- [Announcer] This series was created in partnership with the Sundance Institute.

More information at sundance.org Funding for "Native Shorts" was made possible by a generous grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and from viewers like you.

(bold drumming music) ♪ (singing in indigenous language) ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Bird] "Native Shorts", presented by Sundance Institute's Indigenous Program.

- [Ariel] Hello and welcome to "Native Shorts".

I'm Ariel Tweto.

- [Bird] And, I'm Bird Runningwater.

- And, on today's episode, we are going to watch two films.

The first one is, "This is the Way We Rise."

The second is "Conversion."

Bird, will you tell us a little bit about the first film?

- Yes.

So, "This is How We Rise" is directed by Ciara Lacy, who is "kanaka maoli", or Native Hawaiian.

And this film, short film, short doc really, was shot during the protest of Native Hawaiian people at Mauna Kea, which is located on the big island of Hawaii, and it features this really great spoken word artist.

And, you know, I think it's a really important kind of document of this moment in time when the Native Hawaiian people rose.

- Awesome.

Well, let's take a peek.

And then, we'll come back and have a little discussion.

Enjoy "This is the Way We Rise."

(film machine whirring/clattering) (snap!)

(horn blaring) (people shouting in Hawaiian language) (people protesting/shouting) - [Jamaica] Ask me about the ma una, and I will tell you about 30 kanaka huddled, shivering in an empty parking lot, praying that lahui would answer the call.

(group singing in Hawaiian language) I will tell you about two nights, hot, sleeping directly under a sky, scattered in stars in air so clear, every inhale is medicine.

(horn blaring sound) How every morning I woke to a lahui kanaka growing, as if we were watching Maui fish us one by one from the sea.

(somber music) Ask me, and I will tell you how on the third morning, I watched this 30 became 100, then 100 became a thousand, then a thousand became us all.

Ask me, and I will sing the song of our mana wahine, linked arms and unafraid, who stood in the face of a promise of sound cannons and mace.

Ask me, and I will tell you that I have been transformed here, but I won't have the words to quite explain.

I will say I don't know exactly who I'll be when this ends, but at the very least I'll know that this 'aina did everything it could to feed me and that will be enough to keep me standing.

♪ (fluttering sounds) (marker snaps) - [Jamaica] I think about my role as the poet as having power to make people feel.

If it doesn't bring a tear to your eye, if it doesn't conjure a memory, if it doesn't give you chicken skin, the poem's useless to me.

A poem is as good as it resonates.

And when I find resonance with people, I feel affirmed.

I feel a pilina with them.

(thoughtful organ music) "Pilina" is the word that we use to describe any kind of relatedness, but it also means to be, like, (clasps) stuck to something.

♪ I think we're starving for intimacy, generally.

As Hawaiians, even more so.

There's been this incredible disruption of pilina in ourselves, our land, and the people around us.

♪ (film reel clattering) Between 1778, when Captain Cook arrived, and the overthrow in 1893, we lost 90% of our population due to disease.

(film reel clattering) 90% of our population just died.

That's an apocalypse.

(planes whirring) The world transformed.

(plane whirring) (somber music) And, the ones who live struggle through this incredible transformation of land and resources, and rights and privileges, and living on their land.

(crushing sounds) - [Man] We are Hawaii people!

Natives!

This is our life!

(group shouting) (somber music) - [Jamaica] So, there is a history of exploitation that mirrors what's happening on the mountain.

(metal crushing sounds) (somber organ music) For the last 10 years, a conglomerate has been trying to build a telescope on top of Mauna a Wakea.

This would be the 14th telescope on that mountain, built without the consent of the Hawaiian people.

Mauna a Wakea, the fight to protect her.

I don't think any of us are anti-telescope, but I will say that Hawaiians understand that science that requires desecration is not ethical.

And, it's not science; it's development.

(bulldozer engine puttering) - We are not American!

We are not American!

We are not American!

Say it in your heart.

Say it when you sleep!

We are not American!

We will die as Hawaiians.

We will never be Americans!

(crowd in film cheers) - [Jamaica] Raise your hand if before reading for this class, you had never heard of or experienced the wonderful exciting trauma that is hana ne kitrask.

[pronounced] It's a travesty the way that I grew up being taught about poetry, because I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world.

I thought it was useless.

I thought it was old white dudes meditating on their perfect, old, white dude life.

So, why would that have meaning?

It's not relevant to anything I was experiencing.

It couldn't talk to me as a young, queer Hawaiian woman and help me understand, like, that I was okay.

Then when I was 16, a friend introduced me to slam, and a whole new world of poetry opened up for me.

I was hooked.

(keyboard clacking) By the time I was 18, 19, I was writing almost exclusively about Hawaii.

So?

Colonization, the overthrow, annexation, the loss of our language, the loss of a lot of our cultural practices.

(keyboard clacking) For a long time, I didn't ever want anyone to read my poetry because I grew up in a Hawaiian language immersion school.

My concept of my spelling and my grammar is, like, "That (bleep) atrocious."

And, that used to really bother me 'cause I thought it meant I was stupid.

So, I didn't want people to read the poems.

I just wanted to perform them.

(crowd clapping) The sea is rising and in my tiny Honolulu town, that means underwater homes.

There was a wall of water taunting my homa.

And, I was really lucky that I kind of got pulled into this slam poetry competition.

Three in life.

We come in threes.

Stutter at the finality of the pattern.

One, stop.

Two, think.

(inhales deeply) One, stop.

Two, think.

Three!

(crowd cheers/applauds) Is there still a way out?

(audience cheering/clapping) - [Jamaica] The poems were so close to me that I wanted to perform perfectly.

Not just to win, but to do justice to the poem.

♪ At some point, it became really clear that I could talk about Hawaii on a microphone.

And, if I did it as a poem, people would listen.

♪ I could get a lot of people to listen.

- [Jamaica] What happens to the ones forgotten?

The ones who shaped my heart from their rib cages?

I wanna taste the tears in their names, trace their souls onto my vocal chords so that I can feel related again.

But, our tongues feel too foreign in our own mouth.

We don't dare speak out loud.

So, we can't even pronounce our own parents' names, and who will care to remember mine if I don't teach them?

This is all I have of my family history that's real, and now it's yours.

O Elroy Thomas Leialoha Osorio he kane o Clara Ku'ulei Kay he wahine Noho pu laua a hanau ia o Jonathan Kamakawiwoole Kay Osorio he kane O Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoole Osorio he kane o Mary Carol Dun he wahine Noho pu laua a hanau ia o Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio he wahine.

Do not forget us: "Mai poina."

(audience applauds/cheers) The poem I performed at the White House took 10, 15 minutes to write.

So, the good poems come fast!

They just fall out of you.

To write from a place of inspiration, it's fast paced.

Your heart rate shoots up.

There's actual adrenaline involved.

That can feel really invigorating.

I was really lucky to have a lot of those moments that I thought that that's what writing was, and it made it really hard to have the discipline to keep writing when I didn't have pure inspiration.

(light thoughtful music) ♪ I think that's part of the reason I stopped writing and performing.

♪ Not only did it become kind of a chore, and even like a pressure to produce for other people, but I felt like I had run out of things to say.

And, I had run out of new ways to say old things.

People would ask me to perform somewhere and I would wanna say no because I hadn't written a poem in three years.

♪ (horn blowing sound) So then, after months and months of waiting, we got the call.

And so, our people?

We packed up our bags.

We stepped away from our jobs, because the TMT was gonna start construction again on Mauna Kea and we decided that we weren't gonna let them.

So to block the transport of construction equipment, a group of us chained ourselves to the cattle guard on the Mauna Kea Access Road.

- [Jamaica] We've been here since about 3:30 this morning; locked in.

And, they're about to dispatch the police officers to come forcibly remove us.

This is an invitation to share this message, to come down and bring your mele and your aloha, and your kapu aloha to come malama ka 'aina.

- [Man] It's already happening.

Massive civil disobedience.

We cannot allow this to happen.

TMT must go away.

TMT must leave Hawaii.

(crowd protests/shouts) - [Woman] My brothers, (shaky voice) where's your hearts?

Let them be.

You choose money over us Kanaka Maoli.

- [Man] What's the matter with you guys?

- How can you do that?

- What's the matter with you?

- Look what we have to do!

You guys make us do this!

Leave them alone.

Leave them alone.

(somber guitar music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Jamaica] Do a poem.

- [Woman] Huh?

Bring them home?

- Do a poem?

Right here?

- [Woman] Yeah.

- Right now?

- [Woman] Let's go.

- A poem?

- [Woman] Yeah.

Drop it, girl!

- I got a long one.

- [Woman] Yes.

- [Man] We got a long time.

(overlapping chatter) - It's alright.

I need to get used to it.

- [Jamaica] It's 1876 and David Kalakaua, not yet crowned, not yet anointed or kinged, pens a song at the request of Kamehameha V. Waka Kakwaipa [pronounced] "Hawaii Pono'i": a new national anthem, a new symbol of strength, a new promise to the Kanaka Maoli of Kalakaua's generation that like those before they will stand and fight for their right to noho aupuni.

Today, we call this resistance.

Back then, we just called it pono.

- [Jamaica] Being there, I had voice again.

I had something new to say.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ I've written a lot of poems for the mauna this week.

Um?

I might just read them.

(reads) "Ask me about the mauna "and I will tell you the mo'olelo "of eight kanaka chained to a cattle grate, and the kokua that sat beside us."

♪ "Aunty says she sees hope in me, "and I watch her overflow.

Says she dreamed of this day."

♪ When you write a poem or a song in Hawaiian, it's no longer yours.

You don't have ownership over it.

It belongs to the person you write it to.

That's kind of the beauty in all of this.

All the poems I'm writing, they belong to Mauna a Wakea.

♪ To me in many ways they're all just the same poem.

♪ Mauna a Wakea and I are getting to know each other.

You know, it's like falling in love.

♪ (reads) "This morning, all I have is the magic of a mauna.

"Caught in the sight of the sun "as we are teased by the treachery of time.

"All I have is the honesty of this weight, "weighing minutes stretching across "the hardening curve of my spine.

"All my words caught in the cracks of my breath, "hands curling into their own heat.

This morning, "I have nothing here to hold you with, and you "still as constant as the summit "with all your magic rising beside me, "holding out your hands to catch everything I am and am not quite yet."

(gentle guitar music) ♪ (music fades) (ocean waves splashing lightly) - [Ariel] Woo!

- [Bird] Oof!

- Motivating.

- [Bird] Right?

- It really makes you, yeah, wanna stand for something.

It's like she's so passionate.

And, yeah.

It makes you really want to believe in something and express it.

- Yeah.

I think this is a really great way into kind of the issue.

I think Ciara Lacy did a really amazing job.

She is, like, such a stellar documentary maker.

We worked with her through the Sundance Native Lab on her first feature doc called "Out of State", which got acquired by PBS' Independent Lens.

And then, she made this short film, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2021, which was during lockdown.

It was a virtual festival.

- Okay.

- But, it was picked up by PBS American Masters.

And so, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is the poet, the spoken word artist.

And, she's such an interesting way into the story, through her own personal experience and through her voice.

And also, just to really raise the importance of this issue of the displacement of Native Hawaiians, the overthrow of their monarchy, and then also then trying to build on top of one of their most sacred mountains.

And so, it was just really beautiful I think, to kind of see them come together.

- Yeah.

I like how they highlighted poetry, too.

'Cause this is such a lost art form, I feel like in today's world.

And so, it's almost like she's trying to bring it back.

And, it is a really cool expression or way to express your thoughts and your feelings and your passions.

And so, I like that.

And, even how she talked about her writing and it gave her so much energy.

And, yeah.

So-?

- The thing I found really interesting about Jamaica, the poet, is that she says in the film that she went to a Hawaiian immersion schools, which, like, Hawaii was one of the first places in the United States to create total immersion where they just created whole new generations of Native Hawaiian language speakers.

And so, I think that's really great that she's had that experience.

I wish I had.

- I know.

Same.

Well?

I think let's jump into the next film.

- Mm hm.

- And, the next one is called "Conversion".

Please enjoy.

(film machine whirring/clattering) [drumming/singing in Navajo] ♪ (pounding sounds) ♪ [drumming/singing in Navajo] ♪ [scratchy historical audio] ♪ (wind chimes clinking) (wind whistling) (footsteps thumping nearby) (dogs whining) (footsteps thumping) (dogs whining) (wagon clanking) (galloping hooves) (footsteps thumping) (speaking in Navajo language) (horse snorting) (wind whistling) (dog barking) (speaking in Navajo) (speaking in Navajo) (dog barking) (speaking in Navajo) (footsteps shuffling) (dog barking) (speaking in Navajo) (wind whistling) (footsteps thumping) (wind whistling) (bird cawing) (footsteps thumping) (she gasps) (speaking in Navajo) (wind whistling) (wind whistling) (wind whistling) (speaking in Navajo) (wind whistling) (wind whistling) (footsteps thumping) (thunder rolling gently) (speaking in Navajo) (paper ripping/flicking) (wind whistling) (wind chimes clinking) (footsteps thumping) (bird cawing) (sighs) (speaking in Navajo) (sighs) (shudders) (wind whistling) (footsteps thumping nearby) (wind whistling) (rapid footsteps thumping) (wind whistling) (wind whistling) (paper flicking) (wind whistling) [drumming/singing in Navajo] ♪ [drumming/singing in Navajo] [scratchy historical audio] ♪ [drumming/singing in Navajo] ♪ ♪ ♪ - Wow.

- [Ariel] Wow.

A period piece.

I haven't seen that.

I don't think in a-?

- Navajo language.

- Yeah.

- Period piece; I think it probably set in the '40s.

1940s?

- Okay.

Yeah, that's right.

- Almost a hundred years ago.

- Yeah.

That's what I thought.

- [Bird] Well, this film was directed by Nanobah Becker.

She is a Diné woman, Navajo Nation.

She got her MFA from Columbia Film School.

Which...master's degree, top tier.

- Yeah.

- Expensive.

She made this piece while she was in grad school.

But, you know?

And also, this film kind of comes from kind of the classics collection of Sundance Film Festival.

It premiered back in 2007.

- 2007?

- Yeah.

Were you born then?

- I was!

- Yes.

- Just graduated from high school.

- But, it's like I applaud Nanobah for this film because it's such a complicated exploration of Christianity and conversion, and- (uneasy breath) - The young girls.

- The influences and, like, making a choice, and not.

And, trying to dissuade and what-?

Ugh.

We know what it's like.

It's not easy.

It's not an easy conversation.

So, I applaud Nanobah for doing that.

- It's not easy to make a period piece that doesn't look corny, - Mm hm.

- And, she did a really good job making it.

It was just beautifully shot, well-lit.

I really liked the pacing.

It was all nice.

- I think pretty much all her actors were non-actors, [bold drumming music] which is pretty good testament to her as a director.

- Yeah, it is.

Well, I really enjoyed it.

I hope you guys did, too.

Bird?

Really fun today.

- Exactly.

- Learned something, so thank you.

- Uh huh.

- And, thank you guys for tuning in.

- See you again.

♪ - [Ariel] For this episode, I wore a vest by Michael Haswood, pants and earrings from Original Landlords by Jeremy Arviso.

- [Bird] And today, my necklace is by Cody Sanderson.

♪ - [Announcer] This series was created in partnership with the Sundance Institute.

More information at sundance.org Funding for "Native Shorts" was made possible by a generous grant from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and from viewers like you.