The British Museum in London opened a new exhibit a couple of weeks ago titled “Hawaii: a kingdom crossing oceans," and The Conversation has been featuring stories about the show.
Those who took part in the show hope that someday the artifacts make it back to the islands as part of a traveling exhibit or perhaps into a permanent exhibit in Great Britain.
HPR spoke with many young people from Hawaiʻi who were honored to be in London for the opening.
Jsohnel Pacarro works with the Ambassadors of Aloha ʻĀina program at Kamehameha Schools, which for the last decade has been bringing students to help trace the journey of Hawaiian monarchs in Europe.
Paccaro was part of a stewardship group that has been working with British Museum staff. She told HPR that they were able to bring 48 students in October 2024 to view some of the items in the collections area.
This spring, nearly 70 high school students from Kamehameha Schools will travel to London to see the exhibit firsthand.
“Some of them will be repeat returnees, but the majority of them will be brand new, and this will be their first time experiencing this,” Paccaro said.
“We thought it was very important that we brought as many Hawaiians to see this exhibition, because this collection is unlike anything that we've seen, and these items are here together for the very first time in history.”
Lily Mitchell, one of Paccaro’s KS students, grew up in ʻAiea and just earned a degree in graphic design from Leeds Beckett University in England. Her father is Hawaiian and her mother is British.
She moved to London to look for work and will be helping with programs related to the Hawaiʻi exhibit during its run.
“It's super awesome to see England and London and the British Museum taking pride in showing the relations that we have,” Mitchell said. “It's super cool to just see other Hawaiians here and helping bridge that connection, too."
“They mentioned that a board or a group of Pasifika advised on the descriptions and everything and were heavily involved in curating and picking which artifacts and how they were communicated to the public, and that's not something that is done a lot or has been done throughout history,” Mitchell said.
“I just feel very proud to witness such a change in the tone in Indigenous history and where our art and representation is going.”
HPR also met another student working on her Master of Arts in conservation at UCLA. Hattie Keonaona is making the most out of this experience.
She applied for the summer conservation placement so that she could be involved with the mea kūpuna.
“One of the big things is that this really was an exhibition that had a lot of collaboration from different parts, from Hawaiʻi, different people with their own specialties and their own expertise, being able to work with both on the curation of the exhibit, talking about the conservation as well," Keonaona said.
View upcoming events about the exhibit here. Find the exhibit on The British Museum's YouTube channel here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Jan. 29, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
