About 200 kupuna (elders) from throughout Hawai’i attended the fifth annual Hawaiian Studies Kupuna Conference in Waimea Saturday to help perpetuate the Hawaiian culture and history. They traded life experiences, shared ancient chants and poems and performed hula. The conference,
About 200 kupuna (elders) from throughout Hawai’i attended the fifth annual Hawaiian Studies Kupuna Conference in Waimea Saturday to help perpetuate the Hawaiian culture and history.
They traded life experiences, shared ancient chants and poems and performed hula.
The conference, sponsored by the Kaua’i Hawaiian Studies with the state Department of Education, is running through Tuesday at the Waimea Plantation Cottages.
In recognition of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the conference took the theme of “Ke Ola Hou I Ka Maluhia,” or “A Renewed Life In Peace” to “remind us that true peace is only achieved through aloha,” said Sabra Kauka, conference host and a Kaua’i DOE Hawaiian Studies leader.
“Our Native Hawaiian kupuna are living examples that love and aloha are the answers to much of the problems in today’s world,” she said.
The participants, described as rich repositories of knowledge about the Hawaiian culture and history, teach Hawaiian studies in public elementary schools and private schools throughout the state.
Representatives of the event said they hoped the kupuna would share any new experiences and knowledge about ancient Hawai’i with their students and their communities.
On Friday, Rebecca Kekahu of Anahola distinguished Kaua’i kupuna by having a hula interpreted for a family song on the ‘o’opu hinana, a delicacy for the ali’i. The hula was performed by kumu hula Ulalia Ka’ai Berman of the Big Island.
In a story told to other kupuna, Kekahu said, as a youth, she caught the fish in abundance on the Waimea River. Today, it is harder to find the fish because conservation methods have not been practiced, Kekaku contended.
“Back then, we had a lot because the Hawaiians took only what they needed. Today, people take, take…commercialized,” Kekahu said.
The declining stock shows the heavy impact of development on Kaua’i, a trend that could be turned around if the kupuna can successfully relay to the next generation the importance of conservation, said Kaiopua Fyfe, a supporter or kako’o for the event.
Kekahu said the experiences of the kupuna offer a valuable window to young folks on the evolution Hawaii and its people over the last century.
“My brother and I were the last kids here to be born in a grass shack,” said Kekahu, who was born in Waimea and is 78 years old. She one of seven children of Nick Waiwaiole and Katie Kahaleniau Koani.
Her father, she said “had a heart of gold” because he worked hard and cared for his family.
“He was a fisherman. He was police officer and he was painter for the Waimea bank,” she said. The family, she recalled, was close-knit and worked together in terrace taro fields or lo’i in Waimea Valley.
Kekahu stayed in Waimea until 1953, when she moved to Honolulu, where she stayed for 25 years, working with the state Department of Health.
Kekahu moved to Anahola in the early 1980s with her husband John Kekahu, who hailed from Anahola, home to Kaua’i’s largest Hawaiian community.
Kekahu is the mother of the late Butch Kekahu, a Native Hawaiian rights activist and founder of Aloha March events in Washington D.C.
Leilani Kaleiohi, a DOE kupuna program participant for three years, said talking with people like Kekahu and other kupuna has vastly deepened her understanding and appreciation of her culture and people of Kekahu’s generation.
Kaleiohi said the kupuna have provided a “firm foundation” of knowledge that she will take to her students in public schools and at Kula School in Kilauea, where she also teaches.
“All our kupuna have provided this gift, and people like myself (makua, the generation of Hawaiians between senior citizens and the young) are taking it to the next level (in telling people about old Hawai’i).”
A group of kupuna made a special visit to the West Kaua’i home of Aunty Margaret Aipoalani, who first began working as a kupuna in the public schools 20 years ago.
For nearly an hour, with Aipoalani, at the piano, and others playing the ukulele and the ipu, people sang renditions of Hawaiian songs and performed chants that were said to date back hundreds of years.
“This was a rare occurrence (the offering of songs and chants) that you are not likely to see again,” said a kupuna.
Yesterday, other kupuna took a boat tour to Nualolo Kai along the Na Pali Coast.
Yesterday’s activities continued with workshops, training, displays of lauhala weaving and rare shells from Ni’ihau and Hawaiian medicinal herbs, kapa making, kapa making, native songs and hula.
Co-sponsors of the conference include the Garden Island Resource Conservation and Development, Inc., the Native Hawaiian Education Council of Kaua’i, the Kawakami Foundation, and the Koani Foundation, an Anahola based Native Hawaiian rights unity organization.
