When I was growing up in Hilo, we ate dinner at the table. Mom called, we came. None of this "I’ll be there in a minute" stuff. No sitting with our plates in front of the TV (not that we had a TV) or eating in separate corners of the house. We began with "God is great" or "Bless this food to our use," but when grace was over, it was Hāloa who sat in the fifth chair. Dad, Mom, me, Kauka, and invisible Hāloa. It was Hāloa (and his enforcer, Mom’s nī‘au broom) who insisted on courtesy, on pleasant conversation, on not talking business, and on eating everything served, like it or not. Hāloa would deny us -- "hō‘ole us," Mom said -- if we didn’t toe the line.

Mom didn’t have much more to say about Hāloa, but her sister did.  Most summers, we’d stay with Aunty Lani in Kona, and when I developed an appetite for her no-frills lū‘au -- boiled kalo greens without coconut milk or squid embellishment -- she led me through the coffee trees below her house to where she grew her "wild" kalo in small, mulched patches. 

"This is Hāloa," she said. "Start with Tūtū Man and name his father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, and so on, all the way back. Hāloa is at the beginning of the list.  He is the older brother of our first father. One brother was born as Hāloa-the-trembling-leafed-kalo, the other as Hāloa-the-man, but both were brothers. 

"Hāloa-the-kalo was older. He fed his brother’s family and kept it together. In return, the family took care of him and respected him.  Even today, Hāloa-the-kalo is boss. We take care of him and respect him because he feeds us and keeps us together. If not, pohō ka ‘ohana.  The family will be out of luck. You might be a city boy [for her, Hilo was the city], but you should know this." Then she gave me a little pocket knife and showed me how to carefully gather what we needed from our oldest great-granduncle.

From then on, Aunty Lani and I had a deal. "Dino, if you want me to make lū’au, you know what to do."

It’s no secret that Hāloa has lost his seat at many of our tables and no longer anchors our view of the world. For many of his 21st century nieces and nephews -- those without a Mom and Aunty Lani -- Hāloanakalaukapalili is little more than a purple snack chip. Hāloa and onion dip. Hāloa and Cheetos on a paper plate next to a hot dog or spam musubi. Great-great-granduncle washed down with a gulp of Pepsi or pass-o-guava.

So when a "children’s" book like Hāloa arrives on the scene, we need to welcome it with thanksgiving, care, and responsibility. It is a map to the almost-forgotten māla at the back of Aunty’s now-empty house. A place to lead a child by the hand. An opportunity to tell a story and revive a doing-and-telling process that cannot go untold, unbelieved, and unpracticed if we are to hold together as family and lāhui. 

Hāloa is not really a children’s story, certainly not in the western sense. You can’t wrap it up, give it as a birthday present, and expect it -- on its own -- to enthrall little Pualani. It is long on hānauna -- on birth sequences -- but way short on plot and character.  It is more Book of Genesis than Ghost in Dobb’s Diner, more mo‘okū‘auhau than Clown-Arounds. It reads like this:

Eia ka mo‘okū‘auhau o nēia pae ‘āina.  ‘O Kahiko ke kāne, ‘o Kūpūlanakehau ka wahine.  Hānau maila kā lāua keiki ‘o Wākea ia, he kāne.

Here is the genealogy of these islands. Kahiko was the husband, Kūpulanakehau the wife. A son was born to them. Wākea.

It recounts, matter-of-factly, the mānai ‘ula relationship of Wākea and his daughter Ho‘ohōkūkalani, and it delivers its main, father-of-the-Hawaiian-race point in the same didactic, rapid-fire fashion:

Ua noho hou ‘o Wākea iā Ho‘ohōkūkalani a ua hānau maila he keiki kāne, ‘o Hāloa nō ho‘i kona inoa. A ‘o kēia Hāloa ke kupuna mua o ko Hawai‘i nei lāhui kanaka.

Wākea paired with Ho‘ohōkūkalani again, and they had another male child whom they also named Hāloa. This Hāloa was the ancestor of the Hawaiian race.

The formal, chant-like quality of Armitage’s voice -- I hear it as kepakepa or maybe the slightly slower kāwele -- is compounded by the weight of Solomon Enos’ illustrations. His people are almost all colossal, close-lipped, and solemn. Their deeply shadowed, clay-slab faces emerge from and recede into the mountains, mud, and water from which they descend. Huge of thigh, chest, shoulder, arm, and hand, they reach across double-page spreads in subtle counterpoint to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. They touch, massive fingers to massive biceps, and give birth to islands, to kalo, and to man. 

The immediate effect of these words and images is not Pualani-friendly. Hāloa is not a snack chip. Not a comfort-zone celebration of Tūtū in a koa rocking chair. It is, instead, a resource of names to intone and memorize. A gallery of giant, elemental ancestors to examine and wonder over. Hāloa is unapologetically different -- inspired, I think, by what Armitage has called "resisting the literary constructs of the colonizer" -- but if it is going to make a positive impression on our TV-watching, Harry-Potter-reading children, it will require the guiding hand of a live, loving, story-telling teacher. I don’t see this as a flaw in the book. My feeling is that Armitage and Enos have gone ‘e‘epa on purpose. I’m thinking that they have rejected the western story-telling model in order to encourage a native pedagogy -- a Hawaiian way of transmitting traditional culture. 

Our way is voice and hand, word and action, face-to-face, old to young.  Our way requires an Aunty Lani. Hāloa recognizes her absence, supplies us with the bones, mud, and mystery of her story, and challenges us to take her place. Hāloa is something we should read and discuss with Pualani after we’ve shared hands-on kalo experiences with her and after we’ve told her, in our own words and fashion, the story of the first brothers. When used properly, the book should fade into the background of this larger, interactive process. It should empower us to undermine its own significance.

Hāloa’s collaborators and publisher are admirably committed to its paradoxical role. The book ends with an educational section compiled by Sharon Ka‘iulani Odom: work on a genealogy chart; prepare kalo corms for steaming; sing "Nā Keiki o ke Kalo"; add to your kalo vocabulary; make a fish and lū‘au stew. Neat stuff to do with Pualani.  Hands-on activities that will anchor you and your story deep in her memories.  Tools that, when carefully and consistently employed, will push Hāloa into the background. 

Even more admirable, to my way of thinking, is the decision by the book’s KS publishers to keep Hāloa out of the western marketplace.  It isn’t a commodity; it won’t be sold. Instead, it will be distributed where it is most needed: to Hawaiian schools, organizations, and communities.  My Aunty Helen Laulani Kamakau, who often joked that she was "too Hawaiian" to last more than a year at the old Kamehameha School for Girls, would have approved of this new Kamehameha and its latest publication. E ola ‘o Hāloa -- May Hāloa live.

© Kīhei de Silva, 2006