Looking back to move forward

Hāwane Rios is a Kānaka Maoli (true human being), singer, songwriter, poet, chanter, and dancer.

She is a kiaʻi (protector) working to shield Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i’s tallest mountain, from further development. 

She is an educator and award-winning musician who says her songs come from the deepest parts of her spirit, guided by her ancestors. Her mother, Kumu Hula Pua Case, raised her steeped in the traditional art forms of her Native Hawaiian people.  She is a dedicated cultural practitioner. 

She is now, also, a 2021 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellow.

“The most challenging thing that I face as a musician is not being able to make a living off of my art and be supported solely by that,” she said. “Add in the effects due to the global pandemic, all of my scheduled performances, potential touring opportunities, and speaking events all canceled and or postponed -- it’s tough.”

She said she hopes the support from First Peoples Fund can help her on the way to become an independent artist with her own record label, producing her own music. “I also hope to be able to offer this recording space to other artists in Hawaiʻi,” she said.

Hāwane’s debut album, Kū Kiaʻi Mauna Together We Rise, was named 2020 Contemporary Album of the Year, by the The Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts in their Nā Hōkū Hanohano Awards. She is writing her second album including stories about contemporary life.

“As an Indigenous creative, I believe I have a responsibility to follow in the ways of my ancestors who recorded their lives, the changes of the land, and the shifts in society through the mediums of expression that I have been called to,” she said. “Our language, our genealogies, our legends, and stories were remembered and passed down to us for a sacred reason. I feel profoundly connected to writing about the times we are living in so that the next generations can hear a part of our story of healing, reclaiming, and reuniting.”

She didn’t grow up speaking her Native language but learned it later, in college. It was a revelation. “Learning ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi inspired me to start writing my own songs to remember stories that I was told in my language that I could finally understand,” she said. “I wanted to remember what the love of my ancestors sounded like to me. As I get older, I see how important it is to pass on these stories in mediums of expression that reflect the time we are living in now. I now weave both English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi in my songwriting to help to create more bridges of connection and also to encourage our young ones to learn our language and cultural practices.”

Hāwane has mapped out an innovative plan for her fellowship. She wants to record storytellers relating one ancestral story and one contemporary story of the Kohala and Waimea Districts on Hawaiʻi Island. She then plans to write an original song or chant for each story and record a studio version of them. In keeping with her connection to the land she plans to record the stories in the places that the stories are about. She plans a series of these collections and aims to complete one a quarter.

And she wants the work to be accessible. For that she is turning to technology. 

“One of the most effective ways of sharing and connecting online is through audio,” Hāwane said, adding she wants to create a podcast channel to upload the stories in episodic format. She also envisions video versions of the pieces and included the cost of a website domain, film producer, and editor in her budget proposal.

“I believe in creating innovative ways to get our stories to the next generation that is raised in the era of technology,” she said. “I feel that bringing our stories to online platforms that the youth resonate with will help to keep them connected to the land, to our values, and to one another.” 

Which is, to Hāwane, the deepest channel in the river.

“I was raised by the stories of my people. I have been shaped by the rain, wind, ocean, mountains, and valleys that my ancestors wrote songs about. Someone never stopped speaking our language, never stopped dancing, never stopped chanting, and never stopped believing in our traditions,” she said. “And that is why we are still strong and proud of who we are and where we come from today.”