienced. Ida Pope’s firsthand account of the years that brought her pupils into womanhood during the annexation of their kingdom tells an important story about the Hawaiians and a rapidly changing world. As she worked with forces like Queen Liliuokalani and Charles Bishop, Ida in turn became a force shaping society for future generations of Hawaiian women.