Na Mea Makamae: Hawaiian Treasures offers an introduction to the treasured objects of ka po`e kahiko, the people of Hawaii. Early Hawaiian life is presented in the words of explorer Captain James Cook, naturalist Andrew Bloxam, missionary William Ellis, and Hawaiian scholars David Malo and Samuel Kamakau. In addition, contemporary Hawaiians living on the Kona Coast early in the twentieth century share their mana`o, or thoughts, on traditional life. Hawaiian culture is rich in some of the most artistic, functional, and abstract objects found anywhere in the Pacific. More than eighty illustrations feature religious images, feather capes, musical instruments, fishing gear, stylized ornaments, and a myriad of other items fashioned and used by native Hawaiians. These treasures bear witness to a glorious, complex, and accomplished society. In learning about our past we gain knowledge of our present.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Awarded honorary mention for Excellence in Hawaiian Culture and the top award for Excellence in Design for books published in 1999. -- Ka Palapala Po`okela 2000, Hawaii Book Publishers Association
Big Island's David Young has given us a thorough inventory of Hawaiian material culture. In Na Mea Makamae: Hawaiian Treasures, he illustrates and explains the tools, implements and objects of art that surrounded the daily life of the ancient Hawaiians: stone lamps and nets, tapa pounders and bracelets, daggers and aku lures, drums and statues of the gods. Any serious student of Hawaiiana needs this book. -- Honolulu Magazine November
Even for someone with little or no knowledge of Hawaiian culture, this book is inviting and interesting to read. -- Writer's Digest 2001 Self Published Book Award Winner
Interviews with several Hawaiians familiar with the pieces and their uses take the book beyond pretty pictures. Young's text provides detailed information about all aspects of ancient Hawaiian life. -- Honolulu Star-Bulletin 12/17/99
The name of the book is "Na Mea Makamae," Hawaiian for "treasured objects," and the book itself may be considered a treasured object. -- West Hawaii Today 12/22/99
Big Island's David Young has given us a thorough inventory of Hawaiian material culture. In Na Mea Makamae: Hawaiian Treasures, he illustrates and explains the tools, implements and objects of art that surrounded the daily life of the ancient Hawaiians: stone lamps and nets, tapa pounders and bracelets, daggers and aku lures, drums and statues of the gods. Any serious student of Hawaiiana needs this book. -- Honolulu Magazine November
Even for someone with little or no knowledge of Hawaiian culture, this book is inviting and interesting to read. -- Writer's Digest 2001 Self Published Book Award Winner
Interviews with several Hawaiians familiar with the pieces and their uses take the book beyond pretty pictures. Young's text provides detailed information about all aspects of ancient Hawaiian life. -- Honolulu Star-Bulletin 12/17/99
The name of the book is "Na Mea Makamae," Hawaiian for "treasured objects," and the book itself may be considered a treasured object. -- West Hawaii Today 12/22/99
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly a "Treasure" of a book !!,
This review is from: Na Mea Makamae: Hawaiian Treasures (Paperback)
David Young was born and raised in Hawai`i by a kama`aina family with a keen appreciation for both the Hawaiian culture and Hawaii's natural environment. It is obvious from both his introduction and from the book itself that Na Mea Makamae is a work of love and respect. Most of the material in Young's book has been taken from other published material. As a result, Hawaiian Treasures is primarily a compilation of knowledge from other sources. However, Young openly acknowledges that and he provides very complete notes about his sources for each chapter and an excellent bibliography.One could easily dismiss Young's book as just another "me too" collection of things Hawaiian - but that would be a BIG mistake. Books about collections of artifacts can be terribly boring and bear a close resemblance to reading a catalog, but Young's beautiful book is about as far away from that category as you can get. He has assembled a varied and amazingly representative collection of Hawaiian artifacts, took high quality photographs of them and then added rich commentary to weave a totally captivating book. As he explains in the introduction, "artifacts are representations of a culture." Young has chosen a cross-section of Hawaiian artifacts that clearly portrays both the richness of artistic achievement and the simultaneous practicality with which Hawaiians dealt with their environment. Many of the artifacts that he has chosen are from the Kailua-Kona area, which makes this book especially interesting to Big Island residents or visitors. One of the unique features of Hawaiian Treasures that elevates it to "coffee table" status (in addition to the photographs) is that many of the chapters are preceded by semi-transparent vellum pages which are printed with an historical photograph or drawing, or a Hawaiian kapa or fish-netting pattern. The effect is stunning. In the case of the natural materials, you can almost feel the textures! Chapters include such subjects as: early collectors, food, shelter, trees, textiles, clothing, travel, fishing, recreation, musical instruments, weapons, religion, ornaments, etc. Young uses a very nice combination of photographs (many historical), dictionary-like text entries and interview material to present a surprisingly complete, if brief, overview of the Hawaiian culture. In only 109 pages, he does an excellent job of portraying the complexity, richness and beauty of early Hawaiian life. I've read a lot about Hawai`i, but I learned a lot of new things here (and read about some locations that I have to snoop around now). There is some especially interesting material on the uses of lava caves that I haven't seen before. The only significant way that I think the book might be improved would be to lengthen the descriptions and discussions about some of the artifacts. But then, I suspect that one of Young's purposes in creating this book was to whet people's appetites for more information about the Hawaiians' amazing culture. Hawaiian Treasurers is beautiful, quite remarkable and definitely belongs in everyone's Hawaiian library.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An slim, attractive, information-packed book on "Hawaiian treasures",
By
This review is from: Na Mea Makamae: Hawaiian Treasures (Paperback)
Na Mea Makamae is a book about Hawaiian artifacts. Author David Young writes "Artifacts are representations of a culture, and studying Hawaiian artifacts can lead to an interest in the ancient Hawaiian culture" (p. viii). But he also notes "Because of the passage of time, an anthropologist often can only speculate on the answers to... questions" (p. viii). As an example, he notes the inability to know the translation of tapa and tattoo designs, and petroglyph drawings. I recognized this when I asked Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary managers about petroglyphs of whales (or the apparent lack thereof); their guess was as good as mine.
This book combines exceptionally well-reproduced photographs, drawings, and illustrations, as well as modern photographs of artifacts in collections and museums, with interpretations and text from the limited sources of Hawaiians like David Malo who attempted to record their disappearing culture, even through the biased lens of a missionary education. Interspersed throughout are reproductions of photographs on a translucent "vellum"; very attractive. Young notes "The years 1820-1870 were most devastating to the Hawaiian people. Their social oder and religious system had been overthrown, their population was in decline as a result of disease, their forests and farms had been stripped and neglected, and family unity was threatened as a result of the emergence of towns catering to the commercial interests of the foreigners. Their faith in their culture suffered as they were made by the newcomers to feel ashamed of their religion, language, and lifestyle, and in many homes the Hawaiian language was forbidden and reference to Hawaiian ways punished" (p. 7). Young presents artifacts relating to: - food - shelter - the use of trees - textiles - clothing - canoes and trails - fishing - games and recreation - musical instruments - war and weapons - religion - ornaments Since I'm particularly interested in honu, Young reports that James King, on one of Cook's voyages, noted "At Atooi [Kauai], some of the women wore little figures of the turtle, neatly formed of wood or ivory, tied to their fingers in the manner we wear rings" (p. 91). Young, in an afterward, writes "This suppression of traditional culture, which began in the early 1800s, resulted in the loss not only of traditional Hawaiian religion, language, and lifestyle, but also of the art forms represented by Hawaiian artifacts" (p. 97). The existing artifacts, and the minimal descriptions that exist in Hawaiians' own words and in the journals of early explorers and missionaries, is all that exists. When Young uses the word "loss", he means exactly that... it is gone. Our recreations, and interpretations, are our attempts to describe a past that is unrecorded, and lost. A terrific book for people interested in Hawaiiana.
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