Lawa Ku‘u Lei
by Kihei de Silva
Author's note: What follows are my opening words at the 35th annual Holomua ka Noʻeau, a 2015 concert of Hawaiian music and hula performed by my wife's hālau hula, Hālau Mōhala ʻIlima. The hula we do, on this day and every day, is not the brand of coconut-bra-ed, sarong-clad wiggles still so often associated with "Hawaiʻi" and "Aloha". It is the grounded, fierce, stately hula of our grandmothers, and of their grandmother's grandmothers. The everyday-ness of resurgence requires us ʻōiwi to persist - to continue to do, say, grow, and dance that which our lāhui always has. Its desire for a surge of support and resistance asks that we also, on occasion, reach out and explain why we do what we do.
