Welcome Leilehua Yuen, Gemini Observatory’s Hawaiʻi Culture and Language Resident
Leilehua Yuen - Courtesy of NOIRLab
Please give a warm welina mai to the International Gemini Observatory and NOIRLab's first Hawaiʻi Culture and Language Resident, Leilehua Yuen. Leilehua is a cultural practitioner and kumu hula based in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, with a long history of working on Maunakea and studying the stars. The Hawaiʻi Culture and Language Residency program offers one-year full-time positions to members of our Hawaiʻi community who are experts in Hawaiian culture and language. Leilehua will work directly with Hawaiʻi Education and Engagement Manager, Leinani Lozi, on a series of projects with the aim of grounding our observatories in Hawaiian values and knowledge, as well as providing advice and a unique perspective to our directors, board, and leadership teams.
“We are honored to welcome Leilehua to our Gemini, NOIRLab, and Maunakea Observatories ʻohana,” said Scott Dahm, Director of the International Gemini Observatory. “I’m especially looking forward to exploring new ways of knowing that will help us best serve our Hawaiʻi community and protect Maunakea.”
One of Leilehua’s main projects during her time at Gemini will be to reimagine NOIRLab’s 88 Constellations map from a Native Hawaiian perspective. As a part of this work, she will also be releasing monthly star charts that begin on the Hilo Moon of every Hawaiian malama (month). Anyone will be able to access these charts and their respective moʻolelo on the Maunakea Observatories website.
Another major project in which our island community can engage with Leilehua directly is by attending the new Malalo o ka Lani Maunakea program. Within the program, Kūkākūkā (Talk Story) sessions will engage attendees in learning Hawaiian constellations, including those used for voyaging and time-keeping, before their respective malama begins. Papa Wahi Pana will focus on training individuals to conduct ceremony for entering the sacred space that is Maunakea with ʻoli and hoʻokupu. For more information on Malalo o ka Lani Maunakea, please click here to see the attached flier and fill out the RSVP form in the QR code. In the meantime, we invite you to learn more about Leilehua via her self-introduction below and visit the Maunakea Observatories during one of our many community events.
A Message from Leilehua
Aloha kākou,
What a thrill it is to join the team at Gemini/NOIRLab! In 1999, when Gemini North saw first light, I was working as a consultant for Space Age Publishing Company as well as leading cultural programs on Maunakea based on the premise that culture and science are not mutually exclusive, and that we do not have to sever our roots to reach for the stars.
I was born in Berkeley, California, to a pair of students studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts. My first home was a caravel my father built in the Oakland estuary. Their dream was to live aboard the boat and, after graduation, sail home to Hawaiʻi. Whenever my parents had time off from school, we came home to the islands (though we had to fly as the boat was not finished), where we stayed with my father’s parents.
After my parents divorced, I eventually ended up in Hawaiʻi full-time. Missing my brothers, my mother, and my sea-going home, I took solace in stories and books. Both sets of my grandparents had taught me stories using the stars and constellations and picture books. I remember nights sleeping outdoors and watching the stories play out overhead.
Among my grandparents’ friends were the Reeds (who owned Petroglyph Press, one of the few publishing companies keeping Hawaiian works in print at the time), author Vi Thompson, who wrote so many wonderful stories and collected Hawaiian legends, the Beamer family and thus the Trasks, MacBride, Ozzy Bushnell, and so many others. Our home was filled with books, and many were filled with stories and legends of old Hawaiʻi.
My cousin’s wife was a librarian at the Hilo Library, and so I became the youngest person at that time to hold a library card! Access to books was critically important to me because I was a sickly, asthmatic child. I spent many nights unable to sleep as there were few effective treatments at that time. My key to survival was immersing myself in stories and legends, which distracted me from my battle for breath. So many of those stories and legends could also be read in the stars.
Years later, when I was all grown up and working as a journalist, I was called on to write a story about space information sciences as a viable industry for Hawaiʻi. One of the sources I happened to interview was Peter Michaud, who at the time worked at the Bishop Museum’s Jhamandus Watumull Planetarium. Shortly after that, I interviewed him again for a story about the Makahiki. So, for some 30 years, Peter, the former Education and Engagement Manager at NOIRLab, has been my go-to guy when I need an astronomy quote that a layperson can understand.
Like so many of us in these islands, I have a multicultural background. My grandparents, who raised me, were Henry and Thelma Yuen. Thelma was an Irish hula dancer, and Henry was a Hawaiian-Chinese MD. They met while he was studying medicine at the University of St. Louis.
Due to the anti-miscegenation laws of the time, their marriage was covert and unrecorded. In 1920s Missouri, my grandfather could have been lynched for marrying a white woman. A generation later, their son had to drive from state to state to find a place where he could marry the woman who would give birth to me. These things are important to know to understand me, because this moʻolelo is my kumuwai, the wellspring which fed the kupu, the unfurling sprout of my being, and gave me a passion for equal rights and equal opportunity.
My formative years were during the Apollo missions. Like people around the world, my family and I stayed by our radio in hope and prayer, waiting for the safe return of our astronauts. That era was a time of such contrast. The 20th century saw humans develop the capacity to destroy humanity’s ability to live on this planet, and at the same time we were developing, in the words of the first TV show I was allowed to watch, the ability to “explore strange new worlds.” I was starting college when Voyagers 1 and 2 launched. And the stars silently watched it all.
From my bedroom window, I watched the stars slip behind Maunakea. I watched the Moon in its phases rest on her shoulder before sliding out of sight. I watched Kahoupouakāne adorn Poliʻahu in her white garment each winter. And I watched Kūkahauʻula embrace her at dawn.
Many of you also probably did that thing where, in your senior year of high school, you wrote your dreams of your future in your yearbook. Mine described how I would become a journalist and live in a rainforest. I would ride a motorcycle down the paths to the airport, where I would climb into my airplane and fly to exciting places around the world, then fly to the city and file my story at the editorial offices, fly back to my own airport, and ride my motorcycle home.
Well, my eyesight would not let me qualify on instruments, so I had to fly commercial airliners. But I got to fly to exciting places around the world. For some time, I had a boyfriend who was also a journalist, and we chased eclipses together. I had a motorcycle and lived in the rainforest (not hard on Hawaiʻi island). At last, my father called me and asked me to return and take on our family home.
Once again, I found myself in my old bedroom watching the stars and moon slipping behind Maunakea, Kahoupoakāne adorning Poliʻahu each winter, and Kūkahauʻula embracing her in the dawn. And now, walking into the Gemini offices and being greeted by Peter, I rather feel like my career in writing about space sciences has come full circle!
A big mahalo to Peter, Leinani, and everyone at Gemini for welcoming me on board.
ʻO au nō, me kaʻoiaʻiʻo,
Leilehua
