Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 29, Number 11, 1 November 2012 — Q&A: Alice Walker and Meleanna Meyer [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Q&A: Alice Walker and Meleanna Meyer

Truth-telling as medicine that heals By Naomi Sodetani Truth and beauty have the power to heal. On this powerful premise and a personal leap of faith, kanaka maoli fihnmaker and artist Meleanna Aluli Meyer embarked on her upcoming work, a fihn that expresses the boundless love of homeland that spiritually unites Hawaiians past, present and future. Meyer's feature-length fihn-to-be, Ku'u 'Āina Aloha: Beloved Land, Beloved Country, opts for a deeply personal - and emotionally present - fonn of storytelhng. An early eoneept "sketch" of the work-in-progress is layered with poetic unagery and music, including songs penned by Queen Lili'uokalani, and the unpassioned mana'o of the queen, Meyer and other Hawauan artists and activists bearing witness not only to the usurping of polkieal power, but that of native lands, waters, culture, freedom and spirit - terrible shock waves of loss and inter-

generational trauma that reverberate to this day. However, Ku'u 'Aina Aloha also offers hope in portraying how Hawaiian connnunity resistance and rebuilding has never ceased. The fihn was inspired in 2000 by the discovery of letters Meyer's great-grand-aunt Emma 'Ahna Nāwahī wrote from 1 895 to 1 897. She and her husband, Ioseph, were royalist supporters of the queen and ran a Hawauan-language newspaper in Hilo, Ke Aloha Aina. Meyer's own path attests to her own walk-the-talk dedication to uplifting her connnunity and creating a free Hawai'i: from working with youth-at-risk to creating puhlie murals showcasing the Hawaiian enviromnent and culture, to nurturing the nascent talent of Hawaiian charter school students. Of all her docmnentaries - including Puamana, 'Onipa'a and Ho'oku'ikahi - this is the first ahning to reach out to an audience beyond the Islands with its themes resonant of parallel indigenous struggles. Ku'u 'Āina Aloha is being produced in collaboration with noted Hawaiian fihmnaker David Kalama, with the help of a $150,000 grant from the Office of Hawahan Affahs. The fihn is in production and currently seeks completion funding to be released next year, Meyer esthnates, on or around the queen's birthday, Sept. 2. The fihn has attracted high-powered help, notably Ahee Walker, author of The Color Pmple. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novehst, poet, essayist and hmnan rights activist has contributed generously to the project and helped Meyer to shape the poetic approach of the fihn. Walker also serves as executive producer for the fihn. During her recent visit to Hawai'i, Walker and Meyer talked story about love of land and truth-telhng as medicine that heals.

Q: What brought you together? AW : Even before I met Mele, I was immediately moved by her extraordinary film Ho 'oku 'ikahi. There are some of us whose destiny is to keep the ancestors in memory and in the heart, to bring themforward to bless descendants with what they've learned with * 4

their long years. I realized that I was looking at a kind of medicine that indigenous people around the world use and need very badly. It is the medicine of going through the trouble of healing those places in history where we have done ourselves in, by war, by fratricide, by intrigue, lying, deception. MM: Aliee agreed years ago to kōkua (help) me and this project by being the executive producer. She has been that comageous and eommitted soul who has stood by as my mentor not only with her time, but treasure, advice and counsel, to help bring Ku 'u Āina Aloha into being. Her support is also such an affirmation. For me, to have a black woman on another continent get what we're doing to heal, revive om protocols and language, was so profound. We are not alone in our struggle for justice; we're not just talking to ourselves. Q: Why are you involved in this project? AW : I love anybody who loves

the land. If you love the land, then I love you. And love of 'āina so precious to me is honored in this film. Using the queen's songs to tell this story struck me as such a perfect way to encounter the history in a fresh way - also, to affirm the art of Lili'uokalani. Many people forget that she was an artist, and that an artist has a different way of recording events

and encountering history. We just do. That's just how it is, whether through poetry, music, literature or painting that the coming generations ean bring into themselves, without being terrified, a history that ean be sometimes be absolutely paralyzing. We need to encounter our histories through the art that is created by the people, by the ancestors and what they have to teach us. Q: What was the genesis of the fflm? MM: In 2000 Noenoe Silva was writing her book on the Hawaiian resistance to annexation and showed me letters that my greatgrandaunt had written to the queen after the overthrow. My aunt,

'Aima Nāwahī, was a confidante of the queen. She and my unele published a newspaper in Hilo, and she organized women to add their names to the petition opposing annexation. I was so thrilled to be made aware of these 40 letters that voiced my aunt's questions, her doubts and commentary on the times. What she spoke of shocked me because they deal with om pres-

ent, not just 100 years ago: attacks on the ali'i trusts, diminishment of native rights, continual taking of lands, the struggle so many of our people have with education and houselessness and incarceration. Her commitment challenged me: "What am I doing?" These letters were my impetus to do another filmthat begged to be done. It's my kuleana, something I have to do. Q: What is the fflm about? MM: How our love for our homeland endures and is our cry. And because the land persists, we persist. For me, it is speaking truth to our history, our genocidal trauma, our sorrows and our vision. The film is not "about" something; it will be Lili'u speaking, my aunt speaking, activists and artists like myself who are passionate about the Hawaiian cause speaking not about what happened but what is still happening today. In terms of what went wrong, the historical facts are self-evident. They're not debatable. But how we choose to

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Want to kokua? To get involved and support the completion of thefilm, contact Meleanna Meyerat meleanna@me.com.

<NI NAUELE v www.oha.org/kwo | kwo@OHA.org Q&A / NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS | FEATURES | EVENTS

Meleanna Meyer, left, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author Aliee Walker, are collaborating with David Kalama on an upcoming film. - Courtesy: Ikaika Hussey

Queen Lili'uokalani. - File photo

heal and reconcile is the work of all of us to do. It's not for one group to do something and the other to just sit there. We have to engage in discussion otherwise there'll be no healing for anybody. Ku'u 'Āina Aloha is that kind of exploration. Q: The fllm isn't lielion but unfolds like a visual poem. Why this personal approach? MM: Because our history is personal. The film tries to create an experience, because it's not enough to learn the facts but to feel, to engage in the story through the heart. We're not talking about third person or conjecture, these things did happen, annexation that was illegal. Truth needs to be spoken. Work has been done about the telling of our history, but not the intimate first person truth-telling that will hopefully move people's souls. AW: One of the tasks of artists is to try to find the coating on the pill, you know? Because we often

encounter so mueh resistance and so mueh objection, and it ean be quite daunting. But as artists, it's in our power, if we have the will and the capacity, to figure out how to present this in a way that is healing, that will take us along the path. Medicine that heals you often has to eome in a song, it has to eome in a melody, it has to eome in a

poem, has to eome in a story. It can't just eome as, "Well, this battle was fought on this hill and this descendant murdered this one and they took all the land." This is the way some people think history has to be relayed to us, but it doesn't move the spirit to grow. It ean make you close up and feel history is about struggle and holding on - to more than you ean

actually do anything with, usually. So this way of coming at this, telling the story through the brilliance of the spirit, is truly remarkable and it's just what we need. Q: What are your hopes for this work? AW : Ultimately, all the work we do is to help the world. It is to help the mother, it is to help the Earth in her struggle to be whole and healthy and sustain life - not to have people exploding the heads off of mountains, despoiling the rivers, fouling the oceans. I was so moved by the story of George Helm and Kaho'olawe and the whole coming to consciousness of the Hawaiian people that seems to me just part of the general awakening of the whole planet. I never think of Hawai'i as being a state, I think of it as being a country. I'm with you in reclaiming its roots and helping the tree eome back into full expression. MM: My hope and vision that

the outreach will be really broad and will reach all corners of the Islands and beyond. It will play in festivals and will have educational curricula attached to it as well as proper social media to create some really meaningful dialogue about healing and reconciliation in places where this kind of conversation needs to happen. I do this to honor our kūpuna for the reason of coming together. And you know, if we ean eome together and say "yes" to one another in faith and trust in the good work that we're all doing, we ean move hearts, whieh is even more difficult than moving mountains. Hawaiians want to move on; it's not that we want to live in the past. We have so mueh joy and living to do today. And I'mjust grateful to be part of that movement, that shift of mind that really does need to happen in order for the planet to survive. ■ Naomi Sodetani is a freelance writer, documentary producer and former Publications Edi.tor of Ka Wai Ola o OHA.

Hawaiian marchers carry the Hawai'i flag upside down in a sign of distress. - Courtesy photo