‘O Li‘ulā ko‘u Inoa

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Eia ke kiʻi no ka hana keaka Kalamaʻula, he moʻolelo me Liʻulā (hema) a me kona mau hoa haumāna ʻo Anna a me ʻo Sadie, i ka papa Hawaiian Performance Workshop me Kumu Hailiʻōpua Baker ma Kennedy Theatre i ke kau Spring 2025.
📷 Lurana Donnels O'Malley

Aloha mai kākou!
Ma kēia ʻaoʻao, e kaʻana like ana au i koʻu huakaʻi no ka hoʻopaʻa a me ka hōʻike ʻana i ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi a me ke ʻano Hawaiʻi o ka pae ʻāina.

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9 ʻOkakopa 2025

Ka Hōʻike ʻana i "Kulāiwi" (nā Kumu Larry Kimura)

I kēlā Pōʻalima nei, ua himeni mākou...

11 ʻOkakopa 2025

Kuleana: Teaching Hana Keaka, Performing Mele, Finding Pilina

In my Theatre and Dance 100 class this semester, I had students watch part of the filmed hana keaka Laieikawai, produced on the Kennedy Theatre Mainstage in 2015. For twenty minutes, they were immersed in the Hawaiian language. Their responses were varied, from delight to boredom. I had written about the production that year, after reading a review that deplored the choice of the director, Kumu Hailiʻōpua Baker, to provide no English translation in the form of super- or sub-titles during the live performances. I had disagreed with the reviewer and what I considered her colonizing mindset. I shared these different perspectives with my students as a way to teach about the Hawaiian concept of “kulenea,” which is central to my teaching pedagogy. When I talk to students about kuleana, I explain that the various lived experiences, histories, roles, families, and the communities comprised through our relationships all inform a person's sense of kuleana. I encourage students to decenter the self and see their position as one point of view in a great web of understanding. After reading selections from Shawn Wilson’s Indigenous Research Methods*, I find my own understanding of kuleana broadened by the dream he shares about being a point of light connecting to others that maybe all are part of the same oneness. Furthermore, when learning a new song for my Hawaiian Language class, “Kulāiwi,” by Kumu Larry Kimura, my Kumu, Alicia Rozet, explained one of the lines in the song in a way that also deepened my understanding of Kuleana. “Ke kuleana no ka ʻōiwi” refers to the reciprocal rights and responsibilities of native Hawaiians in relation to their land and ancestors. She talked about how “iwi” are bones, and to be ʻōiwi means that the bones of your ancestors are not only buried in Hawaiʻi, but that they return to the ʻāina, one with the food grown here and the water that rains down upon you here. I am not ʻōiwi but my children are. I grew their iwi in my body and they will always be part of who I am now. Their kuleana is my kuleana.

*Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.