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Dancing in the Sea of Life Hula Newsletter                    
Photo by Yvonne Yarber Carter
 
Lawe i ka ma'alea a ku'ono'ono.
Take wisdom and make it deep.
 
'Olelo No'eau - Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings #1957             
Collected, translated and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui   
   
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Larry Kimura
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SONS OF HALAWA SHOWING AT 21ST ANNUAL ASIAN AMERICAN SHOWCASE IN CHICAGO ON APRIL 9TH

MAHALO NUI LOA !!!
March 1, 2016
 
This past January when I visited Hawaii Island, I had many memorable experiences.  A highlight was certainly the Hawaiian Immersion School Ke Kula 'O Nāwahīokalani'ōpu'u where the light of Hawaiian language and culture is shining brightly.

Another was visiting Hilo Veteran's Cemetery where my parents are buried side by side.  I awoke early and refreshed the morning after my arrival.  My cousin served me fresh sweet yellow papaya for breakfast - I ate the whole papaya!  There was an off and on drizzle of rain outside.  But the air was warm, different than the 20 - 30 degree F weather I had just left behind.

My first stop for the morning was to get flowers at the outdoor market in downtown Hilo.  Vendors were still setting up when I arrived.  An arrangement of big pink anthuriums with one dark red torch ginger set in the center of a gallon can lined with green ti leaves caught my eye.  Perfect for Ma, pink was her favorite color.

I hoped the rain would stop. But it also seemed a perfect cleansing for this keiki o ka 'aina (child of the land) finally returned home - if only for a short visit.
 
The Veteran's Cemetery is located off Haili Street.  It's medium sized and very green dotted with row upon row of small rectangular gravestones.  No one else was there at 8:30 am on a Thursday. I parked the car and walked slowly in the rain toward the familiar spot.  I found their headstones.  

The makana (offering) of flowers was meant for both of them but it didn't look right set in between the headstones so I placed them in front of my mother's headstone.  I wished that I had bought two of the arrangements.  Pink for Ma and yes it would be red anthuriums for Dad.  

But it was too late to think about that - I was on a tight schedule of squeezing in as many family and friends as I could see in the precious few days of free time there.  But first, I wanted to spend a few full moments with my parents.  The rain continued, gentle but persistent.

I remembered when we buried Dad here seven years ago.  His coffin was draped with an American flag.  Dad was a medic during WWII stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana.  Three uniformed military men with white gloves stood at attention and then fired their rifles three times in the air to honor him.  Then they ceremoniously folded the flag and gave it to me (the eldest child) with one bullet in an envelope.  I felt very sad, that I had lost something very dear to me.  I didn't want the flag, I really wanted Dad back.

All of my family - uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, and many friends - had gathered to remember Dad.  We lit a candle, chanted the Heart Sutra and offered incense and flowers.   When I was young I heard this Heart Sutra being always chanted at funeral services at the Paauilo Hongwanjii where I grew up.  I grew to love it not knowing what it meant.

When the service was done, and as we were walking back to our cars we saw a beautiful sight. A Hawaiian 'Io (hawk) was streaking in a long, straight diagonal line from some tall trees near the cemetery towards the land.  It looked like it was hunting something.  And somehow that comforted me because Dad was a great hunter.  

The Heart Sutra or the Maja Prajnaparamita Hrdaya Sutra is also known as The Heart of the Perfection of Great Wisdom Sutra.  We chant it regularly in morning services whenever we do a meditation retreat and also for Buddhist memorial services.  

Sutra in English means suture or a joining or sewing of two into one.  It also means warp, the threads that run through everything, the interweaving of all things.  Can we see and feel that our interconnections - our sutures - run back to our kupuna (ancestors) through the present and into  the future?

The word 'heart' here essentially means letting go of our expectations so that we can see things as they are not as we want them to be.  It's practicing not-knowing so we can let go of our fixed ideas of how something should be and get to the heart of what is.  This is a way out of  suffering.

I stood in between their two graves, warm rain continuing to fall and running down my face and lightly soaking the jacket I had on.  I did three bows on the tough manicured kikuyu grass then lit incense sticks I had brought with me from Chicago.  I placed them in front of each gravestone and watched the familiar curling smoke circling and scenting the humid air.  My body resonated as I chanted the Heart Sutra for Ma and Dad and for all beings.
 
Malama pono (take care of your body, mind and heart),


June Kaililani Tanoue
Kumu Hula and Sensei

P.S.  Here's a slide show of my time on Hawaii Island in January visiting family and friends. 
Larry Kimura
 
Dr. Larry Kimura, MA, PhD is recognized as the grandfather of the
movement to perpetuate the use of Hawaiian
language in modern Hawai'i.  His PhD is
in Indigenous Language Revitalization. As
the Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Language
and Culture, Kimura has spent twenty years
creating audio documentation of the last native Hawaiian language speakers. He is co-founder of Hawai'i's Punana Leo Hawaiian Language Immersion Schools and Chairman of the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee to create new Hawaiian words. Kimura also
serves as Hawaiian Cultural Planner and Interpreter for the University of Hawai'i at Hilo's 'Imiloa Center

It was great to reconnect with him last month in Hilo at the International Indigenous Language Symposium.  He told us a little more about himself.

June Tanoue: I read a beautiful article about your father Hisa Kimura.  I can see that many pono values were instilled in you when you grew up.  What was life like for you growing up?

Larry Kimura: My siblings (two older sisters and two younger brothers) grew up with parents who loved their home in Waimea and who were loyal to their employment.  My father worked for the Parker Ranch all of his life  mostly in the field of agronomy, caring for the pasture feed for the cattle and horses of the ranch and my mother was employed as a telephone operator, a secretary to the ranch's doctor at our dispensary and the manager of a rose farm. 

We were raised to be mindful of others and things around us, work for what we attain, and be grateful for what we have.  We were taught to respect our place, the land around us and the life on it. 

My father, a pure Japanese nisei was born and raised in Waimea like most of his siblings and my mother's family goes back for many generations in Waimea. 

They knew the land "like the back of their hand" as the expression goes.  Now that the term "aloha ʻāina" is becoming more used, I always compare the meaning of this Hawaiian term to how my parents lived their lives in their home place, community and extended connections to a larger world. 

The lessons start from birth, belonging to a place, being aware and sensitive not only to the physical and practical but also to our spiritual relationship to a place and its life forces.

June:  I didn't realize that you were one of the founders of Punana Leo back in the early 80's.  I was so impressed with Nawahi!  What were you thinking when you started Punana Leo and how does it feel now when you think about Nawahi?

Larry:  When a small group of us started Punana Leo, I knew that we needed to do more than teach it as a typical second language at high school or college, because I wanted Hawaiian to live and teaching it that way would not bring life back to the language. 

We needed to return the language to the home so we wanted to get to the babies.  This way the babies at Punana Leo hear it and speak it like they would at home then they take Hawaiian back into their real homes. 

Using our language with the children as the medium of their education like at Nāwahīokalaniʻōpʻu, moving from preschool to kindergarten and all the way until graduating from high school and into college, proves that Hawaiian speaking children can be healthy, successful, contributing citizens of the world while at the same time bringing life to the Hawaiian language and the Hawaiian way of life.

June:  'Imiloa is also very impressive.  Any comments about your work with 'Imiloa?

Larry: ʻImiloa was born out of a need to incorporate cutting edge astronomy with people, especially with the Hawaiian people whose place, Maunakea, was becoming the prime location in the world for modern astronomy.  In this regard, ʻImiloa is a unique astronomy education center.

June:  Your PhD thesis also sounds fascinating - "An Analysis of the Terminal Language of the Native Hawaiian Speaker: A Comparison of the Native Language of Two Generations, the Standard Language of the Parent and the Persistent Language of the Offspring."   It's focused on sensitizing Hawaiian language instruction to the informal register of language use, in order to accommodate a more holistic approach for Hawaiian proficiency.  What were your findings?

Larry:  My thesis acknowledges the last of the native Hawaiian speakers as the language that was passed down from parents to children all the way back from the time of Hāloa.  Today, that family language line has essentially been severed and the current mode of revitalizing Hawaiian through second language learners must commit to the standards left by our native Hawaiian speakers.

June:  And finally - language and the hula.  What are your thoughts about the importance of the language when you dance hula?

Larry:  The way the words are composed carries the spirit and meaning of a hula therefore knowing the intended meaning of the words makes a hula what it should be.
About Us
Successful Halau Fundraiser with Hawaiians Kumu Michael Pili Pang, Keikilani Curnan, Davin, Al, Ryan

Halau i Ka Pono - the Hula School of Chicago is a sister program of the Zen Life & Meditation Center of Chicago located in Oak Park, IL.  Kumu Hula June Kaililani Tanoue established the school in 2009 and has been teaching hula since 2003.

 

Halau i Ka Pono means School that Cultivates the Goodness.  We teach Hula which is defined as the art of Hawaiian dance expressing all that we see, hear, taste, touch, and feel.

 

Hula and healing go hand in hand in our Halau. The dance connects us to the grounding energy of the earth and opens us to the warm spirit of Aloha (love). 

 

 

Come join us!  We have wonderful introductory classes for adult beginners!  No experience necessary.

 

Contact Kumu June at [email protected] for more information.  May your lives be full of aloha blessings!