Origins
Origins
This chapter discusses the origins of people who continue to inhabit Hā'ena by drawing on stories attached to the land. Sources for these stories include oral traditions passed informally over the years from generation to generation as well as books and texts containing stories of Hā'ena. This chapter enters the world of Hā'ena, as seen through the eyes of the ancestors, the kūpuna (elders), and their descendants, all of whom inhabit the land today. It considers a variety of sources where the Hawaiian people preserved their own understanding of their origins, including the cosmological genealogy known as the Kumulipo; accounts suggesting that the earliest inhabitants of Hā'ena might have been the Menehune; and stories about the akua Kāne and his traveling companion Kanaloa, the female akua Pele, the Piliwale sisters, Kapalae, and Hi'iakaikapoliopele (Hi'iaka in the bosom of Pele).
Keywords: oral traditions, Hā'ena, ancestors, kūpuna, Hawaiian people, Kumulipo, Menehune, akua, Kāne, Pele
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