Mary Kawena Pukui

(1895 - 1986)

Mary Kawena Pukui, the daughter of a Hawaiian woman and a plantation owner from Salem, Massachusetts, was raised by her maternal grandmother, who taught her Hawaii’s history and language and instilled in her the importance of remembering and passing on that history to others. Her grandmother died when she was nine years old, and she went on to attend the Hawaiian Mission Academy, where she began learning new methods for preserving Hawaii’s history. In 1937 she was hired as a translator and researcher at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. She wrote and coauthored dozens of books and scholarly works, including a Hawaiian-English dictionary.