Hula Beyond The Ala #12

Hula Beyond The Ala

When a group of women gather together there is a lot of potential for both incredible work to be done and for a lot of personal patterning to be revealed. Women in this society have been conditioned to be in competition with one another for hundreds of years. We have been conditioned to judge and criticize and cause division. Helping to break this toxic colonial pattern is one of my deepest intentions in this work. I was raised witnessing it and I repeated it in my youth, and now in my wā mākua, I am learning to heal it so that I donʻt pass it down to our three children that I have the honor of being a hānai parent to.

Whenever women decide to heal by creating more unapologetic space for traditional rituals, they are spoken about and judged, and oftentimes even ostracized by people in their community. And then, on top of the lateral questioning and analyzing, foreign settlers think that they have the right to either appropriate our cultural practices and then capitalize on them or will do the opposite and gaslight, undermine, and disrespect us and our rightful relationship with our own land and culture.

This is why we need pule, protect one another, and need to be protected. We are the creation story of the next generation and the future matriarchs of our families. Every prayer we offer, every chant we lift, and every hula we dance is a part of the sacred reclamation of what was stolen and silenced in the course of colonization.

It is our responsibility and our birthright to unlearn, reset, restore, heal and shift our patterning, and elevate our relationship to ourselves, one another, our land, elements, ceremonies, and rituals. It is up to all of us to create the space for this vital and sacred work to live and thrive.

To this, I dedicate my life

Hō’ike mai ke aloha nui puni ka ‘āina

#hulabeyondtheala

📸: Megan