This program is brought to you in part thanks to  generous support from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts through appropriations  from the Legislature of the State of Hawaii and by the National Endowment for the Arts  and the Hawaii Council for the Humanities.

I think it's important to know that Kappa  is the Hawaiian word for that substance made out of fiber, plant fiber usually that  is used throughout the tropical zone in many other parts of the world.

So that in Samoa it's  Syapo, in Tonga it's Tafa, in Hawaii it's Kapa.

places that didn't have cotton traditions, linens,  or woven things, ended up somehow discovering that certain tree barks could be beaten and worked  out to be able to make things you could cover yourself with.

When the Hawaiians developed  this art form after they settled in Hawaii and lost contact with the central Polynesia, they  developed a very high high state-of-the-art When Polynesians settled the Hawaiian  archipelago sometime between 300 and 800 AD, they brought plants that were  essential to their way of life.

One of the plants they brought was the woke  brasenia papyriera or paper mulberry.

The plant that was vital to the practice of making  kapa.

One Hawaiian legend tells us that the goddess Hina could not dry her kapa because the  sun traveled too quickly across the sky.

Her son Maui stood at top halakala, lasserued the  sun and forced it to travel more slowly.

Thus, both time and the rhythm of the day as we know  it are associated with the cycle of kapa making.

Kapa in Hawaiian culture was used  as clothing.

It's beaten.

So all the clothing was essentially a rectangle.

So the women would wear a wraparound skirt called a pa.

The men would wear a  loin cloth and called it a malo.

There was a uh like a cloak shoulder  covering that was called a kihei or kappa.

It was also uh the blankets.

It was also um used ceremonially in the temple dressings.

It was used on the ki or the the statues when it was that god's time that he was  you know he ruled or he was awake.

It was used extensively in burials.

They had  different ways of preparing bodies to be buried and so many of them that they found were wrapped  in in like black copper.

Uh so it was you know to take the the cotton uh you know logo.

It was the  fabric of our lives.

Several things distinguish Hawaiian kappa from other Pacific Island kappa.

Finished pieces were felted together and appear seamless.

The color palette used in decorating was  extensive and the cupa designs more intricate than those of other island groups.

But one of the most  unique and beautiful features of Hawaiian kappa is water marking.

If you see a piece of kappa,  just look at it, you know, just flat.

You don't see that watermark.

But if you lift it up to  the light, you see this wonderful surprise.

And the watermarks differed as I understand it from  family to family or from cup maker to cup maker.

That watermarking there to me is the ka of  the cupa.

It is not a hidden meaning.

It's that underlying thing which is very Hawaiian  as well.

Oo.

Why don't you just leave it like that?

Just leave it like that.

Here's the here's  the thread right here.

And so it is just going around.

They open the seam.

This one is folded  over.

So the seam is open.

But they pull it they pull it pretty tight.

But then you see that you  can see all the fiber inside here from whatever they were using.

Many have the impression that  Westerners introduced sewing to Hawaiians.

Yet there are pre-cont examples of Hawaiian kapaoy,  sleeping kappa and malo fragments that were stitched together using a needle made of bone  kilo wood or bamboo.

Pieces are also joined without a needle by punching holes in the cupa  and drawing the thread through by hand.

Thread was made of how or cup of fibers.

Though cupa  making is usually thought of as women's work, the complex process also involved men.

Actually  it was a woman's art or woman's craft.

The men the men were very important though to it.

They helped in the in the planting.

They made all the tools and if we didn't have if the  women didn't have the tools that they made, they could not produce this fine  grade of fabric that they did produce.

I had a a great husband that could help me fashion  the tools.

He made my koola and he cut the forms for the beers.

We were doing this traditionally.

Husband make the tool, wife beat the cupa la lima take off.

It simply in English means  cooperation.

Not my finger.

But it means more than that in Hawaiian because it means all the several  hands working together usually to accomplish something.

So it's more than just cooperating  with each other because you had to have the help of others in order to accomplish what you  needed to do.

Western cloth was introduced when first contact with the outside world came to  the Hawaiian Islands.

Western clothing and cloth quickly became part of a new material culture.

Cotton cloth was soft, brightly colored, sturdy and could be washed many many times outlasting cup  fiber which is essentially a paper.

The process for making kappa was a long arerous hard work  stuff you know and with this new fabric was so easy to acquire you know a pu or a shaw a kihei  you know this is Hawaiian to be bold and bright and the design is bold and um you know telling us  that this came before the oh capella the bamboo printer You know this came before that.

Ironically  cupa making as a craft reached its zenith after contact largely due to the introduction of metal.

Metal tools allowed for finer carving of copper tools and therefore finer design printing  inspired by calico.

Western cloth may also have motivated copper makers to imitate the fine  texture of cotton.

By the light, you can tell the distribution of the cloth.

They were really going  for the the delicateness of some of these things.

Like, you know, look at this ed this border.

This  is all hand dotted these little things.

So, it's like, did they see lace and then want to replicate  that somehow?

Just that that finness of it.

Much of the copper that Captain James Cook  acquired on his voyages was coarse and thick when compared to the soft, thinner copper made  later in the 19th century.

When you look at it at that particular time of kappa, it's all  the same.

It could have all been made by the same person is how uniform it was as as almost an  industry standard.

And when you try and pull it, you can't tear it.

And yet it's thin like a like  a paper towel, you know, and and all the kappa, you know, Smithsonian Museum and Bishop Museum  and uh Peabody Museum and all these places have these kappa that are this fine right before they  stop making it completely.

Unfortunately, just as copper making was experiencing this remarkable  refinement, it also went into a steep decline.

By the 1860s, it was reported that copper was only  seen in its planer forms in outlying areas.

And by 1890, production and use had almost ceased.

Copper  making lay virtually dormant for almost a century until the late 1960s and early 1970s when a  cultural reawakening in Hawaii began to take root.

Many Hawaiians realized that over assimilation  had nearly erased valuable cultural practices.

Kappa was one of these things that that not  because it was any militant kind of thing, but just it was one of the things, one of our  arts that had been completely lost.

My first um recollection of somebody wanting to do it was  Malia Solomon that she started to do some work around the 1960s.

And what she did was go to  central Polynesia and where a couple was still being made by the Samans and by the Tongans and  got general background there.

And then she came home and started to make some pieces here  in Hawaii.

And then pretty soon along comes um people like me and people like Moana Eley  who basic reason why we get involved with all of this is that we have this very strong  curiosity.

We had to find out, you know, how did they do that?

You know, it was  just wanting to know how.

And from that, from just wanting to know how you you learned  a whole lot of other things.

And it's all those other kinds of things like the La Lima, like the  aonui, like the kana, like the hoihi, the respect that you got to have for all kinds of things.

We call them values today, but they were just practical fundamental ways that fit into everyday  life.

Pua Van Dorp is also one of the early cup makers who did much to research and recover this  lost art.

I believe in in a lot of things that get passed down genetically and I think certain kinds  of you know cultural and historical knowledge are part of them.

Not just the color of your eyes or  the color of your hair but things that you know and things you're drawn to.

Holy moly.

There's  at least two different types of watermarks on this.

Correct.

Mhm.

And at least two different  colors.

Mhm.

It's the lines counted one way and impounded one way.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

It's  not.

It's not.

It's too It's too deliberate.

It is.

It is.

It is.

It is.

While many of these  new cupa makers received some instruction, they relied heavily on the work of early  Hawaiian historians, western anthropologists, and the cupa collections held by various museums.

Bylu Cam, the Bishop Museum's director of cultural collections and copper makers continue to learn  from the museum's collection.

But that doesn't look like, you know, all the lines that are  on here, they remind me very much of the lapa, you know.

Would the have been created by um bamboo  liners, do you think?

Because they are hand.

I I I think they might have been, you know, for  the amount of um wines you have here.

Much of their cup of knowledge came from determination,  from trial and error, and from sharing the things they were learning with each other.

We shared  what what we had found out and what worked and what didn't work, you know.

But most of us worked  by ourselves, individually, all by ourselves.

Scraping the bark while it's still in the round  on the stick is easier than extracting peeling off the entire bark.

Yeah.

And trying to work  it on a flat surface.

Anyway, this is one of the processes that we've kind of come upon just  by trial and error.

I went asking questions about kappa making to anybody that would listen to me.

And I went and I looked up in Bishop Museum.

I looked in libraries.

I looked everywhere that I  could to try and get information about Kappa.

And I still remember and this is like 15 years ago.

I  had my tool that I made and I'm pounding it and I look at the book again and pound it and I remember  crying out of frustration.

Okay.

So, I just kept pounding, kept pounding until I, you know, kind of  got something that I thought must have been close.

Today, a small number of people in the Hawaiian  Islands are actively making kappa, but their ranks are steadily growing.

Many kapa makers have had  gallery shows and are encouraged by the rising interest in their craft.

And once again, kappa  is being used for traditional purposes.

I really want it to be more than just find out.

I want you  to use it.

I want you to to take it and wrap your body with it.

I want you to use it however you  have to use it.

I don't want it to just sit on the wall someplace and look good.

This is good to  get kappa out and in galleries and on walls and in frames, but for me personally, I'm always happier  when I can make somebody calls me and says, "Oh, um, you know, my my sister's having a baby and  she'd really like a piece of Hawaiian kappa to catch the baby in when it's born."

and um or you  know somebody just passed away and they want to put the ashes in a piece of Hawaiian kapa and  they're just going to you know put the ashes and put the whole thing in the ocean and let it go.

I'd like to recognize the front row in 2011 at the Merry Monarch the yearly hoola festival held  in Hilo many cupa makers participated in a project that put Hawaiian kappa to a truly traditional  use.

One of our Kapa Kapuna, Marie McDonald, uh, got some of us together and said,  "You know what, you guys, before I die, I want to see a whole hala dressed in Hawaiian  kappa and dancing."

And so we said, "Okay, we can do that."

I really wanted to do something big and  wonderful, clothing, because that was the primary use of uh for the cup that Hawaiian women made, my  ancestors made.

The cupa makers approached Nalani Naka, the kumuhula of Hilo's worldrenowned  Halaw Okikuhi, a halo hoola that would be performing on the Hoik night of the Merry Monarch  Festival, the night of non-competitive dancing.

Tamarie called me to see if I was willing  to participate in this project.

Of course, I jumped at the idea.

I loved it.

And the people  that she worked with also I they were very feisty, feisty crowd, but they were passionate about  what they were doing.

That's what I loved about it.

You can take one design and you think  it's going to cross this way, making lines, right?

But it really is this way.

with um  the help and support of all the cupa makers, we reached out and invited as many cupa makers as  we knew.

We have cupa makers from all islands.

Um we have men and women.

We have mothers and  daughters.

Um so this is really to me just a real coming together of um a wonderful  cross-section of of the couple community.

Just like when you're in hala every Sunday,  you have you have time to perfect it with the guidance of your kumu, right?

So the same thing  with us making kapa.

We have we keep growing it and we we keep practicing it and and that's  why it's the way it is.

This ambitious project is one of great significance in Hawaii's  history.

As a halo hoola had not performed an authentic Hawaiian couple for over 100 years,  the project took many hands and hours of labor.

Kappa is made from the paper malberry tree which  originated in East Asia called Woki in Hawaii.

It was introduced by the first Polynesian settlers carried in their canoes over  thousands of miles of ocean.

If every single person was wearing kapa, then valky must have been growing everywhere.

And now you cannot find Valky growing wild unless you go way back into the mountains  and way back into the nooks and crannies.

In Hawaiian lure, the origin of the plant is  attributed to a man named Mike Koha.

When he realized death was near, he instructed his  daughters to bury him near a stream.

It is said that from his body, the first Walke grew.

Walke thrives when it is sheltered from too much wind and when it has ample water.

As the  walke grows, lateral growth is removed in order to get straight, clean stems.

A choice stem  for harvesting would be very straight, tall, and at least 2 in wide.

It has it needs a lot of  water to uh thrive and you know and to get nice uh material for beating from  it.

So when we planted this, this was the area that was the lowest and it  seemed the dampest at the time.

And that's why I chose this instead of someplace else, you  know, and besides it was clear.

We took off all the grass that was growing here.

And  we had a clearing.

It's not a hard wood.

I lift it out so I don't bend any the ones on  the outside.

And then I'm just going to drop it over here.

I've harvested some other ones here and  you can see why I chose them.

The stems are pretty clear.

Yeah.

So, what I do now is I I discard the  tops because the fibers, they're too young and they're short.

Okay.

Watch out.

And I'm going to  cut it right here just before that intersection.

And this is the part that I'm going to  keep which now is about about 8 ft tall, 8 ft long.

So in the course of like working  with kappa, I I learned so much about the plant, I learned how to take care of it, you know, what  its needs are.

how I can take this plant that comes out of the soil and is nurtured by the  sun and the water and all the elements and I can take it from that and make something unique.

When you're just in the patch and it's it's just the sound of the woke and the wildlife like  the birds and um it's really quite pleasant in here.

Once the stems are harvested, the brown  outer boach is removed by scraping to expose the bast.

The white inner bark.

Traditionally,  this was done with sharp shells.

Opiehi and mother of pearl were often used.

The outer bark  has to be removed and all the green coloring um from the plant photosynthesizing has  to be removed.

If you don't remove it, then your bast is discolored.

And the object,  the finest is the whitest, the clearest bass.

So, a couple makers will spend quite a bit of time  removing all of that green from the branch.

I just want to point out, you see how the teeth are  curved?

I'm going to use that curve in removing the bark from the branch.

Next, the bast is  removed from the hard stem using a nihooi, a knife made of shark's teeth mounted on a  wooden handle all the way down the branch.

And you can see the sap inside there.

That's  what you want.

You don't want woody.

You don't want it woody and sticky and dry.

You want  this.

So, you go all the way down.

Take your off the inside of the vest here and  the outside on this side.

And we'll um take this and roll it inside out.

And we're going to tie the bundle up so it doesn't  unroll.

We just put this in salt water.

It will sit here for a week in this bucket here, the three  pieces that we just uh stripped.

And after a week, the the bass starts to look like this.

Um,  sometimes it'll develop a little foam on it and we'll change it maybe once during that  period.

So, these these pieces are still in the salt water.

They uh start to get a little slippery  and slimy and um much softer than the pieces that we just put in.

They also start to um bleach out a  little bit.

The salt is critical in the bleaching process.

And then this bucket has pieces that  have been soaked for at least a week and we've uh allowed them to soak in fresh water.

This is to  remove any of the excess salt overnight.

And yeah, at least overnight.

And um so we're ready to beat  these.

Um we want to take that extra salt out so the cupa dries.

I think one of the problems that  Hina might have had when the sun wouldn't stay still in the sky so her her cup could dry was  that maybe she had too much salt inside and it wasn't drying.

That's my idea.

So she should  have rinsed her kapa a little bit better.

So that at this point we're going to actually start  the beading process.

This first beading is done on a kua poaku a stone anvil.

The beers that  we're using are called hoha, the round beater.

Sometimes it's riged.

And this is for the first  beading where we put the fiber in the mo stage.

That's first beating we dry afterwards.

And  we can store it then store it for a long time if we need to store it.

The first beating  breaks down the fibers and spreads them out.

It takes uh six strips like this to make a pa  at least 32 in wide.

All right.

And it takes um only two strips about 8 9 10 12  feet long to make a malo.

Okay.

These strips are then taken and dried in  the sun usually on a grassy area.

Once dried, the strips called mo can be stored  indefinitely.

Put it in here to store it.

To prepare them for the next stage, the dried strips  are soaked in fresh water and lightly beaten.

Two to six strips are then stacked, folded, wrapped  up in bundles using tea leaf or banana leaves and allowed to r to ferment.

Retting is another  feature that is unique to Hawaiian kappa.

The process takes anywhere from 2 days to 3 weeks  depending on the air temperature.

The beater now becomes the euku a foursided a flat four-sided  uh beater different from the hooa which is bullet shaped and these are hardwoods as well.

The anvil  that we're beating on is the kua lao.

This one is made of koa that my dad made uh for my mother.

We  pick uh the ea cuku the designs on it.

Uh they do certain tasks.

They they cut the fibers shorter  and they spread them out and that's what we want them to do.

At this time some cuppper makers  will use the side of their euku with a watermark pattern.

Some will wait and use it at the end.

During this stage, the fibers are broken down further and the felting process occurs.

You can  see where the the two layers have been laid on top of each other.

They're still not felted completely  and seamless.

Uh as we beat this several times, then you those layers will not be evident.

So,  right now, we could separate them.

And if we dried this out, it probably would separate.

But we  need to beat and have it ret.

That's the process that we're going through.

The strips eventually  meld into one another, becoming thinner and wider until they are one seamless piece of cloth.

In  this stage, after an initial beating, the couple might be folded, rewrapped to ferment again,  and taken out for another beating.

or it could be completely beaten to size in one sitting.

When  the piece is completely beaten out and and dry, it's somewhat stiff.

So, we want to soften  it so the fibers are more wearable and more pliable.

We can also burnish that push that those  ridges down by burnishing it with a kari shell.

And you know when the capa dries a lot of times  it's very stiff like uh like cardboard and so you have to spend time kind of you know this is  what I do.

If the capa is too thick you can do this all day and it's just not going to get soft  or not going to get soft enough where it's you know very pliant.

And then because I like mine to  have kind of more of a um almost a flannel or or shammy kind of feel.

So then I'll use like this  is a piece of dyke stone.

You see how it's very square like this.

This isn't cut, but up in the  mountains, you can and you can almost see where these kind of straight up and down angles are from  the water.

You know, the these mountains are all big sponges and the way the water comes in and  breaks out, it just cracks straight pieces.

So, this is a little bit rough.

So, I use this one and  it kind of brings up the it lifts the fibers of the copper and then it start it just gives it  a really nice soft feel.

So some of them that have been really worked like that, people just  are like, "Wow, this is like it's like flannel."

Hawaiians created a wide palette of  natural dyes for kappa.

Bronze, grays, reds, yellows, oranges, blues, and greens.

White, an important color in religious ceremonies,  was achieved by bleaching in seaater and sun.

And they were lucky, they were fortunate.

They  were living on high islands and much of the uh native materials that grew here, you  know, was could be used for dyes and they did explore and experiment with them.

Now this is uh one of the native dye plants that we have growing on our farm.

The yellow blossoms.

This yellow blossom is used to produce a blue green kind of  dye.

Um not easily controlled but you can get good color from it.

So it's a state flower  today's state flower hibiscus birch and rigi.

For the kapa maker, the koulei tree, it's  very multi-useful.

It has wonderful bark.

You scrape back at least two layers, the brown  layer and a red blood layer below that.

And you slowly steep that in just plain water.

The  more you cook it down, the shinier it gets, the thicker it gets.

That's one of my favorite  dyes, the Heily Coule that you get from the bark.

But the one that everybody knows about the most  is taking the nut or the kernel from a a mature kui nut, putting a little stack of these kernels  together, putting a fire under it, and just let it smolder and smoke and burn.

It's full of oil.

That oil creates a soot or a smoke and you wipe off that lamp black into a container and it's very  oily.

It's very black and it's very indelible.

The plant that we're going to look at right now  is oleno or turmeric.

It's used for culinary purposes, for food.

U it's also used for medicine.

And it's used all through the out the Pacific and in Asia.

It is used for dye as well.

And  this plant goes through a cycle in in its uh growing season of a year.

It comes up and  it produces nice leaves.

The plant draws energy from the sun and then it produces a flower.

The flower then produces a seed and then the plant moves into a dormant cycle and all the  leaves die back which is what's happening now.

It dies back about this time, October, November,  and pretty soon you won't see any of these.

The plant will be lost in the garden, and you'll have  to remember where you put it.

But this is the time when it's most useful for us.

Part of the cycle  is that it uh stores up its energy during this dormant period.

And all the it's not necessary for  it to photosynthesize.

So the leaves die back and um all the energy is stored in in the corn.

Some people call it the root.

It's the corn.

And so this is what we're after.

It's related  to ginger.

So it doesn't it looks like ginger.

And the color is in this root.

So we cut our the  oena that we harvested this morning up.

We washed it and cut it up.

And this is the first time  we're going to use this tool.

A a stone worker made it for me.

I'm convinced that the stone  is going to react to the dye material and it may or may not change it.

But this would be some a  similar kind of vessel that they would have used.

Water is added to this mixture.

You use the least amount of water cuz you want this color  to be intense at its highest intensity.

Color is applied in many different  ways.

Various techniques are used for laying in a background color.

Designs  are carved into narrow strips of bamboo called oi kapala.

And bamboo is  also carved into round stamps.

And even just that mindset of being able to just  stop and focus long enough to work on something so tiny and intricate using something, you know, not  even sure what they used exactly to carve these kind of things out.

I mean, you could stop at  any given point of of capa making and manufacture and just put all your focus into one part of it  like just oapala and still never understand it, be able to replicate it, be able to um  see the way they saw or how, you know, you look at those things like what was the  thought process that they're, you know, creating like look at this piece right here.

I  mean, yeah, that's this this boggles my brains.

Okay.

It is so fine and it makes me think how  fine and delicate was the copa.

How perfectly flat and smooth.

Yeah.

To have taken that pattern.

How how smooth and lump and debrisfree is their dye that they can lay something on that's  going to it's not going to get in and clog up all these tiny little spaces and then be  able to lay it down and print it.

You know, we teach people how to do oh kapala and it's  so hard to a you go with the negative and the positive space and telling them what you what  you don't put in is just as has just as much weight as what you do.

The empty space is just as  important as the black space.

And that's kind of a hard concept to wrap your head around.

That's not  something that people easily understand.

I mean, you tell them negative and positive space and  they look at you like, uh-huh.

But you take a very simple a simple thing like diamonds.

This is  all positive space on the top.

You explain that to them.

You put it down in this direction repeatedly  and look at the negative space that you create in between.

To me that was really important with  the Hawaiian mind because it wasn't only what you saw.

It's what you maybe didn't see.

Usually  the printer the Oapala is inked by brushing the dye onto the Oapala and then tapping off the  residue, the extra.

I wipe off the back of that printer because I don't want it to smear.

And then I take it over and print on my Kappa.

Now this looks like a uh it'll take a long time.

It takes a little while, but after you get the hang of it and after you've done it for a while,  this happens very quickly.

Straight lines are made with the use of single and multiple line  instruments as well as through cord snapping.

Now, this one would be a single line, but then  we have um liners where the bamboo was split.

Two or three here.

And four.

Okay.

And then  this one was carved out of hardwood with even more.

The edge has been ground down just  a little bit.

So when you lay it on the surface of the cupa and drag it across, the ink  flows down the tines and makes a line like so.

Nine and what?

21.

So almost nine.

Almost 11.

Oh,  that's good.

Plus two more.

You know, you know, I'd say two feet.

So, 11.

Yeah.

Perfect.

See, I  might not need to I might not need a fifth piece cuz that's a lot of overlap.

All of the tools and  methods adapted by island cupa makers through the ages gave rise to a variety in design, texture,  and color, resulting in a refined artistic expression that is distinctly Hawaiian.

At the  Hiki Knight of the Merry Monarch, the richness of this art would once again be seen in one of  the most traditional uses, adorning the bodies of hoola dancers.

I just like the organic.

I mean,  I I like growing things and I a lot of times you're working with pretty rigid pieces like the  O kapala and how do I make something that's rigid, organic, and fluid and even to capture some  of the natural forms.

So, I tried looking at actually stenciling cuz if I would have to repeat  these curves, you know, by hand painting it.

So, I tried some stenciling and that comes off of  the Fijian method and then come back again with um just working it like a painting cuz my my  traditions are in a painting tradition.

You know, like this color here Eric has.

It's already really  really dark.

It's um what what is that dye that you're using?

The dark one combination of pala and  healey from koui.

You know, healy kui bark is like shellac.

It's it's actually a form of shellac.

So  it'll shine.

You see this in the Samoan Kapa.

They use a lot of the hilly dye from Kukui, the inner  bark.

Okay.

I decided that this piece, the piece that I was going to be making would be as close  to red or the colors of the lava that happen to be going now and the flow of the lava.

I'm doing  this for Hawaii Island and for a hala that's from that island.

So using the allaya and using the uh  burnt sienna type of color, that's how we came up with with the the overall color of this particular  poo that we're working on.

Now when it comes to the oh kapala I knew I had this design that I  call mona and it's nothing more than a triangle that has a lot of little triangles in it but it  looks like you know it can you can create it to look like mountains.

This one was definitely one  that I know I wanted to use in my surface design.

So you have positive space going in  this direction.

You have negative space going in that direction.

I want  to try and line it up on the middle where the two points come together.

The second thing that I also thought about is  you know the flowing of the volcano.

Uh just the whole idea of flowing period.

I thought about  lays and how lays wind around things you know.

So, this one I call Hiapo.

When I come think about  the uh Hawaii Island and I think about uh how they're going to use this in that halo,  they always have lanes and and things from that island.

They have beautiful red lea and  orange and yellow lehu up in the mountains.

So, you know, naturally, I'm thinking forest.

I'm thinking something from there.

And that's why I end up with Koopa Hoopu.

This is  a design that's very small and intricate that has lots of good negative space besides  the positive space.

That one of the most important things about Hawaiian design is  it should have both negative and positive.

One of my favorite oh kapala  to use is the hala the le hala.

It's very easy to make it move and  cause it to to move like a lelay.

And that's what I wanted.

Okay.

So, I  knew I was going to use the the Lehala.

This this is very contemporary but inspired  by our ancestors and what they did.

Yeah.

No, I wish they all had 18 inch waist  like this.

You know, it would be so easy.

Yeah, we'll make more plates in the back so I love that song.

Thank you.

I love the  sound.

I I like this too because this is the It's heavy.

It's contrasty.

Yes, it's  really heavy.

Okay, that's it then.

Yeah, I think it looks okay.

And then this looks lovely.

Okay, shall I tell my girls to skip a meal?

I have to make a poo for this project, a  skirt.

And so I I decided that I was going to do it in sections.

So this is my prototype  in small fashion.

So, I'm going to take these strips that I've u just applied color onto and  I'm going to lash them together and they will be worn around the waist like so.

Then over  this will be a cummer bun like belt and it will be out of another piece.

So, I've used uh two  colors so far.

This blue is haha or um delissia.

It's a native loilia.

Um it's on the endangered  species list.

The fruits are collected and then um ground up and then the the color from  the fruits is applied.

It it's it comes out uh from steel blue to a deep purple depending on  how intense the color is applied.

And then this is haha on here.

The base pink here is Akala, a  native raspberry.

Another couple maker gathered the fruits up in the mountains and gave them to  me.

And uh we've been saving them in the freezer and when we take them out, we just let them thaw  and the juice from the aala is simply was simply applied on with a brush or with a liner.

You can  see these lines are put on with a liner.

They form the basis of the color of my pu.

So I have much  more work to do and then the initial lashing and then I'll wrap it up and send it to uh Kumu Nalani  and she'll um hopefully be surprised and pleased.

Does it feel secure like a  like a paperclip kind of thing?

We wanted P to actually touch the floor.

This is going to be Hawaiian kapa and it's going  to look like Hawaiian Hawaiian and it's going to be the colors and the designs and the things  that that we recognize as Hawaiian couple.

While the couple makers are busy at work, the dancers spend many hours in  rehearsal, striving for perfection.

That's the top.

A few weeks before the hik night,  kappa arrives in boxes at the hala hoola.

Kumuhula and kappa makers look over all of the kappa  trying the different pieces on dancers in an informal fitting.

By the night of the performance,  each dancer will have been matched to a particular piece of kappa and carefully instructed on  how to drape and tie it.

walking over there.

As the festival approaches, Hilo becomes a hive of activity and the  cuper makers gather to enjoy the scene.

In preparation, the dancers  must learn how to bind and layer the kappa to their bodies.

This ritual of  careful dressing and attention to detail allows the dancers to commit to the hoola and move  from their everyday lives into a sacred space.

That's beautiful.

The cuppper makers have  been asked to wear their own cupappa as part of the evening's festivities.

They arrive  and join together as a group eager to see the beautiful Hawaiian arts of hoola and kappa  once again united.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are once again humbled and honored that they  are gracing us here at the 48th annual Hoik.

This stadium is named after their mama,  Edith Kanak.

Please welcome Hello Okui.

Nataly.

Oh, come on.

might Oh my m might might away.

We are all I need.

You know, come Thank you all very much for  keeping the tradition of alive.

The huiki night is a rewarding artistic and  cultural experience for the kappa makers, the halo and the community.

With the  joy of seeing their vision fulfilled, the cupa makers return to their  work with renewed inspiration.

Kappa is what I want to do.

So it's  every day in some way there's some part of kapa that is in my life.

Okay?

And the practices and the and those kinds of values that I talked  about before, they're a part of me now.

And for for them to be a part of you, I  think that's better than lifech changing.

I think my inspiration for making  kappa the the main one is to be able to preserve a particular tradition of  our culture that was lost and to make sure that it's never lost again.

This is why the  teaching component is so important for me.

It's fulfilling and it's make my life  worth I guess you can say worth living especially at this old age when it's just  not something to do.

It's something that really brings me satisfaction and  joy you know I I love doing it.

The hiki performance closes with a mele  cuckoo for the female chief nah performed with kua and iuku.

This mele also honors the  perseverance of the couple makers of Hawaii.

Baby boy.

Heat.

Heat.

This program is brought to you in part thanks to  generous support from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts through appropriations  from the legislature of the state of Hawaii and by the National Endowment for the Arts  and the Hawaii Council for the Humanities.