[Previously published in Hawai'i Magazine]
Blue Hawai'i?
Northsiders Inspired to Build Their Island in the Midwest
by Czerina Salud
We sat under the blazing Maui sun for hours, trying not to fidget or make noise. We'd been preparing for this ceremony for months in our studio spaces at the Old Town School of Folk Music and at the Dance Connection studio on Clybourn. Who would've thought that signing up for a hula class would, a year later, land an unwitting group of Northsiders smack in the middle of a sacred Hawaiian purification ritual ordained by the Kumu (living masters) of the Hawaiian culture?
So this was Hawai'i. The real Hawai'i. Not the coconut bra, grass skirt, Elvis song poaching version of the Islands I'd always seen in the glossy photographs of travel magazines. That version of Hawai'i was what sold timeshares, vacation homes and honeymoon getaways to people who romanticized the idea of a tropical retreat. That overtly romanticized version of Hawai'i, unfortunately, has only contributed to obscuring the rich culture and the more authentic aspects of life on that aina (land).
The aina. What many vacation goers completely miss the point of. I couldn't help but involuntarily wince when I was greeted back in Chicago with requests to "see pictures" of my vacation. What I'd learned – what we all learned – was that the Hawaiians have a very special relationship to the aina. It isn't just "land" in that two dimensional sense. It is not a commodity that people buy only to let appreciate so it can be sold off later for a tidy profit. It is the inspiration of all song, story and dance in the Hawaiian culture such as the Kumulipo (creation chant), an over 1000 line piece detailing the importance of how the Islands came to be – describing nature and life as it existed before man and woman. The aina is their historian. It has seen all things pass and will endure as all things continue to evolve. It is the oldest member of everyone's family and holds the richest stories of their past. It is alive.
Our initiation into this living tradition in Hawai'i began at that purification ceremony - a tribute to Laka, the goddess of hula. Not only does the land live and breathe in Hawai'i, but so do their gods and goddesses. We spent hours watching one person after the other bring offerings of ti leaf (considered to be the proper vegetation to present to Laka) up to her altar in complete silence and complete humility. Polynesian men the size of pro-wrestlers bowed their head in deference as they walked, crouched down, presenting offerings of kava lifted above their heads to the community elders.
When the offerings were completed all 500 of us (from Chicago, from Arizona, from California, from Hawai'i, from Japan, from Europe, from everywhere) rose in silence and responded to the kahea (a verbal cue/call given by the Kumu) with our prepared chants and hula. It was electrifying. 500 voices bringing life to a language that had almost died out 200 years ago. 500 bodies moving in unison with the knowledge of thousands of years of history preserved in the story of the dance. Though we were all of varied backgrounds and geography, for this one moment we were of one heart. A Hawaiian heart.
It was with this heart we'd spent the following week getting to know Hawai'i. Our "big city" minds were officially on vacation.
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Our Chicago-based organization, Kupa'a Pacific Island Resources, came to Maui under the guidance of our Director, Lanialoha Lee, as participants in the 2005 Worldwide Hula Conference. This was an event four years in the making and only the second of its kind - ever. Through Lani's direction, Kupa'a has proudly stood alongside the other West Region Mainland Halau (hula schools) as the only representation of the entire Midwest Pacific Island Community for both conferences. We'd all arrived in Maui for the conference expecting a week-long intensive series of workshops, classes and performances - a "hula boot camp" for lack of a better analogy. But the world that opened up to us went much deeper than the few mele (songs), oli (chant) and hula (dance) we learned and even beyond the parts of the aina we visited.
I was startled by my initial encounter with Maui. The grasses and trees looked so dry. It was overcast as well. Nothing at all like the glossy postcards that presumably depicted leafy green palm trees, a crystalline shoreline and eternally sunny skies. Why was everything so brown and dark? I soon found out.
One of the workshops I'd signed up for took us on a tour of Lahaina and Ka'anapali. As we descended into the Ka'anapali Valley our guides, led by Kumu Hula Pali Ahue – a conference organizer, familiarized us with the history of the aina. At one point in time, a river that flowed from the top of the mountain and spilled out into the ocean carried 25 million gallons of water a day into the valley, nourishing all the plant life and farmland in the vicinity. As resorts, hotels, golf courses and celebrity vacation homes began to pop up in the area, the waters became diverted to these facilities. As a result, only 1 million gallons of water a day ever makes it to the surrounding farm land and plant life. The luxurious accommodations of the nearby resorts and vacation homes had come at the cost of depriving the local population the means to raise their own food. The story of the brown Maui grasses became clearer to me.
Our bus zoomed along the coast. From my window I could see the entire side of a mountain. The woman next to me, Koana Smith - a long time Maui resident, pointed out camping tents set into the mountain side as we drove by them.
"There are more than usual", she said to me. "Camping season?" I asked. "No. Those are all the homeless Hawaiians that were kicked off their land", she replied.
I was in disbelief. I thought the surrender of the Hawaiian Islands to the Western World happened over 200 years ago. Surely the native people would have rebuilt and reclaimed a part of their community by now. I was struck by a moment of clarity. Everything I'd seen and experienced since I got there suddenly began to link together.
The seemingly overpriced real estate listings in the office windows we walked passed. The "Kou Inoa" (an initiative for Hawai'i's independence from the U.S.) voter's registration table parked out every night in front of the evening's concert venue. The hula conference itself as an effort to maintain a culture, tradition and language that was almost lost to the world. The heartfelt manner the Kumu and instructors taught us about the significance of altars, burial grounds, battles and earthly manifestations of the divine that once inhabited this land. The mana'o (ideas) that conference organizer Kumu Hula Hokulani Holt-Padilla enthusiastically shared with us of learning the language, correctly sharing the hula, visiting Hawai'i often and understanding our kuleana (responsibility) to dancing hula.
That land and the activity on that land were ripe with living examples of the unfinished business of Hawai'i's occupation.
* * * * * * * * * *
Over two hundred years later, the land still reflects the endurance and strength of the Hawaiian people. You can see it in the occasional "shack" that is nestled in a row of million dollar homes, usually the sign of the last native land dwellers who refused to sell their home to the non-Hawaiian land developers. You can see it in the parks of Kanaha beach where a local group of environmental preservationists have poured years and their personal finances into reintroducing the native plant life back into this ecosystem. When I made an effort to observe and actually got out from behind my tourist's camera, everything I saw in front of me revealed a piece of that aina's story.
The significance of the land there goes beyond a mere territorial dispute. The occupation of the Islands had left the native population decimated. Within 50 years, ninety percent of the Hawaiian people had died due to disease brought over by the colonists. Those who had survived the diseases and their descendents would find themselves systematically stripped of their cultural and physical inheritance as their lands were annexed, their language forbidden in the schools, and their cultural practices forbidden and forced underground for decades. Those who choose to hold onto their traditional way of life would find themselves at the mercy of a foreign system.
Because the system that exists today favors "development" over rehabilitation, natural resources (like water) are made available to land developers before they are given to the farmers. The local farmers who feed the indigenous population then become further impeded to do their job due to the scarcity of resources. The self-sustenance of the native people is further prohibited by restricting their access to the oceans. I learned, from my conversations with the local residents, that only those with commercial fishing licenses were allowed to harvest the sea (apparently an effort to keep the homeless off the beaches so they wouldn't "mar" the beauty of the coastline for vacation-goers).
The trade-off to preserve the Hawaiian way of life (one that is agriculturally centered and communally based) has forced many to lose their homes and their means of providing for themselves. It is not an uncommon story to hear of someone finding a long lost family member living in a cave strategically located near a Chinese cemetery because of the food offerings periodically left at the gravesites. With the lack of water to farm and restrictive fishing laws, those ceremonial offerings become the only source of food for some.
The future generations of Hawaiians that refuse to live like this, but do not want to compromise their heritage, are left with the option of leaving their home. A significant amount of young Hawaiians have transplanted themselves onto the west coast of the mainland. As this uprooted generation settles into their new homes and begin to raise their own families, however, they are faced with the challenge of keeping that connection to the aina as told through their mele (song) a real and integral part of their daily life, not only for themselves but for the succeeding generation as well so their history is not lost.
I had learned in one of my mele workshops that, though much of the culture's history is referenced in the text of the music, it is the land that actually preserves that knowledge. To sing of the beauty of the Maunaleo mountains is nothing more than a snapshot of a moment in that mountain's life. The visceral understanding of its splendor is heard in the composer's voice, a voice whose potency comes only from knowing – from being connected.
One of the conference panelists under the guidance of Kumu Vicky Holt Takamine reminded me that hula and the Hawaiian arts, unlike most art forms practiced today, is not art for arts' sake. It is a creative expression with purpose. In the past oli (chants) were used from everything to assisting with the drudgery of the daily chores (i.e. beating cloth to a rhythm that was kept by chanting) to maintaining the genealogy of families (as entire texts of a song explain who's related to whom) to praying (as I had experienced in the purification ceremony). Their "art" played an integral role in maintaining the social order of their communities. Even in this modern setting, the Hawaiian arts and hula exist for a purpose. It has been the anchor for many Hawaiians as they are forced to readjust their way of life in order to accommodate the Western ways of life. It is the vehicle by which their history is preserved and their way of life is perpetuated. Astoundingly enough, although these practices were nearly extinguished by the Western World, it is also something they continue to share with, not only their communities, but with the very same interlopers that would have seen this way of life perish centuries ago.
* * * * * * * * * *
We were all very grateful to have experienced the island of Maui, not merely as tourists and onlookers but as advocates for the Hawaiian arts and culture. We'd all come away with our own epiphanic stories and moments of self discovery. Our travels back to Chicago buzzed with an excitement in our conversation of what we had learned and what we were planning to do with that knowledge.
The conversations on the trip home circled around future plans for "adopting" Foster Beach, planting our own native gardens and, of course, sharing the hula we learned at the conference. We'd all been touched by the aloha of the hula community and it was an important reminder to us that we "live aloha" on our island here in the city.
Perhaps as our hula family here in Chicago grows and continues to educate the residents of our city, those associations of the grass skirts and coconut bras will begin to fade and in their place will stand a truer representation of what Hawai'i really is. These culturally independent and rich traditions steeped in the history of the land have forged the resiliency of a people who are often represented as nothing more than a mere caricature in most of the world's eyes. Somehow, despite the prolific mischaracterization perpetuated by the Western World, the Hawaiian way of life manages to endure and thrive. Here, in Chicago, we strive to bring a new vision to those old misconceptions as we continue to build our island in the Midwest.
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About the Author Czerina Salud is one of Chicago's many working artists and a Mezzo Soprano whose current repertoire includes both Hawaiian and Western classical music. Her enthusiasm for hula – and Spam – will most likely keep her returning to Hawai'i.
Email: czerina@hotmail.com
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