We, the undersigned students, alumni, and professors of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), are writing in response to the inclusion of University President David Lassner as a speaker and dancer on an Asia Pacific Dance Festival (APDF) panel entitled “Living the Art of Hula” that took place at UHM on July 25th, 2019. We denounce Lassner’s presence on this panel and call for accountability of the APDF organizing committee who invited him to participate.
Lassner is directly responsible for the ongoing oppression of Kānaka Maoli through his role in pushing forward the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea despite widespread, decades-long opposition from the Kanaka Maoli community. On July 12th, the UHM community received an e-mail from “UH Manoa Leadership” which, among other problematic assertions, advised members of our community to call the police on peaceful mauna protectors demonstrating on campus, effectively criminalizing Kānaka Maoli at an institution which claims to be an “Indigenous-serving” “Native Hawaiian place of learning.”
Hula is not a universal spiritual practice. It belongs to Hawaiian people and this ‘āina. Even beginning hula students know that hula recounts and honors the reciprocal and familial relations Kānaka Maoli share with this archipelago and its inhabitants–the plants, animals, ancestors, natural energies, and land. Hula practitioners know that Mauna Kea is a sacred dwelling place of akua, a beautifully unique ecosystem, and a living ancestor of Kānaka Maoli. Lassner has stated that he would not call Mauna Kea “sacred,” even while some of the hula community’s most respected kumu hula conduct ceremony on the mauna and lead the struggle to protect Mauna Kea from the TMT. It is clear that Lassner either never learned or has long forgotten his hula lessons. We adamantly assert that, given his racist and colonial oppression of Kānaka Maoli in the institution he claims to lead, his refusal to uphold Indigenous rights, and his ongoing desecration of the ‘āina from which hula grows, he has no place to either speak about nor dance hula on any panel.
As people who are actively working to protect this university’s commitments to Indigenous people and sustainability by opposing the construction of the TMT with our bodies and voices, hearing the news that Lassner was included on this panel was hurtful and shameful. APDF is a biennial festival co-sponsored by the East-West Center and the UH Mānoa Outreach College which invites one “Pacific” and one “Asian” dance group to join a local hālau hula as resident dance companies, sharing, teaching, and discussing their dance practices with an international collective of dancers, artists, and scholars. We applaud this effort to amplify and center Oceanic and Asian bodies and voices in the fields of dance and performance studies where they are often marginalized and erased. However, we wish to critique a practice of centering a vision of “culture” which is divorced from discussions of politics, power, and accountability. When you display Indigenous bodies as evidence of “culture” but do not simultaneously join them in the fight against their oppression, we have to question whether you are actually centering their voices or merely profiting off of their art and labor. Why should these communities trust your organization with their knowledge and dance practices if you simultaneously elevate the voices of their oppressors? Are you creating safe spaces in which they can do and share their work? Are you creating safe spaces for members of these communities who live, study, and work at UHM? In what ways are you accountable to Indigenous Oceanic voices beyond your festival?
By operating much of your festival in our department’s facilities, you have brought this injury into our intimate spaces of working, learning, sharing, and dreaming. Now we write this letter to begin to heal. We are not demanding or interested in an explanation about why or how Lassner ended up on this panel. What happened was wrong, but it is irreversible. We write to invite APDF organizers into a conversation about how to move forward with accountability to the Kanaka Maoli and hula communities, whose trust you have surely shaken, not only by your inclusion of Lassner as part of this panel but by your festival’s relative silence on Mauna Kea and the ongoing struggle against the construction of the TMT. We are open to a meeting with festival organizers to discuss this further. We also recommend these steps as a beginning to rebuild that trust and move forward into a future of accountability to the communities with whom you work:
The Asia Pacific Dance Festival must formally and publicly apologize for allowing Lassner to participate as a panelist at the “Living the Art of Hula” event on July 25th, 2019.
The Asia Pacific Dance Festival must formally and publicly renounce the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea because of its desecration of land sacred to Kānaka Maoli and injury to the Kanaka Maoli community.
The Asia Pacific Dance Festival must formally and publicly promise to include Kānaka Maoli on the organizing committee of the 2021 festival, and a member of each of the nations from which the invited Asian and Oceanic dance groups come.
A hiki i ke aloha ʻāina hope loa. Kū kiaʻi mauna!
Signed,
Marley Aiu
BFA student in Dance and English
Katherine Altman
MFA student in Directing
Kaipulaumakaniolono Baker
MFA student in Hawaiian Theatre
Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker
Associate Professor of Theatre, Hawaiian Theatre Program Director
Chrystle Chick
BA student in Theatre
Alexis Chong Tim
BA student in Theatre
Francisann Camuso
BA student performer in Dance
Marshall Daniel Keʻalalauaʻe Cressy
BA student in Theatre
Charessa Fryc
BA alumna in Dance and Political Science
Keli Ka’iulani Hall
BA student in Theatre
Maria Teresa Houar
PhD student in Theatre, Performance Studies
Qalil Ismail
BA Alumnus in Theatre
Alexus Johnson
MFA student in Dance, Performance and Choreography
Kristen Johnson
BA student in Dance, BS student in Kinesiology
Julia Joseph
BA student in Theater
Ākea Kahikina
MFA student in Hawaiian Theatre, MA student in Hawaiian Language
Alten Kiakona
BA alumnus in Theatre
Tina Chan
BA student in Dance
Lily Hiʻilani Kim-Dela Cruz
BA student in Theatre
Emma Majewski
BFA student in Dance
Marc Marcos
MA alumnus in Theatre, Costume Design
Mari Martinez
MA student in Dance, Performance Studies
Alex J. Miller
MA student in Dance, Performance Studies
Christianne Moss
BFA student in Dance
Kekela R. Oku-Fernandez
BA student in Theatre
Lurana Donnels O'Malley
Professor of Theatre, Director of Graduate Studies in Theatre
Melisa Orozco Vargas
MFA student in Theatre for Young Audiences
Nina Grace Parson
BA student performer alumna in Dance
Toni Marie Temehanaoteahi Pasion
MA alumna in Dance
Tahirih Monica Perez
BA student in Dance
Mike Poblete
PhD student in Western Theatre
Kiana Rivera
MFA alumna in Playwriting
Angela Sebastian
MFA student in Dance
Pamela Shoebottom
MFA alumna in Dance, Performance and Choreography
Kealiʻikeola Simpson
MFA student in Directing
Emily Steward
MFA student in Western Theatre
Kimberlee Stone
MFA student in Theatre for Young Audiences, Playwriting
Tavehi Tafiti
BA student in Dance and Hawaiian Studies
Iana Weingrad
MFA student in Dance, Choreography and Performance
Jorin P. Young
BA student in Theatre