our friends from australia invited us for lunch at the 'cheeseburger in paradise' restaurant in waikiki. it was kinda tacky, with its plastic pineapple cups for softdrinks, and waiters wearing fake hula skirts over their long pants. i took photos, of course! but the talk was good and the food not too bad. i ate one of the 20 different kinds of cheeseburger (what else?). james ordered his usual cheeseburger with no cheese. on the way back to the hotel, i took a picture of a plastic hula girl doll dancing around on the floor in one of the hotel shops. i'm caught by the unreality of it all--this must be what it's like to acknowledge living in the matrix. rather jarring! and kinda spooky! the doll was dancing to 'aloha oe', a song the queen wrote. and just steps away, down the hall, there she was--the queen! twilight zone!
after lunch, we went with them to their hotel room. i had brought my camera and interviewed nyrelle patell, the director of the australian first nations academy for cultural family therapy and counseling (whew! long org name) about her work in north queensland and why she was here in the first place. she came for a conference at the waikiki convention center sponsored by the american counseling association. must have been a thousand people at this convention. anyhow, she was the international speaker brought in for this conference. nyrell happened to find me, as i mentioned in an earlier post, because of kuhio vogeler. she needed to have someone (hawaiian) provide protocol and give permission for her to speak. the conference organizers didn't know what she was talking about but, as i understand, offered her some dancers/chanters from polynesian cultural center. she declined. we ended up taking them all to kekuni's house on thursday. we all stayed until midnight. she explained what she needed and he agreed to provide it. saturday morning, kekuni showed up at the convention center and offered her and the session participants oli and lei. people were blown away by the protocol and their ability to be participants/witnesses to it. kekuni had made a lei out of the puakenikeni flowers in his yard. he had explained on thursday evening that his wife, irene, planted that tree a month before she died. and here it was, pretty huge and full of flowers. so he gathered the flowers and took irene (the lei) along with him to the convention center. he presented that lei to nyrell. and she told the audience the story. apparently people were so moved, they cried. all good!
nyrell invited kekuni to be the keynote speaker at a conference for first nations people re generational trauma in november 2009. he accepted her invite. with any luck, we'll all go along to carry his bag carriers, or set up his equipment, or something.
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