April 24, 2026 • 43 mins
Yves delves into the rich and varied story of Emma Nakuina, often known as the first woman judge in Hawaii.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and what good stuff
I never told you protection of iHeartRadio and today is
time for another edition of Female First, which means we
were once again joined by the wonderful, the worldly Eves.
(00:25):
Welcome Eves. Hi, we are so excited to have you.
As always, you once again have been pretty busy. Can
you tell the listeners what you've been up to. I
have been moving around so yeah. Since the last time
we all spoke, I was leaving Cape Town to come
back to my hometown of Atlanta, and that was.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The world win of a time. But I had a
really good time though I really did. It was just
like one thing back to back to back to back.
My birth day was during that time as well, so
I'm anased to teach a yoga class on my birthday,
which was really nice, and I got a lot of
the things that I like. I didn't have with me,
(01:13):
but I want it so I don't know if I
mentioned this before, but I like to keep I'm liking
keeping things light when I'm here, I have. I like it.
I like the fresh start and not having a lot
of things. But there were some things that I needed
because when I came I came directly from India, so
I had like only two suitcases, one big one, one
(01:35):
small one. So there were a lot of clothes that
I didn't have, So I was kind of under equipped
in some ways. And I'm trying. I don't really buy
a lot of things, and I'm trying to buy the
fewest amount of things that I can. So, oh, I'm
one of my first hike here since I honestly kind
of abominable. But I have been, like I think I
(01:58):
told you, I've been like was strangers like you would
want to hike because I didn't want to go alone,
and then relating to people as weird. That's a whole
other conversation. But h Yeah, So I went on a
hike with a couple of people and it was gorgeous, stunning.
(02:20):
I'll never get tired of the landscape. Yeah, it's just
really it reminds me quickly how much of a privilege
it is to be here. That's awesome, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Glad that you had a good time coming back to
your hometown and your birthday was good and that you're
back in.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Cape Town safely. Thank you, yes, yes, and you got
the hike. Safety is important in these times all the time,
but these times too.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Well, this is an interesting question I have.
I know the answer for Samantha. I don't know the
answer for you, Eve. But were you ever involved in
like a debate club type of thing or a model
you in type of thing? Would you Are you good
(03:13):
at like persuasive essays?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, I am grinning from ear to ear for everyone
who can't see me, because I am really great at
persuasive things in general. Like I attract things to me
through my writing, so that is one of my strong suits.
So like if I I've won competitions, I get things
(03:36):
through my writing. So I will say that, yes, I
if somebody needs to do a petition for something, I'll
be like, okay, use me, like I'll help you. I
can't guarantee you the win, but you know, like use
the power of my pen specifically to try to get
the thing that you want, like because I have I
do have that track record. However, debate team. No, I
(03:58):
was never on a debate team. I was an act
dmick team girl. But I don't think I would be
good at debate team because I get I'm not an arguer.
I don't really like confrontation and that will just be
a little too stressful for me. I think, I think
some people. I also think of the things that you
(04:20):
have to be a good talker, and I know I'm
sitting here and everybody's like, you're talking on a frickin
mic right now. I was not a talker as a child,
So although I did perform and I did lots of things,
but still it wasn't my favorite thing to do. So
that was definitely something I would not choose. I do
remember being in my gifted education class when I was
(04:43):
in elementary school and they were teaching us about debate,
and back then I was like, oh, okay, maybe you know.
But then it got time for me to be able
to actually join debate teams and I was like, nah,
not for me. I'm gonna do. I'm doing a million
other things anyway, So yeah, what about y'all.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, I was I was in a class that had
a debate element. I don't think I was on debate team,
but you had to learn to debate. I was really
good at it, but I didn't like it because the
teacher always assigned me specifically the topic the opposite argument
I would like to make because I was the town
(05:22):
feminist back then. Some people would know like, oh, she
would hate argue this, and so they would always assign
me that. But I was also really competitive, so I
would usually win and then'd be really.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Mad about it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So I was on that. I don't know if I'm
really good at persuasive writing. I'm good at writing like
I won essay contest, but I don't think because I
remember once I had a teacher tell me I relied
too hard on I can't even remember where it's called anymore,
but the one where you're like trying to make people
feel an emotion, like I relied too much on that,
(05:54):
and so I'm not sure. Maybe I would. I would
defer to you, Eve for except writing. I think we
need a little bit more of that.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Well, I was gonna say, that's really true, actually effective.
Look at the Republican Party, that's what they used and
have one. I don'tt to understand what she means. I
think it's because you were winning too much.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I think probably the point she was trying to make
is that the Republican Party shouldn't be doing that, but
they are winning.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You're correct if you want to win that's what you do, apparently.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I guess. Yeah, say she was a tough teacher. She
was notoriously really tough.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I came from a school that had very little extra extras,
so I don't think we had any like debate teams.
There were things that I was not involved in because
I wasn't like top tier. I think I ended up
being top twenty, but not top ten, and anything extra
extra would be top ten. So I didn't quite make
the cut when we would have I'm sure because you
(06:54):
had I think this was my tenth grade. I'm assuming
you'll probably remember when you had mock trial and it
would be based off some play. I think mine was
about Caesar. I think that was the typical Was it
yours too? Like I see, oh, okay. I was Brutus's lawyer,
and though because the kids already knew the play and
(07:16):
they did not care about trial stuff, they already made
up their mind way beforehand. My point was that he
was innocent of intent and murder because what he was
doing was for the good of the country. That he
admitted that he did kill them, but this was not
what you think. And my teacher was like, I think
you need to be a lawyer, like she was freaking,
(07:38):
like she was freaked out by me because of the
rationale that I came out on as the tenth grader.
But I still lost because they were like, no, but
he killed them.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I was like, but that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah, that's the closest I can remember of having something.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Did you continue? You didn't continue after that, because it
sounds like you got some nice affirmation, and for me,
it's saying I'm good at something. I'm like, okay, maybe
all right with this for a second.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
It's one of those things where it kind of felt
like an insult, you know what I mean when they
were like, yeah, you're too good at that.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You need to check and see if you're okay with
your soul type of thing.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Because I came from a very country mountain town that
had very black and white ideals, so in that sense
of like, yeah, you're a reasoning murder and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay, but this is what I know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So essentially, obviously I'm not a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I don't I don't think it would make me cry
being a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, because I'm also very hyper competitive, So if I
felt like I was representing it either way, Like, if
I was representing someone who did something wrong, I would
feel guilty. If I was convicting someone who did something
who should be like like had reasons were like all
these things, I would feel like guilty. So I don't
think I could do it anyway back to.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's your answer.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, a lot of considerations to take in, of course,
but let's just loosely relate to who we're talking about today.
And I'm very excited to talk about this person. Who
did you ring for us today, Eves.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I am excited to So today we're talking about Emma
kailik Metcalf Beckley Nakuina. So she is considered the first
female judge in Hawaii. Now there is some discrepancy over
that title, but we'll get into that a little later
in her chronology when we get to that point. But
I also want to give a big shout out to
(09:40):
Uhuwayhi Hopkins, who I pulled a lot of this info from.
She did research on Emma and like has talked about Emma.
There's a thesis that she did about Emma and it's
called hanw Makalolo for the Benefit of Her Race. A
portrait of Emma Kaili Capulo Metcalf Beckley Nakowina, and apparently
(10:05):
she started this research because Frank Metcalf, who was Emma's brother,
is her great great great grandfather, so there is a
family relation there. Essentially, why is why she how she
got into that research. The thesis was done in twenty twelve,
and there was a talk that she gave in twenty
(10:27):
twenty where she mentioned that she needs to update the thesis.
I haven't seen an updated thesis, so I know that
there are some things in that thesis that she said
herself because of the descendant, said you need to correct
that that need to be updated. But it is still
a very comprehensive thesis and like a foremost place you
(10:52):
can go to for a very full, full body chronology
of Emma's life, and it is really cool. And also
I'll say that she has been on my list, my
collection of people I wanted to talk about for so
so long, and in the mystery of why it is
(11:13):
why it feels like the right time to talk about
her right now? That is now? But yeah, I'm excited
to get into her story. Shall we get into the history? Yeah,
(11:34):
So Emma was born on March fifth, eighteen forty seven.
She grew up in Manoah, Oahu and her mother was
a chiefist named Kailaku, and through her mother's line she
was coco Alie or basically a class of chiefs of
nobility that cared for the ali e, which were the
(11:57):
high nobility, and the Coco would uplift their ability to
control a district or an island, so they were in
service to the alee. So Hopkins does talk about this
more in her thesis because there's a lot more that
(12:19):
goes around how nobility worked, how the classes changed because
of the overthrows and the new constitutions and the disenfranchisement
and the colonization and the white supremacy of it all
that was happening at the time, So a lot of
those structures changed the way that Hopkins described it, and
(12:44):
that affected what Goco Elee meant by the time Emma
was around and was growing up. But just know that
it was because of her lineage. She was hanging around
the nobles. She was in the noble circles related to
the Lee, and that was like part of what she
was born into and how she moved through society and
(13:07):
how she worked to when she was younger. But Hopkins
also said that she believes that one of the knowledge
systems that did come down through Emma's mother's side is
the management of water, and that is part of what
she what she studied, what she was a scholar on
(13:28):
how she worked later in her life, and that water
management may have also had something to do with her father,
who was Theophilist Metcalf. She might have also gained knowledge
in that as a child because of her father. So
her father, Theophilist Metcalf, was a descendant of Puritan immigrants.
(13:49):
He was He had this de Guero type shop. Apparently
it was short lived, but that kind of gave him.
He's been known as a first photographer in Hawaii. He
was a land surveyor for the Mahele, which was the
land redistribution process as proposed by Kamehameha the third and
(14:10):
as soon as foreigners could buy land, he bought some land. Uh.
He was also Marshal of the Kingdom for a short second.
Hopkins told this story of how there were no walls
in the prison because that was one of the things
he was over as a Marshal of the Kingdom. But
like he was like, we need to get some walls,
(14:32):
like can't we figure something out? And essentially he was
only this marshal for a short time because he didn't
really care for the position. He was also Superintendent of
public Works, member of the House of Representatives, and he
became a sugar planter. So there's this very involved and
(14:53):
very full it's full of tension. This story in Emma's
in her father's life that had to do with land.
So he bought some land. He bought a plantation for
one thousand and forty eight dollars that was put in
Emma's name when she was a child, and that was
supposed to be her land. So after he died, he
(15:17):
left the land and his will to Emma, but the
trustees of that will wouldn't let her manage it. She
wasn't like, she wasn't able to get her land back,
and she couldn't take the issue to court, And thinking
about her role in litigation, it is very ironic to
(15:39):
think about how much trouble she went through with this.
But she couldn't take the issue to court because she
was married and the rule of law at the time
was that she had to have permission from her husband.
Her husband at the time, who were going to call
him out by name in a second? Okay, so you're
about to find out his name. Her husband at the
time wouldn't let her go up against the sale because
(16:03):
because y'all, this is about to get even shadier, the
person who was buying the plantation was his cousin's husband.
Isn't that wild? Take a moment. The probate for her
father's will ended up taking like nine years. She tried
to go to court after he died, the case was
(16:23):
dropped because the person who purchased it had already owned
it for many years. So yeah, a little glimpse into
that drama. But her father was also a member of
the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society and he went on to
have three more children, Frank, Helen, and Julia, but they
(16:46):
didn't share a mother with Emma, and they didn't move
through society at the same way, like the same way
that Emma did. So it it seems like they were
kind of as strange like they were. They didn't really
get along, well, they weren't on the same page. Yeah,
it didn't seem like it was the closest relationship for sure.
(17:07):
But when Emma was a child. Kameyh May how the
fourth chose her to be trained in traditional water use
and writes it was a thing to kind of see
what children were drawn to and kind of what they
had access to through their parents, and what their parents
were well versed in and knowledgeable in, and they could
(17:28):
be you could you would nurture that and help a
child move forward and whether whatever that direction is. And
this was the case with Emma. She got trained in
traditional water use of rights and kameha May how the
fourth also made her custodian of the laws of the
Kamehamehas and she was made an authority on the workings
(17:49):
of all ancient laws. So she these are really high,
very noble things that she was assigned to do. She
went to a Wahu college later called Punaho and she
was the first Kanakamui or native Hawaiian student to go
to Punaho school. She almost attended Mills Seminary in California,
(18:14):
but her father died in August of eighteen sixty six
in Oakland, which is where the school was, and she
instead went back home and took care of family. So
speaking of that man, his name was Frederick Beckley, her
first husband and they got married in eighteen sixty seven.
The Beckleys or they also are named family okay, so
(18:38):
Sam Beckley you name dropping because they were of a
high chiefly ranking as well. The two of them had
seven children together, although unfortunately a lot of them died young,
and her first husband died in eighteen eighty one and
she ended up remarrying in eighteen eighty seven. Tsei and
(19:00):
cousin Moses Nakauina. He was also of Coco a lie
status and Emma she was as Coco a lie like
we talked about earlier, how that class was. They were
in service with a lie. She was a sort of
(19:21):
lady in waiting to Queen Kapiolani and Queen Liliukolani, and
when the queens would travel or start organizations, Emma was
there and she would help out. And as an example
of some of the things that she was involved in
because of her status, she was secretary of the Lilo
(19:43):
Ko Lanni Savings Bank, which was a bank for women.
She was a first division member of the Lilo Ko
Lani Educational Society. And as an example of the travel
she did, she went on a trip to Bird Island
with Lily Okalani as I said earlier, the researcher who
(20:04):
gathered all this information, did all the research and recorded
that research on the life of Emma was clearly after
these is still finding out more about Emma and her life.
So she found out that she was a godmother to
(20:25):
Princess kai U Lani. So I don't know how much
in the last few years more that she's found out
about Emma, but I'm sure there's a lot more. If
I'm probably a lot more to be discovered too. But
Emma herself didn't have a lot of she didn't have
(20:45):
any really formal training in western law. But her dad
apparently had a lot of family members who were trained
in the legal field, which sounds about right. I mean,
you know, considering his lineage, he had that Puritan family
from Massachusetts also, you know, of high ranking and all
these things. Yeah, so she still had access to that
(21:09):
information essentially. And from eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty
seven she was working as a cure trix. And we've
come across that suffix a lot in our previous episodes.
Ava trix was one of my favorite ones to say.
(21:30):
But as it sounds, it means curator. She would call
herself a cure trix, and she was a curator at
the Hawaiian National Museum and Library. That museum was commissioned
in eighteen seventy two, and the first curator of that
museum was Harvey Rexford Hitchcock Junior. He was appointed in
(21:51):
eighteen seventy four, and in eighteen eighty two, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs, who's was Walter Murray Gibson, had the
museum moved from the Department of Education to the Department
of Foreign Affairs. Museums were becoming this hugely important and
influential place and became more desirable as a vehicle for
(22:18):
attracting tourism and money and all the things. And he
Administer of Foreign Affairs, appointed in the curator of the
museum in eighteen eighty two, and under her she apparently
uplifted this museum a lot. The museum's collection was considered prized.
(22:40):
But in eighteen eighty seven, just five years after she
became curator, the museum was affected by the Bayonet Constitution,
which is a part of the whole lead up to
the annexation of Hawaii, the overthrow of Native Hawaiians. A
lot of Native Whyans were disenfranchised in this process, and
(23:03):
so the museum fell prey to that whole insidious situation.
In eighteen ninety one, most of the museum's collection was
moved to the Bishop Museum. Also, I just always, you know,
saying things like that out loud, it always feels so
(23:23):
it always feels so icky, like it feels so dark,
because it's just yet another example of the negative effects
that cultural institutions have to face when there are things
that are happening that are mated down through government, especially
especially white supremacist actions of government that touch cultural institutions
(23:48):
and the work that they're doing. But yeah, most of
the museum's collection in eighteen ninety one was moved to
the Bishop Museum. She did not become the curator at
the Bishop Museum, and we'll come back to that in
a bit of a second. But to move through this chronology,
(24:10):
we'll move on, but just put a pin in that
that name Bishop Museum. So she also publishes a lot
of writing while she was curator. In eighteen eighty three,
she wrote a pamphlet that went with pieces that were
going to an exhibition in England, and that was called
Hawaiian Fisheries and methods of fishing, and that kind of
(24:33):
kicked off her start in becoming the prolific writer that
she was. She began writing serials for newspapers. One of
the first ones was Hiyaka and then and in eighteen
eighty four to eighteen eighty six she published Moleilo or
Hawaiian Stories that were passed down through generations, and this
(24:54):
publication called Thrums Annual. She also wrote reports, and she
advocated for things like she wrote a letter in a
newspaper advocating for creating and naming a park, and a
lot of the other stuff she did revolved around those
legends and stories that had been passed down. She published
(25:17):
some of those too, and in eighteen ninety four she
published this treatise called Ancient Hawaiian Water Rights and Some
Customs pertaining to Them. And Hopkins has said that historians
and scholars still use that treatise as a source for
how water was managed and pre contact Hawaii. So coming
(25:42):
back to the Bishop Museum, William Tuffs Brigham became the
first curator of the Bishop Museum in eighteen ninety two.
Later on he became the first director of the museum.
He was there for quite a while, so there was
a lot of back of worth in his position at
the museum. But there was a point where in eighteen
(26:06):
ninety seven, Emma and some of her friends were on
the lawne watching the Kamehameha School for Boys some of
the students who were there watching them do military training,
which is a pretty normal thing for people to do.
But Brigham had a problem with it because he had
a problem with her. He had beef with Emma, and
(26:28):
he had a janitor come out and tell Emma and
her friends to leave, which is like, you couldn't do
your own dirty work. But whatever, Brigham is soon fired,
but then he's brought back, and then he was later
fired fully. But yeah, there was there was some beef
and back and forth there. But in eighteen nineties she
(26:51):
kept writing. In eighteen ninety seven she co wrote an
article where she interviewed the oldest living inhabitant of Hawaii.
And it was the year after that, eighteen ninety eight,
when Hawaii was annexed by the US. Just to kind
of position us in time here. So a few years later,
(27:12):
nineteen oh four, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee, which was this
precursor to the tourism board there hired her to write
a pamphlet to promote tourism. She is the only Hawaiian
they hire, which is kind of okay, not kind of.
It is really wild to think about, but not surprising.
(27:34):
It's one of those things where it's like, okay, of
course it's the tourism board, you know, but she's the
only Hawaiian they hire. And it was the only pamphlet
that they never reprinted. It was called Hawaii It's People
in their Legends, and in it she uplifted how industrious, organized, humble,
(27:59):
and not eligible Hawaiians are, so she said in it,
like how on par Hawaiians were with Europeans and Asians.
But then she'd also mentioned how there were ways Hawaiians
were superior. So it definitely seems like one of those
things where she knew she had to She knew she
(28:21):
had to navigate how she was saying what she was
going to say in there, because it's this way of
like she knew her audience, right, so she knew who
was going to be reading these pamphlets, So they're going
to be thinking Hawaiians are inferior to everyone else, especially
the Europeans, Europeans and Asians who are coming here. The
Hawaiians are going to be less civilized than these people.
(28:41):
They're going to be less knowledgeable than these people. So
it kind of makes sense that she was putting Hawaiians
on par with Europeans and Asians. She would say, I
can't remember exactly what the quote was, but something like
we do this just as well as Europeans and Asians do.
And I just had to sit with that for a
second because it's like, it's like you only have to
(29:02):
do that. You know, you're used to being part of
a marginalized group where it used to be inferior. It's
kind of like you have to prove to these other
people by directly saying we're on par with them. All right,
let's start there as a baseline, and then you can
kind of get into the Okay, these are the ways
of which we think what y'all are doing is actually
not up two hour standard. And so she went on
(29:24):
after saying that to say that like Hawaiians, we care
for the land. Unlike and this is a quote, the
white man, with his alleged superior knowledge, prevailed on chief
and commoner to throw down their wholesome restrictions as saving
of superstition, with the result that fishes are very scarce
(29:45):
in Hawaiian waters and getting more and more so every year.
So basically, she was saying, we know how to take
care of the land. We've been doing this for a
long time. We have a lot of great, sustainable and
precedented systems that work well. And you come over here
and you are supposed supposed to have this like highly
(30:06):
civilized knowledge, this highly superior knowledge, and you're not keeping
the fishes alive. They're scarce because of this so called
knowledge that you have. So I just appreciate it. It
seemed like a kind of like you're stepping into the
water slowly. You're starting on the shallow end and then
you're kind of tipteeling your way into the deep end
(30:26):
on the other side. However, we hear the language that
I just used. It wasn't. She wasn't. They didn't love that.
The promotion committee didn't love it. So it makes sense
that they didn't. They didn't reprint that pamphlet and didn't
care for that. So a few years later, in nineteen
(30:58):
oh seven, she retired from her position as water commissioner,
but she kept writing and It's notable that all of
her publications were in English, and I can't speak Hawaiian.
I don't understand Hawaiian.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So what I'm saying is we've talked a lot before
about like how fewer things are accessible to me and
to us as other English speakers, especially for English only
speakers like a lot of and readers like a lot
of us are in the United States. That means that
this work is accessible to me and to other people
who are just English speakers who want to read it.
(31:37):
But of course I was curious about why that was,
because Emma could speak Hawaiian and she did give her
lectures in Hawaiian. So the way that Hopkins, the researcher,
just talks about it, she says that she was still
(31:58):
even though she was writing in English, he was still
addressing the native Hawaiian audience through like subtexts and meanings
that native Hawaiians would know but other people might not
pick up on. So foreigners who would be reading this
(32:18):
wouldn't understand those underlying meanings, but the Hawaiians would get
that subtext. Hopkins also says that she Emma might have
wanted to educate people who only spoke English, so it
was a matter of like, yes, it was still kind
of how we talked about with that quote, like Okay,
we just have to tell you a little bit. Okay,
(32:39):
we are on par with y'all, like we do do
this too. So those are a couple of points about it.
There's another point that I'll get to in a second,
but I wanted to pause to just say that I
just loved hearing Hopkins say that about how there was
subtext there because of course I'm not I'm not Hawaiians,
so I wouldn't know that subtext. However, I can relate
(33:02):
to it so much because this is how knowledge was
shared through black people in so many ways, through black
communities throughout history, because we weren't able to say things
in front of white people. So it was like we
had to figure out how to code. It was a
lot of enigma, and it was a enigma that we
understood amongst each other in ways of sharing secrets and
(33:22):
information that we didn't want to go outside of our
circle that we knew we had to say it in
a different way, but it was still in public. So
it's like, how do we do that in a pamphlet?
How in her case, you know, she was addressing both audiences.
So despite the fact that she was using English, which
was this colonizer's language, she still was able to speak
(33:49):
to her own people. And so I just really I
appreciate that point, and I think just as us who
for all the non historians listening and non scholars listening,
you know, it's something that we are able to relate
to and understand more deeply, even if we don't fully
know about Hawaiian history and what it means to be Hawaiian.
(34:11):
But the other point that Hopkins brought up, which was
also something I loved, and this is speaking to my
WU side, is that Hopkins thinks that Emma might have
had some layer of foresight here, of predictive ability, because
(34:32):
she was like, well, maybe Emma had this inkling that
Hawaiians might not speak as much Hawaiian in the future,
so this language but will be lost to a lot
of native Hawaiians, and so if I write this in English,
then it will be accessible to Hawaiians later on, who
should absolutely have this knowledge. So it's cool to think
(34:56):
about that as well. I know that speculation, speculation based
on her deep research and understanding of Emma though, and
also whether that was the case or not, that is
a very real benefit of what happened, because now we're
sitting here talking about her, and now a lot of
Hawaiians who may not have been able to understand the
(35:17):
Hawaiian language have access to this information. And also, Emma,
there were articles that were written about her in her time,
but her her presence has only gotten larger and more
brilliant because of all of these publications she did, and
(35:38):
because a lot of them are in English. But yeah, oh,
there is one story I forgot to tell about Brigham
related to his related to his beef with Emma. So
in nineteen seventeen, she brought a group of visitors to
(35:59):
the met and he told her off. I'm not sure
exactly what he said, but one of the museum trustees
was witnessed to this whole brigamorole, and Brigham was fired
because of that. So she kind of got him fired.
I think that's kind of an important thing to say,
where it's like, in a way, she got him fired.
(36:21):
But yeah, so she did a lot of other things too.
She was a notary public, a grantor of marriage licenses,
She was a translator, she was a cultural advisor. She
was a translator because she would take American curriculum and
she translated it into Hawaiian for Hawaiian schools. And in
(36:41):
eighteen ninety two, she became Commissioner of Private Ways and
Water Rights for Kona Oahu. And this is where we're
getting to her first, she was the only woman to
hold this position, so once Lili o'kilani isn't queen anymore,
that made Emma the highest ranking woman in government. So
(37:04):
she held that position until nineteen oh seven, so quite
a while. And Emma herself said that she held that
position longer than anyone before her. So one of the
cases that she was on during this time in nineteen
oh four was called the Lehai Naluna water Rights case,
(37:26):
and she was co counsel on that case with Assistant
Attorney General Noah Aluli. So, like we said before, she
had no training in law, she wasn't a lawyer, but
she was considered to have the knowledge to be able
to do the work that lawyers and judges did. And
(37:46):
Hopkins maintains that even though there's been like debate over
whether she is an actual judge, because we started this
episode talking about how she was the first female judge
in Hawaii. Hopkins maintains that she was a judge, and
I'm going to trust the people who have done the
research and understand the legacy and the actual work that
people did, because there can be also a lot of
(38:09):
semantics at play as these with these first like we've
talked about before, but the practicals of it were that
Emma was presiding over cases. In those cases, there were plaintiffs,
there were defendants. Those people who were there were represented
by lawyers. These cases happened in a courtroom, and people
(38:29):
there were sworn in, there were witnesses. I mean, the
list goes on, and when Emma made a decision, she
recorded it and those decisions were legally binding. And for
these reasons that is that's why Hopkins maintains that she
was a judge. And Emma was called a judge in newspapers.
(38:50):
So there was a nineteen ten article about her called
American woman a judge in Hawaii. Yeah, an American woman,
missus Nakuwema has made herself a power in Hawaii. She
holds a unique position in the territorial government. She is
a water rights commissioner and sits as a judge to
decide cases where the rights are in litigation, and is
(39:14):
considered an able and most just official, her decisions seldom,
if ever being set aside. So yes, newspapers are not
the final say on what someone's official title was. However,
even then they recognize that the work she was doing
was essentially the work of a judge, So that is
(39:35):
her first. We're given it to her today. We're the
official We are the official judges of who gets to
be a judge. That's right correct. She was one of
the first women inducted into the Hawaiian Historical Society that
happened in eighteen ninety four. She was also a member
of the Daughters of Hawaii and she taught Hawaiian studies
(39:58):
at the Territory Royal School McKinley. And she ended up
dying on April twenty seventh, nineteen twenty nine, when she
was eighty two years old. And like I said earlier,
she has living descendants, so there are still people who
carry her legacy forward and it is rich. So I'm
glad we've got to talk about her today.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Me as well, and what she did so much. I
love that we didn't get to her first until like
the ag. Yeah, Now I kept thinking, like, did I
miss it? She was just up to so much and
it's a really fascinating story. And she also saw a
(40:39):
lot of change in her lifetime and had to adapt
to those changes. So it is a story that I
feel does invite more questions. It is sort of like, oh,
I should go research that, or I should look into
that more. I'm really happy that people like Hopkins have
(41:01):
done this research, are still doing this research, and we
might find out something new that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It is really cool to think about. And that just
made me think, Annie, about how you're talking about how
she was in this transitional period. That has been kind
of a running thing for our last Like the last
few people that we've talked about, they've been at these
like transitional periods from eras of colonization to eras of independence.
(41:29):
Maybe it's the other way around, but yeah, these people
have lived on these precipices. So I didn't even think
about that until just now because I remember mentioning that
in our last episode too. I don't know if that
says something about where we where we are in America today.
That's why these stories are like the ones that I
want to share at this moment that could go a
lot of ways. So I don't know what to wish for,
(41:50):
but maybe we're in a precipice and I can only
hope fingers crossed that it's in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, let us hope us Oheeves, Well, once again, thank
you so much for bringing this story to us.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We always love having you. Where can the good listeners
find you? Thank you? Y'all can find me? Go first
to Eves Jeffcote dot com. That is spelled y V
E S J E F F c O A T
dot com. Y'all can get to everything from there, sign
up for my email list, keep up with what I'm doing,
(42:28):
read some of are writing all of the things. You
can also go to Instagram I'm at not Apologizing, and
you can also listen to many other episodes of Stuff
Mom Never Told You, where we're talking about female first,
our pioneering accomplishments of women in history.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yes, and go do that if you have not already listeners.
If you would like to contact us, you can or
email us hello a Stuff I Never Told You dot com,
also on Blue Sky a Mom Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram and TikTok at Stuff We've Never told You. We're
also on YouTube. We have some merchandise accompon Bureau, and
we have a book you can get wherever you get
your books. Thanks as always to our superroduce Christina or
executive producer My and your contributor Joey. Thank you and
(43:09):
thanks to you for listening stuff Never told You. Projection
by Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and what good stuff
I never told you protection of iHeartRadio and today is
time for another edition of Female First, which means we
were once again joined by the wonderful, the worldly Eves.
(00:25):
Welcome Eves. Hi, we are so excited to have you.
As always, you once again have been pretty busy. Can
you tell the listeners what you've been up to. I
have been moving around so yeah. Since the last time
we all spoke, I was leaving Cape Town to come
back to my hometown of Atlanta, and that was.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
The world win of a time. But I had a
really good time though I really did. It was just
like one thing back to back to back to back.
My birth day was during that time as well, so
I'm anased to teach a yoga class on my birthday,
which was really nice, and I got a lot of
the things that I like. I didn't have with me,
(01:13):
but I want it so I don't know if I
mentioned this before, but I like to keep I'm liking
keeping things light when I'm here, I have. I like it.
I like the fresh start and not having a lot
of things. But there were some things that I needed
because when I came I came directly from India, so
I had like only two suitcases, one big one, one
(01:35):
small one. So there were a lot of clothes that
I didn't have, So I was kind of under equipped
in some ways. And I'm trying. I don't really buy
a lot of things, and I'm trying to buy the
fewest amount of things that I can. So, oh, I'm
one of my first hike here since I honestly kind
of abominable. But I have been, like I think I
(01:58):
told you, I've been like was strangers like you would
want to hike because I didn't want to go alone,
and then relating to people as weird. That's a whole
other conversation. But h Yeah, So I went on a
hike with a couple of people and it was gorgeous, stunning.
(02:20):
I'll never get tired of the landscape. Yeah, it's just
really it reminds me quickly how much of a privilege
it is to be here. That's awesome, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Glad that you had a good time coming back to
your hometown and your birthday was good and that you're
back in.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Cape Town safely. Thank you, yes, yes, and you got
the hike. Safety is important in these times all the time,
but these times too.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Well, this is an interesting question I have.
I know the answer for Samantha. I don't know the
answer for you, Eve. But were you ever involved in
like a debate club type of thing or a model
you in type of thing? Would you Are you good
(03:13):
at like persuasive essays?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, I am grinning from ear to ear for everyone
who can't see me, because I am really great at
persuasive things in general. Like I attract things to me
through my writing, so that is one of my strong suits.
So like if I I've won competitions, I get things
(03:36):
through my writing. So I will say that, yes, I
if somebody needs to do a petition for something, I'll
be like, okay, use me, like I'll help you. I
can't guarantee you the win, but you know, like use
the power of my pen specifically to try to get
the thing that you want, like because I have I
do have that track record. However, debate team. No, I
(03:58):
was never on a debate team. I was an act
dmick team girl. But I don't think I would be
good at debate team because I get I'm not an arguer.
I don't really like confrontation and that will just be
a little too stressful for me. I think, I think
some people. I also think of the things that you
(04:20):
have to be a good talker, and I know I'm
sitting here and everybody's like, you're talking on a frickin
mic right now. I was not a talker as a child,
So although I did perform and I did lots of things,
but still it wasn't my favorite thing to do. So
that was definitely something I would not choose. I do
remember being in my gifted education class when I was
(04:43):
in elementary school and they were teaching us about debate,
and back then I was like, oh, okay, maybe you know.
But then it got time for me to be able
to actually join debate teams and I was like, nah,
not for me. I'm gonna do. I'm doing a million
other things anyway, So yeah, what about y'all.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, I was I was in a class that had
a debate element. I don't think I was on debate team,
but you had to learn to debate. I was really
good at it, but I didn't like it because the
teacher always assigned me specifically the topic the opposite argument
I would like to make because I was the town
(05:22):
feminist back then. Some people would know like, oh, she
would hate argue this, and so they would always assign
me that. But I was also really competitive, so I
would usually win and then'd be really.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Mad about it.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So I was on that. I don't know if I'm
really good at persuasive writing. I'm good at writing like
I won essay contest, but I don't think because I
remember once I had a teacher tell me I relied
too hard on I can't even remember where it's called anymore,
but the one where you're like trying to make people
feel an emotion, like I relied too much on that,
(05:54):
and so I'm not sure. Maybe I would. I would
defer to you, Eve for except writing. I think we
need a little bit more of that.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Well, I was gonna say, that's really true, actually effective.
Look at the Republican Party, that's what they used and
have one. I don'tt to understand what she means. I
think it's because you were winning too much.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I think probably the point she was trying to make
is that the Republican Party shouldn't be doing that, but
they are winning.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
You're correct if you want to win that's what you do, apparently.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I guess. Yeah, say she was a tough teacher. She
was notoriously really tough.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I came from a school that had very little extra extras,
so I don't think we had any like debate teams.
There were things that I was not involved in because
I wasn't like top tier. I think I ended up
being top twenty, but not top ten, and anything extra
extra would be top ten. So I didn't quite make
the cut when we would have I'm sure because you
(06:54):
had I think this was my tenth grade. I'm assuming
you'll probably remember when you had mock trial and it
would be based off some play. I think mine was
about Caesar. I think that was the typical Was it
yours too? Like I see, oh, okay. I was Brutus's lawyer,
and though because the kids already knew the play and
(07:16):
they did not care about trial stuff, they already made
up their mind way beforehand. My point was that he
was innocent of intent and murder because what he was
doing was for the good of the country. That he
admitted that he did kill them, but this was not
what you think. And my teacher was like, I think
you need to be a lawyer, like she was freaking,
(07:38):
like she was freaked out by me because of the
rationale that I came out on as the tenth grader.
But I still lost because they were like, no, but
he killed them.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I was like, but that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah, that's the closest I can remember of having something.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Did you continue? You didn't continue after that, because it
sounds like you got some nice affirmation, and for me,
it's saying I'm good at something. I'm like, okay, maybe
all right with this for a second.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
It's one of those things where it kind of felt
like an insult, you know what I mean when they
were like, yeah, you're too good at that.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You need to check and see if you're okay with
your soul type of thing.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Because I came from a very country mountain town that
had very black and white ideals, so in that sense
of like, yeah, you're a reasoning murder and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay, but this is what I know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So essentially, obviously I'm not a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I don't I don't think it would make me cry
being a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, because I'm also very hyper competitive, So if I
felt like I was representing it either way, Like, if
I was representing someone who did something wrong, I would
feel guilty. If I was convicting someone who did something
who should be like like had reasons were like all
these things, I would feel like guilty. So I don't
think I could do it anyway back to.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's your answer.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, a lot of considerations to take in, of course,
but let's just loosely relate to who we're talking about today.
And I'm very excited to talk about this person. Who
did you ring for us today, Eves.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I am excited to So today we're talking about Emma
kailik Metcalf Beckley Nakuina. So she is considered the first
female judge in Hawaii. Now there is some discrepancy over
that title, but we'll get into that a little later
in her chronology when we get to that point. But
I also want to give a big shout out to
(09:40):
Uhuwayhi Hopkins, who I pulled a lot of this info from.
She did research on Emma and like has talked about Emma.
There's a thesis that she did about Emma and it's
called hanw Makalolo for the Benefit of Her Race. A
portrait of Emma Kaili Capulo Metcalf Beckley Nakowina, and apparently
(10:05):
she started this research because Frank Metcalf, who was Emma's brother,
is her great great great grandfather, so there is a
family relation there. Essentially, why is why she how she
got into that research. The thesis was done in twenty twelve,
and there was a talk that she gave in twenty
(10:27):
twenty where she mentioned that she needs to update the thesis.
I haven't seen an updated thesis, so I know that
there are some things in that thesis that she said
herself because of the descendant, said you need to correct
that that need to be updated. But it is still
a very comprehensive thesis and like a foremost place you
(10:52):
can go to for a very full, full body chronology
of Emma's life, and it is really cool. And also
I'll say that she has been on my list, my
collection of people I wanted to talk about for so
so long, and in the mystery of why it is
(11:13):
why it feels like the right time to talk about
her right now? That is now? But yeah, I'm excited
to get into her story. Shall we get into the history? Yeah,
(11:34):
So Emma was born on March fifth, eighteen forty seven.
She grew up in Manoah, Oahu and her mother was
a chiefist named Kailaku, and through her mother's line she
was coco Alie or basically a class of chiefs of
nobility that cared for the ali e, which were the
(11:57):
high nobility, and the Coco would uplift their ability to
control a district or an island, so they were in
service to the alee. So Hopkins does talk about this
more in her thesis because there's a lot more that
(12:19):
goes around how nobility worked, how the classes changed because
of the overthrows and the new constitutions and the disenfranchisement
and the colonization and the white supremacy of it all
that was happening at the time, So a lot of
those structures changed the way that Hopkins described it, and
(12:44):
that affected what Goco Elee meant by the time Emma
was around and was growing up. But just know that
it was because of her lineage. She was hanging around
the nobles. She was in the noble circles related to
the Lee, and that was like part of what she
was born into and how she moved through society and
(13:07):
how she worked to when she was younger. But Hopkins
also said that she believes that one of the knowledge
systems that did come down through Emma's mother's side is
the management of water, and that is part of what
she what she studied, what she was a scholar on
(13:28):
how she worked later in her life, and that water
management may have also had something to do with her father,
who was Theophilist Metcalf. She might have also gained knowledge
in that as a child because of her father. So
her father, Theophilist Metcalf, was a descendant of Puritan immigrants.
(13:49):
He was He had this de Guero type shop. Apparently
it was short lived, but that kind of gave him.
He's been known as a first photographer in Hawaii. He
was a land surveyor for the Mahele, which was the
land redistribution process as proposed by Kamehameha the third and
(14:10):
as soon as foreigners could buy land, he bought some land. Uh.
He was also Marshal of the Kingdom for a short second.
Hopkins told this story of how there were no walls
in the prison because that was one of the things
he was over as a Marshal of the Kingdom. But
like he was like, we need to get some walls,
(14:32):
like can't we figure something out? And essentially he was
only this marshal for a short time because he didn't
really care for the position. He was also Superintendent of
public Works, member of the House of Representatives, and he
became a sugar planter. So there's this very involved and
(14:53):
very full it's full of tension. This story in Emma's
in her father's life that had to do with land.
So he bought some land. He bought a plantation for
one thousand and forty eight dollars that was put in
Emma's name when she was a child, and that was
supposed to be her land. So after he died, he
(15:17):
left the land and his will to Emma, but the
trustees of that will wouldn't let her manage it. She
wasn't like, she wasn't able to get her land back,
and she couldn't take the issue to court, And thinking
about her role in litigation, it is very ironic to
(15:39):
think about how much trouble she went through with this.
But she couldn't take the issue to court because she
was married and the rule of law at the time
was that she had to have permission from her husband.
Her husband at the time, who were going to call
him out by name in a second? Okay, so you're
about to find out his name. Her husband at the
time wouldn't let her go up against the sale because
(16:03):
because y'all, this is about to get even shadier, the
person who was buying the plantation was his cousin's husband.
Isn't that wild? Take a moment. The probate for her
father's will ended up taking like nine years. She tried
to go to court after he died, the case was
(16:23):
dropped because the person who purchased it had already owned
it for many years. So yeah, a little glimpse into
that drama. But her father was also a member of
the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society and he went on to
have three more children, Frank, Helen, and Julia, but they
(16:46):
didn't share a mother with Emma, and they didn't move
through society at the same way, like the same way
that Emma did. So it it seems like they were
kind of as strange like they were. They didn't really
get along, well, they weren't on the same page. Yeah,
it didn't seem like it was the closest relationship for sure.
(17:07):
But when Emma was a child. Kameyh May how the
fourth chose her to be trained in traditional water use
and writes it was a thing to kind of see
what children were drawn to and kind of what they
had access to through their parents, and what their parents
were well versed in and knowledgeable in, and they could
(17:28):
be you could you would nurture that and help a
child move forward and whether whatever that direction is. And
this was the case with Emma. She got trained in
traditional water use of rights and kameha May how the
fourth also made her custodian of the laws of the
Kamehamehas and she was made an authority on the workings
(17:49):
of all ancient laws. So she these are really high,
very noble things that she was assigned to do. She
went to a Wahu college later called Punaho and she
was the first Kanakamui or native Hawaiian student to go
to Punaho school. She almost attended Mills Seminary in California,
(18:14):
but her father died in August of eighteen sixty six
in Oakland, which is where the school was, and she
instead went back home and took care of family. So
speaking of that man, his name was Frederick Beckley, her
first husband and they got married in eighteen sixty seven.
The Beckleys or they also are named family okay, so
(18:38):
Sam Beckley you name dropping because they were of a
high chiefly ranking as well. The two of them had
seven children together, although unfortunately a lot of them died young,
and her first husband died in eighteen eighty one and
she ended up remarrying in eighteen eighty seven. Tsei and
(19:00):
cousin Moses Nakauina. He was also of Coco a lie
status and Emma she was as Coco a lie like
we talked about earlier, how that class was. They were
in service with a lie. She was a sort of
(19:21):
lady in waiting to Queen Kapiolani and Queen Liliukolani, and
when the queens would travel or start organizations, Emma was
there and she would help out. And as an example
of some of the things that she was involved in
because of her status, she was secretary of the Lilo
(19:43):
Ko Lanni Savings Bank, which was a bank for women.
She was a first division member of the Lilo Ko
Lani Educational Society. And as an example of the travel
she did, she went on a trip to Bird Island
with Lily Okalani as I said earlier, the researcher who
(20:04):
gathered all this information, did all the research and recorded
that research on the life of Emma was clearly after
these is still finding out more about Emma and her life.
So she found out that she was a godmother to
(20:25):
Princess kai U Lani. So I don't know how much
in the last few years more that she's found out
about Emma, but I'm sure there's a lot more. If
I'm probably a lot more to be discovered too. But
Emma herself didn't have a lot of she didn't have
(20:45):
any really formal training in western law. But her dad
apparently had a lot of family members who were trained
in the legal field, which sounds about right. I mean,
you know, considering his lineage, he had that Puritan family
from Massachusetts also, you know, of high ranking and all
these things. Yeah, so she still had access to that
(21:09):
information essentially. And from eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty
seven she was working as a cure trix. And we've
come across that suffix a lot in our previous episodes.
Ava trix was one of my favorite ones to say.
(21:30):
But as it sounds, it means curator. She would call
herself a cure trix, and she was a curator at
the Hawaiian National Museum and Library. That museum was commissioned
in eighteen seventy two, and the first curator of that
museum was Harvey Rexford Hitchcock Junior. He was appointed in
(21:51):
eighteen seventy four, and in eighteen eighty two, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs, who's was Walter Murray Gibson, had the
museum moved from the Department of Education to the Department
of Foreign Affairs. Museums were becoming this hugely important and
influential place and became more desirable as a vehicle for
(22:18):
attracting tourism and money and all the things. And he
Administer of Foreign Affairs, appointed in the curator of the
museum in eighteen eighty two, and under her she apparently
uplifted this museum a lot. The museum's collection was considered prized.
(22:40):
But in eighteen eighty seven, just five years after she
became curator, the museum was affected by the Bayonet Constitution,
which is a part of the whole lead up to
the annexation of Hawaii, the overthrow of Native Hawaiians. A
lot of Native Whyans were disenfranchised in this process, and
(23:03):
so the museum fell prey to that whole insidious situation.
In eighteen ninety one, most of the museum's collection was
moved to the Bishop Museum. Also, I just always, you know,
saying things like that out loud, it always feels so
(23:23):
it always feels so icky, like it feels so dark,
because it's just yet another example of the negative effects
that cultural institutions have to face when there are things
that are happening that are mated down through government, especially
especially white supremacist actions of government that touch cultural institutions
(23:48):
and the work that they're doing. But yeah, most of
the museum's collection in eighteen ninety one was moved to
the Bishop Museum. She did not become the curator at
the Bishop Museum, and we'll come back to that in
a bit of a second. But to move through this chronology,
(24:10):
we'll move on, but just put a pin in that
that name Bishop Museum. So she also publishes a lot
of writing while she was curator. In eighteen eighty three,
she wrote a pamphlet that went with pieces that were
going to an exhibition in England, and that was called
Hawaiian Fisheries and methods of fishing, and that kind of
(24:33):
kicked off her start in becoming the prolific writer that
she was. She began writing serials for newspapers. One of
the first ones was Hiyaka and then and in eighteen
eighty four to eighteen eighty six she published Moleilo or
Hawaiian Stories that were passed down through generations, and this
(24:54):
publication called Thrums Annual. She also wrote reports, and she
advocated for things like she wrote a letter in a
newspaper advocating for creating and naming a park, and a
lot of the other stuff she did revolved around those
legends and stories that had been passed down. She published
(25:17):
some of those too, and in eighteen ninety four she
published this treatise called Ancient Hawaiian Water Rights and Some
Customs pertaining to Them. And Hopkins has said that historians
and scholars still use that treatise as a source for
how water was managed and pre contact Hawaii. So coming
(25:42):
back to the Bishop Museum, William Tuffs Brigham became the
first curator of the Bishop Museum in eighteen ninety two.
Later on he became the first director of the museum.
He was there for quite a while, so there was
a lot of back of worth in his position at
the museum. But there was a point where in eighteen
(26:06):
ninety seven, Emma and some of her friends were on
the lawne watching the Kamehameha School for Boys some of
the students who were there watching them do military training,
which is a pretty normal thing for people to do.
But Brigham had a problem with it because he had
a problem with her. He had beef with Emma, and
(26:28):
he had a janitor come out and tell Emma and
her friends to leave, which is like, you couldn't do
your own dirty work. But whatever, Brigham is soon fired,
but then he's brought back, and then he was later
fired fully. But yeah, there was there was some beef
and back and forth there. But in eighteen nineties she
(26:51):
kept writing. In eighteen ninety seven she co wrote an
article where she interviewed the oldest living inhabitant of Hawaii.
And it was the year after that, eighteen ninety eight,
when Hawaii was annexed by the US. Just to kind
of position us in time here. So a few years later,
(27:12):
nineteen oh four, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee, which was this
precursor to the tourism board there hired her to write
a pamphlet to promote tourism. She is the only Hawaiian
they hire, which is kind of okay, not kind of.
It is really wild to think about, but not surprising.
(27:34):
It's one of those things where it's like, okay, of
course it's the tourism board, you know, but she's the
only Hawaiian they hire. And it was the only pamphlet
that they never reprinted. It was called Hawaii It's People
in their Legends, and in it she uplifted how industrious, organized, humble,
(27:59):
and not eligible Hawaiians are, so she said in it,
like how on par Hawaiians were with Europeans and Asians.
But then she'd also mentioned how there were ways Hawaiians
were superior. So it definitely seems like one of those
things where she knew she had to She knew she
(28:21):
had to navigate how she was saying what she was
going to say in there, because it's this way of
like she knew her audience, right, so she knew who
was going to be reading these pamphlets, So they're going
to be thinking Hawaiians are inferior to everyone else, especially
the Europeans, Europeans and Asians who are coming here. The
Hawaiians are going to be less civilized than these people.
(28:41):
They're going to be less knowledgeable than these people. So
it kind of makes sense that she was putting Hawaiians
on par with Europeans and Asians. She would say, I
can't remember exactly what the quote was, but something like
we do this just as well as Europeans and Asians do.
And I just had to sit with that for a
second because it's like, it's like you only have to
(29:02):
do that. You know, you're used to being part of
a marginalized group where it used to be inferior. It's
kind of like you have to prove to these other
people by directly saying we're on par with them. All right,
let's start there as a baseline, and then you can
kind of get into the Okay, these are the ways
of which we think what y'all are doing is actually
not up two hour standard. And so she went on
(29:24):
after saying that to say that like Hawaiians, we care
for the land. Unlike and this is a quote, the
white man, with his alleged superior knowledge, prevailed on chief
and commoner to throw down their wholesome restrictions as saving
of superstition, with the result that fishes are very scarce
(29:45):
in Hawaiian waters and getting more and more so every year.
So basically, she was saying, we know how to take
care of the land. We've been doing this for a
long time. We have a lot of great, sustainable and
precedented systems that work well. And you come over here
and you are supposed supposed to have this like highly
(30:06):
civilized knowledge, this highly superior knowledge, and you're not keeping
the fishes alive. They're scarce because of this so called
knowledge that you have. So I just appreciate it. It
seemed like a kind of like you're stepping into the
water slowly. You're starting on the shallow end and then
you're kind of tipteeling your way into the deep end
(30:26):
on the other side. However, we hear the language that
I just used. It wasn't. She wasn't. They didn't love that.
The promotion committee didn't love it. So it makes sense
that they didn't. They didn't reprint that pamphlet and didn't
care for that. So a few years later, in nineteen
(30:58):
oh seven, she retired from her position as water commissioner,
but she kept writing and It's notable that all of
her publications were in English, and I can't speak Hawaiian.
I don't understand Hawaiian.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
So what I'm saying is we've talked a lot before
about like how fewer things are accessible to me and
to us as other English speakers, especially for English only
speakers like a lot of and readers like a lot
of us are in the United States. That means that
this work is accessible to me and to other people
who are just English speakers who want to read it.
(31:37):
But of course I was curious about why that was,
because Emma could speak Hawaiian and she did give her
lectures in Hawaiian. So the way that Hopkins, the researcher,
just talks about it, she says that she was still
(31:58):
even though she was writing in English, he was still
addressing the native Hawaiian audience through like subtexts and meanings
that native Hawaiians would know but other people might not
pick up on. So foreigners who would be reading this
(32:18):
wouldn't understand those underlying meanings, but the Hawaiians would get
that subtext. Hopkins also says that she Emma might have
wanted to educate people who only spoke English, so it
was a matter of like, yes, it was still kind
of how we talked about with that quote, like Okay,
we just have to tell you a little bit. Okay,
(32:39):
we are on par with y'all, like we do do
this too. So those are a couple of points about it.
There's another point that I'll get to in a second,
but I wanted to pause to just say that I
just loved hearing Hopkins say that about how there was
subtext there because of course I'm not I'm not Hawaiians,
so I wouldn't know that subtext. However, I can relate
(33:02):
to it so much because this is how knowledge was
shared through black people in so many ways, through black
communities throughout history, because we weren't able to say things
in front of white people. So it was like we
had to figure out how to code. It was a
lot of enigma, and it was a enigma that we
understood amongst each other in ways of sharing secrets and
(33:22):
information that we didn't want to go outside of our
circle that we knew we had to say it in
a different way, but it was still in public. So
it's like, how do we do that in a pamphlet?
How in her case, you know, she was addressing both audiences.
So despite the fact that she was using English, which
was this colonizer's language, she still was able to speak
(33:49):
to her own people. And so I just really I
appreciate that point, and I think just as us who
for all the non historians listening and non scholars listening,
you know, it's something that we are able to relate
to and understand more deeply, even if we don't fully
know about Hawaiian history and what it means to be Hawaiian.
(34:11):
But the other point that Hopkins brought up, which was
also something I loved, and this is speaking to my
WU side, is that Hopkins thinks that Emma might have
had some layer of foresight here, of predictive ability, because
(34:32):
she was like, well, maybe Emma had this inkling that
Hawaiians might not speak as much Hawaiian in the future,
so this language but will be lost to a lot
of native Hawaiians, and so if I write this in English,
then it will be accessible to Hawaiians later on, who
should absolutely have this knowledge. So it's cool to think
(34:56):
about that as well. I know that speculation, speculation based
on her deep research and understanding of Emma though, and
also whether that was the case or not, that is
a very real benefit of what happened, because now we're
sitting here talking about her, and now a lot of
Hawaiians who may not have been able to understand the
(35:17):
Hawaiian language have access to this information. And also, Emma,
there were articles that were written about her in her time,
but her her presence has only gotten larger and more
brilliant because of all of these publications she did, and
(35:38):
because a lot of them are in English. But yeah, oh,
there is one story I forgot to tell about Brigham
related to his related to his beef with Emma. So
in nineteen seventeen, she brought a group of visitors to
(35:59):
the met and he told her off. I'm not sure
exactly what he said, but one of the museum trustees
was witnessed to this whole brigamorole, and Brigham was fired
because of that. So she kind of got him fired.
I think that's kind of an important thing to say,
where it's like, in a way, she got him fired.
(36:21):
But yeah, so she did a lot of other things too.
She was a notary public, a grantor of marriage licenses,
She was a translator, she was a cultural advisor. She
was a translator because she would take American curriculum and
she translated it into Hawaiian for Hawaiian schools. And in
(36:41):
eighteen ninety two, she became Commissioner of Private Ways and
Water Rights for Kona Oahu. And this is where we're
getting to her first, she was the only woman to
hold this position, so once Lili o'kilani isn't queen anymore,
that made Emma the highest ranking woman in government. So
(37:04):
she held that position until nineteen oh seven, so quite
a while. And Emma herself said that she held that
position longer than anyone before her. So one of the
cases that she was on during this time in nineteen
oh four was called the Lehai Naluna water Rights case,
(37:26):
and she was co counsel on that case with Assistant
Attorney General Noah Aluli. So, like we said before, she
had no training in law, she wasn't a lawyer, but
she was considered to have the knowledge to be able
to do the work that lawyers and judges did. And
(37:46):
Hopkins maintains that even though there's been like debate over
whether she is an actual judge, because we started this
episode talking about how she was the first female judge
in Hawaii. Hopkins maintains that she was a judge, and
I'm going to trust the people who have done the
research and understand the legacy and the actual work that
people did, because there can be also a lot of
(38:09):
semantics at play as these with these first like we've
talked about before, but the practicals of it were that
Emma was presiding over cases. In those cases, there were plaintiffs,
there were defendants. Those people who were there were represented
by lawyers. These cases happened in a courtroom, and people
(38:29):
there were sworn in, there were witnesses. I mean, the
list goes on, and when Emma made a decision, she
recorded it and those decisions were legally binding. And for
these reasons that is that's why Hopkins maintains that she
was a judge. And Emma was called a judge in newspapers.
(38:50):
So there was a nineteen ten article about her called
American woman a judge in Hawaii. Yeah, an American woman,
missus Nakuwema has made herself a power in Hawaii. She
holds a unique position in the territorial government. She is
a water rights commissioner and sits as a judge to
decide cases where the rights are in litigation, and is
(39:14):
considered an able and most just official, her decisions seldom,
if ever being set aside. So yes, newspapers are not
the final say on what someone's official title was. However,
even then they recognize that the work she was doing
was essentially the work of a judge, So that is
(39:35):
her first. We're given it to her today. We're the
official We are the official judges of who gets to
be a judge. That's right correct. She was one of
the first women inducted into the Hawaiian Historical Society that
happened in eighteen ninety four. She was also a member
of the Daughters of Hawaii and she taught Hawaiian studies
(39:58):
at the Territory Royal School McKinley. And she ended up
dying on April twenty seventh, nineteen twenty nine, when she
was eighty two years old. And like I said earlier,
she has living descendants, so there are still people who
carry her legacy forward and it is rich. So I'm
glad we've got to talk about her today.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Me as well, and what she did so much. I
love that we didn't get to her first until like
the ag. Yeah, Now I kept thinking, like, did I
miss it? She was just up to so much and
it's a really fascinating story. And she also saw a
(40:39):
lot of change in her lifetime and had to adapt
to those changes. So it is a story that I
feel does invite more questions. It is sort of like, oh,
I should go research that, or I should look into
that more. I'm really happy that people like Hopkins have
(41:01):
done this research, are still doing this research, and we
might find out something new that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
It is really cool to think about. And that just
made me think, Annie, about how you're talking about how
she was in this transitional period. That has been kind
of a running thing for our last Like the last
few people that we've talked about, they've been at these
like transitional periods from eras of colonization to eras of independence.
(41:29):
Maybe it's the other way around, but yeah, these people
have lived on these precipices. So I didn't even think
about that until just now because I remember mentioning that
in our last episode too. I don't know if that
says something about where we where we are in America today.
That's why these stories are like the ones that I
want to share at this moment that could go a
lot of ways. So I don't know what to wish for,
(41:50):
but maybe we're in a precipice and I can only
hope fingers crossed that it's in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, let us hope us Oheeves, Well, once again, thank
you so much for bringing this story to us.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We always love having you. Where can the good listeners
find you? Thank you? Y'all can find me? Go first
to Eves Jeffcote dot com. That is spelled y V
E S J E F F c O A T
dot com. Y'all can get to everything from there, sign
up for my email list, keep up with what I'm doing,
(42:28):
read some of are writing all of the things. You
can also go to Instagram I'm at not Apologizing, and
you can also listen to many other episodes of Stuff
Mom Never Told You, where we're talking about female first,
our pioneering accomplishments of women in history.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yes, and go do that if you have not already listeners.
If you would like to contact us, you can or
email us hello a Stuff I Never Told You dot com,
also on Blue Sky a Mom Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram and TikTok at Stuff We've Never told You. We're
also on YouTube. We have some merchandise accompon Bureau, and
we have a book you can get wherever you get
your books. Thanks as always to our superroduce Christina or
executive producer My and your contributor Joey. Thank you and
(43:09):
thanks to you for listening stuff Never told You. Projection
by Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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