The Incomparable Bishop Museum

     Though Tom and I have been to Honolulu over half a dozen times, still every time we go there we feel called to revisit the Bishop Museum, a treasury of the history and culture of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.
       And so on Monday, April 21, we set out from the Hale Koa across town to the Bishop Museum.

Panoramic views of Honolulu from the Bishop Museum.

     After crossing through the lobby of the entrance building, which houses the planetarium,

...one enters the courtyard on one side of which is the science center,

...and on the other side of which is our perennial destination, the original Bishop Museum, built in 1889,  that houses the world's largest collection of cultural and natural history artifacts of the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands. 

    I love to spend hours getting lost in the three levels of exhibits.

       But among all the exhibits, I do have two favorites.
       First is the Kahili Room,      

...displaying the kahili, or feather standard staffs of the ali'i nui, or Hawaiian high chiefs, 

...along with a history of the Hawaiian monarchs from Kamehameha I, who conquered and united all the islands,

...to Queen Lili'uokalani, the last queen of Hawaii, who in 1893 was forced with much sorrow to surrender Hawaii to the United States,

..and all the kings and queens in between, who I always imagine from their paintings must have been so uncomfortable, all trussed up in their Western clothing in Hawaii's tropical climate.

    My other favorite exhibit is Pacific Hall,

…dedicated to the hundreds of Polynesian  islands with their hundreds of languages and cultures, and with models of the canoes used by the seafaring islanders of ancient times, 

...such as the double-hulled canoe that a thousand years ago carried voyagers from Bora Bora twenty five hundred miles across the Pacific Ocean to where they discovered the string of lovely, verdant islands that they named Hawaii.

      Along with the permanent exhibits always on display at the Bishop Museum, there are also  temporary special exhibits that offer something new to see each time we visit. 
         This time the special exhibit was on the ways in which the Kānaka ʻŌiwi - the Hawaiian people - sought to maintain their identity and assert their presence in the early years after their land became an American territory.

      Part of the exhibit covered the ali'i  -  the chiefs, men and women who, since ancient times, were the leaders who carried out all the levels of governance and welfare of the islands. 
       After Queen Lili'uokalani was overthrown and Hawaii became a U.S. territory, the ali'i likewise lost their governing positions.  
​        However, the ali'i remained leaders by organizing themselves into groups that continued to work for the health, education and welfare of the Hawaiian people. According to the exhibit, "The Ali'i championed philanthropic causes such as education, health, and elder care to provide for the well-being of all citizens of Hawaii."
        Here is one of the exhibit photographs taken in 1919  of the Hale o na Ali'i Society wearing cloth replicas of the traditional feather capes formerly worn by the Hawaiian chiefs.

      I left the Bishop Museum musing what a better place the world might be if,  instead of the leaders we now have, the world were ruled by the ali'i.