Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • The beauty of Kauai just fills my soul.

  • There are places of extreme beauty.

  • And that for me is thePali Coast

  • where there is a hidden gem.

  • An old village site called Niihau Kauai.

  • It is an absolutely ideal place to perpetuate Hawaiian culture.

  • (reflective music)

  • (Hawaiian music)

  • I teach Hawaiian studies here in Kauai,

  • and the children call me Cuomo Kauka.

  • (Hawaiian music)

  • I teach Hula, which is Hawaiian dance,

  • Ōlelo Hawaii, which is Hawaiian language,

  • and Kapa, which is Hawaiian barkcloth.

  • Oh my God, it's so beautiful.

  • In Hawaii, we did not have loomed material.

  • We made our clothing and our blankets from the bark of a tree.

  • Kapa is made first by growing the plant and then harvesting it.

  • Scraping off the outer bark.

  • Removing the inner bark

  • and pounding it out.

  • You got to pound, and pound, and pound and pound

  • and then you need many, many strips and you fold them

  • together and pound them all out as one.

  • (pounding sound)

  • But you've got to have the materials to teach Hawaiian arts.

  • And those materials are very much based on plants.

  • (Helicopter sounds)

  • We have to grow the Wauke in order to make Kapa.

  • That's why we have been return to Niihau Kauai for 27 year.

  • There are no roads in there.

  • It is only accessible by boat or by air.

  • (helicopter sound)

  • You feel the sense of place when you land.

  • When you walk along the little trail.

  • And when you look out at the ocean

  • and you see the turtles that are resting on the beach.

  • They have been on that beach for centuries.

  • We've only been on that beach more recently.

  • (uplifting music)

  • Our first trip into Niihau Kauai

  • was to return ancestral remains or Kupuna iwi,

  • and, ever since that trip,

  • we have been going back to take care this old village site.

  • And we have also planted Wauke there to make Kapa.

  • And I am still trying to figure out how my Kupuna,

  • how my ancestors made as beautifully as they have.

  • It's a process.

  • We have to relearn these things.

  • Voila.

  • So it's a place of old Hawaii

  • that brings much to our understanding of perhaps how life used to be.

  • Come in right here and you gotta cut it at the bottom.

  • I like to teach my children about Kapa

  • because first of all they have to learn

  • how to take care of the plants

  • and then they have to learn how to harvest them

  • and how to clean them

  • and how to pound them.

  • (pounding sounds)

  • They know who they are.

  • They know where they live.

  • They know why they live here

  • and what they can do to help.

  • How do Hawaiians see the land,

  • that the land is the chief and that people are its servants.

  • (reflective music)

The beauty of Kauai just fills my soul.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it