[1] It also includes a genealogy of the members of Hawaiian royalty and was created in honor of Kalaninuiamamao and passed down orally to his daughter Alapaiwahine.
In 1779, Captain James Cook arrived in Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaiʻi during the season and was greeted by the Hawaiians reciting the Kumulipo.
[3] Years later Queen Liliʻuokalani described the chant as a prayer of the development of the universe and the ancestry of the Hawaiians.
The second section, containing the remaining nine wā, is ao and is signaled by the arrival of light and the gods, who watch over the changing of animals into the first humans.
[13] The supermassive black hole M87*, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, was informally given the Hawaiian name "Pōwehi", a poetic description of generative darkness or the spirit world taken from the Kumulipo.
[14] In 2009, the poet Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio performed her poem, Kumulipo, at a poetry event at the White House.