[Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] my [Music] um [Music] why [Music] [Music] oh it was at a workshop with the department of education teachers what was called department of public instruction then dpi so i wrote on the board hawaii glottal i dash a and a so i turned around i looked at the teachers i said i'd like for us to study this word now the ana is the root word to measure to evaluate to determine what is the best so we're going to concern ourselves with that and teach only the best of hawaiian culture in the classroom and that was my reason for that word hawaiian emma the kona coast on hawaii island is the site of the historic komo battle of 1819 led to the end of the traditional religious system antinona's relative the chiefess manono died alongside her husband kekua okolani in that historic battle their bones were laid to rest at cuomo and remain there to this day the battle of kuamo is historically significant because the sacred land tells the story of how a thriving culture underwent a nearly catastrophic change as traditional identities gave way to western influence [Music] because hawaii eventually became dominated by western culture hawaiians began to lose their traditional values and way of life western contact brought deep turmoil and lasting change hawaiians were actively discouraged from speaking their language and engaging in their religious and healing traditions other cultural practices such as hula and oli the hawaiian form of chant went underground in a secretive effort to guard and preserve them for future generations traditionally hawaiians had no written language disciplines such as history genealogy and celestial navigation were verbally passed down to each generation let's listen to auntie nona share the mo lo or story of the battle of kuomo with her hanai daughter miley luching beemer this was a battle of hawaiians against hawaiians the conservative hawaiians led by uh high chief keku okalani and his wife princess manuno i think she figured very prominently in this whole [Music] scene [Music] and liholiho kamehameha ii that favored as did kahumanu the abolition of the couple system the um abolishing of the old religious ways and kekua kalani saying no let us leave the old religion intact wow what a tumultuous time that was very very but the hawaiians did it themselves this is before the missionaries arrived in 1820 so the cousins go to battle and in the chant manuno asks her husband if she can take part in the fray and he says no but he will fix a halii for her made of uluhe fern and she can rest there and watch the progress of the battle she wants to get it but with keku kolani's army in their hand hume spears and there was liholiho's forces with cannon and musket oh no match so early on she sees her husband fall with a musket shot and she runs down wailing [Music] and when grandma told it to us i started to cry she covers his face with his cape and she picks up his spear and she goes into the battle and she keeps chanting [Music] keep your love keep your love no matter what obstacles come to hawaii keep your love oh that's pretty powerful [Music] big lump in my throat but it was real and i'm proud to bear her name i just wish i had the guts and gumption that she had picking up that spear and going into battle [Music] and then of the forces taken to the stockade you can just imagine the tears the sadness their voices calling out goals it's so quiet in kona at night there are no breezes and so we imagine that all these voices are heard in the starrcade and lihuliho here and he's wondering what are those voices saying and he comes at dawn and he listens at the gate and he hears them saying [Music] keep your love be no obstacle for hawaii if you keep your love do you think we can live that today we need to oh we need to we need to live in love yes that's a wonderful admonition for the hawaiian people for the whole world keep your love up outside mom some of that story is undocumented isn't it true what i haven't read a lot i haven't read this ending part yeah no that's what you learned as a child though that's what we were told that she covered his face with his cape picked up his spear and went into the battle hmm and when leholejo comes to the stockade and opens the gates and says return to your homes in peace there will be no further battles in hawaii wow and that was true that was the last battle 1819 the battle of cuomo hmm that's why this chant in this hula is so important not just as a family message you know but it's the belief that that's the way the world should live in love no matter what obstacles come keep your love hard to live life but we try you know you do a good job i don't um tell that story without the lump in my throat it's so real and when you think of the suffering of the time and standing up for what they believed was right you really have to commend them in spite of the politics of the time to keep your love that surrounds everything you know it doesn't matter who we are where we come from keep your love winona was born on august 15 1923 she was raised on the big island of hawaii auntie nono wanted people to understand quote who hawaiians really are end quote in 1947 antinona sold her washing machine her car and her pearls to finance a u.s tour of a hand-picked hawaiian performance troop through numerous engagements and lectures the group gained popularity and eventually performed on the arthur godfrey show and later at carnegie hall in new york it was that same passion that brought her to teaching at the kamehameha schools for almost 40 years she became pivotal in reforming the curriculum of the schools by bringing the best of the hawaiian culture into the classroom [Music] my first teaching experience with children was in 35. i had just uh entered kamehameha in seventh grade and this was september and there was a notice on the bulletin board any girls interested in teaching at kakaako mission kakako mission school sign here well i had had teaching experience that august i was just 12 years old and my mother was ill so my father said oh no no you and your sister you have to go take care of mother's classes and my first student was mary pickford yeah she was here on her honeymoon with the buddy rogers betty rogers nice nice man and she was just about my height so she wasn't intimidating and she was so sweet her hands were so gentle and small feet i think my feet were bigger than hers but anyway i thought well i know how to teach [Music] well before a lot of like my grandmother and i've heard from a lot of other people that it wasn't um people weren't proud to be hawaiian like to be hawaiian you know stupid hawaiian lazy hawaiian you know things were a lot different but now after we've gained some of our culture back i think now people are starting as well as before to start and say you know i'm proud to be hawaiian we were a highly um evolved culture before before all this happened i mean we might not be adapt to many of the ways of western society but a lot of people now feel more more proud to be hawaiian [Music] i was in college just a brief flashback i bumped into a guy from new york who was a owned a recording studio so he said you know what are you going to be when you go up and say oh no i you know i enjoy playing the guitar and stuff like that maybe i'd like to you know do some recording and stuff and he laughed at me and i said hey keep hanging guys all you want to do is just sit under the beat you know under the coconut tree by the beach and just play ukulele and drink beer you guys never mentioned anything you know you and i yeah that was the way that uh hawaiians were perceived in the world as lazy not you know good for nothing kind of guy i was always badgering my dad and who are the hawaiians you know where did we come from where do we belong are we black are we white are we red what are we you know so i thought going to a hawaiian school i could ask those questions and get some answers wrong she was rather an extreme radical i suppose because she you know she danced i think she was one of the first people to dance the hula standing up you know which was not allowed at kamehameha and i believe she was suspended for that oh i did get expelled [Laughter] is that part of history i was a member of the hawaiian club and i brought my my classmates and we chanted as we walked in winona you may leave the campus walk down the hill with my suitcase that was my ninth grade year well princess bernice pauahi bishop did found the schools from [Music] her lands she was the last of the kamehamehas and had inherited considerable land and the revenues from the lands were used for this hawaiian school for good and industrious men and women but it didn't mean we couldn't be good in industrious hawaiian men and women but their thought was to be folly there was no hawaiian allowed it was disgraceful it was [Music] shameful it was backward and ignorant and all those negative things and i knew i wasn't backward and i wasn't ignorant i'm just now getting rid of that sadness in my heart after all these years you'd think i would have overcome it or outgrown it or forgotten about it but it's just been such a deep hurt in my heart and i guess you must multiply that by thousands of other hawaiians that feel the same as i i'm sure i've had a good life maybe i might not have married an irishman but love is funny that way you can't really predict what's going to happen but he asked us to go back to johnstown pennsylvania when kayla was like oh maybe five or six months old so he said i've been in your backyard now you come to my backyard so we packed and we went up to johnstown pennsylvania and the first night we were there serving dinner and i was setting the table with the family and everything and there wasn't a place at the table for me and i thought isn't that funny and the mother said oh we have your plate here and she put it out on the back porch with the dog i was incensed and i thought if my husband loved me you know he'd stand up for me but he didn't and of course i didn't tell him i was happy with kapono either but i packed up kayla and we left and came home i told him if he came home fine if he didn't come home fine well he never came back kobe used to go to kawaii and he'd shake hands with reverend akaka wipe his hands on his pants i'd say odell the color isn't going to come off on your hands but he simply couldn't get past the brown skin and don't tell kayla he never once picked him up change a diaper or anything like that he was a brown baby but don't tell killer that i've never told him that it was kind of sad i said why did you marry me well i love you and i thought maybe he didn't love me maybe he loved her life the beach the music the moonlight all of those things are very captivating well we didn't hear from him about uh 20 years ago carolina may be 25. carolyn capono came back from a concert tour mom there was a guy that came backstage and he shook hands with us he looked so familiar he said capono i'm your father hodel i said oh what did you do he said i sat down fast i said then what did you do he said i introduced him to kyola i said dan what did keller do he hugged him and he patted his shoulder and he cried i thought that was very sweet kill and i always knew that we were hawaiian and we were always taught to be proud of that and respectful of that it was always a source of i think strength for us to know where we came from and what that our roots were hawaiian and my mother was always involved in hawaiian culture and hawaiian dance and researching hawaiian history uh so we took these elements and put them on records and on the stage and i think kids our age at the time who are listening to what we were doing i think through us somehow they became a little bit more in touch with their own hawaiianness and their own hawaiian roots they got more into the music and the dance and bringing their friends in to discover you know the hawaiian sound usually curl up on the floor we put the shell down and the body then the elbows and then the head we all curl up on the phone well it's not easy because we have our feet in two cultures but your hawaiianness overwhelms anything else in your lives your love of god your love of self your love of family you don't have time for the petty things but what he's mentioning is to be sensitive to your own things not easy especially in the city i was speaking to a group of children at kaha and i said oh how many are going to our new kamehameha campus here on this island two hands i said oh where are the rest of you going oh we're going honolulu i said you have a perfectly beautiful campus here oh we want to go where the action is i thought that is a problem you want to be where the action is that's the western action but there's more to it than that my friends more to it than that even in the urban situations that we're all in now you've got to hang on to your hawaiianness to be sensitive to small things like we say the smell in the air the flowers the appreciation for the beauty around you don't ever lose sight of those values your kindness to each other very important [Applause] my mother nona beemer was a brilliant hula authority and a renowned educator she was a hawaiian cultural treasure in many ways her guidance led me to some very interesting journeys one of these explorations came from the work of nathaniel emerson the unwritten literature of hawaii it was a piece called the hulu the dance of the maine mom created the unique choreography for this piece and taught it to moanalani i think that it relates to my mother's life considering the discriminations and barriers that she encountered my mother's intention was to promote the aloha spirit in the world and to carry to those who may he [Music] so [Music] the youngest sister of pele journeys along the napili coast on the island of maui she arrives at a cliff overlooking the shining sands of kahakuloa from the ledge below she hears a mournful cry [Music] oh [Music] [Music] it was a sad creature a woman maimed of hands maimed a feet her torso swayed in the gathering darkness [Music] feels compassion for this poor creature she takes the hollow lay from her neck and tosses it close to the woman who looks up to see that it is a gift from the goddess seeing the woman's face hiyaka is overcome with sadness how will this pitiful creature wear her beautiful leg [Music] so [Music] do [Music] when the lay finally rests on her shoulders hijacker places her in a dream so that once again she can become the beautiful dancer of her youth [Music] so [Music] my oh [Music] [Music] way [Music] oh [Music] oh um [Music] it oh a jubilant dream but alas it was only a dream [Music] oh oh [Music] oh cake [Music] now [Music] ah [Music] [Music] evenings at the bemer ranch were always very joyous the air was crisp and cool mother lit the kerosene lamps for warmth and the ranch house glowed in amber hue oh so cozy and as i sat at the dining room window i could see mauna kea with a ring of stars i felt like i was saying my prayers that god was so close the ranch house seems so small small beside the majestic grandeur of mauna kea [Music] my friend and i would sometimes to see her [Music] standing when she [Music] when she [Music] and i could be forgotten [Music] and a thousand miles [Music] still i wouldn't call the beauty [Music] she will be [Music] if you love her like [Music] do [Music] at early morn as we awoke mauna kea woke with us it was as though she was our kahu our family guardian watching over us as we went about our daily lives she was a constant source of strength to give us support and she was a strong reminder for us to stand firm in our beliefs she was like our kupuna a loving presence she was with us every moment of every day [Music] anti-nona became the catalyst for a groundswell that led to an investigation of the kamehameha schools bishop estate trust her letter resulted in a public outcry over the management of the estate's trust let's listen to leslie wilcox's interview with auntie nona regarding her actions he wrote a letter to the state supreme court in the late 1990s in which you said mrs lindsey mrs lokilani lindsay trustees managed micromanagement methodology is an utterly diabolical plan of a self-serving egoist oh i didn't know her at all but it was just an abomination that that happened in your letter you were expressing what had been an inner angst many people upset with what was happening at the trustee level at the old bishop estate but so many people didn't want to lose what they had and you were the one who brought it out well you know they were afraid of their jobs the students were afraid of their scholarships you know i didn't have anything to lose i had no children in school i had retired you know and i thought this was just not right so when my hanai's son kaliko beamer trap came home and told me that lokelani had sent a directive to the university the language department that the vocabulary they were developing could not be taught at the kamehameha schools you know so i just felt that because if it was spoken during pauahi's time we could have spoken it but i thought why we're back in the middle ages we can't speak it because pawahi didn't speak it 50 years ago something's wrong you know so that really sort of encapsulated it from you i said we have to do something about it so that was the straw and there was a firestorm after you wrote the letter true true well i think it gave other people courage to speak up too and that triggered a a an overhaul a reform of the old bishop yes about time about time i'm so happy that people want to learn about hawaiian culture i don't want to deprive anybody of learning about the culture i don't know maybe i'm on a left field by myself but i'd love to share it with everybody in the world no no it's a heart [Music] hey [Music] beemer's aloha spirit is perpetuated in the aloha music camp that is committed to preserving and teaching hawaiian traditional culture let's see how the camp and its kumu its instructors interact with the students as they perform and teach their lessons [Music] um [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] morning [Music] so [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] it was indeed anti-nona beemer's vision to spread aloha around the world while visiting cambodia kyoa and moanabeemer witnessed the trauma that cambodians continue to experience as a result of the vietnam war the country is now attempting to rediscover itself and reclaim its rich traditional culture and identity [Music] [Music] like many native and indigenous cultures around the world cambodians are attempting to embrace the wisdom of their ancestors they do not want to be simply known as the killing fields that cambodian people once had a vibrant culture as witnessed by the angkor wat monuments this identity was stripped away during the vietnam war the u.s dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on cambodia exceeding the amount dropped on japan during world war ii this led to the uprising and takeover of the country by pol pot and the khmer rouge in the process it is estimated that 1.5 to 2 million people were killed like many traumatized native and indigenous cultures around the world the spreading of the aloha spirit can help heal and restore the wisdom of these struggling cultures as keol and moana witnessed the poverty of disadvantaged cambodian children they had the vision to take 40 ukulele to cambodia as a gesture of aloha and to teach a group of children how to play the instrument the aloha music camp embraced the idea and funded the mission which included several or teachers the children took to the instruments with enthusiasm adapting even more readily than expected and with such joy [Music] as the beamers had hoped they began acculturating the instrument adapting it to their own music and songs the children had never experienced a formal dinner before so as a special treat dinner was included in the program now the children are performing their own native music and concerts in siem reap cambodia and sharing their experiences recently the children presented a new performance on youtube demonstrating the sustained interest and value of this program when keola and the hawaii group saw the clip it brought tears of joy and gratitude to their eyes [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] as the sun lights up the sky over the kuomo battleground we are reminded that ancient traditional wisdom is precious to the world even as it remains under threat by rapid globalization if traditional cultures completely disappear and western culture is assimilated what then defines a sense of self [Music] it is encouraging that countries are preserving their ancient traditional cultures around the world even in oppressed tibet the tibetans and chinese are honoring their religion and cultural practices by prostrating in front of and around the zhoukong temple [Music] rich and colorful vibrant music and cultural tradition fiji firewalkers chronicle the origin of a polynesian people whose civilization dates back to 700 bc [Music] bhutan is a country that has a message for the world that promotes gross national happiness preserving culture is a vital component of the country's policy to achieve happiness for its people let's listen to the former prime minister of bhutan we see our culture as as as the very basis for the bhutanese people as as the as our national identity it is what really distinguishes us from other people and that is what has sustained us for a long time as a as a as a country as a as a bhutanese people and we felt that the the culture which he is responsible for imbibing the basic values in the buddhist people he is also very important without the culture you really got lost at all that you are like everybody else not necessarily in a positive sense but you would have lost your values and uh this is very important in preserving the the uh i guess the happiness of the people at the end of the day you have to have certain sense of satisfaction that has to come from inside a person and for this culture and our way of life is very important it has to be part of our everyday life because hawaii is so different what makes it different it's our culture what about our culture makes it different it's caring caring about the aloha [Music] it's a big job big job you think love is so common why doesn't the world get it yes it's so common it was a beautiful experience i didn't feel worthy they asked for they wanted eight kupuna and i said i'm not even a mabi kupuna i've only been here a year you should have maui kupuna and they reminded me he didn't he wasn't coming for the maui kupuna he was coming for the kupuna the hawaiians not just the maui hawaiians so we were given one question just pose one question to him [Music] so my question was love is so common why doesn't the world get it oh and he put his hands many different levels of love [Music] you killed for the love of our [Music] different levels of love tibetans [Music] years of oppression native peoples years of oppression but we go from now from here forward i thought that was so beautiful from here followed never mind what's going on you know i'm here and all the different levels of love but when you think about the levels of love that aloha encompasses all of it all of it doesn't matter what kind of love you're talking about aloha encompasses all the levels of love [Music] oh some we have to go from now [Music] generally speaking we are not uh what are they not adequate sort of information or lesson to to the younger people to student the importance of warm-heartedness or compassion with compassionate basic sort of way of thinking compassionate thinking then spiritual sense of forgiveness automatically come a sense of dialogue also automatically come a sense of reconciliation also automatically come so all these i think the sort of detailed explanation how how much importance of these things the for individual level for happiness for individual level also family level or society level that my my view those that are touched with the spirit of aloha with love are extraordinary people they're kind they're considerate they're thoughtful all of these wonderful ingredients that we would love the world to have and it's all based on this one premise [Music] aloha [Laughter] i think we have to trust love that the love is put in our hearts for a reason and when we say to our friends you know ahiki no o ko may all good be with you to fill your hearts with love that's as beautiful a thing as you can say to anyone yesterday as well as today this gift of love [Music] to fill your hearts with love i think that's a beautiful admonition and lovely to be able to share that with students to say trust your hearts love never fails [Music] they will pass i know [Music] in [Music] now i am a young man still [Music] in many ways we benefit from that time and as well as my grandmother like the things that she fought for just to be able to speak the language and dance you know what i mean now a lot of things maybe we take them for granted because it seems so natural to us but we really benefit a lot from the things that they fought for and the way they brought back the culture [Music] you