Indigenous Remembering

Hale Kealohalani Makua, Hawai’i

Hale Makua began his journey at Pukalehua (Doorway to Heaven), where people who loved him planted a tree above his placenta in an ancient Hawaiian birth ceremony. They prayed that Hale Makua’s life, like the tree growing above Ho’okena in South Kona, would connect heaven and earth. Through his mother, Makua was a seventh generation direct descendent of King Kamehameha. Through his father, he descended from the beloved Keoua Kuahu’ula of Ka’u—the high chief murdered and sacrificed by Kamehameha himself in Kohala—clearing the way for Kamehameha to become ka mo’i—the King. Hale Makua’s rare bloodline made him a high chief, lani, or heavenly body, and his courage led him through three tours of duty in Vietnam before he landed in a Texas VA Hospital for five years, trying to heal his wounded leg. Throughout these trials, he was visited by his ancestors daily. With their help, he became a different kind of warrior, a spiritual warrior (keolamagazine.com). Hale Makua remembered and could recite genealogy 1,260 generations back. It was the story of human migrations that went back 25,000 years and included Tibet, Asia, India, Egypt, and Africa. Hale Makua was the keeper of an extraordinary and possibly unequaled body of knowledge and was invited to speak at gatherings, conferences and cultural events throughout the world Hale Kealohalani Makua passed away in 2004.