Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula
The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Saturday, November 7, 2026
6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Bishop Museum Great Lawn
$25 General Admission, Free for ages 13 and Under
Museum Members 50% Discount

In partnership with the Mary Kawena Pukui Cultural Preservation Society, Bishop Museum invites you to celebrate the life, work, and enduring legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui, a foundational pillar of Hawaiian knowledge and cultural revitalization.
Nānā i ke Kumu 2026: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula celebrates traditional hula carried through the Pukui hula lineage: a living legacy of movement, mele, language, lore, and ʻike passed from generation to generation.

Inspired by the hula and mele presentations Mrs. Pukui organized in Hawaiian Hall during her tenure at Bishop Museum and throughout Hawaiʻi paeʻāina, the program draws upon research by Pelehonuamea Harman and Kimo Alama Keaulana and Pukui’s own program notes to bring forward traditional hula and mele that are rarely seen or practiced today.

The evening will feature the premiere of newly restored archival footage from the 1930s and 1940s, including hula foot movements demonstrated by Patience Nāmaka Bacon and traditional hand gestures. Archival film, audio, photographs, narration, mele, and live hula will come together to illuminate this ʻike as more than a record of the past, but rather, as a living hula legacy that endures today.

This will be a rare coming together of kumu hula, archival presentation, and intergenerational ʻike. Join us for this truly special evening honoring Mrs. Pukui’s contributions to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, moʻolelo, hula, mele, and the perpetuation of ʻike kupuna.

He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula : Hula Is A Living Legacy

Hula Dancing Steps (1943)
Filmed in 1943 by George Bacon, these moving images capture Mary Kawena Pukui, Patience Nāmaka Wiggin, and Pele Pukui at a moment when the documentation and preservation of traditional Hawaiian knowledge had become an important kuleana for their ʻohana. The set of moving images, a silent film of approximately nine minutes, focuses closely on the physical vocabulary of hula. Kawena, Nāmaka, and Pele demonstrate kāholo, ʻuwehe, several forms of ʻami, and traditional hand gestures.

The Hula of Old Hawaiʻi (1943)
Approximately twenty-seven minutes, this film preserves a program of mele and hula performed by Kawena, Nāmaka, and Pele. Among the many compositions represented are Kaulilua i ke Anu Waiʻaleʻale, A Hilo Au E, Kalalea, Kalani Ka Manomano, ʻAua ʻia e Kama, Hoe Puna i ka Waʻa, E Pele, a Pele, Aia ʻo Pele i Hawaiʻi, and He Inoa Nou e Kalanianaʻole. More than eighty years later, these films allow us to witness mele and movement, the relationship of a mother with her daughters, and practitioners deliberately preserving ʻike so that it might continue beyond their own generation. The original footage is preserved within the Bishop Museum Media Collection and today is cared for and made accessible through ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Kuʻualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi. One of the films was recently digitized from the Smithsonian Institute’s Collection by the Mary Kawena Pukui Cultural Preservation Society.

Mary Kawena Pukui 1895–1986
Born in Kaʻū, Hawaiʻi, Mary Abigail Kawenaʻulaokalaniahiʻiakaikapoliopele Nāleilehuaapele Wiggin Pukui was raised within a world of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, moʻolelo, mele, hula, lāʻau lapaʻau, and the ʻike of her kūpuna. She became one of the most consequential scholars and repositories of Hawaiian language and culture of the twentieth century.

Kawena devoted her life to learning, documenting, translating, teaching, and transmitting ʻike Hawaiʻi. Her decades of work with Bishop Museum produced an extraordinary legacy of translations, oral histories, ethnographic notes, mele, recordings, and publications, including the Hawaiian Dictionary, Place Names of Hawaii, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, and Nānā i ke Kumu. Yet her work extended far beyond the written page. Hula was part of the traditions she inherited, practiced, studied, and deliberately sought to preserve.

Kawena and her hānai daughter Nāmaka trained with noted hula masters including Keahi Luahine and Joseph ʻĪlālāʻole. In their training, Nāmaka served as ʻōlapa while Kawena learned the mele, rhythms, and accompaniment as hoʻopaʻa. The 1943 films offer a rare opportunity to see Kawena as a kumu, hoʻopaʻa, mea oli, mother, practitioner, and active participant in the transmission of hula.

Patience Nāmaka Bacon 1920–2021
Patience Elmay Nāmakauahoaokawenaʻulaokalaniikiikikalaninui Wiggin Bacon, affectionately known as Aunty Pat, was born in 1920 and entered the Wiggin-Pukui ʻohana as an infant. Raised by Kawena within a Hawaiian-speaking household, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi was her first language and the practices and values of the ʻohana became the foundation of her life.

Nāmaka learned her first hula as a young child and began formal study with Keahi Luahine at fourteen. She later trained with Joseph ʻĪlālāʻole alongside Kawena. In this relationship of learning, Nāmaka embodied the hula as ʻōlapa while Kawena served as hoʻopaʻa, and together they documented what they had been taught. In the 1943 films, the young Nāmaka allows us to witness the manifestation of this ʻike in her feet, hands, eyes, posture, and movement.

Her kuleana to preservation continued throughout her long life at the Bishop Museum, where she became an invaluable scholar, translator, transcriber, cultural advisor, and keeper of her mother’s vast body of recorded knowledge. The films therefore capture Nāmaka near the beginning of a lifetime devoted to preserving and perpetuation ʻike Hawaiʻi.

Asenath Henrietta Pelehonuamea Nāpuaʻalaonuʻuanu Pukui Suganuma 1931–1979

Pele Pukui, Kawena’s daughter, was born in Honolulu in 1931 and grew up immersed in the language, mele, hula, and cultural life that surrounded her mother and her older sister Nāmaka and their ʻohana. In the 1943 footage, Pele is only about twelve years old. Her presence makes these films truly special as we see mele and hula moving visibly from one generation to the next. Pele continued to carry this hula inheritance into adulthood. At a time when highly commercialized representations of Hawaiian dance had become familiar to public audiences, she returned to the performance of traditional hula, working with her mother as narrator and with noted chanter and musician Kaʻupena Wong as hoʻopaʻa. Through these presentations, traditional mele and hula were again brought before public audiences.

Pele’s life was shorter than those of her mother and sister, but her place within this genealogy of hula remained consequential. The 1943 films preserve something especially precious: Pele as a young haumāna, learning and dancing within her own ʻohana, before she would become a bearer of that ʻike herself.

George Edward Bacon 1918–1993
Behind the camera in 1943 was George Edward Bacon, who would later become Nāmaka’s husband. Then serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Bacon was also a skilled photographer with an enduring instinct for documentation. These films demonstrate that practice at an early point in what became decades of photographic work in Hawaiʻi.

Bacon’s camera preserved performance as well as ʻike. In the shorter film especially, its attention to kāholo, ʻuwehe, ʻami, and kuhi lima suggests a documentary purpose: recording details of movement so that they could be seen and studied again. His work thus became part of the same larger effort of preservation undertaken by Kawena and Nāmaka.

Bacon continued photographing Hawaiʻi for decades. Today, the George Bacon Collection at the Hawaiʻi State Archives preserves an extensive visual record that includes landscapes, communities, historic places, musicians, cultural practitioners, and hula dancers. His role in these 1943 films reminds us that preservation depends upon those who hold and transmit knowledge, as well as those entrusted to document it carefully.

L-R: Brannon Kamahana Kealoha, Rianne Kiyomi Kuʻuleimilikaʻaikealoha, Graves-Grantham, Frank E. Kaʻiuokalani Damas, Kalimakuhilani A.K. Suganuma Southard, Kekoa Harman, Pelehonuamea Harman, Devin Kamealoha Forrest, Kimo Alama Keaulana, Tifeni Kanoe Cadina

In alignment with the theme of He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula, these practitioners will chant “Mele Kāhea” to open our program, perform “Kona Kai ʻŌpua i ka Laʻi” to demonstrate a variation of this hula kālāʻau, and dance “Piano Ahiahi” in sync with the archival footage, bringing the movements preserved on film into the present.

Experience Ea Mai ʻEiwa: Patterns of Practice

T. REX: Extended Cut Screenings

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E Ulu, E Ola

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Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula
The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula
The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Mahalo To Our Sponsors!

State Museum of Natural and Cultural History of Hawaiʻi

Experience Ea Mai ʻEiwa: Patterns of Practice

T. REX: Extended Cut Screenings

Field Trips

After Hours

E Ulu, E Ola

Join & Give

Membership

E Ulu a Paʻa

Corporate Partners

Foundations

Volunteer

Become A Member

Make A Donation

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Mahalo To Our Sponsors!

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula
The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)

Nānā I Ke Kumu: He Hoʻoilina Ola Ka Hula
The Living Hula Legacy of Mary Kawena Pukui Through Archival Film, Audio, Photographs, and Hula (1930–1945)