Hawaii
Hawaii: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans review – a feather-filled thriller full of gods, gourds and ghosts
Relations between Britain and the Pacific kingdom of Hawaii didn’t get off to a great start. On 14 February 1779 the global explorer James Cook was clubbed and stabbed to death at Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay in a dispute over a boat: it was a tragedy of cultural misunderstanding that still has anthropologists arguing over its meaning. Cook had previously visited Hawaii and apparently been identified as the god Lono, but didn’t know this. Marshall Sahlins argued that Cook was killed because by coming twice he transgressed the Lono myth, while another anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere, attacked him for imposing colonialist assumptions of “native” irrationality on the Hawaiians.
It’s a fascinating, contentious debate. But the aftermath of Cook’s death is less well known – and the British Museum’s telling of it, in collaboration with indigenous Hawaii curators, community leaders and artists, reveals a surprisingly complex if doomed encounter between different cultures.
Cook isn’t mentioned in the wall texts or portrayed in the show, but his ghost is everywhere in the objects he and his men brought back to Britain. And what marvels they are. Before Cook’s voyages the peoples of the Pacific, connected with each other by epic canoe crossings that linked the Polynesians from Hawaii and Easter Island to Tahiti and New Zealand, created cultural forms that we now call art. Giant pink feathered faces of gods with mother-of-pearl eyes grimace and gurn while a club embedded with tiger shark teeth combines beauty and menace. Bowls carried by naked figures on their backs embody how Hawaiian chiefs and monarchs were feasted and respected.
Monarchy is at the heart of this show, a common language shared by the otherwise chalk and cheese Hawaiians and Britons. After the death of Cook, which was heartily regretted on both sides, Hawaii learned, as it were, to speak British and assert its equality with a “modern” state. It worked, for a while. In 1810 King Kamehameha I sent a magnificent, feathered cloak to George III, with a yellow diamond pattern on red – on loan here from the Royal Collection which still owns it. The king apologised that he was too far away to support Britain in the Napoleonic Wars but expressed friendship – and could Britain help if Hawaii was attacked by France? The Hawaiian cloak is wittily juxtaposed here with a glittering jewelled costume worn by George IV at his coronation: idiosyncratic customs existed on both sides of the world.
Forget Cook, the show suggests: remember King Liholiho. In 1824 he and his Queen Kamamulu set out on a journey that reversed all those British “discoveries”. They set sail for Britain laden with gifts, hitching a lift on a whaling ship (the story would be even better if they’d gone by outrigger canoe). George IV seems to have been touched by the greetings from across two oceans because he received the Hawaiians in 1824 with diplomatic honours. They were seen in the royal box at the theatre and portrayed by artists. Typically cartoonists were less generous – Cruikshank portrays the depraved George IV with his arms around a tattooed Polynesian. They also visited the British Museum where they could not have missed three of its most stunning exhibits, the feathered faces of gods brought back by Cook’s team from Hawaii which are known to have been on display at that time.
The Hawaiian treasures retrieved from the British Museum’s stores are remarkable – they should have a permanent gallery to themselves. You can’t stereotype them: the fierce gaze of a martial-looking god with a chunky wooden body seems modernist, which is no coincidence because Pacific sculptures helped inspire modernism. I mistook one of the feathered godheads with its almost caricatural eye for a contemporary artwork. It was collected by Cook.
These wonders are not reliquaries of a dead culture. There’s a perfectly preserved 18th-century dance rattle, or ‘uli’uli, brought back from Cook’s third voyage, a gourd from which purple, red and white feathers sprout and radiate. A video shows Hawaiian dancers using a modern recreation of the same instrument. To Hawaiians the artistic masterpieces their ancestors made are bearers of memory, instruments of identity.
This exhibition is a celebration of Hawaii and a defence of museums with global collections. The almost miraculous preservation of delicate, fragile artworks made with feathers, teeth, wood and bark for almost 250 years is surely to the British Museum’s credit, as is this way of seeing them as embodiments of living culture.
How does the story end? The king and queen of Hawaii gave their lives for cultural diplomacy: they both died of measles in London in 1824. George IV honoured them by sending their bodies home on a Royal Navy ship. Hawaii successfully persuaded Britain and Europe it was a nation state, with a monarchical government they could do business with – so Britain kept its greedy hands off this one place. In the end it would be the US that seized Hawaii, colonised it and eventually made it the 50th state. The objects here are weapons in a continuing cultural resistance. Look out for that shark-toothed club, Mr President.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – If you grew up in Hawaii, a visit to your local Crackseed shop is likely a core childhood memory.
Let’s go holoholo to one of the oldest shops in Honolulu, Kay’s Crackseed.
Any time Lanette Mahelona of Kaneohe is in Manoa, a stop at Kay’s Crackseed is a must!
“I stop by here, and I always grab two pounds of this seedless creamy ume because it’s hard to find on our end of the island, Kaneohe,” said Mahelona.
Kay’s Crackseed sits in a four-hundred-square-foot shop at Manoa Marketplace.
The original owner, Kay, opened the shop in 1978 and ran it for 18 years.
Mei Chang now runs the shop. Her family took it over in 1996. They’ve been selling an assortment of crack seed and products, which Mei says is a healthy snack in the eyes of the Chinese.
“Yeah, so like the ginger, the Chinese always say it’s Chinese medicine, so they help your motion sickness, the stomach, and even the kumquat,” said Chang. “It’s like honey lime ball, if you catch a cold, sore throat, they help a lot.”
Customers are encouraged to sample the different treats.
Now working in a crack seed shop isn’t anything new for Chang.
She said these kinds of shops are in common in Taiwan that her grandparents used to sell different kinds of li hing mui.
Chang lived right above her grandparents’ shop and was in the second grade when she started helping them with the business.
“Every day when I finish school first thing open a jar,” said Chang. “I really like the football seed, so every day I eat a football seed for my snack.”
And talk about a full circle moment, her daughter would also help around the Manoa shop.
Through Kay’s Crackseed, Chang hopes to carry on traditional recipes she learned from her grandparents.
“Crack seed for us is not only the snack, but it’s like childhood memory, yeah, the happiness, so we try to keep doing the tradition. So, all the juice we make here is from our grandpa and grandma’s recipe,” said Chang. “So, a special yeah, secret sauce, so we have some customers that live far away, the other side of the island, drive so far to come here to get the li hing one. The wet li hing mui, the rock salt palm, is really popular.”
“The li hing mui ones are not as sweet, sweet as other places, and it’s soft,” said Crystal Kaluna of Kauai.
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Kolekole Pass is officially allowed to be used as an evacuation route in the event of an emergency on West Oahu.
U.S. military and civilian officials signed an updated official memorandum of understanding Wednesday, opening Kolekole Pass for emergency use.
The first document was signed just prior to July 29, 2025, when Hawaii faced a tsunami warning, and the pass was opened for West Oahu residents to evacuate.
Nearly 500 vehicles made their way through the pass that day as many evacuated the Leeward Coast, officials said.
Maj. Gen. James Batholomees, U.S. Army Commander, Hawaii, was joined by his counterparts from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and the state Department of Transportation officers for Wednesday’s signing.
Batholomees said he took command the day before the tsunami warning.
“The next day, the first order that I had the blessing of giving was in conjunction with the Navy opening the pass during the tsunami,” he said.
Kupuna from the Leeward Coast also attended the signing, saying they were happy for a much-needed secondary route in the event that Farrington Highway is shut down.
Leeward Coast resident William Aila recalled when Farrington Highway was closed for 11 days due to Hurricane Iwa in 1982.
“We need an opportunity to bring in first aid, to bring in food, and to bring in other emergency supplies,” said Aila.
Officials say they are committed to conducting a mass evacuation rehearsal using Kolekole Pass every year.
Ed Sniffen, director of the state Department of Transportation, said it’s the key to a successful activation to use the route.
“The road is safe,” said Sniffen. “When we rode through this, and we did this twice with large operations, the road is safe.”
He added, “That being said, there are improvements that we still want to make.”
HDOT continues to work with the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy on upgrading the roadway, which may total $20 million in improvements.
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
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