Download resources to establish intention, connection for meetings, spaces
Posted: February 26, 2024
Our theme for 2024 Teacher Institute Day was E Ulu Kini, which translates to growth in multitudes. The keynote was delivered by Kumu Hula Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaʻole, who developed Hālau ʻŌhiʻa to teach basic Hawaiʻi practices that can connect anyone anywhere to their inner and outer landscapes.
In her keynote, Kealiʻikanakaʻole shared a mele moʻokū, a song that allows participants to use their foundations to introduce and center around their personal relationship to spaces. Watch her speech below.
“The relationship that we’re working on is the relationship between me and that mountain there, between me and that group of trees there, between me and my water source, between me and my food source,” she explained. “You can unfold each layer very beautifully to explain why you’ve used that name or explain that we can tell right now where I am creating this mele at.”
Kealiʻikanakaʻole said, “We want to not only create connections, but we want to expand our personal and our collective intimacy, or aloha, for those connections. You’re establishing the relationship between the people, the geography or the landscape that you’re addressing, and the geography and the landscapes that you brought with you.”
Listen to the mele moʻokū pronunciation:
Listen to leo oli or chant styles:
E Ulu Kini
The morning oli, or opening chant, was composed by Kealiʻikanakaʻole and Leilā Dudley, and reminds us that the earth feeds us in order to help us grow. Watch the video to view the oli with subtitles and translation.
Kealiʻikanakaʻole says while Mele Moʻokū offers a narrowing focus of intention, E Ulu Kini represents the widening, even deepening, of what we want for ourselves, for our families, and for our youth.
“E ulu kini is about really planting your feet into the earth and using that beautiful, strong metaphor to offer Hawaiʻi’s children the best nutrition — the best intellectual nutrition, the best emotional nutrition, physical nutrition — that we can offer as educators. We may not at this moment be putting plants into the ground, but we are making sure that the rootlets that belong to our children are nourished,” she said.
Kealiʻikanakaʻole was a longtime associate professor of Hawaiian studies at Hawaiʻi Community College, trained under and was ritually elevated to kumu hula of Hālau O Kekuhi, and served as executive director of the Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation, named after her grandmother, a pioneer in the resurgence of Hawaiian cultural identity. In 2016, Kealiʻikanakaʻole retired from her formal responsibilities to become an advocate for island-consciousness and works to make Hawaiʻi lifeways more accessible to educators and stewards of Hawaiʻi.
If you’d like to learn more, Kealiʻikanakaʻole is offering HSTA members the following opportunities:
- Get an exclusive 50% discount on the course tuition and access an accessible, consumable curriculum for learning and experiencing Hawaiʻi life ways. The main course content will go live on Sunday, March 3. Use this exclusive link to register with the discount.
- Sign up for a free, three-day virtual orientation, March 1–3, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., to learn simple skill sets and daily practices that explore aloha and our relationship to mother earth. You could win a tuition waiver for Hālau ʻŌhiʻa! Register here for the free orientation.