UH Hilo celebrates renaming Mookini Library’s Hawaiian Collection in honor of beloved Kumu Edith Kanakaʻole

Posted on June 5, 2025 by Staff

The Edith Kanakaʻole Hawaiian Collection is now named for the beloved Aunty Edith, a UH educator and internationally acclaimed Indigenous Hawaiian composer, chanter, dancer, teacher, and entertainer.

By Susan Enright.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has renamed the Hawaiian Collection at Mookini Library in honor of educator and cultural icon Edith Kanakaʻole.

The Edith Kanakaʻole Hawaiian Collection is now named for the beloved Aunty Edith, an internationally acclaimed Indigenous Hawaiian composer, chanter, dancer, teacher, and entertainer. She passed away in 1978. During her time at Hawaiʻi Community College and UH Hilo, Kanakaʻole developed a variety of courses on ethnobotany, Polynesian history, genealogy, and Hawaiian chant and mythology. To honor her monumental contributions to the Hilo campus, the humanities building at UH Hilo, which is located next to the library and houses subjects such as languages, English, philosophy and kinesiology, is named in honor of the Keaukaha native; in 2023, her portrait was painted as a large mural on the side of the building closest to the library.

Renaming event

Large wooden sign above etched glass doorway: Edith Kanakaʻole Hawaiian Collection. — Beautiful new sign for the renamed Edith Kanakaʻole Hawaiian Collection at Mookini Library, UH Hilo. (Photo: Mookini Library/UH Hilo)

Along with staff and students, four generations of Kanakaʻole ʻohana joined the Hawaiian Collection renaming celebration May 5, 2025. At the event were Kanakaʻole’s daughter Pua Kanahele, a retired Hawaiʻi CC Hawaiian studies professor, and great-granddaughters Lanihuli Kanahele and Pelehonuamea Harman who serves at UH Hilo’s new director of Native Hawaiian engagement (leading oli at 0:27 in the above video).

The video highlights the ways in which Kanakaʻole’s legacy continues to shape how Hawaiian knowledge is taught, valued, and passed on at UH Hilo.

Hawaiian Collection Librarian Annemarie Aweau Paikai narrates part of the video, sharing, in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language), her manaʻo on Kanakaʻole’s legacy and the collection’s renaming. Paikai talks about how important it was to have members of Kanakaʻole’s family present at the event, and to have hula students dance to a beloved composition of Edith Kanakaʻole entitled “Ka Uluwehi O Ke Kai.”

Learn more about the life and legacy of Edith Kanakaʻole: PDF/Mookini Library.

Story by Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.