NĀ KAMA A KA‘AHUPĀHAU ME KŪHAIMOANA
1999, Kamakakuaokalani: Center for Hawaiian Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Reduction Relief Print on handmade mulberry paper
Nā Kama a Kaʻahupāhau me Kūhaimoana — Inheriting the Responsibility to Protect
This mural was commissioned by the Center for Hawaiian Studies in 1998 during a period when the Center, under the leadership of Haunani Kay Trask, was actively asserting Indigenous authority within the university and challenging State of Hawaiʻi public art policies to recognize contemporary Hawaiian art as a living cultural practice rather than historical representation.
The commission asked me to translate the kaona held within the moʻolelo of Kaʻahupāhau and Kūhaimoana, the guardian shark deities of Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor), into a contemporary visual form appropriate to an Indigenous academic space. In the moʻolelo, Kaʻahupāhau is known not as a figure of dominance, but as a protector who distinguishes between those who belong in relationship and those who pose harm. Her guardianship is attentive, discerning, and relational — grounded in care rather than control.
That distinction shaped the design process. Rather than illustrating the story directly, the work was developed to carry its underlying logic: protection as responsibility, knowledge as attentiveness, and power as the ability to care for a place and its people over time. The design draws on Hawaiian genealogical thinking, where kinship extends beyond humans to include ocean, species, and place, and where guardianship is exercised through restraint as much as action.
The mural imagines descendants — or ongoing presences — of these guardian beings, not as figures fixed in the past, but as continuations of responsibility carried forward. The intention was to create a visual language that invites reflection on how guardianship is learned, practiced, and renewed, rather than claimed or imposed.
This project reflects an approach to design grounded in Indigenous epistemology: translating ancestral knowledge into contemporary form while remaining accountable to lineage, place, and community. The work was not intended to resolve meaning, but to hold it — allowing ʻike to remain active, relational, and present within the space it inhabits.y.
THE PROCESS
Nā Kama a Kaʻahupahau me Kuhaimoana was Herman Piʻikea Clark’s first large-scale commissioned mural project, created for the newly constructed Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Installed in the Faculty Seminar Room—referred to as the “war room” by then director Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask—the mural honors the legacy and protection of two powerful ancestral shark deities: Kaʻahupahau and her brother Kuhaimoana, guardians of Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) and Kanaka Maoli sovereignty. This mural emerged through a moment of institutional shift and cultural assertion. Under the fierce advocacy of Dr. Trask, the State of Hawaiʻi was compelled to revise its public art acquisition policies to include Kanaka Maoli artists—who had long been excluded from state commissions—and to ensure that Indigenous voices and aesthetics were present within spaces of Hawaiian intellectual resurgence. Clark’s commission became a pivotal expression of that reclamation. The mural weaves ancestral symbolism with contemporary design sensibilities, reflecting Clark’s signature approach to Indigenous abstraction. With bold composition and layered meaning, Nā Kama a Kaʻahupahau me Kuhaimoana speaks not only to the power of ancestral protection but also to the role of art in political and cultural resurgence.
INSTALLATION LOCATION AND DETAILS
Kamakakuaokalani, Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Faculty Seminar Room Wall Mural.