May 8, 2006

Native Hawaiian rights activist Haunani-Kay Trask to give talk on May 9

Haunani-Kay Trask, a scholar and native Hawaiian rights activist, will speak at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9, at the Merrill College Cultural Center.

Trask's lecture "Native Hawaiian Opposition to American Militarization: the Role of Student Resistance," is part of the Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month celebration on campus. The theme of the celebration is "Preparing Today for Tomorrow: Momentum for Movement." The talk is free and open to the public.

Trask was the first full-time director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa in Honolulu and is also one of the founders and leading members of Ka Lahui Hawai'i, the largest native sovereignty organization in Hawai'i. She has been a Fellow at the Pacific Basin Research Center at Harvard University (1998) a National Endowment for the Arts Writer-in-Residence at Santa Fe, New Mexico (1996), a Rockefeller resident fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder (1989), and an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellow (1984).

Trask's books include the critically acclaimed, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i, as well as two books of poetry, Light in the Crevice Never Seen, and Night is a Sharkskin Drum. She was co-producer and scriptwriter of the award-wining film, Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation (1993).

For more information, please contact the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, one of the event's sponsors, at (831) 459-5349 or e-mail aapirc@ucsc.edu.