History's 2026 Reichard Panel: Gabe Chang-Deutsch '25 & Prof. Noenoe Silva
On February 24, 2026, the Department of History celebrated History alumni Gabe Chang-Deutsch '25, the 2025 winner of the Peter J. Reichard 1966 Memorial Research Award for the best honors thesis in History. Gabe Chang-Deutsch rejoined faculty, friends and classmates on campus to present a lecture on his award-winning thesis, "Nā Palapala Hoʻopiʻi: Petitions in the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1868-1887."
Chang-Deutsch was joined in conversation by honored guest scholar Dr. Noenoe Silva, professor of Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Hawaiian language at the Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language.
Gabe Chang-Deutsch '25, and guest scholar Professor Noenoe Silva (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa). (Photo By History Department)
Noenoe K. Silva is Kanaka Hawaiʻi from Kailua, Oʻahu, author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism and The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History, and numerous journal articles. Her research includes the reclamation of ʻike Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian knowledge) through Hawaiian language, poetry, literature and history, reconstructed through the archives written by kūpuna Hawaiʻi (ancestors).
Silva offered critical praise for Chang-Deutsch’s original research, highlighting his exemplary engagement with Hawaiian language primary sources. In particular, she outlined how his use of Hawaiian-language primary sources uproots imperialist mis-characterizations of indigenous Hawaiians as politically apathetic to US occupation and annexation. Instead, his original translations of legal petitions unveil a rich history of democratic documentation, communal resistance and civic self-determination among citizens of Hawaiʻi that adds vital breadth to our understanding of Polynesian, Hawaiian and US political history.
Thesis Abstract:
Nā Palapala Hoʻopiʻi: Petitions in the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1868-1887." Gabe Chang-Deutsch, 2025.
In the 19th century, residents & citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom utilized mass petitions to secure their interests in a moment of rapid political & economic change. These social documents dealt with many of the issues that structured contemporary Hawaiian politics, such as immigration laws, livestock ownership, & plantation labor relations. This thesis examines petitions in order to trace how Hawaiian subjects shaped their own experiences & political life. In the process, it argues that petitions are a powerful documentary record for understanding how Hawaiians imagined their rights, and created egalitarian customs.