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Every day, thousands of Waikiki tourists overlook a massive four-stone monument on Kuhio Beach, encircled by a low iron fence, walking briskly to snap photos of the legendary Duke Kahanamoku statue next to it.
Few people will stop to read the plaque describing the healing stones of Kapaemahu, imbued with healing power by four kahuna, or Tahitian sorcerers, over five centuries ago. Yet if they did, the plaque fails to mention that the healers were “mahu,” a Hawaiian word for those who are both male and female in mind, body, and spirit.
Their gender duality was intrinsic to their healing power, but the plaque omits this vital information after suppression by Christian missionaries and decades of social and political censorship, say the co-authors of a new picture book for children , “Kapaemahu”.
“It’s a big loss. A deep shame,” they wrote. “For only when you understand the true history of these stones will you see their living power.”
The book, which was just released, is the first-ever U.S. publication in both English and Olelo Niihau, the Niihau dialect of Hawaiian, said co-author Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu. Identifying as “mahu” or transgender, she is a Hawaiian teacher, filmmaker and gender minority activist.
His co-writers include Dean Hamer and his partner, Joe Wilson, both Emmy Award-winning filmmakers, who collaborated with Wong-Kalu to make five films about transgender people and social outcasts. The book is based on their latest film, “Kapaemahu”, released in 2020 and nominated for a 2021 Oscar. It is illustrated by Daniel Sousa Kokila, an Oscar-nominated animator.
The book’s release coincides with a Bishop Museum exhibition on “The Healing Stones of Kapaemahu” which will run until October 16, also a collaboration of the three co-authors. The story was based on a Hawaiian legend, passed down orally through generations, but first published around the turn of the 20th century by James Aalapuna Harbottle Boyd, who used the term “sorcerer’s stones”.
Hamer said it was especially important now that the story be known to visitors and local residents “as we see this rise in prejudice and discrimination towards gender diversity.”
“It’s such a good story to fight against that. Imagine a kid, who is (gender) fluid or questioning, hearing about this great story. I think it’s really great for them to have a place to go and say, Hey, this is for us; we can be heroes, not just the butt of jokes or something worse,” he said.
Hamer said the writers had no intention of creating a film aimed at children. They wanted to tell a universal story, a Hawaiian legend, in the most understandable way for people of all ages. However, film festival programmers, publishers, and librarians felt it would appeal to younger audiences (4-8 years old), and Hamer sees the benefit.
“Children are always our best audience because they are the ones who will tell the story and are important for the next generation. And kids are in many ways the most open-minded to this story, because when they hear about these amazing people who are both male and female, they’re like, Oh cool, that’s magic. , it is something wonderful! And they don’t have the preconceived notion that it’s something that should be questioned or anything.
Wong-Kalu said she grew up hearing the word “mahu” used as a derogatory term. “I would like our people to disarm that word,” she said.
People may associate the concept of mahu with the LGBTQ movement, but Hawaiian gender duality goes beyond physicality, which was once an accepted part of island culture, she said.
“Why were they such amazing, wonderful healers? It is because of their duality of mind, heart and spirit.
In the book, the description of the healers is elegant and simple:
“The visitors were tall and deep-voiced, but gentle and soft-spoken. They weren’t men. They weren’t women. They were mahu – a mixture of both in mind, heart and spirit.
Wong-Kalu said, “It is important to tell this story in order to elevate Kanaka history, culture and language.
It was not enough to tell the story only in English, but in the Niihau dialect, the only form of Hawaiian that has been spoken continuously since before the foreigners arrived.
“For far too long the telling of history has been relegated to outsiders or other than Hawaiians, who have been heavily colonized and have articulated it through their eyes. I want my people to tell elements of the story. Hawaiian story and don’t be afraid to tell it in its raw form,” she said.
According to the authors’ notes, the sacred stones have fallen victim to colonization, militarization, and the growth of tourism, which has brought drastic changes to Hawaiian life. In 1941 the stones were buried to make way for a bowling alley in Waikiki. When the bowling alley was demolished in 1963, a few old Hawaiians insisted that the stones be recovered.
Hamer said they were then moved a short distance, where they stood between the Duke’s statue and the police station, to make way for a public toilet, their original location.
While the flush toilets might not be the best backdrop for the stones, Hamer said the location worked.
“In a way, it’s very fitting that they’re there in the midst of millions of tourists. That was the original goal; it was not to make a place for prayer or healing, it was to make a monument so that people would remember what these amazing mahu healers did.
Hamer said he was working to get the city to change the plaque to tell the whole story.
The highlight of the Bishop Museum exhibit is an artistic three-dimensional recreation of the stones, lit from within and surrounded by four 30-foot-tall banners of healers. It includes traditional healing artifacts and a timeline of the stones’ history. A separate room is dedicated to the Glade Show Lounge, a former Chinatown nightclub with transgender performers, who were forced to wear buttons proclaiming “I Am A Boy” to avoid arrests and fines in the 1960s.