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.