At Bishop Museum, our collections embody the living cultures of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Our humanities collections contain 3 million cultural items, archaeological materials, historical photographs, works of art, audio recordings, books, and manuscripts — more than half of the world’s primary source material for Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. But with only 5% of our collections currently available online, they are mostly inaccessible. Through our Digital Futures Initiative, Bishop Museum will digitize more of our collections and make content publicly accessible.

Yet digitization alone does not give sufficient context to our materials. Nor does it explain how different items relate to each other in significant ways. Every item in our care is part of the interconnected histories of Pacific people, cultures, and languages. But it is the knowledge and stories behind these items that illuminate their meaning.

Stories live within our communities. They are held by Bishop Museum’s staff — our curators, collection managers, and caretakers — whose combined knowledge and experience is rooted in the collections they steward. They are held by our practitioners and our kūpuna, who perpetuate the legacies of oral tradition and cultural practice. Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian people) on staff are especially vital to preserving Museum and Hawaiian histories, as they share the stories that they alone retain. All of these voices — these storytellers — are part of a genealogy of knowledge that’s both institutional and cultural, both lived and inherited. It is their voices that must be shared.