Aloha everyone,
Hope you’re enjoying a great long weekend, or your days as they whiz by. This weekend I participated in a haku mele retreat, designed to help a small group of us write a mele, a song. Our mele were on a topic of our choosing; our work or community or something deeply personal, or anything in-between. While I won’t share the specific contents of the workshop or the beautiful mele that were haku’d by my fellow students, I can tell you how it made me feel.
Many of us entered into the workshop with trepidation. We were terrified of being judged by our amazing, encyclopedic and encouraging kumu. However, because we live in a world where we are taught we are not enough, many of us came in feeling not Hawaiian enough, or at all, like we can’t ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i enough, or at all, or that we weren’t prepared enough, or at all. I think when we internalize those things, we judge ourselves first so others don’t have to. However, in spite of our fear, we were all there, and we all worked very hard. Being a part of the group, and watching our musical narratives grow as our mele took root was inspiring.
At the end, we cheered for each other as our mele were born. We had struggled together, we stayed up late; we searched the myriad co-sourced books on our resource table and scoured the corners of the internet; we prayed and consulted our guides and aunties and uncles; we looked deep within and faced ourselves. Our kumu said: “I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t think you could do it.” And we did. Each cheer when each chant was born by being uttered for the first time in front of the group was a collective witnessing, a sense of triumph. Our kumu told us that the world needs our compositions. The leo and the imagery give us mana. This is essential to being a practitioner in the Hawai‘i landscape.
Chants help us record our once and present history, call the future into being, ask for permission, commemorate, mourn, celebrate, remember, memorialize, process, heal, convene, galvanize, share, declare. Afterwards as we drove back down to Hilo, a couple of my fellow students shared how they felt before and during the class. My car companions are each skilled practitioners in their area of expertise, deeply familiar with their places and faces, creatures and features specific to the biology and survival of certain endangered Hawaiian species. The mele they wrote will help us celebrate not the destruction of habitat or risk factors, but life-giving elements, abundance, joy, resurgence. In that way, these mele call into being a better future for these species, and for all of us.
While our kumu have infinite expertise in their world of composing and culture, history and mele, they don’t have the experiences that we brought. Together with them was the alchemy that helped to birth these chants. What our kumu said made me think: The world needs our mele–more than we need our anxiety and our fear. And every time we show up, in spite of our fear, it makes it easier to show up next time. And next time. Without the experiences, kuleana, and spark of each student, their mele would not have life. And who knows the ripple effects of our mele as they reverberate out into the world?
For all of us out there doing some kind of good work, we are all doing our best to show up. And we are often critical of ourselves for not being enough in some kind of way. Maybe we forget a line, or we fumble our cadence. Still, we are here, giving it our best go, showing up for our kuleana as best we can. This is so important. If we let fear keep us from showing up (and showing up is often the hardest thing), who will recite and document our story’s unfolding? Will they understand the nuances of our values, what we hold dear, what it takes to thrive?
This reminds me of one of Aunty Pua’s principles: “…and be creative!”. The story goes that she was working with the Department of Public Safety (the name of the department has changed now) and doing one of her signature circles. She was talking to one of the men who told her: “…you have to remember, we are a paramilitary organization. We work on orders.” Basically, they are told what to do and the do it. No questions asked. They were ordered to attend her workshop; he recounted that they had received a memo with instructions: “You will show up at these dates and times and participate…” and at the bottom of the memo it said “…and you will be creative!”. The man followed his orders diligently. He got ready for the class at the appointed time, and came to the right place. And as he pushed the door open and walked through, he told himself: “You must be willing to hear something you never thought you’d hear, from someone you never thought you’d hear it from…and you will be creative.”
What if what you need to hear today is that you are enough? That someone, a respected expert, a kumu, a friend, believed in you? Studies show that if you have just one consistent person who believes in you no matter what, you can overcome significant adversity. Who is your person? What do you need to hear from them today? What do you need to hear from yourself?
This post is a bit rambly, and certainly a bit preachy, forgive me for I am exhausted! However I am proud, for I haku’d my first mele this weekend, guided by my kumu, led by my kūpuna. A mele may seem short and simple, or esoteric, but I know now intimately how much time, sweat, research and relationship goes into every syllable, every line, and the mele overall.
Hope you have a week full of creativity and inspriation.
Mahalo nunui,
Dawn
Photo taken at Kīlauea, 5/24/25