Winona Beamer

Campaigner for the preservation of Hawaiian culture

Winona Kapuailohiamanonokalani Desha Beamer, the great matriarch of indigenous Hawaiian culture, has died aged 84. Her ancestral name, meaning "precious flower", can be traced back through five generations of musicians to the house of Kamehameha and Ahiakumai which ruled Hawaii in the 15th century. But as an educator and campaigner for Hawaii's Polynesian culture since the 1940s - and the woman who coined the term "Hawaiiana" - she was widely known as plain Aunty Nona.

Nona's parents were Pono Beamer, a fisherman and songwriter, and his wife, Louise, a school teacher and hula dancer. Nona spent a lot of her childhood with her grandmother, Helen Desha Beamer, a prolific songwriter and hula dancer whom her granddaughter considered her primary cultural influence. Throughout her life, Nona would emphasise the importance of learning from kapuna (ancestors).

Nona first danced in public at the age of three - and she carried on for the next 80 years. Announcing her retirement in 2006, she said: "I'm handing in my resignation. I want to quit while I'm ahead." That was after completing a statewide tour with her son Keola, himself one of the world's leading Hawaiian slack-key guitar players, best known as the composer of Honolulu City Lights and an innovative musician who has fused Hawaiian roots and contemporary music. In the event, his mother's final performance did not come until last February.

As a child Nona was dismayed by the increasing domination of American culture in Hawaii. In the 1930s she was briefly expelled from school for performing the then banned hula dance. She repeatedly stated in interviews: "It wasn't until I was about 70 that I felt I was doing good as a Hawaiian. Now I can be proud to be a Hawaiian. It was a long time coming after years of feeling shame."

Nona claimed her teaching career started when she was aged 12. "We were teaching the old stories as a way of having children learn about their heritage," she recalled, "but the Hawaiian chants were spooky for the children, so we added a few musical notes. It was nothing great, but these songs made the history come to life for the children."

Moving to the US, she studied anthropology at Colorado Women's College, and Barnard College, Manhattan. In New York she encountered the then US first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and upon returning to Hawaii took charge of her programme to provide emergency food in all school cafeterias.

In 1948 Nona coined the term Hawaiiana to convey indigenous Hawaiian culture and, in 1949, began teaching at Kamehameha high school - the same school that once expelled her - setting up the Hawaiian studies department and remaining there for nearly 40 years. She also took over her mother's hula studio and taught hula in Waikiki for 30 years. She became a noted chanter, composer and storyteller and helped reintroduce standing hula for women in the school curriculum.

During the 1950s Nona became upset at how hula was being marketed to Hawaii's tourist trade so she began promoting its ancient forms. Around this time she composed Pupu Hinuhinu, a song that has since been sung by all Hawaiian schoolchildren.

Once retired from teaching, she set up the Aloha Music Camp with Keola to share her knowledge of Hawaiiana. In 1996 she recorded a CD, The Golden Lehua Tree: Stories and Music from the Heart of Hawaii's Beamer Family.

Nona received many awards, including being inducted into the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame and the Magic Penny award for lifetime contribution to children's music. In 1987 she as named Outstanding Hawaiian of the Year.

Her campaigning spirit never left her and, in 1997, she circulated a letter complaining about mismanagement of funds at Kamehameha school, which led to the resignation of the board of directors. Last year, she wrote to President George Bush and the US Congress in protest over plans to install the advanced technology solar telescope (ATST) on Hawaii, calling for the cessation of "any further invasion of our sacred homeland". She wrote: "There is no concern for the rare and endangered species of plant and animal life of Hawaii. There is utter disregard for ancient artefacts and sites."

She is survived by her three sons and a daughter.

· Winona Kapuailohiamanonokalani Desha Beamer, songwriter, dancer, teacher, born August 15 1923; died April 10 2008

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