Hula Is My Life
A dance class is hardly the place most would look to for a militant activist to lead their people against a perceived abusive government. Yet eight years after its inception the Hawaiian rights organization ‘Ilio’ulaokalani is still led by a dance teacher, Vicky Holt Takamine, who is having success despite the long odds.
By Chad Pata
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Vicky Holt Takamine with members of her hula halau
say she walks with the earth rather than on it. In her movement, you can see her ancestors. In her steps, their tradition is alive.
This is not something one can just project, but something that comes from a life lived in the pursuit of one’s culture. She was the oldest of all of her grandmother Victoria’s children, a woman who gave her more than just a name, but a belief in her people.
“My grandmother had 10 children and not one of them speaks the language,” says Takamine, who recalls walking Ma’ili Beach with her and collecting limu and collecting Hawaiian salt. “In her generation, everyone spoke Hawaiian, and that to me had a lot of influence on me and what I am doing now.”
The input did not stop with grandma; her mother Frances worked at the Bishop Museum, where she and her four siblings would while away afternoons scooting past Hawaiian head-dresses and ancient sailing canoes.
“Growing up, always being around it, you can’t help but absorb it,” says Takamine.
From historical to hands-on, she also spent every summer on Moloka’i. Her father was a surveyor for the state, and while he was mapping the Friendly Isle she was fishing and weaving lauhala mats in the traditional ways.
Combining this with an education from Kamehameha Schools and a master’s degree from UH in dance ethnology, it would have seemed she was on track for a low profile career as a hula instructor, known to dance enthusiasts in the Islands, but not the general public.
And so it was for the first 20 years post-graduation, a simple life with her husband Ed and their three kids. Her life was busy, but nothing like her brother, ex-state senator Milton Holt. The closest she got to the limelight was sign-waving for him on the corner of a busy intersection.
The only controversy she ever got involved in was with time management, between her students and her spouse.
“Ed is a ‘hula husband’ and it has been very hard on him,” says Takamine of her full-blooded Japanese husband of 36 years. “I am so totally focused on my students and the things I have to do, that if you can’t fit yourself into that picture, you have to wait until I’m done with it.”
And so he has, understanding his wife’s passions and his role in it. But all this changed in February 1997 when the Takamines were preparing to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her halau Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima. While planning the party, her soon to be daughter-in-law Jamae Kawauchi came to her with a bill she had been tracking as part of classes at Richardson Law School at UHM.
Known as Senate Bill 8, it basically restricted land use of undeveloped properties to those who could prove ancestry previous to 1778 in the Hawaiian Islands. It also would require intensive cataloguing of any plants or wildlife taken from said properties.
This would seriously inhibit halaus from gathering their ferns, maile and lauhala necessary to make their ceremonies pono, proper. Flowers and foliage that had been available for hundreds of years were now going to be inaccessible to those who used and respected them most.
“They were committing cultural genocide with this bill, they were going to kill my people and my culture with this bill,” says Takamine, who knew that her time out of the spotlight was now over.
She wrote a letter and brought it to meetings in the Legislature. She couldn’t understand how these people didn’t care about her plight. After a second day of hearings, she knew she could no longer do it on her own. The landowners wanted clear titles over their holdings, and Hawaiians gathering natural resources was interfering with that.
So she called every halau in the book and told them of their plight. She pleaded with them to come down for a vigil, a 24-hour, pahu drum-beating, hula-dancing sit-in at the Capitol.
When she arrived, there was no one there. She feared that her cries had been in vain. But soon they started pouring in, dozens of halau with hundreds of dancers and drummers, filling the rotunda with the sounds of ancient Hawaii. It made business impossible in the Capitol, and sleeping strained for the Gov. Ben Cayetano across the street at Washington Place.
They chanted and danced throughout the night, beginning anew every hour on the hour. And according to Takamine, every time they surrounded the mosaic at the center of the rotunda, the heavens would open up and torrential showers would pour through the opening in the center of the capital.
“I know that was the tears of my kupuna who had been fighting for native rights for hundreds of years,” remembers Takamine of her first night as an activist.
The active clouds of that evening also led to the group’s name, ‘Ilio’ulaokalani, which means “red dogs of heaven.” Auntie Pua from Hilo saw a dog-shaped cloud that evening in the sky. It had been tinged red by the sunset, and they saw it as a sign.
“We are a watchdog group, but there are lots of other meanings to it as well,” says Takamine. “We are loyal to our owners, the aina, and will defend it to our deaths. We bark a lot, and when we start barking, people pay attention.”
There is no way to ascertain how much the Legislature paid attention to their howling, but the bill died in both the House and Senate, leaving Hawaiians free to continue to worship as before.
Takamine with ‘hula husband’ Ed and their family
But their struggles did not end there, and the battles have been many, culminating with the gathering of 15,000 native Hawaiians at Iolani Palace in August to protest the Kamehameha Schools ruling. The courts found the Hawaiian preference for admission to be racist and thereby ruled it unconstitutional.
Takamine did not take this news lightly.
“Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop did not have any children, so she gave her inheritance to the children of Hawai’i,” says Takamine. “We are all her children, you can trace our genealogy. She was not an American, she was a native Hawaiian, and Kamehameha Schools was established as a Hawaiian institution prior to the overthrow and that has to be looked at.”
While these issues are argued in courts, she also has found another cause that deserves her attention as much as the Hawaiian people do: the Hawaiian lands.
In this cause she discovered allies she did not know existed. As she went in against HECO and real estate developers, she found friends in American organizations such as the Sierra Club.
In order to work better with the environmentalists, she created a second organization, KAHEA, which focuses on environmental issues and protection of Hawaiian lands.
While her success has been mixed, she fights it on all levels: from ancient lauhala groves in Kailua (she lost) to protection for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (she won).
She even has an answer for the traffic problems that plague O’ahu: turn it into a biking community.
“The mayor of Bogota, Colombia, turned his city into a biking community by widening sidewalks and creating their own bike lanes,” says Takamine, who admits she would not want her kids riding on the streets the way they are today. “But with proper lanes and the weather we have out here, it could work. The ancient Hawaiians used to walk everywhere; aren’t bikes a good alternative?”
So between saving her people and their land, how much time can she have left for hula?
Apparently, a lot. She teaches classes at UH-Leeward and UH-Manoa and is just returning from a trip to Japan to perform with Robert Cazimero in Tokyo. So despite the militant look she is often seen giving on the 6 o’clock news, she doesn’t see herself in that way.
“I am not a warrior, I am just myself,” she maintains.
“But the women didn’t get to vote until they took it to the streets. The blacks didn’t get anything until they took it to the streets. Our constitution was written by rich white men for rich white men, and we have spent the past 200 years trying to change that.
“It’s simple, if you want something done, you have to take it to the streets.”
So next time you see the red shirt gang lining the streets of Honolulu, know that while Takamine may be part warrior/part dancer, she is undeniably, all Hawaiian.
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