Iolani Palace invites you to join us at our new Na Moolelo Lecture Series, which feature presentations by Hawaiian cultural experts, historians, and museum professionals that prompt will discussion of Hawaii history and culture as well as museum practices.

The lecture series is free and open to the public.

The summer schedule for the Na Moolelo Lecture Series is as follows:

Wednesday, November 21

Topic: Unfit for a Queen: Eugenics and Hawaiian Education in Territorial Hawaiʻi

Between 1907 and World War II, a number of eugenics initiatives were introduced in Hawaiʻi. Learn more about how these measures helped assimilate Native Hawaiians and other non-whites to American norms while stabilizing control of the new oligarchy in the first decades of US occupation.

Speaker: Ilima Long

Ilima Long is a doctoral student in the Political Science program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She works at Native Hawaiian Student Services, where she builds programming to support the NHSS mission and prepare students to contribute to a life-affirming and de-occupied future in Hawaiʻi.

Wednesday, December 5

Topic: Nā Wāhine Koa: 20th and 21st-Century Women Warriors of Aloha ʻĀina

This presentation draws on a collaborative book project among four Hawaiian women elders who have led demilitarization and sovereignty activism asserting aloha ʻāina for decades: Moanikeʻala Akaka, Maxine Kahaulelio, Terrilee Kekoʻolani-Raymond, and Loretta Ritte.

Speaker: Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She authored The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School, and co-edited A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land and Sovereignty and The Value of Hawaiʻi, 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions.

All discussions will take place at 5:00 p.m. in the Kanaina Building on the Palace Grounds. Admission is free.

The free Na Moolelo Lecture series continues Iolani Palace mission to preserve and share Hawaii’s unique cultural and historical qualities with the community.