Workshopping for Culture and Community

In a small room in Lānaʻi City, a group of 10 people, ranging in age from junior high-school students to kupuna, are gathered around a long table stacked with colorful piles of flower blossoms—bougainvillea, hydrangeas, agapanthus, cup and saucer flowers, bachelor’s buttons, as well as palapalai fern fronds. They’re all studiously engaged in selecting flowers from the piles and weaving them into their own slowly growing strand of haku lei, but the conversation is also flowing.

Kumu (instructor) Diane Preza looks around the group and says, “The best thing about these workshops is not just the learning, but talking story. Because you’ll be talking and you’ll learn so much. You learn a little bit about Hawaiian language, native plants, and then you learn from the kids about football and everything they’re up to these days. I never knew.”

This is a lei making workshop being put on by the Lāna‘i Culture and Heritage Center (CHC), part of a series of educational classes called Hana Ka Lima (meaning “to work with the hands”) intended to preserve and perpetuate cultural skills and knowledge within the Lāna‘i community.

Since the program kicked off in fall 2023, the Center has held workshops on pounding pa‘i‘ai (taro), ulana niu (coconut leaf weaving), and making traditional hau cordage. That last one was a two-part workshop—students spent the first class learning how to strip and soak the bark of the hau, or hibiscus tilaceus, plant, then returned two weeks later to dry the bark fibers, and twist and roll them into cordage.

Shelly Kaiaokamalie, executive director of the Lāna‘i CHC, says, “I think sometimes folks think these kinds of practices are in the past, but these are things that are part of a living culture. It’s been exciting to be able to reinvigorate that here on Lāna‘i.”

In a place like Lāna‘i, with a population of just over 3,300, where many of the young adults leave the island to pursue education and better economic opportunities, fostering links between generations and passing along traditional knowledge is especially important.

“The Culture and Heritage Center serves not only as a cultural resource, but as a connector of this local community,” says Kaiaokamalie. “We’re able to bring folks together, to learn with people who have these skills, and to have fun doing it. Talking story, learning about each others’ families. It’s a way to build relationships and community, in addition to the cultural enrichment.”

The Hana Ka Lima workshop series has been funded by the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority through its Ola: Living Hawaiian Culture Program, supporting Island programs that perpetuate Hawaiian culture and community.

Kēhau Meyer of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, which administered the Kukulu Ola program through July 2024, says, “There’s intrinsic value in investsing in Indigenous practices, and supporting cultural practitioners as essential members of our community. These programs reinvest into people and place, which are the two most valued things that make Hawai‘i Hawai‘i.”

Kaiaokamalie says Lāna‘i is one of those places you really have to come visit to understand. “Lāna‘i is a special community, with many rich stories and histories and values,” she says. “I think that people in elsewhere in Hawai‘i and from other places can really learn from experiencing Lāna‘i.”

Read more Stories of Impact