The last few weeks have been spent working on a mobile device app which focuses on Fort Vancouver in Vancouver, Washington. What is it? See here. Beta testing begins in the Fall.
The Mobile Vancouver Project is the brainchild of Brett Oppegaard and other media professors at Washington State University and rangers at Fort Vancouver. The first module of this project (so far there are three) focuses on the cultural aspect of the Fort; the Hawaiian laborers and William Kaulehelehe. Ke Kukui Foundation was contacted as a cultural reference and since I'm one of the "historians" and liaison between KKF and the Fort, I've been an active part. Besides researching the history through reference books and countless hours online, I worked on finding the scenes, the appropriate chants, music and verses, casting the actors, and managing Ke Kukui's part with Brett.
Bully Magsayo recites the Lord's Prayer in `olelo Hawaii and in English.
The story of William Kaulehelehe is quite heartbreaking.
He was an unordained minister who was asked to come from Hawai`i in the mid 1840s to influence the hundreds of Pacific Northwest Hawaiians who were working as trappers, laborers, millers, sailors, gardeners, and cooks at Fort Vancouver.
On the left, the real William and Mary circa 1850s. On the right, our actors Frank VanWaardenburg and Virginia MacKenzie
He was known in Fort Vancouver history as “Billy” or “Kanaka William" and while not an ordained minister--no Hawaiians had been ordained by that date though some had already been formally licensed to preach by the Protestant missionaries--but he was a man of good reputation. And, it should be noted, McLoughlin placed him on the rolls as “teacher” at an annual salary of £40, a rate about equalling that for the top European craftsmen on the Columbia river.
Recreating the confrontation of the US and William, just before they burned down his house.
In early 1860, with the decline of the beaver fur trade and a border dispute, Hudson’s Bay Company relocated to Victoria, BC and gave up the Fort to the Americans. Kaulehelehe and his wife lived there for a few months until the U.S. Army removed the windows and doors from his home, carried him out by force, and burned the house in March of 1860.
The app will have recreated scenes of this as well as an earlier antidote of Hawaiians doing a hula in 1847 even after it was outlawed in Hawai`i.
Preparing to film the hula scene.
Late one night, the men had gathered, were drinking and generally were in a jovial mood. "8 Sandwich Islanders in the crew who afforded a pantomime dance with singing - grotesque and ridiculous." 1847, Paul Kane. Two wanted to desert the next day because of the ridicule. "Ku on Columbia: Hawaiians in 1831-1854" " by Donnel J Rogers.