“Vintage Photograph Series” by Frank Warren. From the collection of Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea.

When I was a child, no one spoke to me in Hawaiian, recited my genealogy, told me stories of the old gods or my ‘aumakua. Although I grew up surrounded by Hawaiian music, I wasn’t taught any of the words to Hawaiian songs. No one even taught me to surf or to paddle; in those days not many women were active in sports. People with some Hawaiian blood hid it if they could; it was not OK to be too “ethnic” or too dark, like my father was.

“Daddy, tell me about the past, about my Hawaiian side. Tell me about my family. Tell me about gramma— she spoke Hawaiian, I know, but I don’t remember her. What was she like?”

I couldn’t stop asking. It was not just curiosity, or merely wanting to know. It was a desperate need for training, for weapons to fight off the overpowering allegiance to Western ways, the intentional forgetting of roots and culture. My need came from a deep alienation from the “haole way” that my parents tried so hard to instill in me. It was something born in me, felt in my bones, an indistinct whispering, unintelligible, yet as real as any living voice, a presence that was as much a part of me as the shadows of clouds constantly changing the dark greens and blues of the mountains in my valley home or the peace I felt wandering in the “pakapaka ua,” the pelting raindrops that would settle the disquieting foreboding in me, the uneasiness of being pulled between two cultures, Hawaiian close to being crushed into oblivion by the importance of conforming, of being “American,” of being “progressive.”

My parents did give me “hula lessons.” A neighborhood friend came to teach us hapa haole hula such as “There Goes My Tutu E,” “Little Brown Gal” and “The Hukilau Song.” I hated them with all the intensity of a child’s passion. I hated them for a complexity of reasons which I could not have put into words. One of the rea sons had to do with being a pre-teen in an age of sexual vulnerability where no protests were raised against acts that have come to be labeled date rape, spouse abuse, child molestation. I hated being trained to display my body to please men, an underlying but unspoken assumption of those lessons. Another reason was my strong sense that these songs were selling out my cultural heritage. What about ancient chant and dance? Those were hidden, unknown or considered too “foreign” for tourists to be comfortable with. I was being allowed to dance only songs that, intentionally or not, belittled the beauty of brown skin, the dignity of elders, the tradition of sharing work. Yet another reason wasmy shame at being so uncoordinated and awkward, doubly shamed at being the daughter of a race for whom grace of movement flows in the blood. At lu‘au, my father would occasionally be inspired to “hula” after many drinks. He would get up with a silly drunken delight and “go around the island” with an ‘ami that was uninhibited and as graceful and manly as any large male dancer could be. I would have had to be as drunk as he was to lose my shame and enjoy the dance.

And so, at age ten, I searched and searched for someone to teach me a Hawaiian song. Teach me a song of my heritage, a song that I can sing, a song to fend off the cellophane hula skirts and the coconut shell bras, the Tahitian belly twitches and the selling of young brown flesh to fulfill the fantasy of the “hula maiden.” Teach me a real Hawaiian song, to fend off the comic hulas that rob us of our dignity, little“brownies” clowning around for the tourist trade.

Teach me an ancient chant to celebrate the connection I feel between myself and my land and my ancestors, those that encircle my spirit. Let me hear the hills echo the sounds that will tie me to this place, this time, ground my hā, my breath in this body, now. Teachme a song to hold onto, to letme know that I can be in this dark age, that all the things that are Hawaiian in me can live.

Teach me a song to hide my awkwardness, my clumsiness, my big lū‘au feet, my shame at being so unskilled a dancer. I can’t dance, for shame. For shame. So teach me a song that I can sing. Not “Oh, we’re going to a hukilau, a hukihukihukihukihukilau.” Years after I learned that “huki” means to pull and that “hukihuki” means to have arguments or problems with others, literally pulling back and forth. No wonder I feel I’m being pulled apart.

And yes, I did learn a Hawaiian song. An old Chinese lady who was visiting my parents taught me both words and movements to a child’s song three lines long. She spent about a half an hour teaching me, patiently saying the words over and over until I got both words and hand motions.

Puka kinikini, puka kinikini, ‘a‘ohe ‘ao ‘ewa, ‘a‘ohe ‘ao ‘ewa, he ‘upena, he ‘upena. Many, many doorways, many, many doorways, but none I can get out of, but none I can get out of, it’s a fishnet, it’s a fishnet.

She had given me a gift, a bigger treasure than she ever knew. I have never forgotten that moment and the joy I felt at having this small piece of my Hawaiian heritage to cling to. I sang that song for days and days, putting index finger and thumb together for the “eye” of the net, making fish swim with my hands, throwing the shoulder net in the last line. A child’s song, one appropriate for my age. It wasn’t until years later that I would look back and see how appropriate it was for my situation, a little part-Hawaiian fish trapped in a soulsmothering net of Western ways.

For me, that simple song was a start. It was one of the first times my thirst for Hawaiian knowledge was quenched just a little, a small empowerment for who I was. It was a small impetus forward in my lifelong search for learning my culture and traditions, the language and literature that have such depth of beauty and complexity and which even today remain unapproached by most of us.

I will always sing the ancient songs that I have come to learn, the chants that echo from my beloved mountains, and I will tell those whisperings that still call to me now, evermore clearly.And this I promise to that little childwho disappeared so long ago, that although I may never dance, I will sing out my Hawaiianness, a mau a mau, forever.

(Reprinted with permission from Growing Up Local, Bamboo Ridge Press, 1998.)

ELIZABETH WIGHT writes, “How can I separate who I am from who my family is, from the stories I heard as a child, from my community, from the Mānoa rains that bring me peace, from poi dogs and ‘chop suey’ people, ‘all mix up’?”