Pukui, Mary Kawena, 1895-1986

Mary Abigail Kawenaʻulaokalaniahiʻiakaikapoliopele Naleilehuaapele Wiggin Pukui was a Hawaiian scholar, author, composer, hula expert, and educator. She was born on April 20, 1895 in Haniumalu, Kaʻu, on Hawaiʻi Island, to Henry Nathaniel Wiggin, descended from Massachusetts Bay Colony governor Simon Bradstreet and his wife, the poet Anne Bradstreet, and Mary Paʻahana Kanakaʻole, descendant of a long line of kahuna (priests) going back centuries.

Pukui was educated in the Hawaiian Mission Academy, and taught Hawaiiana at Punahou School. Pukui was fluent in the Hawaiian language, and from the age of fifteen collected and translated folk tales, proverbs and sayings. She worked at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum from 1938 to 1961 as an ethnological assistant and translator. She also taught Hawaiian to several scholars and served as an informant for numerous anthropologists. Pukui is the co-author of the definitive Hawaiian-English Dictionary (1957, revised 1986), Place Names of Hawaii (1974), and The Echo of Our Song (1974), a translation of old chants and songs. Her book, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, contains nearly 3,000 examples of Hawaiian proverbs and poetical sayings, translated and annotated. In addition to her published works, Pukui's knowledge was also preserved in her notes, oral histories, hundreds of audiotape recordings from the 1950s and 1960s, and a few film clips, all collected in the Bishop Museum. She is often credited with making the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s possible.