My name is Deborah Kuʻupuaonaona McCue – born and raised on the East Coast by my Hawaiian mother and grandmother. My husband calls me Hawaiirish – because of the Irish and Scottish bloodlines that flow from my father and maternal grandfather. But I was raised by a hula dancer and cultural teacher who shared her Hawaii with me and when I was 6 years old, my full-blooded Hawaiian grandmother traded the Pacific for the Atlantic, leaving her home in Wahiawā, Oahu to join our family in Rockville, Maryland. Her gentle voice of instruction, her spirit of aloha, and her healing presence were a constant in my youth. The memory of her a blessing. The stories in whitehawaiian are memories I want to share with my ʻohana or anyone interested in perpetuating Hawaiian culture. Blood quantum was an idea forced on indigenous people by colonizing forces to determine their right to call themselves Native American or Native Hawaiian. Its specter had plagued me all my life and kept me from acknowledging that I am Kanaka Maoli. In these stories you’ll find my thoughts about being a white Hawaiian.

Aloha!

Kuʻupuaonaona