Lā Kū’oko’a 2024
I am writing this as a reflection the day after vending a #Native Hawaiian Owned #Makeke held up at #UH #Hilo #Campus Center. This event featured many Hawaiian-Owned Businesses including apparel, food and crafts and Live Musical Performances by #Kuulei Music, #Kaikena #Scanlan and #Hoaikane
🌺 Key takeaways:
🌞 Everyone is stoked for Hawaiians, not just us. I now see how many more people want to celebrate our sovereignty and support #landback and it is so much more thoroughly felt by the people in-person than what you will see in the media which hides that fact.
🌞 Interactions on the subject #matters of our #heroes and historic #figures are not only enlightening, but gratefully received by all and with many having their own heartfelt #connections on and around these subjects.
🌞 It is spiritually #healing for people to hold space for these subjects and relate to them with others who feel free to do the same
🌺 When I was asked by the members of #Kipuka
🌊 What my favorite thing about being a business owner is, I told them that it was being able to control the #voice of my company. I know that owning a business gives a sort of #power to push an agenda, we Hawaiians learned that from (what) the #BigFive (pulled off in aiding the illegal overthrow of Queen #Liliuokalani and helping to imprison her to gain more power for themselves as #American #Loyalists who disguised themselves as #Hawaiian #Kingdom subjects); and so this is US now, asserting OUR agenda (as genuine subjects of an occupied nation).
🌺 Lahui
🤙🏾 Compared to when I was a kid, we are clearly now more unashamedly proud of who we are as a people and as a nation, and therefore as individuals. #lahui
🌺 Tidbits that I shared
with visitors to my booth:
🌊 This has always been our dream, to be unashamedly proud of being Hawaiian
🌊 With each new portrait I make, I feel even more unreserved in my pride as a Hawaiian
🌊 It’s awesome to see all of the other #kanaka #owned business in one place because now we know who is alongst us and who we must support
🌊 I enjoy and am taught throughout the process of doing each portrait, how to see the diversity within the shared #Kuleana that we have as Hawaiians, and through witnessing so in-depth that diversity, able to #cohabitate that #diversity in myself to see that we are not DIFFERENT from eachother at all, but rather TOGETHER we are #WAIWAI
🎶 I do not own the rights to this music:
💚 Ku’ulei Music “Aloha Aina Meds”
🎺 Alex Goose “Switch It Up”
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