Princess of Hawaii! An Introduction!

She owned 9% of Hawaii. She was able to speak English, however, she declined. She also lived in a grass house voluntarily. And she ensured that her people would never be washed away. She was called Princess Ruth Keelikolani. And she made her whole life proving that you could have power in two worlds not forgetting that you were not obliged to leave the first one.

Ruth was born in 1826 and was of the utmost Hawaiian royal blood in both parents. She was nobility (aliit) in a sense that made her be respected even without uttering a single word. She was a child who was observing her world fade away.

Christian missionaries came in during the childhood of Ruth, and they were insistent on salvaging the Hawaiian souls by destroying the Hawaiian culture. They banned the hula. They criticized the old religion. They demanded that the Hawaiians act like the New Englanders and talk American, and forget their gods that their fore fathers worshipped over a millennium.

The religion and social structure of the Hawaiian system the Kapu system which had dominated the life of the Hawaiian people had formally been done away with in the year 1819, earlier than Ruth was even born. By the age she had reached, most Hawaiian royal family had joined Christianity.

Most. Not Ruth.

And she had a regulation that made Westerners positively insane. She would not speak English. Not in public. Not in private. Not ever. She knew English fluently. She was able to read it, and understand intricate political debates that were transacted in it. But she refused to speak it. Talked Hawaiian to you wanted to speak to Princess Ruth. In the case that you were not able to speak Hawaiian, you took a translator. It did not matter to her whether you were a missionary, a businessman, a diplomat or a diplomat of another country and royalty.

Hawaiian, or nothing.

Imagine the audacity of this. It was the 1860s and 1870s. Hawaii was being systematically dominated by American and European businessmen in its economy. Hawaiian language was being suppressed even in schools. Hawaiian kids were being disciplined on the basis of speaking Hawaiian language.

And here was Princess Ruth who was among the most influential women in the islands, who sat in her grass house, compelling those who wished to have an interview with her to seek a translator. Yes--because Ruth was a beautiful Western-style house-owner. She was rich enough to live the way she wanted. She made a decision to reside in a Hawaiian grass house. A hale pili. The type of house her ancestors had resided in since time immemorial.

Not as a museum piece. As her actual home. She slept there. She held court there. She entertained visitors there. She clarified it: I am able to afford your world. I choose mine.

By 1870s Ruth was already the largest single land owner in the whole of Hawaii. She owned about 353,000 acres- about nine percent of the whole Hawaiian Island chain. Nine percent. Of an entire island nation. She used it to stay Hawaiian. But Ruth was not naive. She knew what was coming. She felt a squeeze of American business interests. She saw the Hawaiian monarchy becoming weaker. She realized that in a generation or so, the state of Hawaii may not exist as an independent kingdom.

And so she decided that would resound in the following century and a half. On the death of Ruth, in 1883, she willed everything, all 353,000 acres, all that power, all that wealth, to her cousin Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop. Bernice applied that land in forming a trust. And it was based on that trust that the Kamehameha Schools—schools of the Native Hawaiian children, were founded, which were supported by the land that Ruth had left behind.

Kamehameha Schools is today among the richest of the private schools in America, accommodating thousands of students who are the Native Hawaiians. It is there since Ruth Keekelikolani was not selling out, was not assimilating and was not letting her land be divided among people who did not know what it was.

And then she left nine percent of Hawaii so that the children of Native Hawaiians could have education, opportunity and oneness to their culture long after her departure.

The Hawaiian princess passed away in 1883, a decade before the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, 15 years before Hawaii became a territory of the United States.

She was not present when the kingdom was terminated. But she left behind her long enough to make something that would last longer.

The Kamehameha Schools are still running today more than 140 years after she established it. It has educated thousands of Native Hawaiian students. There is thriving of Hawaiian language and culture programs. The land which she refused to sell is still used by her people to whom she was fighting.

Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani is known to most Americans.

Living Hawaiian children who pass the gates at Kamehameha Schools do so upon land which she preserved. Any Hawaiian language speaker now lives in the space that she created at the time when speaking Hawaiian was a statement of resistance.

She is the owner of nine percent of Hawaii. She would have sold it, made profit out of it, used it to create her own legacy in the Western world.

She sacrificed everything to save the Hawaiian children who were yet to be born. That is not just generosity. That is vision. She realized that you struggle against colonization not only with guns or politics, but through declining to be what they would like you to be. Ruth occupies a grass house due to the fact that grass houses were Hawaiian and she was Hawaiian and nothing could turn her into western wealth.

She was also talking in Hawaiian because her ancestors spoke Hawaiian and letting them go would be letting them fade away.

She was practicing the old religion since these gods had safeguarded her people over a millennium before the missionaries came.

And she left her land to Hawaiian children because she understood that land is identity, and education is survival and the only way to fight back colonization is to ensure that your children do not forget their identity.

In 1883 Princess Ruth Keelikeolani passed away. But she is still winning. Due to the fact that each time a Hawaiian attends graduation of Kamehameha Schools, each time someone speaks Hawaiian in a crowd, each time Native Hawaiians recover their culture, that is what Ruth bequeathed. She refused to disappear. And she also ensured that her people did not disappear either.