Hawaii's Cultural Renaissance: The Return Of Kapa Makers | Handmade In The Pacific | Perspective

Subscribe and click the bell icon to get more arts content every week:
/ perspectivearts
Documentary series which gives viewers a rare and intimate insight into the creative processes and cultural significance of traditional artefacts in Australia, Rurutu, New Zealand and Hawaii.
Perspective is KZbin's home for the arts. Come here to get your fill of great music, theatre, art and much, much more!
From "Handmade In The Pacific"
Content licensed from DRG to Little Dot Studios.
Any queries, please contact us at:
[e-mail]

[@christopherstube9473]

Thank you so much for showing your art in the preparation of the cloth and the careful handling of the brushes and printing blocks. My grandmother knew and loved Queen Liliuokalani and was a teacher for a lot of Samoan chiefs as a young girl in the early part of the last century when the Christian Queen was old. She was invited one day to Washington Place for tea and always told us stories of how beautiful and skilled and lovely she was. I have no claim to Hawaii as i grew up in other climates, but i love the ethics and the traditions and have been trying to learn enough Hawaiian so i can read the newspapers and understand Kahiko chant. Someday i may make it to the Merry Monarch festival, but hopefully by that time the ali'i of the provisional government will have persuaded a return to the Hawaiian law, and caused the US to unhand the islands and allow it to return to the prototype of a Sovereign neutral state and a constitutional monarchy. I would like to see Hawaiians as of 1893 vintage to choose whether they will elect the next monarch or not as per the Hawaiian constitution.

[@aniani_ku]

Spoken like a true ally to the Kingdom of Hawaii! Mahalo nui e ke hoa ❤

[@rutilopata8294]

The most touching beautiful documentary… full of grace and calm passion, I loved the story and appreciate this beautiful precious Kapa making tradition, thank you from my heart for sharing it , you are blessed by the universe my dear✨🙏🏻🌸🦋🕊

[@dalani61]

Thank you!

[@honoree2894]

I couldn’t have said it any better! 🤍 This has made me ache for my home on the Big Island… Thank you for sharing your amazing talents ♥️

[@claudettedelphis6476]

How very special 👗👠🎀👒🌺 Thank you so very much for sharing with us 🇺🇸 Love 💕 Hawaii 🦚🦩🧚‍♀️🦜😇😉👋🦋🐳🐬🐋🐠🐡🦐🍂🌹🌼🌴🍐🍑🍒🏄‍♂️

[@Vera-kh8zj]

what a wonderful glimpse into this very special culture. Everything I get to know about it stirs my heart

[@gerryhouska2859]

And what an amazing woman to show us.

[@Vera-kh8zj]

@@gerryhouska2859 strong, sensitive, intelligent, artistic.

[@dalani61]

@@gerryhouska2859 mahalo!

[@dalani61]

@@Vera-kh8zj thank you!

[@reneemoreno8030]

I can do this...its a process and spiritual and patience is needed. My kumu taught me many things as well...like making cordage and kukui oil. The tools used are special as well. I miss the islands Mahalo nui loa.🌴🌈🌊🌞🥰

[@jourdainhiini6548]

Mahalo..I applaud your determination to bring back Kapa to Hawaii. Just like Tatau Samoa retained Tapa making. There is a much easier way to make it. You should definitely take a trip to your Cuzzies in Samoa and see how they do it. You definitely found your own way though. Thank you for sharing.

[@dalani61]

I did have a chance to visit American Samoa but seems they make most of the siapo in Western Samoa. I would like to go back and spend more time with the makers though, and thank you!

[@katrussell6819]

Thank you for teaching me about this art form. It is beautiful and full of heart.

[@Nakikiao]

Aloha Dalani - thank you for sharing your experience practicing Hawaiian crafts and perpetuating the life of the land in righteousness.

[@jaymo8206]

I was a Kamaaina on the Big Island for nearly 20 years. The high cost of living drove me away. But Hawaii will always be my spiritual home. The islands are the most beautiful I've ever been to. I also learned how the missionaries and other haole arrivals ruined Hawaiian culture and traditions. The islands are rich in history . My adult son still lives in Madame Pele's back yard. Aloha nui loa.

[@gonefishing167]

The reverence showed at the statue of the queen bought tears to my eyes. Thank you so much for the experience you gave people. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

[@katherinenoggle6407]

Very interesting, i really enjoyed watching this. How wonderful to rescue something, to restore it to your people forever. Beautiful.

[@huahindan]

Beautiful

[@stankythecat6735]

Amazing !! thank you for sharing that . I am so pleased to see the traditions and cultures of Hawaii being rediscovered and preserved

[@a.a.gabriel]

Beautiful.

[@vaughangarrick]

This is fascinating and what the internet is for

[@toniomalley5661]

This is so beautiful and this lovely lady has such beautiful ears lol regards from Ireland

[@dalani61]

My ears thank you!

[@cicicox5995]

this was awesome

[@FBCarson]

Learn from the cradle of Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga. A wise person learns from the mistake of others and fools learn from their own. Take notes, you’ll be amazed how closely connected we really are, make it yours, and own it.

[@farginargle]

Hello! So beautiful. Really moved. Can we see the whole dance? Thanks!

[@Travelman501]

She is most definitely an artist

[@dalani61]

Haha I do my best

[@gonefishing167]

That was so interesting, thank you. Just love the cock crowing in the background. He’s a ‘ cool guy’. 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

[@dalani61]

Do you want him? 😄

[@frostfox1208]

When I was a kid at Maunawilili school in Kailua, we made Kapa cloth by crunching up a brown paper sack. Just another teaching opportunity waisted. Do you think there is paper mulberry trees around Diamond Head? Thank you for your video.

[@dalani61]

I learned the paper bag method in San Diego back in the day! Paper mulberry wasnt so much domesticated as loosely cultivated so when people stopped making kapa in the late 1800s the plant sort of stopped growing, You would not find it growing wild around Diamond Head.

[@Ultra-Luminary]

Can I come and live with you, please? ✨😌🙏🌸🌺🍀

[@hori166]

A beautiful film. Two things: 1) Kapa (aka Tapa) making is not unique to Hawaii. Might something be learned from collaborating with other Polynesians, e.g. Samoa? 2) Thurston Twigg Smith had other ideas about whether Liliuokalani was good for Hawaii. Do the victors really get to write the history? Stop any tourist in Waikiki and ask them how Hawaii became part of the US and you'll almost NEVER get the right answer. So, yes the victors write the history, or Americans (I don't consider Hawaii to be America) are just ignorant (Fake news! SAD!). When people get all gaga about how wonderful Hawaii is and how happy Hawaiians are, I tell them that Hawaii is a bunch of volcanoes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with just the tops showing. There's a lot of tectonics going on under the surface that occasionally results in a fiery eruption.

[@patrickfitzgerald2861]

Give the entire archipelago back to the Hawaiians, and let them decide what to do with it.

[@cecilyerker]

Sounds nice and woke to say in theory, but then they’d be totally defenseless in times of war, and wouldn’t benefit from the other protections of being a US state. Plus I don’t think all Hawaiians would want to restore a monarchy.

[@no_rubbernecking]

@@cecilyerker They would not have to be totally defenseless since they could join NATO or the equivalent Pacific alliance. As far as what the Hawaiian people would want, let's recall that they were never asked in the first place, hmm? And today i think it's 70+ % of the population is Japanese-American and of course many other national origins. These people should not be asked because their ancestors were not the ones who had the islands stolen from them in the first place.

[@patrickfitzgerald2861]

@@no_rubbernecking True on all counts, especially your last sentence. And while the whole idea may sound far-fetched at first, my decades on the planet have taught me that historical wrongs can indeed get corrected over time.

[@no_rubbernecking]

@@patrickfitzgerald2861 Thanks and you're right, it's not at all far-fetched.

[@christopherstube9473]

The archipelago was never annexed as it is under hostile military occupation for the last 128 years and there has been no treaty of peace signed or a treaty of annexation which must be signed by both parties in peacetime. There was never any conquest since the Queen surrendered the sovereignty of her government to Grover Cleveland and he exchanged executive letters with her which is binding as a treaty. He agreed to restore the kingdom when he got his soldiers back from the Spanish American war if her government would pardon the treasonous sons of the missionaries. Also the first generation of Hawaiians after the occupation signed a Kue petition that they did not wish to be annexed, so the house and senate of the united states pretended to pass a law to annex them, but the territory of Hawaii and the State of Hawaii are a legal fiction in the united states territorial waters because that is as far as its civil law reaches by international law. There is no statute of limitations on war crimes and other international injustices, and the Kingdom of Hawaii still lives in International law.

[@OstblockLatina]

With all due respect, one has to have A LOT of free time and good financial backstage to allow oneself all the time and work that is put into researching and making it... or customers standing in line to buying those things in exchange for a fortune. Or just being a serious case of a masochist. I'd go mad if I had to constantly beat those trees for a day or more, not to mention the state of my back, wrist joints and eyes afterwards. I swear I had to forward the video a whole bunch of minutes because the Chinese torture of all that hammering was making me want to scream and break things. My word, that woman's neighbours must be the most patient people in the world - elsewhere she'd get herself fined for all that noise, hours and hours without end. I can imagine the indigenous Hawaiians back then, given woven cotton clothes, learning they don't have to spend months to make an equivalent of a pair of knickers anymore to have anything to put on them, rejoicing and cheering and throwing all the kapa making tools and resources into their refuse pits and swearing they'd never again waste their time and health on making any of those.

[@dalani61]

Wow you hit the nail on everything! So yes, I am a 30 year professional at this and make my living as a kapa maker, artist, teacher, demonstrator and whatever else people think of for me to do thats kapa related (you'd be surprised!) It really is 24/7 as I also grow the plants, make the tools and dyes and everything else involved with this art. Im lucky to farm and work on a lot that currently has no neighbors and actually, I am the least of offensive noises on my street haha. I really dont pound everyday, if im lucky, one good long day in a week, as other peoples kapa concerns keep me very busy. And youre right, as a practitioner, I tend to believe that Hawaiian women were pretty excited when they got a hold of fabric and didnt have to beat trees anymore!