my Native Hawaiian Lineage

The Moʻokūʻauhau

The Pai family moʻokūʻauhau — the genealogical record passed down in the Hawaiian tradition — names the lineage explicitly. Mohai and Kauakahiwahine gave birth to Kauomeaono Mahai-nee-nee, born in Kaʻū in 1734. Kauomeaono and Ululani gave birth to Keawekuloa Pai, born in 1810. Keawekuloa and Kameheu gave birth to Kaoiliokalani Pai, born in Kohala in 1839. Kaoiliokalani and Kanehaku Naipo gave birth to Kanehaku Kepaimaka Kalepa Pai. Kanehaku and Kapua Kupahu Moi gave birth to Alfred Leimakani Pai, born in Kawaihae in 1865. Alfred and Kaininau Makaloa Nahalea gave birth to William Kahakulani “Opelu” Pai, Sr., born in Kona in 1909.

These are not just names. Each one is a life lived on this island, under these stars, in relationship to this ocean. The chain does not break. It ran all the way to my father. It now runs all the way to my son, John, the 11th generation of our Native Hawaiian bloodline.

The First Written Record, 1880

Long before Opelu, before Sarah, before Albert Leimakani and Alice Kaninau, there was a marriage license issued in Waimea on a Wednesday in the rainy season of 1880. It was called Palapala Ae e Mare — Permission to Marry — and it was registered by S. H. Mahuka, the Luna Haawi Palapala Ae e Mare for the Apana o South Kohala. It joined two people whose names are now my own deep history: K. Pai of Kawaihae, South Kohala, and Mrs. Kapua of Hilo. The date was December 1, 1880.

That license is the moment we can put our finger on it — the moment the territorial bureaucracy first wrote down what we already knew. The Pai family was already here. The genealogy back to Mohai in 1710 was already an oral fact, kept in chant and memory the way Hawaiian families have always kept their lineages. The license simply made the chain legible to a bureaucracy that would, less than a decade later, take part in overthrowing the kingdom that issued it. The chain ran on regardless.

Written Language and the Burden of Proof

The Hawaiian language was spoken, not written, until Protestant missionaries (specifically, “Congregationalists” from Boston) developed the first Hawaiian translated Bible in 1839…61 years after Capt Cook’s arrival in 1778. For thousands of years before that, Hawaiian lineage was preserved through moʻokūʻauhau — the oral genealogical chant, memorized and recited across generations.

Current Federal regulations require written documentation of pre-1778 ancestry to establish that someone is Native Hawaiian, although the Hawaiian language wasn’t in writing until 1839. Requiring a Western recording standard on a tradition that was never Western. They ask Hawaiians to prove on paper what was always preserved by voice. That is not pono.

My family meets the standard either way. Through moʻokūʻauhau, my Native Hawaiian lineage runs back through Mohai and Kauakahiwahine — names held in oral tradition long before any alphabet existed to record them. Through written record, it begins with the 1880 marriage license of Kanehaku Pai and Kapua Kupahu, registered in Waimea under the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. My earliest documented ancestor by name and date is Mohai, born in Kaʻū in 1710. He married Kauakahiwahine of Waimea in 1730…48 years before Cook arrived.

Writing arrived with the missionaries, starting in 1839. The chain was already ours. Both are true.

The 1820 Arrival of the Missionaries

The 1820 arrival of the Congregational missionaries was the single most consequential cultural event between Cook’s 1778 arrival and the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. They created a written Hawaiian language to translate the Bible, converted the public religious life of the kingdom, illegalized the Native Hawaiian language, suppressed hula and chant, and embedded themselves in the Hawaiian government as advisors.

Once inside the Hawaiian Kingdom, they pressured King Kamehameha III into the Māhele of 1848 — the law that turned land from something Native Hawaiians belonged to into something that could be bought and sold. Most Native Hawaiians could not navigate the bureaucratic approval process and English-language paperwork required to keep their lands. Missionary descendants acquired the rest. A generation later, those same families, with the help of the US Government, illegally overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

A Note on My Great-Grandfather

William Kahakuʻilani “Opelu” Pai Sr. was born in Kailua-Kona on February 10, 1909. The 1930 census listed his occupation as fisherman. His 1973 death certificate listed it as diver. The work had not changed.

He attempted the first solo swim across the Molokaʻi Channel in 1939 — twenty-two years before the crossing would be officially recognized — and a 75-mile open-water swim from Kaʻena Point on Oʻahu to Nāwiliwili Bay on Kauaʻi in 1941. He is honored by the Hawaiʻi Swimming Hall of Fame.

The full story of these swims — the bamboo pole that fed him through eighteen hours and fifty-six minutes in the channel, the sponsor who was the only Hawaiian to testify publicly against statehood, the day-for-day birthday he shared with my grandmother Alice — appears in The Promise I Made.

The Federal Definition of a Native Hawaiian

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), under 13 C.F.R. § 124.3, defines “Native Hawaiian” as follows:

Native Hawaiian means any individual whose ancestors were natives, prior to 1778, of the area which now comprises the State of Hawaii.

By this definition, I am Native Hawaiian. The lineage on this page documents how. Mohai, born in Kaʻū in 1710, was a native of the area that now constitutes the State of Hawaiʻi sixty-eight (68) years before Captain James Cook became the first recorded European to encounter the Hawaiian Islands on January 18, 1778. He is my direct ancestor. The chain between us is documented across ten (10) generations.

This matters because the SBA 8(a) Business Development Program — established by Congress to drive economic development in disadvantaged communities — recognizes Native Hawaiian Organizations (NHO) as one of the categories eligible to participate. The profits generated by an NHO-owned 8(a) firm flow back to the NHO, which then uses those profits to serve the Native Hawaiian community. That is how Mālama Kaʻū Foundation is structured. That is how the dialysis clinic in Kaʻū will be built.

Native Hawaiian Organization (NHO) means any community service organization serving Native Hawaiians in the State of Hawaii which is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the State of Hawaii, is controlled by Native Hawaiians, and whose business activities will principally benefit such Native Hawaiians.

The integrity of the NHO program works only when the “Native Hawaiian” NHO board member’s lineage can actually be traced to pre-1778.

If not, than that’s clearly “fraud, waste and abuse” of a Federal Government program developed for Native Hawaiians, only.

For me…my Native Hawaiian ancestral chain begins in Kaʻū in 1710. It does not break.

Read the rest in The Promise I Made.