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An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including interview with Sabrina Craig, the director of South Side Home Movie Project; interview with Vanessa Au and Ellison Shieh, directors of the Asian American Film Festival and Hula performers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the representation of Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) Hula Dance in traditional systems of representation and organization.Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study analyzes the controlled and natural language vocabularies employed for the representation and organization of Hawaiian culture, in particular Hawaiian hula. The most widely accepted and used systems were examined: classification systems (Library of Congress Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification), subject heading systems (Library of Congress Subject Headings and authority files (Library of Congress and OCLC Authority Files), and citation indexing systems (Web of Science Social Sciences and Art and Humanities databases).Findings Analysis of various tools of representation and organization revealed biases and diasporization in depictions of Hawaiian culture. The study emphasizes the need to acknowledge the aesthetic perspective of indigenous people in their organization and presentation of their own cultural knowledge and advocates a decolonizing methodology to promote alternative information structures in indigenous communities.Originality/value This study contributes to the relatively limited scholarship on representation and organization for indigenous knowledge organization systems, in particular Hawaiian culture. Research suggests that access to Native Hawaiian cultural heritage will raise awareness among information professionals in Hawai’i to the beauty of Native Hawaiian epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the popularity of hula in contemporary Japanese society in order to understand how Native Hawaiian images and traditions play a role in constructing the image of a ‘paradise’ in Hawai`i. By drawing on the personal experience of the author as a participant observer in hula lessons and performance in Tokyo, it argues that aiming for the sense of cultural authenticity is integral to the Japanese practitioners’ attraction to hula. It also shows how Native Hawaiian hula teachers and performers skillfully appropriate the Japanese desire to discover an ‘authentic’ Hawai`i for their cultural as well as personal gain. Today’s Japanese discourse of ‘Hawai`i as paradise’ derives from the contemporary socio-cultural context of a Japanese society that longs for the authentic culture of the indigenous ‘other’ as well as from the shrewd use of that longing by the ‘other.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented about the diasporic hybridity of the Indigenous Hawaiian dance form of hula mua as developed by Native Hawaiian Patrick Makuakane in the Salva Mea section of the show "The Natives Are Restless - Ke Akua." The author argues that the geographic, cultural, political and aesthetic hybridity of hula mua articulates a resistant Hawaiian historiography. Makuakane's critique of Christianity's role in the U.S. colonization of Hawai'i is mentioned.

To prepare for research studies that would evaluate the impact of hula as part of a clinical intervention, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and management programs, kumu hula defined as "culturally recognized hula educators and experts," were interviewed. Investigators sought to elicit their views regarding hula's traditional and contemporary connections to health and well-being, assess the cultural appropriateness of such projects, and suggest ways to maintain hula's cultural integrity throughout clinical intervention programs. Six prominent kumu hula from five different Hawaiian Islands participated in semi-structured key informant interviews lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. Each was asked open-ended questions regarding their attitudes, beliefs, and experiences regarding the connections of hula to health as well as their recommendations on maintaining the integrity of the dance's cultural traditions when developing and implementing a hula-based CVD program. All kumu hula endorsed the use of hula in a CVD intervention program and articulated the strong, significant, and enduring connections of hula to health and well-being. Each kumu hula also recognized that health is the full integration of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. When care is taken to preserve its cultural integrity, hula may be an effective integrated modality for interventions designed to improve health and wellness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the mele hula ka'i, or entrance dance chant, "Hiki mai e ka la ma ka Hikina," focusing on how the traditions of the Polynesian people are represented in the lyrics. Other topics include the power of words in the Hawaiian language and culture, the impact of colonization, cultural assimilation, and cultural maintenance on Hawaiian traditions, and a discussion of the Hawaiian mythological figure Kumukahi and how his story relates to Hawaiian geography.

During what was perhaps the first transnational hula tour of North America and Europe between 1892 and 1896, hula performers received sustained attention during a critical period when Hawai‘i's political status and proposed annexation by the US was a topic of national and international debate. Given Hawai‘i's subordinate economic and political status even prior to formal colonisation in 1898, hula operated as a form of colonial culture that became a part of mass, racialised entertainment on the rise in Europe and the US. While little known today, hula dancers who were previously members of the royal Hawaiian court circulated through international expositions, vaudeville theatres, dime museums and café-concerts. This gendered and sexualised colonial exhibition of hula associated Hawai‘i with the eroticised bodies and movements of women. However, late-19th-century Euro-American circuits also systematised opportunities for non-chiefly Hawaiian women to perform gendered cultural knowledge, travel and work. To illuminate the ambivalent character of transnational hula, as both colonial culture and opportunity for women performers, this paper traces the experiences of one member of the troupe: Kini Kapahu (also known as ‘Jennie Wilson’), previously a court dancer and later known as Hawai‘i's ‘first lady’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a speech delivered by Charles Seeger at the 51st Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, held in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2006, in which he discussed the history and characteristics of Hawaiian hula, which encompasses poetry, dance, and music.

Using the Hawaiian hula tradition as a case study, this article explores archival institutionalization of knowledge and contents necessary for performance. The fact that the performance skills of hula remained in continuous practice is what allowed a successful revival in the late 20th century of poetic repertoire that had become entombed in archival sources by the end of the 19th century. I consider the role of archives as a form of memory, particularly in the context of colonized peoples, and advocate for performers to determine how the archived repertoire would be staged again in ways that address contemporary rather than past circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of hula dance as a key factor in the imagined intimacy of the relationship between Hawaii and the U.S. in the decades before Hawaii achieved statehood. Objectification of Hawaiian culture; Restrictions of a U.S. oriented consumer culture; Coping behavior of Hawaiians with lived racial realities of life as minorities in the United States.

Discusses Kanaka Maoli empowerment through literature. Information on the olelo makuahine, the indigenous language base of the Kanaka Maoli; Creation of the Hawaiian alphabet and writing system by U.S. Calvinist missionaries; Views of king David La'amea Kalakaua on the hula dance; Use of kaona and traditional metaphors by the literature.

Explores the vernacular history of the poetry of modern Hawaiian Hula. History of cultural resilience and resistance to assimilation; Conceptualization of social history; Integration of vernacular poetic texts and practices of enactment; Structural organization of modern Hula.

Focuses on the conservation of the national culture of indigenous people focusing on hula practices in Hawaii. Meaning of colonialism to Native Hawaiians; Relationship between Native Hawaiians and the land; Protest of Hawaiians to the Senate Bill 8; Legal protection for gathering rights; Denial of the existence of Native Hawaiians as a distinct people.

Describes Hawaiian hula competition events. Impact of circumstances on repertoire, performance, and presentation and tradition; Role of genre conventions in changing the context of competition structures; Hula competitions as stages of innovative creativity.

Examines the hula dance as an embodied social practice and the relationship among bodies, social identity and performative practice in the hula. Representations of the hula in tourist shows; Perception of the hula by residents of the United States mainland; Features of the construction of Hawaiianness by the tourist industry in Honolulu, Hawaii.

This essay suggests how a social science perspective can begin to make a conceptual sense of cultural diffusion as it reinforces and reinvents meaning all along the Pacific Rim. Cultural meaning is always shaped by history. Before attempting to sketch the parameters of a scheme of the diffusion/meaning process, it is crucial to consider the historical context within which this socio-cultural puzzle is embedded. In the case at hand, it is important to be aware that the East-West cultural diffusion that is such a hot area of concern today is by no means a new phenomenon. There are three categories of diffusion that are found in their Pacific Rim contexts. A good example of East-West diffusion today would be the popularity of karaoke in the U.S. The diffusion of U.S. fast foods to Japan offers an example of a second category--diffusion in the opposite direction--even as it suggests some important points about the compatibility of context and history in the adoption process. Finally, an example of the third category, that of hybrid created culture, is the Australian dance hall form known as hula, which takes that already much altered Hollywood musical form of native Hawaiian dance and combines it with Australian musical and dance forms to create a mode of expression that reflects Australians own place and sensibility.