Ed greevy and Haunani-Kay Trask
b. 1939, Los Angeles
lives and works in Makiki, Kona, Oʻahu
1949–2021, San Francisco
lived and worked in Honolulu, Kona, Oʻahu
hawai‘i triennial 2022
@ HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART
@ HAWAI‘I STATE ART MUSEUM
» » Hear more about Haunani-Kay Trask in the Sensuality is Pacific: Haunani Kay Trask & Kainani Kahaunaele episode of fresh pacific, a podcast with award-winning journalist Noe Tanigawa.
Installation view: Ed Greevy and Haunani-Kay Trask, Selections from Kū‘ē: Thirty Years of Land Struggle in Hawai‘i (2004), 1971–1993, Honolulu Museum of Art, HT22, Honolulu. Courtesy of the artists and Hawai‘i Contemporary. Photo: Christopher Rohrer.
Haole independent documentarian Ed Greevy and Native Hawaiian political leader Haunani-Kay Trask first collaborated together for an exhibition in Honolulu during 1981. Greevy presented a selection of black and white photographs documenting local land struggles and Trask wrote accompanying captions to contextualize the passionate scenes of dissent. Their creative alliance, formed and sustained at the front lines of environmental and social justice movements in Hawaiʻi, continued for over two decades.
In 1970, on the streets of Waikīkī, Greevy encountered a poster by Save Our Surf (SOS), an action-oriented and information-driven grassroots community organization established in the mid-1960s. By the early 1970s, SOS had expanded beyond advocating for Hawaiʻi’s shorelines and surf to embrace other issues of the times such as tenant rights: ‘HULI’. Struck by the poster, Greevy, a concerned surfer himself, made his way to an SOS meeting held at the home of co-founders and tireless activists John and Marion Kelly. Like Greevy, Trask too was inspired by SOS and the Kellys, especially Marion—an anthropologist and educator who helped to co-create the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), and supported the beginnings of the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, UH Mānoa, where Trask served as the founding director.
In 1971 Greevy was encouraged by the Kellys to document the eviction of a rural community in Kalama Valley, Oʻahu, to make way for a resort development: ‘YANKEE GO HOME’. A witness to what Trask would later identify as ‘the birth of the modern Hawaiian movement’, Greevy was forever changed by this experience. Radicalized, he turned his camera to the numerous land struggles that characterized post-statehood Hawaiʻi—Waiāhole and Waikāne; Niumalu and Nawiliwili; Chinatown; Heʻeia; Mokauea; Sand Island; and Mākua—as well as initiatives, associations, and organizations behind the demonstrations, including Stop All Evictions, Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, and Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi.
Deeply involved in many of these efforts and brought together by their shared concerns for justice, Trask and Greevy worked together weaving an ongoing story of resistance that culminated with the publishing of Kū‘ē: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawai‘i in 2004. Consistent with their intersectional approach, the co-authored publication historicizes demands for increased self-determination in Native/non-Native communities: ‘LIBERATE HAWAII’. Through image and text, those who oppose over-development, ongoing dispossession of Native Hawaiians, and desecration of cultural heritage and environmental resources across the archipelago are brought sharply into view.
HT22 honors their impactful work through a selection of powerful moments from Kū‘ē: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawai‘i. Trask and Greevy’s friendship and working relationship endures as a testament to the importance of mobilizing in solidarity to protect people and place, while acknowledging cultural differences. Sung and unsung, named and unnamed, remembered and forgotten, their collaboration as encapsulated in Kū‘ē lives on, ensuring that lesser- and well-known stories of Hawaiʻi continue to serve as vital points of reference and inspiration for generations to come: ‘KŪ HAʻAHEO’.
Ed Greevy, Speech on the Beach, 1993, black and white photograph. Courtesy of the artist. © Ed Greevy.
In July of 1993, President Bill Clinton visited Hawaiʻi and spoke at the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel. Billed as the ‘Speech on the Beach’, the President’s visit galvanized Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi members to organize a demonstration for Hawaiian sovereignty. At the time, Ka Lāhui was the largest, best organized sovereignty group, with close to 20,000 enrolled citizens. President Clinton, who later issued an official apology to Hawaiians for the 1893 American-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, played the liberal role of Native supporter all the while refusing to recognize Hawaiians as a nation. The protest made good copy for the President, but like his apology accomplished little for Hawaiians. — Haunani-Kay Trask
Ed Greevy. Portrait of Ed Greevy circa 1968, in Mo‘ili‘ili. Photo by Rick Regan.
Ed Greevy was born in Los Angeles in 1939. He was a political science student at Long Beach State University when he first came to Hawaii in 1960. He began his photography career in 1962 as an aspiring surfer photographer, aiming to produce images that made viewers feel they were in the middle of the action. This creative impulse led Greevy to begin photographing protests, speeches and civil disobedience in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s over the development of Hawaii’s beaches, displacement of local communities and discretion of Hawaiian culture would achieve the visual depth he searched for.
Greevy started with Save our Surf where he documented the Kalama Valley protests, the Waiāhole-Waikāne struggle, and the Kahoʻolawe protests. Throughout his career he has taken an estimated 60,000 photographs. Greevy has taken part in several exhibitions, including Tree House in Honolulu (2018) and Kumu Kahua Theatre Performance in Honolulu (2019).
Haunani-Kay Trask was a Hawaiian activist, educator, author, and poet. She served as leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and was professor emeritus at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Trask was a pivotal intellectual figure among Native Hawaiian people over the past four decades, demonstrating the importance of critical analysis and creativity to forging a more just future for Indigenous peoples. Her book From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i (1993) remains a classic of Indigenous political thought. She was founding director of the School of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai’i, (the only school of Indigenous studies at a research 1 institution in the U.S.) and founded Ka Lahui Hawai’i, the largest grassroots group in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.