Lisa Kanae and Drew Kapp in conversation

Context

In May 2024, a hui of faculty and staff from UH Hilo, Kapi‘olani Community College, and Maui College were invited to participate in Pāmaomao Maine for a cultural exchange with four tribes from the Wabanaki Alliance—the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet/Wolastoqey and Mikʻmaq. Drew Kapp, Professor of Geography at Hawai‘i Community College, was part of the Hawai‘i Community College hui that coordinated all that was necessary – travel and hotel arrangements, meals, connecting with tribal leaders, and moving from location to location on a large, chartered bus. Kumu Kapp and his colleagues also taught oli, hula, and protocol so that we would be prepared to meet the four tribes on the trip. For me and my colleagues, the Pāmaomao Maine experience was beyond profound. 

During a visit to a sacred site, we met with a younger generation of Maliseet men who were driven to actively perpetuate their cultural practices, and they spoke of their ancestors, land, and responsibility with reverence and love. We were assigned to reflect on our experience by writing a poem. These poems were written during the three-hour bus ride in the night to our hotel. 

Lisa Kanae

The Path to Sacred

Sacred is to the left of an open field 
framed by poplar, ash, and birch, where 
young Maliseet men perpetuate ceremony 
- sweat lodge, fast, smudge -  
and generations of knowledge 
shared alongside the Medxnekeag River.

Sacred is inside an industrial warehouse building where
fathers, uncles, brothers, and sons sit in a circle and 
with one sight, beat one drum.
Mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters 
dance an outer circle.
Silky tassels sway from 
the hems of inherited shawls.
Their chant, layers of throaty notes of longing and pride.

Sacred is felt in the chief’s voice, 
her song heavy with reverence for ancestors
while families share moose meat, wild rice, and fiddlehead cake. 
Sacred is felt in the chiefʻs voice,
her song heavy with reverence for Wolastoq,
where young Maliseet men lit dried, white sage for 
me to gather smoke into my breathing,
over my head, my body. 
Sacred is to feel the eagle’s wing
grace each shoulder, and with a word that means love, 
I am no longer the same person.

Drew Kapp

Meduxnekeag

By the healing river Meduxnekeag
From whom identity is drawn
Pungent herbs smoke
An eagle wing caresses shoulders
Music floats through forest
And a wet black salamander
Whose identity is also riparian
Is so gently held 
Held just the way an ancestor would be
Then placed back on the bed of wet black soil 
Under a blanket of pine needles 
By the frame of the sweat lodge 
So gently placed
Just the way an ancestor would be
With reverence

Lisa Linn Kanae is the author of the short story collection Islands Link By Ocean (Bamboo Ridge Press) and the chapbook Sista Tongue (Tinfish Press). She also teaches composition and literature at Kapi‘olani Community College in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Drew Kapp lives within the ʻŌmaʻolala forest in the uplands of Keaʻau, Puna, Hawaiʻi Kuauli. He teaches geography classes at Hawaiʻi Community College in Hilo, is involved in campus and community aloha ʻāina mālama honua work, and also co-hosts the moʻolelo-centered podcast Ka Leo o ka Uluau.

Photo by staff