In 1971, while on the Big Island searching for the lyrics to an old Hawaiian song, Eddie Kamae met a man who would change his life. Sam Li‘'a was a songwriter of an older era, whose years and music spanned two centuries. Born in 1881, he spent most of his life in and around Waipi‘'o Valley. When Sam passed away, a few years after they met, Eddie began to yearn for a way to pay tribute to this man and what he stood for.

Though he was in the midst of his career as a musician and composer, Eddie began to dream of making a film about Sam and his valley. It would be about the place that had nourished the old man's music and how his music in turn had celebrated and revealed the spirit of that place. It would include testimonials from other people who had been touched, as Eddie had been, and it would include Sam's songs, composed in the older tradition of Hawaiian lyric poetry.

Eddie consulted his teachers and kupuna. He spoke with Iolani Luahine, the legendary dancer. He spoke with Mary Kawena Pukui, the foremost Hawaiian scholar and historian of her day. He spoke with Pilahi Paki, Hawaiian teacher and composer. They all told him the same thing: when the Hawaiians of Sam Li‘'a's era are gone, our last living links with the pre-modern life of early Hawai‘'i will also be gone.

This was the beginning of The Hawaiian Legacy Series, which now includes seven documentary films, released between 1988 and 2000, with four more documentaries to be completed in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Since 1986, Hawaiian musician and film director Eddie Kamae and his wife, film producer Myrna Kamae, have devoted their lives to helping ensure authentic Hawaiian cultural continuity through the films. Their goal is to document for posterity the music, language, people and places of old Hawai‘i.

More than 30 of the kupuna Eddie has filmed are no longer with us. Through film festivals, community events and prime time television, the seven award-winning documentaries in The Hawaiian Legacy Series have reached more than half a million people from Waianae to Washington, D.C. More than 200,000 students have participated in classroom discussions. Four additional films are underway and a fascinating book based on Eddie’s story is being published in November 2004.

The Work of the Hawaiian Legacy Foundation: A summary