Final thoughts on "Chief of War"

The Apple TV+ historical drama shortchanged viewers on Hawaiian history and culture

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender 

The first season of Apple TV+’s “Chief of War” is complete. What to make of it? Rotten Tomatoes gives the series about the fight to unify the Hawaiian Islands an overwhelming 93 percent approval rating, based on a survey of critics’ reviews. Here’s a brief sampling:

The San Jose Mercury News’s Randy Myers has called it “invigorating, compelling, and sweeping.”

David Opie of Empire Magazine praised “Chief of War” for cutting a “brutal swathe through epic chapters of Hawaiian history, long unseen and long overdue on screen.” 

Kelly Lawler of USA Today called the series “transportive, immersive, and enlightening – the prettiest and bloodiest history lesson you'll get all year.”

From Hawaii to Asia, “Chief of War” has been sweeping. It’s surely been immersive when it’s been bloody. But it hasn’t been a “history lesson.”

As the author of a novel covering the same historical ground as “Chief of War” (and more), I see this as the show’s biggest problem.

New York Times TV critic Mike Hale took note of this when he wrote that “Chief of War” was “stuffed with people...who existed and with events that took place, but the story that is spun from them is largely fanciful.”

Why make such a big deal over “Chief of War’s” fanciful departures from Hawaiian history? Empire Magazine’s Opie perhaps unwittingly answered that question with his praise of “Chief of War” for bringing a story “long unseen” to the screen.

None of “Chief of War’s” viewers, and no TV critics, have ever seen this story on screen. Moreover, many of them—viewers and critics alike—have likely never read a book about it or learned about it anywhere else.

Before “Chief of War” premiered on August 1, its prospective audience, including critics, was a tabula rasa—a clean slate. As the first filmmakers to bring Hawaii’s unification story to a popular audience, “Chief of War’s” Hawaii-born creators Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett had an opportunity to create something truly unique. Going to a place no filmmakers had gone before, they were free to tell an untold story of the Hawaiian people from the Hawaiians’ unknown point of view to a large, popular audience. Historically, they muffed it.

I’ve already written at length—you might say ad nauseam—about Momoa’s and Pa‘a Sibbett’s dislocation of and departures from Hawaiian history. “Chief of War” viewers expecting a drama that faithfully reflected Hawaiian history, as well as viewers with no prior knowledge of Hawaiian history, were shortchanged.

“Chief of War” also shortchanged viewers culturally. Momoa said a goal of the series was to “immerse” viewers in Hawaiian culture. But the immersion was a mile wide and an inch deep.

The creators of “Chief of War” accurately depicted the appurtenances of Hawaiian culture, including grass houses, clothing, weapons, temples, sail canoes, and religious idols. They introduced viewers to a Hawaiian war god and name-checked a few other Hawaiian deities. Actors spoke Hawaiian throughout the series, and almost exclusively during the first two episodes, imbuing “Chief of War” with an air of authenticity. For all that, “Chief of War” was cultural kitsch. (The New York Times TV reviewer called it “Polynesian kitsch.”)

“Chief of War” never explored aspects of Hawaiian culture that could’ve immersed viewers in life as Hawaiians of Kamehameha’s and Ka‘iana’s day lived it. For example:

• The complexities of the Hawaiians’ strict kapu, harsh laws that barred men and women from eating together and reserved certain foods exclusively for men, for example, and imposed dire penalties for many other transgressions.
• An ali‘i caste-structure that ranked Hawaiian nobility based on the inter- and intragenerational purity of their bloodlines.
• The all-pervading importance of mana, spiritual power that could be won or lost in myriad ways.
• Hawaiian society’s mutual sexual liberation of men and women.
• The political power wielded by women, who could rule villages as “chiefesses” even as they were barred from eating certain foods.

“Chief of War’s” creators could have injected more aspects of Hawaiian culture into the series’ slower scenes, which at least two critics suggested needed some juice.

Empire Magazine’s Opie wrote, “you…wish the quieter moments carried as much weight as the barbaric battles.” And Daniel Fienberg of the Hollywood Reporter predicted that “many viewers will be more than happy to ignore the poorly developed ethical debates and flimsy romances that fill so much of the nine hours.” Talk about damning with faint praise.

The first rule of good storytelling is “show, don’t tell.”

What if, in place of characters talking about ethics, Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett had written a scene showing Kamehameha dealing with an ethical conundrum?

In episode 6 of  “Chief of War,” Kamehameha tells his council he’s proclaiming a law to protect peaceful civilians because he was attacked by villagers who thought he meant to assault them. (A mouthful to recall, which it was to listen to.)

Instead of all the talk, why not show Ka‘iana dragging a commoner before the council because the fellow has attacked him? When it turns out that Ka‘iana has unwarrantedly menaced the accused, Kamehameha pardons the suspect and proclaims his law of the ”splintered paddle.” Historically, that’s not what happened (but so much of what happens in “Chief of War” isn’t). A scene like that is more culturally immersive than talk of mercy alone, and it serves the story by heightening the growing tension between peace-loving Kamehameha and his hot-headed ally Ka‘iana.

Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett deserve praise for exposing a large popular audience to obscure Hawaiian history for the first time. It’s a singular achievement. But historically and culturally, the first season of “Chief of War” could have been better. I hope it will be better in a subsequent season, if there is one. Failing that, “Chief of War” can serve as a baseline for a future historical drama about 18th-century Hawaii and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii, about the life of King Kamehameha I and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

Chief of War Episode 9: The climactic battle that never was

“Chief of War” creators spin barest Hawaiian historical threads into fantasy

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender 

Before its premiere in August, Apple TV+ publicists described “Chief of War” as the story of the Hawaiian Islands’ unification. But by the end of the first season’s climactic battle between the forces of Kamehameha and his archenemy Keōua Kū‘ahu’ula in episode 9, Kamehameha and his ally Ka‘iana had united only Hawai‘i Island (the Big Island) under Kamehameha’s rule. So, the rest of the unification story will have to wait for another season or two.

Jason Momoa, who plays “Chief of War’s” hero Ka‘iana, directed episode 9. The battle is a cinematic tour de force. Fought in a hellscape of erupting lava, it's “The Lord of the Rings’” Battle of the Black Gate meets “Game of Thrones’” climactic Battle of King’s Landing, with much better lighting than the latter and a real volcanic eruption in the background instead of “The Lord of the Rings’” CGI Mount Doom.

Speaking of CGI, Aficionados of graphically bloody battle scenes will surely want to watch this one more than once. They’ll no doubt especially appreciate a computer-enhanced sequence in which a lava field splits in two under the feet of hundreds of Keōua’s warriors (or thousands; it’s hard to tell), tumbling them into a river of molten magma. (This bit struck me as the inverse of the Red Sea swallowing Pharaoh Rameses’s army in the 1956 film, “The Ten Commandments,” and the 2014 movie “Exodus: Gods and Kings”)

Momoa filmed his battle over eight days, deploying his production crew, actors, and scores of extras on the Kalapana lava field in the Big Island’s Puna District. The lava field is named after the village of Kalapana, obliterated by a Kilauea eruption in 1990. If you visit the Big Island, you’ll find the Kalapana lava field at the end of Route 130. You can’t miss it because the road ends abruptly at a wall of black lava. The street signs of the destroyed community still stand amid the lava, a stark reminder of the perils of investing in the area’s real estate.  

Providentially, near-simultaneous eruptions of the Mauna Loa and Kilauea volcanoes coincided with “Chief of War’s” shooting schedule. Momoa has called this geological event a “sign of approval from our ancestors.” Perhaps. But if Hawaiians’ ancestral storytellers could’ve been consulted, it’s unlikely they would have approved of Momoa’s and his co-writer Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett’s version of the Big Island’s unification. Why? Because “Chief of War” episode 9’s decisive battle, in which Ka‘iana kills Keōua, with or without their faceoff across a magma-filled chasm, never happened.

As they’ve done numerous times throughout this series, Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett have spun the barest elements of Hawaiian mo‘olelo (history) into kaao (fantasy). And as usual, history is more interesting.

Before episode 9's big battle, Kamehameha’s and Keōua’s warriors glare and snarl at each other, while their leaders hurl insults. Historically, Hawaiians in opposing armies often did this before they started throwing spears.

During the battle, the opposing armies’ priests stand apart, praying to their respective gods for victory, mostly unmolested because to attack them was kapu. According to Nathaniel Emerson, translator of 19th-century Hawaiian writer David Malo’s Hawaiian Antiquities (1951, Bishop Museum), they did this.

Keōua’s army was decimated by a volcanic eruption, but not during a battle, as in “Chief of War.”

Though Kamehameha and Ka‘iana fought Keōua Kū‘ahu’ula more than once, they never decisively defeated him.

The story of Keōua Kū‘ahu’ula

Keōua was younger than his cousin Kamehameha by fourteen or fifteen years. He was a constant thorn in Kamehameha’s side from the time of Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s death in approximately 1782.

Kalani‘ōpu‘u left the Kohala District to his favorite nephew Kamehameha, whom he had also named keeper of the war god, Kūkā‘ilimoku. He left the distribution of the rest of the Big Island’s land to his oldest son and heir, Kiwala‘ō. Kiwala‘ō refused to grant any lands to Keōua beyond his family’s ancestral Ka‘ū District.

After Kiwala‘ō was killed at the Battle of Moku‘ōhai, Keōua retreated to Ka‘ū, which became his base of operations against Kamehameha. The two cousins battled back and forth for control of the Big Island for the next nine years.

Keōua’s army was retreating from one of these battles when Kilauea erupted and smothered hundreds of his warriors. Despite this calamity, Keōua’s surviving forces administered a crushing defeat to Kamehameha’s warriors under the command of Ka‘iana, whom Kamehameha had dispatched to Ka‘ū to destroy his troublesome cousin’s disaster-stricken army.

Meanwhile, Kamehameha’s people built a massive heiau (temple) on a hill overlooking a small bay at Kawaihae, on Kohala’s northwest coast. Kamehameha had ordered the temple’s construction after a seer on O‘ahu prophesied that if Kamehameha built the temple and dedicated it to Kūkā‘ilimoku, he would conquer all the islands.

Unable to defeat Keōua in the field, Kamehameha sent two of his uncles to Ka‘ū to invite Keōua to Kawaihae for the consecration of his new temple. Keōua accepted Kamehameha’s invitation against his advisers’ advice. According to some accounts, Keōua thought Kamehameha meant to make peace with him. According to other accounts, Keōua suspected Kamehameha meant to kill him and went anyway, resigned to die.

Keōua Kū‘ahu’ula died at Kawaihae Bay when Kamehameha’s chieftains, led by Ka‘ahumanu’s father Ke‘eaumoku, swarmed his double-hulled canoe and assassinated him. Kamehameha consecrated the new heiau by sacrificing Keōua’s body on the altar of his war god, Kūkā‘ilimoku. Kamehameha was finally the undisputed ruler of the Big Island, and his road to conquest of the rest of the islands was open.

The foundations of the temple that Kamehameha built on the hill overlooking the bay at Kawaihae are still there. From a path just below the heiau’s lava-stone wall, you can look down on the small bay and imagine how its waters ran with blood amid that chaotic scene more than 230 years ago. The heiau takes its name from the Hawaiian name of the hill on which it stands: Pu‘ukoholā—the hill of the whale.

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii, about the life of Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

Setting the stage for a historic battle

Looking ahead to “Chief of War’s” climactic battle in episode 9, a question remains: What's it about, really?

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender 

In episode 8 of “Chief of War,” Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula orders his warriors to chop down palm trees in Kamehameha’s sacred grove, kidnaps the grove’s kahuna (priest)—whom he later tosses into the Kilauea volcano’s seething caldera, kills Ka‘iana’s brother Nahi in a fight, and sacrifices Nahi’s bones. It’s a multiply aggressive act that finally provokes the peace-seeking Kamehameha to concede Ka‘iana’s point that he must fight his cousin, Keōua. It’s also riveting drama.

Keōua, who previously tried without success to draw Kamehameha into a fight by burning down his village’s food stores, needn’t have gone to all that trouble. Simply chopping down a palm tree or two would’ve been enough.

Palm trees, nui, were sacred to Hawaiians. It was forbidden, kapu, for anyone to chop them down. For one ali‘i to fell a palm tree within another ali‘i’s jurisdiction was a provocative act almost sure to draw armed retaliation. Historically, that’s what sparked a bloody fight between cousins that followed the death of the Big Island’s ruler Kalani‘ōpu’u. But the fight wasn’t between Kamehameha and his cousin Keōua.

In “Chief of War,” Kalani‘ōpu’u has named Keōua to succeed him as the Big Island’s ruler and made his nephew Kamehameha the keeper of his war god Kū, in hopes of preventing a fight between cousins. Keōua wants the war god’s idol for himself, and that’s sufficient reason for him to go to war with Kamehameha in the Apple TV+ streaming series.

Historically and years before Ka‘iana arrived on the Big Island, Kalani‘ōpu’u gave Kū into Kamehameha’s keeping and named Kiwala‘ō, Keōua’s older brother, his heir. As the Big Island’s new ruler, Kiwala‘ō controlled all the island’s aina—land—except for the lands of the Kohala District, which Kalani‘ōpu’u willed to Kamehameha. Kiwala‘ō was free to divide the rest of the island among his subchiefs as he saw fit.

Suspicious that Kiwala‘ō intended to redistribute the land they’d held under Kalani‘ōpu’u to the island’s “rainy-side” chiefs, the “dry-side” Kona chieftains, led by Ka‘ahumanu’s father Ke‘eaumoku, pressured Kamehameha to come out of Kohala to join them in a war against his cousin. Reluctant to resort to arms, Kamehameha tried to persuade Kiwala‘ō to conciliate the Kona chiefs, without success.

Meanwhile, unprovoked, Kiwala‘ō’s brother Keōua and his warriors chopped down Kamehameha’s palm trees and killed some of Kamehameha’s people. Keōua’s brash attack decided the matter for Kamehameha and was the opening act of the Battle of Moku‘ōhai, which culminated in Kiwala‘ō’s death at the hands of Ke‘eaumoku. The historic battle was not fought over a feathered idol on a stick as “Chief of War” would have it. It was first, last, and always a fight over aina.

Other than the brutal unseating of Kiwala‘ō as the Big Island’s ruler, Moku‘ōhai settled nothing. The Big Island remained divided after Moku‘ōhai; Kamehameha and his Kona allies held Kohala and Kona, Keōua held Ka‘ū, and the cousins’ uncle held the Puna, Hilo, and Hāmākua districts. It would be another nine years before Kamehameha finally unified the Big Island under his rule.  

As with so much of “Chief of War,” its creators, Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett, have taken liberties with Hawaiian history in their lead-up to the series’ forthcoming climactic battle in episode 9. In this instance, they’ve cut out the unfortunate middleman, Kiwala‘ō, in favor of jumping years ahead to Kamehameha’s later fight with Keōua. This was inevitable once Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett chose Ka‘iana as their protagonist, because Ka‘iana wasn’t on the scene when Kamehameha and Kiwala‘ō went at it.

“Chief of War” was billed as the story of the fight to unify—more accurately, the fight over who would unify—the Hawaiian Islands. Historically, that fight was mainly resolved by a bloody battle between Kamehameha and the late Kahekili’s son, Kalanikūpule, on O‘ahu. Will that be what “Chief of War’s” final battle is about? It’s hard to imagine at this point, but who knows? Stay tuned…

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii about the life of  Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

 

Fancy versus History in "Chief of War"

Episode by episode, the Apple TV+ series has become increasingly imaginative  

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender 

When I was researching Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about the life of Hawaii’s Kamehameha and his struggle to unify first the Big Island and then the rest of the island chain under his rule, I learned that Hawaiians of Kamehameha’s time and earlier told one another two kinds of stories: kaao and mo‘olelo. Kaao were fanciful stories, told for fun. Mo‘olelo were serious stories Hawaiians—who had no written language—told to transmit their history, genealogies, and religious rituals to successive generations.

The Apple TV+ series “Chief of War” has been lightly tethered to Hawaiian mo‘olelo from the start, when its first two episodes mislocated important historical figures in place and time. But as the series has unfolded, its connection to the Hawaiian people’s mo‘olelo, already tenuous, has become increasingly severed. “Chief of War”—created by Hawaii-born Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett—is substituting kaao for mo‘olelo more frequently.

Take, for example, Kamehameha’s “law of the splintered paddle” (māmalohoe), which he proclaims in episode 6 of “Chief of War,” saying he’ll extend it to everyone, including Keōua Kū’ahu‘ula and subsequently to a haole sea captain in episode 7.

 

According to Hawaiian mo‘olelo, Kamehameha promulgated this law to protect civilians from being assaulted while going about their usual business—farming, fishing, food gathering, or literally just “lying down by the side of the road”—after he paid a humbling price for assaulting some civilians. In “Chief of War” Kamehameha tells his allies he’d slipped away from his council one night and taken a canoe to Puna, where locals who thought he’d come to attack them broke a canoe paddle over his head. That Kamehameha was attacked by commoners who broke a paddle over his head is mo‘olelo. But “Chief of War’s” how, when, and where of it is kaao.

First, the how. The notion that Kamehameha could have paddled a canoe from Kohala to Puna overnight and returned without his council noting it is a kaao requiring an impossible suspension of disbelief for anyone who knows the Big Island’s geography. For example, it takes nearly two hours to travel by car from Puako Bay in South Kohala to Kalapana in the Big Island’s Puna District by way of the Saddle Road, the shortest overland route. By sea it’s an eighty to ninety nautical-mile sail or paddle (source: Windows’ AI-driven Copilot, which I’ve found very useful for spot research). As powerfully built as history’s Kamehameha was, there was no way he could have covered that distance as quickly as “Chief of War” would have it, paddling a Hawaiian outrigger canoe by himself.

Second, the mo‘olelo’s where and when is much more interesting than “Chief of War’s” briefly told kaao would have it. The incident that led to the māmalohoe’s promulgation happened near Laupāhoehoe, north of Hilo on the Hāmakua Coast, on the Big Island’s windward side opposite of leeward-side Kohala. This, after Kamehameha suffered an embarrassing defeat at Hilo in his ongoing struggle to unify the Big Island (he suffered more than one); in this case at the hands of an uncle who ruled the Hilo District. Kamehameha was nursing his wounded ego when he paddled a canoe a relatively short distance down the Hāmakua Coast, in daylight, to attack some peaceful villagers, caught his foot in a lava crevice, and was attacked by the villagers instead.

Kamehameha’s application of the law of the splintered paddle in “Chief of War” is problematic. Kamehameha proclaimed the law to protect peaceful kānaka, civilian commoners. It’s unlikely he would have extended its protection to an ali‘i warrior like his bitter foe Keōa Kū’ahu‘ula. It’s even less likely that Kamehameha would’ve extended the law’s protection to a haole mariner like Simon Metcalfe. He does both in “Chief of War.”

Kamehameha’s application of the law to Metcalfe in “Chief of War” does serve to heighten the tension between Kamehameha and Ka‘iana, who scorns Kamehameha for his reluctance to fight, whether it’s with Keōua or Metcalfe. And goodness knows, the ofttimes-plodding plot of “Chief of War” needs periodic infusions of tension.

Kaao trumps mo‘olelo again in episode 7 of “Chief of War” when American Simon Mefcalfe orders his ship’s cannons loaded with nail-filled cannisters and opens fire on Hawaiian villagers gathered on a beach in Kohala, massacring hundreds of men, women, and children.

Mo‘olelo: Simon Metcalfe really fired his cannons on Hawaiians, killing scores. Kaao: In “Chief of War” Metcalfe’s slaughter of innocents happens on the wrong island and in response to a historically inaccurate provocation.

Briefly, in "Chief of War" Metcalfe’s ship arrives at the Big Island’s Kohala District, where Metcalfe hopes to commence a lucrative trade in sandalwood. Metcalfe’s used a stolen chart to find the Hawaiian Islands, even though Capt. James Cook had charted the islands earlier and every haole mariner and his uncle knows where they are by now.

Englishman John Young—who was left behind on Maui by the Nootka, a ship on which he never sailed, and who did sail on Metcalfe’s Eleanora, until Metcalfe left him behind on the Big Island—mediates between Metcalfe and Kamehameha in Kohala. Ka‘iana warns Kamehameha not to trust the “palefaces” and seeks to somehow force an armed conflict by sneaking onto the Eleanora at night and grabbing Marley, the former Nootka crew member who stole the chart and brought it to Metcalfe. An alarm is raised and a tense, armed standoff ensues until Kamehameha boards the Eleanora, orders Ka‘iana to stand down, and proclaims that his splintered-paddle law applies to a haole like Metcalfe as well as Hawaiians, much to Ka‘iana’s disgust. The following morning, Metcalfe is advised that the locals will supply him with food and water and told he must leave. Angered, Metcalfe sails to a neighboring Kohala bay and slaughters the villagers there. Aside from the massacre, the rest is pure kaao. The mo‘olelo is more interesting.

Metcalfe’s massacre happened at the village of Olowalu on Maui, not at Kohala on the Big Island. Metcalfe was not provoked by Hawaiians’ refusal to trade with him. He was provoked after a day of trading at another village, when Hawaiians stole the Eleanora’s skiff, tied to the ship’s stern, under cover of darkness.

Metcalfe first anchored off Honua‘ula on Maui’s leeward side for trade. After a day of trading successful for Metcalfe and Hawaiians alike, an ali‘i from Olowalu who had come to Honua‘ula to trade paddled out to the ship in the night, cut the skiff’s line to the Eleanora, and towed the skiff back to Olowalu. The Eleanora’s night watchman was asleep in the skiff. When he woke up he began shouting—too late because by then no one on the Eleanora could have heard him. Nevertheless, the ali‘i killed the unfortunate haole to silence him and tossed his body into the sea.

When Metcalfe discovered his skiff and his watchman missing the next morning, he ordered his men to fire the ship’s cannon on Honua‘ula, killing several villagers.  He sent people ashore to take prisoners. Two apprehended villagers were taken to the Eleanora for interrogation. They told Metcalfe the thieves were from Olowalu, up the coast towards Lahaina.

Metcalfe sailed to Olowalu, where the area’s high chiefess, who was the thieving ali‘i’s partner, declared a kapu, forbidding Olowalu villagers from approaching the ship because of what had transpired at Honua‘ula. After three days of pressure from the Olowalu ali‘i, who were eager to trade with the Eleanora, and after Metcalfe sent crewmen ashore to convince the Hawaiians as best they could by signing that Metcalfe meant them no harm, the chiefess lifted the kapu.

The Olowalu villagers loaded their canoes with pigs, fruit, yams, and vegetables, and whatever else they had to trade for haole goods, and soon their canoes surrounded the Eleanora. The ship’s crew pelted refuse at Hawaiians in canoes at the ship’s bow and stern to force them to join the other canoes on the Eleanora’s port and starboard sides. The gathered Hawaiians looked up from their canoes, waiting for Metcalfe’s permission to board the ship. When Metcalfe was sure no more canoes were coming out from shore, he ordered the Eleanora’s crew to open fire on the Hawaiians with muskets and port- and starboard-side cannons. At least 100 Hawaiians were killed instantly and scores more were wounded.

The Olowalu ali‘i who stole Metcalfe skiff wanted the boat for its parts. Having no metal ore or metallurgy, the Hawaiians prized any haole object made of any kind of metal, especially iron nails. Nails had been a common trade currency between haole seamen and Hawaiians since Captain Cook’s visit in 1778-79. The ali‘i and his men stole Metcalfe’s skiff to pry out its nails. They most likely chopped up the skiff’s remains for firewood.

Given the old Hawaiians’ fondness for nails, Metcalfe’s cannonading Hawaiians with nail-loaded canisters in “Chief of War” is a scene of grisly, albeit surely unintended, irony. No kaao, that. 

 

 

 

  

Hawaii's Kamehameha Schools is under attack

As “Chief of War” stirs popular interest in Hawaiian culture, a right-wing group launches assault on  Kamehameha Schools' admissions policy favoring native Hawaiians

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

(This blog post originally stated incorrectly that SFFA filed suit against Kamehameha Schools on Sept. 3 in U.S. District Court in Hawaii, based on a misunderstanding of a report by SCOTUS.blog. SCOTUS.blog reported on Sept. 3 that SFFA was preparing a suit. SFFA filed its suit on Oct. 20. I apologize for the error, but not for jumping the gun.)

I received a disturbing notice from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs recently: A Virginia-based outfit, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), is challenging the admissions policy of Kamehameha Schools. 

SFFA's challenge is a redo of an earlier challenge to Kamehameha Schools' admission policy—Doe v. Kamehameha Schools—that was argued and lost by its plaintiffs in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court nine years ago.

SFFA claims that “over 20,000 parents, students and others” have joined its membership “to help restore color-blind principles to our nations’ schools, colleges and universities” since its founding in 2014.

SFFA has successfully sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina over their admissions policies. SFFA is looking for families whose children have been rejected for admission to Kamehameha Schools.

SFFA says it's challenging privately funded Kamehameha Schools because Kamehameha Schools’ “preference [for applicants of native-Hawaiian ancestry] is so strong that it is essentially impossible for a non-Native Hawaiian student to be admitted to Kamehameha.” SFFA states that Kamehameha Schools’ “focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court.”

Kamehameha Schools does indeed give “preference to applicants of Hawaiian ancestry to the extent permitted by law.” Applicants who can prove to have at least one kanaka maoli (pure Hawaiian) ancestor can qualify for preferential treatment. Kamehameha Schools additionally reserves twenty-five percent of “new spaces” for orphan and indigent applicants who demonstrate they can be “academically successful.”

Kamehameha Schools’ present-day admissions policy is in keeping with its history of ensuring educational opportunities for Native Hawaiians since its founding by a bequest from the will of Bernice Pauahi Bishop in 1887. Pauahi Bishop was a great-granddaughter of Hawaii’s King Kamehameha I, who unified the Hawaiian Islands and founded the Kingdom of Hawaii.

SFFA’s attempt to prevent a venerable, privately endowed and funded Hawaiian educational institution from fulfilling its mission on its own historic terms is audacious. Worse than that, it’s duplicitous.

According to the 2020 census, 21.8 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents are self-identified native Hawaiians. And according to the Hawaii Department of Education, approximately 41,577 students in Hawaii’s public schools identified as Native Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian during the 2020–2021 school year, accounting for about 23.7 percent of the total public school enrollment of 174,704 students. 

Kamehameha Schools serves approximately 6,000 students across three K-12 campuses and more than 30 pre-schools—meaning that there are about seven Native Hawaiian students enrolled in public schools for every Native Hawaiian student in Kamehameha Schools classrooms. Because that ratio is so lopsided, there’s no way Kamehameha Schools can accommodate all Native Hawaiian applicants, let alone non-Native Hawaiian students; not under its preferential admissions policy.

Meanwhile, acting allegedly on behalf of a majority of Hawaii’s population, Students for Fair Admissions and their attorneys are contesting a Kamehameha Schools admissions policy that benefits a minority of a minority of a minority of Hawaii’s general population, general student population and Native Hawaiian student population. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

Students for Fair Admissions was founded in 2014 by conservative, self-described “legal strategist” Edward Blum. Blum, who specializes in orchestrating challenges to race-conscious policies in education and voting rights, is not a lawyer. He’s a professional organizer of lawsuits against educational and other institutions. SFFA is one of several non-profit organizations Blum’s established to bring legal challenges based on one form or another of alleged preferential discrimination, most often based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Blum’s other organizations are the Project on Fair Representation and the American Alliance for Equal Rights. Blum’s non-profit groups are reportedly funded by conservative donors and legal foundations. Since they’re non-profits, they don’t have to disclose their donors.

They do have to disclose their budgets. In 2023, according to their IRS 990 forms, SFFA paid Blum $48,000 annually and Project for Fair Representation paid him $150,000—this latter when Project for Fair Representation ran a $106,841deficit. Blum is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he likely draws another salary. AEI pays its fellows between $88,000 and $144,000 annually; average annual salary at AEI is $112,674. (Nice work, if you can get it.)

Policy changes are the primary goal of Blum’s groups. In 2014, Blum’s newly constituted SFFA challenged Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s admissions policies, arguing they discriminated against white and Asian applicants. SFFA ultimately won its case big time in the Supreme Court, whose favorable ruling in 2023 effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions.

That victory came with a multimillion-dollar exclamation point for SFFA when UNC settled with Blum’s group for $4.8 million, of which $3.9 million went to legal fees and $900,000 went to “expenses.” To date, Harvard has not settled with SFFA.

In Doe v. Kamehameha Schools he U.S. Ninth Circuit Court sitting en banc (with all its judges) upheld the school’s preferential admissions policy in a 12-4 ruling. But in the wake of the six-to-three conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s decision in the UNC and Harvard cases two years ago, SFFA ’s chances of winning a suit against Kamehameha Schools’ admission policy appear promising.

Kamehameha Schools is potentially a settlement-rich target for Blum’s SFFA and the group's attorneys. With a budget backed by a $15.2 billion endowment, including financial assets of $10.5 billion and $4.7 billion in commercial real estate, Kamehameha Schools’ operating budget for FY 23-24 was $460 million, including: $240 million to support its K-12 campuses and pre-school programs; $90 million for scholarships, outreach programs and partnerships with Hawaiian-serving organizations; $60 million for management of 365,000 acres of ancestral lands; and $70 million for support services and administration.

Financially, SFFA has been the most successful of Blum’s groups. In 2023 SFFA had revenues of $3.25 million, $1.74 million in expenses, and $1.51 million in net income. With resources like that, Students for Fair Admissions appears well fixed to finance the latest case against Kamehameha Schools all the way to a favorable Supreme Court, while potentially subjecting Kamehameha Schools to serious financial stress as it seeks to defend itself.

Forgive my cynicism for wondering if that isn’t a goal of SFFA's lawsuit, which seems bent on denying a beloved 135-year-old educational institution—devoted from its inception to uplifting native Hawaiians and their culture—the right to its own future.

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii, about the life of  Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

"Chief of War" goes downhill in episode five, and that's a good thing

No snow job; Hawaiians really, really sledded without it

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

In the fifth episode of “Chief of War,” Ka‘iana returns to Hawaii with his load of muskets, landing in the Kohala district on the Big Island, where he offers the district’s ali‘i moku (chieftain) Kamehameha his services. He’s not welcomed by Kamehameha’s council, who distrust him because of his previous alliance with Maui’s ruler Kahekili. Ka‘iana says he’s trying to “atone” for that. Kamehameha challenges him to a hōlua (sled) race, saying he’ll “let the gods” decide if Ka‘iana should join his council.

The ensuing hōlua race is at once the most thrilling and historically authentic scene in “Chief of War” to date. Thrilling, because Momoa and Hawaiian actor Kaina Makua (who plays Kamehameha) really rode handcrafted replica hōlua sleds down a track that would thrill an advanced snow skier; and authentic because Hawaiians of Kamehameha’s day did this for sport. Of course, the Hawaiians of the time didn’t have safety lines like Momoa and Makua, and they didn’t race to win their gods’ favor, but still…

When I was growing up in Chicago, I spent many happy winter-weekend afternoons joining other kids snow-sledding down a small hill in nearby Lincoln Park. So when I was  researching Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about the life of Kamehameha, I was excited to learn that Hawaiians sledded year-round without ice or snow. I was so entranced by the old Hawaiians’ sledding that I had to put a hōlua race between Kamehameha and his brother in my book. Unfortunately, when the time came to cut my draft manuscript down to a more readable (and portable) size my editor prevailed on me to lose the race.

My source for hōlua racing details and many other aspects of 18th-century Hawaiian culture was Hawaiian Antiquities, Mo‘olelo Hawai‘i by David Malo (Bishop Museum, 1951). Malo was a native Hawaiian born at Keauhou on the Big Island, roughly two years before Kamehameha’s climactic battle on O‘ahu for control of all the islands except Kaua‘i in 1795. Malo was a young man when the first Congregationalist missionaries reached Hawaii in 1820 and he learned to speak, read, and write English in a missionary school. He collected his people’s stories and recorded them in Hawaiian. His work, and the work others who added to it, was translated and published in English in 1898.

In Hawaiian Antiquities Malo describes “sliding downhill on the hōlua sled” as “a sport greatly in vogue among chiefs and people, and on the issue of which they were very fond of making bets, when the fit took them….The bets having been arranged, the racers took their stations at the head of the track; the man who was ranged in front gave his sled a push to start and mount it, whereupon his competitor, who was to his rear, likewise started his sled and followed after. He who made the longest run was the victor. In case both contestants traveled the length of the course [i.e., neither fell off their sled], it was a dead heat and did not decide the victor.” In that case, Malo says, victory went to the competitor who had “the best run.” He doesn’t say who the judges were; or what Hawaiians, who didn’t have coinage or currency, bet on these races.

The Hawaiians didn’t just slide down any hill. They constructed tracks for their sleds. “Rocks were first laid down,” writes Malo, “then earth was put on and beaten hard; lastly the whole was layered with grass, and this was the track for the hōlua sled to run on.” “Chief of War’s” producers built a hōlua track, based on historical descriptions, for episode five.

The Hawaiians built their tracks to last. On the Big Island, you can see a real hōlua track at the Kaloko-Honokōhau National HistoricPark, off Highway 19 just north of Kailua-Kona.

Kamehameha steals the show

The best thing about “Chief of War” to date is native-Hawaiian educator, taro farmer, and first-time actor Kaina Makua’s casting as Kamehameha. Makua, one of three “Chief of War” actors who speak Hawaiian, brings an expressiveness to his role, especially when delivering his Hawaiian-language lines, that the cast’s non-Hawaiian speakers, including Jason Momoa, lack. Moreover, Makua’s Kamehameha is true to history’s picture of him—a firm, thoughtful leader with a common touch; a warrior initially reluctant to fight, but ready to give battle if a fight comes to him.

A fight is coming to Makua’s Kamehameha. At the end of episode five, Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula leads an unprovoked nighttime raid on Kamehameha’s village and sets fire to the village’s thatched-roofed long house. The conflagration marks the beginning of “Chief of War’s” buildup to its season finale in episode nine, when Kamehameha and Ka‘iana will face off against Keōua in a bloody battle on a Kohala lava field (already much ballyhooed in advance publicity, so no spoiler alert there). Assuming “Chief of War” keeps faith with Hawaiian history, that battle will be a climactic fight between Kamehameha and Keōua for undisputed rule of the Big Island. Unification of the rest of the islands under Kamehameha’s rule will have to wait until another season of “Chief of War.”

A jarring moment in episode five and a historical fact check

Episode five’s connection to Hawaiian history is jarringly disrupted when, after speaking Ō‘lelo Hawai‘i—Hawaiian—almost exclusively through “Chief of War’s” first four episodes, Hawaiian characters suddenly start speaking English—to each other. Presumably, they owe their newfound English fluency to John Young, who’s been running English classes for the Hawaiians since he was marooned in Hawaii several years earlier. (This, while Young’s simultaneously learning to speak Hawaiian himself.) 

I suppose this is acceptable as dramatic license, but do these Hawaiians really need to speak English among themselves? They don’t, of course. It’s certainly convenient however for viewers who’ve become tired of reading subtitles by episode five.

Factually, it’s entirely implausible. At this point in Hawaiian history only Ka‘iana, who’s returned from the Far East after a lengthy sojourn and a roundtrip on two different ships with English-speaking crews (the Nootka and the Iphigenia), has had the time and opportunity to learn English—by virtue of exposure alone. Meanwhile, John Young, who’s only just arrived in Hawaii at about the same time as Ka‘iana’s return, hasn’t had time to learn Hawaiian, let alone teach English to a single Hawaiian.

In any event, late-18th century Hawaii’s general population did not speak English. Hawaiians didn’t begin to gain English fluency until well after the first Congregationalist missionaries arrived in 1820. The missionaries taught Hawaiians to read in their own language (using a phonetic alphabet that differed from Hawaiian as it was then spoken). Hawaiians achieved the world’s highest literacy rate, in their own language, by 1840; English did not become a primary language in the Hawaiian Islands until the mid- to late-19th century.

Hawaiians really did go mano-a-fin with killer sharks

 “Chief of War” mostly got it right

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

In the first scene of the first episode of “Chief of War,” the series’ hero, Ka‘iana (Jason Momoa), dives into the sea from a double-hulled sail canoe to rope and kill a niuhi, a man-eating shark, after his companions chum the water with ‘awa, an intoxicant, to inebriate the animal. As implausible as this might seem, it’s not a Hollywood CGI fever dream. Through “Chief of War’s” first four episodes it’s the series’ most historically credible scene.

According to native-Hawaiian writer Stephen L. Desha, Hawaiians went mano-a-fin with sharks and killed them. Desha conserved Hawaiian oral history in columns he wrote for readers of Hawaiian-language newspapers in the first quarter of the 20th century. His columns were later translated into English and compiled in a book, Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupi‘o (Kamehameha Schools Press, 2000). Kekūhaupi‘o was Kamehameha’s martial arts trainer; his kahu.

Desha learned about Hawaiian shark-hunting methods from his “wife's grandfather who was one of those who fished for niuhi on the purplish-blue seas of Kāne.” Desha recounted the old man’s account of shark baiting as he heard it:

In the red dawning [said Desha’s wife’s grandfather] my foster father ordered two men to immerse the bait [the flesh of a butchered pig], then some men with sharpened sticks…began to pierce the putrid bundles, releasing stinking juices and grease to spread over the surface of the sea.

— From Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupi‘o

Unlike Ka‘iana’s crew in “Chief of War” These real-life Hawaiian fishermen did not use ‘awa to slow the reflexes of their man-eating shark. But ‘awa, a sacred drink derived from a pepper plant, was ritually employed by Hawaiian shark hunters, as in “Chief of War.”

Drawing on the old man’s recollections, Desha spins his story of Kekūhaupi‘o’s fight with a man-eater. In Desha’s telling, Kekūhaupi‘o’s companions chum the water with stinking bundles of rotting sow meat wrapped in kalo (taro) and kī (ti) leaves to lure the shark to the canoe and dull its senses.

 Kekūhaupi‘o’s kahu cautions him to remain on the canoe until the shark grows sluggish from gulping “greasy” sea water:

“E Kekūhaupi‘o e, don’t be too hasty…when I tell you to leap, attempt to dive under this fish which is following our canoe, but not just at this moment, as the sea has not cleared. Wait a little and let the shark swallow the grease from the bundles.”

—From Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupi‘o

Kekūhaupi‘o waits as instructed, dives under the shark and spears it, killing it before it can turn on him.

Kekūhaupi‘o had watched the shark gulping baited sea water knowing very well the place to thrust his short spear and that if his thrust should be awkward his opponent would have time to turn quickly on him….on hearing his teacher’s order he dove straight to the shark’s side giving it no time to turn.

—From Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupi‘o

In my novel, it’s Kamehameha, coached by Kekūhaupi‘o, who dives into greasy water to kill a shark.

Kamehameha slipped into the water with a short ihe spear tied to his wrist. He filled his lungs, doubled over, and slid beneath the water’s surface. Intent on the pig meat, the shark did not notice him. From a fathom below the canoe’s hull, Kamehameha turned back and kicked hard, angling up toward the shark, now a dark shadow against the water’s bright surface. Sensing Kamehameha’s presence at last, the great predator turned toward him.

—From Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii

Regarding the virtues of greasy pig meat versus ‘awa for sedating sharks, a writer of historical fiction gets to choose, and putrid pig flesh makes for more pungent prose than ‘awa.

Historical choices in “Chief of War” episode 4

Ka‘iana concludes his adventure in Zamboanga by releasing hundreds of Asian men, women, and children from slave pens while searching for and rescuing Tony, his black crewman friend from the Nootka, while incidentally starting a fire that engulfs the town’s gritty slave-trade quarter. Historically, there’s not much to unpack from this wholly imaginative sequence.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in the Big Island’s Ka‘ū District, where “Chief of War” creators have made some historical and cultural choices.

The story:

Kalani‘ōpu’u, the Big Island’s ruler, has died. He’s named his son Keōua (Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula) to rule after him. Kalani‘ōpu’u’s nephew, Kamehameha, swears to follow Keōua, but that’s not enough for Keōua. He’s furious when he learns Kalani‘ōpu’u has entrusted Kamehameha with his war god, Kūkā‘ilimoku. Keōua wants to rule and keep the god, a grinning feathered idol on a pole. He calls Kamehameha a “low-born” “bastard” son of Poiwa (Keku‘iapoiwa) who’s not fit to take the god into his keeping. Keōua is so angry about this, he knocks out one of his own teeth to show the assembled chiefs how mad he is. Kamehameha is unmoved. He says he must honor his uncle’s dying wish and takes the god back to his fiefdom in Kohala, where he installs it in a temple and announces he will not fight Keōua unless Keōua attacks him first.

The history:

Historically, Kalani‘ōpu’u did not choose Keōua to succeed him. Prior to his death in the Ka’ū District circa 1782, Kalani‘ōpu‘u named his oldest son Kiwala‘o his heir and made his nephew Kamehameha the war god’s keeper—an arrangement Kalani‘ōpu’u hoped would forestall a fight between the two cousins after he died. When Kamehameha and Kiwala‘o eventually fought, they clashed over land distributions, not the idol. The fight between the two cousins was resolved by the slaying of Kiwala‘o at Moku‘ōhai (where Ka‘ahumanu’s father killed him).

The victory left Kamehameha in control of the Big Island’s Kohala and Kona districts. Keōua, who sided with his older brother Kiwala‘o against Kamehameha at Moku‘ōhai, controlled the Ka‘ū District. (A third chief—an uncle of Kamehameha, Kiwala‘o, and Keōua—ruled the Hilo and Puna districts and a portion of the Hamakua Coast on the Big Island’s windward side.)

Kamehameha and Keōua were still fighting for control of the Big Island—Keōua had previously dispatched their mutual uncle—when Ka‘iana turned up there with a load of muskets years after the battle of Moku‘ōhai. Offering his services to Kamehameha, Ka‘iana became an important ally in the former’s fight with Keōua for control over the rest of the Big Island. History will be served when Ka‘iana joins Kamehameha in opposing Keōua in a future episode of “Chief of War” (a clash that is almost certainly coming). But the series’ creators will have short-circuited history to get there.

Culture:

I appreciate the care “Chief of War” creators have taken to portray Hawaiian culture for a popular audience. But at the risk of stepping out of my “lane” as a haole, I’ll point out a couple of discordant cultural notes in episode four.

First, Keōua’s do-it-yourself tooth “extraction”—Hawaiians of Kamehameha’s and Ka‘iana’s day knocked out their own teeth out of grief, not in anger as Keōua does in episode four. Hawaiians considered it proof of anguished mourning. Kamehameha famously knocked out one of his teeth when his first lover died.

Second, Keōua’s insulting reference to Kamehameha’s parentage—Keōua calls Kamehameha Keku‘iapoiwa’s “bastard” offspring. In fact, no Hawaiian child could be born a bastard in Kamehameha’s day. The Hawaiians of his time had no marriage sacrament and there was no such thing as birth out of wedlock. Moreover, Hawaiian men and women were equally free to take lovers even when they partnered with others. A case in point: As a very young man, Kamehameha had an affair with one of Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s wives, with the inevitable biological result. Kalani‘ōpu‘u adopted and raised Kamehameha’s child. As for Kamehameha’s “bastard” birth, his mother, Keku‘iapoiwa, was rumored to have had an affair with Kahekili, Maui’s future ruler. Her partner, Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s brother Keōua (not be confused with Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s son Keōua), accepted Kamehameha as his own child.

Hawaiian villages really raised children back in the day.

Do you have comments, objections, concerns, thoughts about this and other posts on this blog? I’d love to hear from you. Well, from anybody for that matter.  

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii about the life of  Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

 

 

“Chief of War” scratches the surface of Hawaiian history’s dramatic potential

 True-to-life drama trumps confected spectacle

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

Having written a historical novel about the life of Hawaii’s legendary King Kamehameha and his fight to unify the Hawaiian Islands, I’ve gnashed my teeth over the Apple TV+ miniseries “Chief of War’s” departures from Hawaiian history. But I’m revising my opinion of the show.

In a previous blog post, I took vigorous exception to the dislocation of real people in time and place in “Chief of War’s” first two episodes. Episode three aroused my ire (to the point of being irate) when another historical figure, American ship captain Simon Metcalfe turned up in a place and time I wasn’t expecting him.

Briefly, in episode three of “Chief of War,” Metcalfe’s ship, the Eleanora, is at Zamboanga in “Indonesia” (Spanish Indonesia, AKA the Philippines) simultaneously with John Mears’s Nootka, whose crew plucked Ka‘iana out of the sea off Maui, where neither Ka‘iana nor the Nootka were, historically speaking. In “Chief of War’s” alternative historical reality, Metcalfe’s Eleanora is without its real boatswain, John Young, because in episode two of “Chief of War” Young got lost on Maui and left behind by the Nootka, which historically wasn’t there, and neither was Young because, historically, he was with Metcalfe on the Eleanora—at the Big Island. (Are you following me?)

Aaaanyway, back to Zamboanga. A Nootka crew member named Marley steals Meares’s navigational chart of Hawaii and takes it to Metcalfe, who evidently has never heard of Hawaii and wouldn’t know how to find the islands without it, even though the late Captain James Cook charted the islands years before and every haole mariner and his brother knows where they are by now—and historically Metcalfe and Meares found them without help. Marley tells Metcalfe there be trading treasure there; sandalwood, a commodity the world is eager for because it smells nice, and Hawaii has sandalwood trees galore. Marley also attacks and ties up Ka‘iana’s only friend on the Nootka, a black man, presumably to sell him into slavery.

A Hawaiian woman who’s a proprietress of a bar in Zamboanga befriends Ka‘iana, helps him acquire weapons, and urges Meares to go into the sandalwood trade with her. How and when this entrepreneurial wahine reached the Philippines is anybody’s guess, but as she’s had time to establish herself as a businesswoman it appears she’s been there long enough to have arrived too early, historically speaking.

Meanwhile, there’s not much action back in the islands. The evil Kahekili is building a structure with his enemies’ bones; the Big Island’s mō‘ī (king) Kalani‘ōpu’u, is dying; his son and heir Keōua (Keōua Kū‘ahu‘ula), and his nephew Kamehameha don’t like each other (historically, Kalani‘ōpu’u’s eldest son, Kiwala’ō, was his heir); kindly John Young teaches Ka‘ahumanu and other Hawai‘ians English; Ka‘ahumanu marries Kamehameha wearing a wedding gown that looks like it was designed by Dior, Balmain, or Givenchy. (It’s a wonder what Hawaiian seamstresses could do with tapa—bark cloth—back in the day, or maybe the gown was prȇt à porter?)

The preceding historical nit picking is unfair to “Chief of War” creators Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett, who evidently know their audience. “Chief of War” may disappoint viewers who expect to see history they already know brought to life, but they’re a minority. Most of “Chief of War’s” viewers are likely unfamiliar with Hawaiians’ history and culture. That includes viewers who’ve been to Hawaii, especially regarding Hawaiian culture. Going to a lū‘au doesn’t cut it.

Telling a Hawaiian story from a Hawaiian point of view, in Hawaiian, for the first time on a screen of any size, Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett are reaching a popular viewing audience while immersing them in Hawaiian culture. Spectacle keeps viewers coming back week after week as the series unfolds: 

A noble hero of Herculean proportions triumphs over adversity; politics forces a beautiful woman into a marriage she doesn’t want, setting up a future, tension-filled romantic triangle; a brutal warlord plots to extend his reign over a gentle, peace-loving populous; white intruders encroach on and threaten to exploit an indigenous people; and there’s fighting, lots of bloody fighting. 

We’ve all seen this movie before. Familiar spectacle is “Chief of War’s” wrapper; inside there’s a cultural encounter of a novel kind. For Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett, cultural respect is the thing.

Hawaiians will judge whether Momoa and Pa‘a Sibbett have given their culture its due. It’s too bad they haven’t given Hawaiian history its due—or couldn’t because of production constraints—because truth being stranger than fiction, true events make for more compelling entertainment than “Chief of War’s” spectacle.

For example, the Englishman John Young was not stranded in Hawaii by accident; he was a victim of circumstances, and the circumstances are intrinsically entertaining:

• Young was captured by the Hawaiians and held against his will by Kamehameha after he rowed ashore at the Big Island’s Kealakekua Bay to hunt game fowl for the Eleanora’s crew.
• Young had to go ashore because Kamehameha, ruler of most of the Big Island, put a kapu (taboo) on the bay, barring his people from trading with the Eleanora, on pain of death.
• Kamehameha wouldn’t let them paddle out to the Eleanora because a few days earlier at another bay, one of his subchief allies had boarded a different haole vessel and slaughtered all but one of its crew.
•  Kamehameha didn’t want the crew or captain of the Eleanora to find out what happened to the other haole ship because he feared the Eleanora’s captain would fire his cannons on the people at Kealakekua in revenge. So, he couldn’t allow Young to return to the Eleanora.
• The subchief who boarded the other ship and killed its crew was seeking revenge.
•  Some days earlier the Eleanora had arrived at the subchief’s village.
•  When the subchief boarded the Eleanora to greet Captain Metcalfe and initiate trading, Metcalfe beat him with a heavy rope.
• The subchief vowed to avenge Metcalfe’s drubbing by attacking the next haole ship to come along.
•  The next ship to come along was the Fair American, captained by Metcalfe's son, who died in the assault.
• The surviving Fair American crewman was Isaac Davis, who later became one of Kamehameha’s two trusted haole advisers; the other being John Young.

Seriously you can’t make this stuff up—real people, real events, and real drama ready-made for visual storytelling. It’s the historical equivalent of instant coffee. Just add dialogue.

The history of Hawaiian unification is bursting with true-to-life drama. I hope “Chief of War's” popular success spurs another filmmaker to unpack all of it.

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii about the life of  Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

What’s in a consonant? How missionaries changed Hawaiian

 The language Hawaiians speak today is not their ancestors’ ‘ōlelo 

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

Thanks to “Chief of War,” Jason Momoa’s nine-part series streaming on Apple TV+, a wide viewing audience is learning about the Hawaiian Islands’ unification and the founding of the Kingdom of Hawaii for the first time, notably from the Hawaiians’ point of view and in their language. But the series’ Hawaiian characters are not speaking the ‘ōlelo (Hawaiian language) of Hawaiians in the late-18th century, when “Chief of War” takes place.

Hawaiians had a rich oral tradition but no written language prior to 1820, when the first Congregationalist missionaries arrived from Massachusetts. After gaining fluency in Hawaiian and converting influential chiefs and chiefesses to their brand of Protestantism, the missionaries set out to spread the Word to the up-to-then unlettered masses by teaching them to read it in their own language. To this end, the missionaries embarked on a six-year project to develop a Hawaiian-language lexicon for a Hawaiian-language Bible.

They quickly ran into a problem, however. The Hawaiians’ spoken language was too complex for the written language the missionaries wanted to create. First off, the Hawaiians used too many interchangeable and potentially confusing consonants—B and P; L, R, and D; K, T, and D; W and V.

For example, consider the last pair of consonants, W and V. As the missionaries presumably heard them say it, Hawaiians interchanged “v” for “w” in “Hawaii,” pronouncing it “ha-vy-ee," which they still do. Meanwhile, the missionaries would have heard Hawaiian word for woman pronounced as wahine, which does not rhyme with “machine.” Oops, Hawaiian vowels are pesky. The “i” is pronounced “ee” and instead of being silent, the final “e” is pronounced “eh.” And wahine is pronounced wah-hee-neh.

If they’d come up with their own written lexicon, the Hawaiians likely would’ve kept and interchanged the  “v” and “w.” Moreover, the old Hawaiians actually pronounced “Hawaii” “oh-vy-ee.” The consonant-loving missionaries were loath to start any word with a vowel, thus “o” had to go.

To simplify their Hawaiian-language lexicon, and perhaps to reduce the printing costs of Hawaiian Bibles, the missionaries dropped the interchangeable consonants B, R, D, and V, leaving the Hawaiians with P, L, K, and W. Hawaiian as the missionaries wrote it and 19th-century Hawaiians learned to read and write it—becoming the world’s most literate people at the time—is the Hawaiian we mostly hear today.

The British naval explorer Capt. James Cook, who “discovered” (stumbled across) the Hawaiian Islands in 1778-79, heard Hawaiian and wrote it in his journals as Hawaiians spoke it. For example, Cook wrote of a Hawaiian ruler named “Terryaboo” (Teh-ree-ya-boo), and a subchief named “Tamahamaha” (Ta-mah-hah-mah-ha). In the missionaries’ lexicon, “t” becomes “k” and “r” becomes “l”, “Terryaboo” becomes Kalani‘ōpu‘u (Kah-lah-nee-oh-pu-u), and “Tamahamaha” becomes Kamehameha (Ka-meh-ha-meh-ha). Kamehameha is, of course, the Hawaiian who united the Hawaiian Islands and became the Islands’ first king; Kalani‘ōpu‘u was his uncle and ruler of the Big Island when Cook arrived. Turns out, Cook got Hawaiians’ names right—to a T.

I was deep into the first draft of OnceThere Was Fire, my novel about the life of Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands, before I learned from a park ranger at the Big Island’s Pu‘uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park that missionaries had altered the Hawaiians’ language. (Hōnaunau is a must-see stop on any Big Island historical tour.) I approached the ranger, told him about my novel, and asked him if I needed to change all the characters’ names. To my relief he assured me that today’s Hawaiian is what it is and not to worry about it.

That said, I’ll leave off with one caveat for viewers of “Chief of War”: The true (pre-missionary) name of the series’ hero wasn’t Ka‘iana; it was Ta‘iana.

Postscript: What’s in a name?

If you’re wondering why the Hawaiians are called “Hawaiians,” speak “Hawaiian,” or why their island chain is named the “Hawaiian Islands,” or America’s 50th state is called “Hawaii,” look for the answer to Kamehameha (AKA, The Conqueror), who united the islands. Kamehameha was born on the island of Hawai‘i (the Big Island) and began his successful campaign to unify (subjugate) all the other islands there. If Kamehameha had hailed from Maui, or if his fiercest enemy—Kahekili, the ruler of Maui—had conquered all the islands instead of  Kamehameha, the chain would likely be identified on today’s maps as the “Maui Islands,” the islanders would be “Mauians,” and their language would be “Mauian.”

Before the Hawaiian Islands were called the Hawaiian Islands, they were known as the “Sandwich Islands,” thanks to their aforesaid “discoverer,” Captain Cook. Cook named the islands after his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, an English nobleman who had the brilliant idea of slapping a piece of meat between two slices of bread. Hawaiians called their islands the Sandwich Islands until 1840, when the preamble to the Kingdom’s first constitution referred to the archipelago as the Hawaiian Islands. And they’ve been the Hawaiian Islands ever since.

Stephen Shender is the author of  Once There Was Fire, A Novel of Old Hawaii about the life of  Kamehameha and the unification of the Hawaiian Islands.

“Chief of War” takes promiscuous historical liberties in first episodes

 Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

 (Spoiler alert: You may not want to read this blog post if you haven’t watched the series yet.)

 Anyone familiar with Hawaiian history and hoping to see it well portrayed, however dramatically adapted, is likely to be disappointed by the first two episodes of “Chief of War,” Jason Momoa’s nine-episode series on Apple TV+.   

 Fiction

Episode one finds Ka‘iana, having deserted Kahekili’s army on Maui in disgust over the latter’s bloodlust, living peacefully as a simple, shark-roping fisherman on Kaua‘i. 

Requiring Ka‘iana’s continued service in his quest to conquer O‘ahu, Kahekili sends his warriors to find him and summon him back by the following morning, or else. After somehow crossing 230 to 250 miles of ocean between Kaua‘i and Maui overnight in a sail canoe, Ka‘iana agrees to fight for Kahekili again. Returning to O‘ahu with a fleet, he spearheads a successful invasion amid graphic and copious bloodshed and many bared male butt cheeks. Kahekili arrives in time to gratuitously order the slaughter of unarmed civilians and O‘ahu’s boy king, who are sheltering in a holy place of refuge (a pu‘uhonua in Hawaiian). Ka‘iana is filled with disgust anew. At night, he and his family steal away, this time to Maui.

In episode two, Kahekili’s warriors pursue Ka‘iana to Maui. Ka‘iana hides his family in Maui’s ’Iao Valley and takes off, leading a score of pursuers away from them.

Meanwhile, a group of haole come ashore from their ship to gather provisions for their continued voyage to China. One of Kahekili’s men crosses paths with a crewman, kills him and takes his pistol. Ka‘iana comes upon this fellow, kills him, takes the pistol and, encountering the other haole seamen in the bush, returns the pistol to them, earning their good will.

Ka‘iana continues his flight and is injured in a melee when Kahekili’s warriors overtake him, but he manages crawl away and hide in a cave where he’s subsequently found and nursed back to health by the ali‘i princess Ka‘ahumanu, meeting him for the first time.  

Ka‘ahumanu and Ka‘iana part ways, Ka‘ahumanu to travel to the nearby Big Island where she’s been betrothed by her father to an unnamed chief, against her will, and Ka‘iana to continue leading Kahekili’s warriors away from the ’Iao Valley.

This time Kahekili’s warriors corner Ka‘iana at the edge of steep cliff at the ocean’s edge and in the ensuing fight he disappears over the side with one of his attackers. Ka‘ahumanu and her entourage are about to depart for the Big Island in their double-hulled sail canoe when a crewman from the haole ship staggers up the beach crying he’s lost. Ka‘ahumanu orders her people to take the bedraggled haole with them. Meanwhile Ka‘iana wakes up aboard the haole ship and is last seen staring at Maui as it recedes in the ship’s wake.

Facts

None of the 19th-century Hawaiian sources on which I relied while researching Once There Was Fire, my novel about the life of Hawaii’s Kamehameha, mentioned a connection between Ka‘iana and Kahekili on Maui prior to their alliance on O‘ahu. The pair could have been together on Maui before moving on to O‘ahu. But everything else about Ka‘iana’s whereabouts in “Chief of War’s” first episode is sheer bunkum. 

As detailed in a previousblog post: Ka‘iana fled from O‘ahu to Kaua‘i after picking the wrong side in a rebellion against Kahekili. After Ka‘iana irritated Kaua‘i’s queen-consort, he left Kaua‘i on the Nootka, a British ship captained by John Meares and bound for China. “Chief of War’s” misplacement of Ka‘iana in episode one leads to some serious historical problems in episode two.

In episode two Ka‘ahumanu’s encounter with Ka'iana in a cave on Maui couldn’t have happened because Ka‘iana wasn’t there. Moreover, Ka‘ahumanu was more likely on the Big Island with her mother and father. Ka'iana met Ka‘ahumanu on the Big Island after he’d returned from China several years later, when she was already one of Kamehameha’s wives.

Captain Meares did not fish Ka'iana out of the sea after he fell off a cliff on Maui because neither of them were there. Ka‘iana boarded Meares’s ship under his own power at Kaua'i, where the Nootka had stopped for provisioning.

Meanwhile, who was that lost haole sailor whom Ka'ahumanu took aboard her sail canoe as she left Maui (where she probably wasn’t in the first place) for the Big Island? My bet's on John Young an English seaman who fell into Kamehameha’s hands about the time of Ka‘iana’s return from China. If confirmed in a later episode of “Chief of War,” that’s a historical mashup three or four times over: Ka'ahumanu wasn't on Maui, and John Young did not get left behind on Maui by the Nootka (Meare's ship), because (1) the Nootka stopped at Kaua'i, not Maui, and (2) because Young was left behind on the Big Island, not Maui, by a different vessel, the Eleanora captained by a nasty haole named Simon Metcalfe.

What a tangled history we weave when first we screw up who was where when!

Ka‘iana, the inconsistent hero of “Chief of War”

Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Shender

“Chief of War” producer/writer/actor Jason Momoa’s upcoming nine-episode historical drama about the late 18^th century struggle to unify Hawaiian Islands (premiering on Apple TV+ August 1) will mark this story’s first introduction to a wide viewing audience. Even if they’re unfamiliar with Hawaiian history, casual visitors to Hawaii likely already know the name of Kamehameha, the warrior chieftain who led the fight to unite the Islands, from the Hawaiian highways and roads named after him. But there are no roads named after “Chief of War’s” hero, Ka‘iana, whose portrayal by Momoa as a leader of the fight to unify the Islands will leave a lasting impression on the series’ audience. Momoa’s Ka‘iana will no doubt come off as a heroic.

 Ka‘iana is an important figure in Hawaii’s unification story and a colorful character in Once There Was Fire, my historical novel about the life of Kamehameha and his unification of the Hawaiian Islands. He fought bravely alongside Kamehameha in battles on the Big Island and Maui. Ka‘iana became the “most famous” Hawaiian of his day, thanks to portraits of him that circulated widely in the world beyond the Hawaiian Islands.

 I drew on stories about Ka‘iana from multiple sources when I was researching and writing my novel and found him to be more an opportunist than a hero. In the sources I consulted he comes off as a conniver whose most consistent loyalty was to himself.

I’ve already sketched the broad outlines of Ka‘iana’s story elsewhere: He sided with Kamehameha’s fiercest enemy, Kahekili, before turning against him. He later sided with Kamehameha and then, on the eve of the final battle for Hawaiian unification on O‘ahu in 1795, turned against him.

There are two chapters to Ka‘iana’s story: what happened before he joined forces with Kamehameha and what happened after. In my novel, I alluded briefly to the first part and wrote extensively about the second.

The first chapter is as important to understanding Ka‘iana as the second. I wrote about it at length in the first draft of Once There Was Fire, but on my editor’s advice I reduced it to a few hundred words. The fuller story is worth exploring for its insight into  Ka‘iana’s character from the Hawaiians’ point of view.

Part I Misadventure on Kaua‘i

Having chosen the wrong side in a struggle between the O‘ahu nobles and Kahekili, the Maui ruler whom he’d earlier helped conquer O‘ahu, Ka‘iana fled for his life to Kaua‘i. Hawaii’s last king, David Kalākaua (1836-1891) tells the story of Ka‘iana’s misadventures on that island in his collection of Hawaiian lore and oral history, Legends and Myths of Hawaii (Mutual Publishing, 1990).

According to Kalākaua, Ka‘iana was welcomed on Kaua‘i by the island’s queen, Kamakahelei, and her consort, Kaeo, a cousin of Ka‘iana and one of Kahekili’s brothers. Writes Kalākaua:

“Ka‘iana was kindly received at the court at Kaua‘i and given lands for his proper maintenance. But he could not remain quiet. While the clash of arms was heard on the other islands, he chafed under the restraints of his exile and attempted to organize a force of warriors for a descent upon O‘ahu. Kaeo prevented the departure of the expedition, however, and a mutual feeling of suspicion and antagonism was soon developed between him and his reckless and restless cousin.”

Ka‘iana could have settled on Kaua‘i as a gentleman farmer and lived peacefully off the sweat of the peasant tenants who would have come with the lands he’d received for “his proper maintenance.” Instead, he tried to organize a military venture that threatened to embroil Kaeo in fight with his own brother.

Blocked by Kaeo from an attempted conquest of O‘ahu, Ka‘iana next tried to displace him as Kaua‘i’s co-ruler. Continues Kalākaua:

As the avenues of advancement through the chances of war seemed to be temporarily closed to him, Ka‘iana donned his best attire, gave entertainments and began vigorously to play the courtier. He first sought to supplant Kaeo in the affections of the queen. Failing that, he next paid court to her daughter…The latter was disposed to regard his suit with favor, but Kaeo…objected to the alliance.

Ka‘iana was fast wearing out his aloha on Kaua‘i. As his luck would have it, about this time the English navigator, explorer, and fur trader John Meares arrived at Kaua‘i. Meares’s vessel, the Nootka, reached Kaua‘i, Kalākaua writes:

…just as the fortunes of Ka‘iana seemed most desperate and Captain Meares was easily prevailed upon to permit the handsome Hawaiian to accompany him to the Asiatic Coast.

As to who “prevailed upon” Meares, surely by this point Kaeo was as eager to get rid of his troublesome cousin as the latter was to leave Kaua‘i.

Kalākaua’s grandfather was a close ally of Kamehameha. Before he became king, Kalākaua published a Hawaiian-language newspaper devoted in part to preserving his people’s oral histories in writing. As an exponent of the Hawaiians’ view of Ka‘iana, Kalākaua is as authentic as they come. And in Kalākaua’s telling, Ka‘iana comes off as a self-aggrandizing troublemaker.

Part II Schemer and troublesome ally

When Ka‘iana returned to the Hawaiian Islands from China (on a different ship) he was no longer welcome on Kaua‘i, for obvious reasons. Ka‘iana prevailed on the ship’s captain to take him to the Big Island where he offered his services—along with muskets, ammunition, and the knowledge of their use he had acquired abroad—to Kamehameha.

The year following Ka‘iana’s arrival, two English seamen, Isasc Davis and John Young, fell into Kamehameha’s hands. Davis was the lone surviving crewman of the Fair American, a ship that was attacked and captured by one of Kamehameha’s allies. Young was the boatswain of the Elenora, a sister ship that arrived some days later. He was taken prisoner by the Hawaiians when he came ashore to hunt game for his ship’s larder. This, after the locals unaccountably failed to paddle out to trade with his ship’s captain as expected, because  Kamehameha had forbidden it.

Kamehameha’s ally thought he had good reason to attack Davis’s ship, and Kamehameha thought he had good reason to bar his people from trading with Young’s ship—and to hold Young despite his desire to return to the Elenora. Kamehameha subsequently barred Young and Davis from trying to leave on any foreign ship, upon pain of death, because he feared retaliation if foreigners (haole) learned what had happened to The Fair American and its crew. (If you want to know more about these goings on, google “Fair American,” “Elenora,” “John Young,” “Isaac Davis,” or “Simon Metcalfe.” Or better yet, read my book.)

Young and Davis settled into life on the Big Island, rendering valuable services to Kamehameha, who treated them well. But the pair did not entirely abandon their desire to leave, given an opportunity to do so. About a year after their arrival, they got their chance.

James Colnett, the captain of a newly arrived haole ship, learned that two Englishmen were being held by Kamehameha and sent them a note offering to aide in their escape. Young accepted the captain’s offer in a note of his own, entrusting a Hawaiian to deliver the note to the ship. But the ship’s captain never got it, because Ka‘iana intercepted it.

Author Emmett Cahill tells what happened next in his well-researched biographical work, The Life and Times of John Young (Island Heritage Publishing, 1999). Relying on a later, second-hand account by the British explorer George Vancouver, who learned of this affair from Young, Cahill writes:

“[Ka‘iana], already jealous of the two white men, took the letter to the king [Kamehameha] and persuaded him he could read it, claiming he had learned to read during a trip to China aboard an American vessel. Ka‘iana’s version to Kamehameha was that Young and Davis ‘desired Captain Colnett to get the king in his possession and to keep him until the schooner [the Fair American] were delivered up to him and many more of the islanders.’ To avoid this trap, Ka‘iana urged the king to kill Young and Davis, ‘after which … no one would know any thing about them but themselves.’”

Young’s note was in English. Ka‘iana had learned to speak English during his travels abord haole ships, but he could not read it.

Having received no reply from Colnett, Young and Davis set off for the shore but were quickly surrounded by Hawaiians and taken to Kamehameha. If Ka‘iana was counting on Kamehameha executing Young and Davis for trying to leave, he was sorely disappointed. Instead, writes Cahill, quoting Vancouver, who was paraphrasing Young: 

“[Kamehameha] very dispassionately advised them to return from whence they had come; and said, that he would do anything they could wish to render their lives more comfortable, but he would not consent that they should leave the island.”

Young and Davis never again sought to leave Hawaii. True to his word, Kamehameha rewarded both men with lands and positions of trust among his advisers. They served him loyally for the rest of his and their lives. (Davis predeceased Kamehameha and Young outlived him. Kamehameha appointed Young, who married one of his nieces and settled at Kawaihae in the Big Island’s Kohala district, governor of the Big Island.)

For his part, Ka‘iana continued to vex Kamehameha. The object of continued discord between them was Kamehameha’s favorite partner (out of his some twenty “wives”) Ka’ahumanu.

Hawaiians had no marriage sacrament and Hawaiian men and women of Kamehameha’s time and before held liberal attitudes about sex. Men could have children with multiple women and women could have children with multiple men with little or no fault found by anyone. Hawaiian culture having no concept of “wedlock,” no Hawaiian child was ever born with the stigma of “illegitimacy.”

Kamehameha was not concerned about the “extra-marital” liaisons of his other “wives,” but he made an exception for Ka‘ahumanu, declaring her kapu (forbidden) to other men because, according to one account, his kahuna nui (high priest) told him to.

According to Stephen L. Desha, an early 20th century Hawaiian-language newspaper columnist and preservationist of Hawaiian oral history, the priest Holo‘ae told Kamehameha:

There is only one rebellion remaining in your kingdom…and that is your wife, Ka‘ahumanu. If the love of your wife turns to another ali‘i (noble) and she rebels against you, then your kingdom will become unstable…

According to the previously mentioned King David Kalākaua, politics had nothing to do with it:

[Kamehameha] loved her as well as he was capable of loving any woman, and she was the only one whose indiscretions were regarded by him with jealousy.

Whether for political reasons or reasons of the heart (or both), Kamehameha would not tolerate any other man paying court to Ka‘ahumanu.

Ka‘ahumanu was a strong-willed woman however, and unwilling to respect a kapu that was intended for men, and not her. Here’s King Kalākaua, again:

 [Ka‘ahumanu] doubtless sought to avail herself of the privileges of the time, but Kamehameha objected with a frown that would have meant death to another, and for years their relations were the reverse of harmonious.

Ka‘iana was likely the main source of the couple’s disharmony. He ignored Kamehameha’s kapu and paid too much attention (and perhaps more than that) to Ka‘ahumanu. The disharmony continued until George Vancouver, who had befriended Kamehameha and Ka‘ahumanu, prevailed on the two of them to, in effect, kiss and make up.

For Kamehameha, there would have been no forgiving Ka‘iana for his approaches to Ka‘ahumanu, but Kamehameha still had uses for the impetuous warrior, and he did not punish him. He did, however, freeze Ka‘iana out of his inner council ahead of a climactic battle on O‘ahu for control of all the islands except Kaua‘i in 1795. This—plus, no doubt, suspicions that Kamehameha’s advisers of longer standing wanted him dead—contributed to Ka‘iana’s insecurity about his status in Kamehameha’s camp and led him to defect to the losing side on the eve of the battle of O‘ahu, at the cost of his life.

Ka‘iana chose further military adventure over a comfortable life as a gentleman farmer on Kaua‘i. When his cousin, the consort of Kaua‘i’s queen, foiled his scheme to invade O ‘ahu, he tried to supplant him in the queen’s affections. When he failed in that, Ka‘iana pursued the queen’s daughter, exhausting his welcome on Kaua‘i. On the Big Island, Ka‘iana schemed against John Young and Isaac Davis, displeasing Kamehameha. He then further alienated Kamehameha by coming between Kamehameha and his kapu partner, Ka‘ahumanu. Despite all this, Ka‘iana had proven his worth to Kamehameha in earlier battles and could have again, to his advantage, on O‘ahu. But his insecurity got the better of him at the end.

Decision by decision and step by step, Ka‘iana dug his own grave.