Richard Kekuni Blaisdell, Sovereign activist and professor of medicine, Died at 90

Richard Kekuni Blaisdell, in full Richard Kekuni Akana Blaisdell was born on March 11, 1925, and died on February 2016.

He was professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi in Honolulu, and a longtime organizer in the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement.

Richard Kekuni Blaisdell was the co-founder of an organization of Hawaiian health professionals called, E Ola Mau in 1984.

Richard was also the Founding Chair, of the Department of Medicine at the University of Hawaii John Burns School of Medicine in 1966.

Richard Kekuni Blaisdell was the convener for the 1993 Kanaka Maoli People’s Tribunal, which documented U.S. abuses throughout all major islands in great detail before an international panel of judges, and the primary organizer of Ka Pākaukau (literally, “the Table”), an ongoing forum for dialogue surrounding Kānaka Maoli sovereignty and Hawaiian independence.

Whilst in Chicago, in 1965, Mr.Blaisdell received the national Lederle Medical Faculty Teaching Award, and thus became known to Dean Windsor Cutting, former Stanford Medical School dean and newly appointed first dean of the University of Hawaii School of Medicine.

He became the first Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the newly established University of Hawai’i School of Medicine, in 1966.

Richard and his wife joined others in lobbying for a four-year medical school.

Richard sustained platelet atherosclerosis research.

Following his sabbatical years, Blaisdell was a visiting professor of medicine at Rutgers Medical School in 1969 and Harvard Medical School in 1979.

Richard Kekuni Blaisdell served as an East-West Center medical consultant in the Trust Territory of the Pacific, 1968–1970, and at a University of Hawai’i teaching consultant on Okinawa, from 1967-1974.

Richard Kekuni Blaisdell passed away at 90 yrs old.