On May 12, Hōkūpaʻa, Dartmouth’s Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander student group, held its annual lūʻau on Maxwell lawn, drawing 750 attendees, according to Hōkūpaʻa co-president Liʻua Tengan ’25. The three-hour event featured seven Pacific Islander dances that centered around the theme of “Moananuiākea,” or the Pacific ocean.
The lūʻau opened with an oli — or chant — called E Hō Mai, performed by students in Hōkūpaʻa. According to Hōkūpaʻa member Chase Kamikawa ’26, the oli asks ancestors to bless those chanting with their generations of knowledge. After the oli, Hōkūpaʻa performed dances and songs. Most of the dances were Hawaiian hulas, but students also performed Tongan and Fijian dances, Tengan said. The event closed with a song called “Hawaii Aloha,” which is sung in Hawaii to end large gatherings, according to Kamikawa.
Hōkūpaʻa started planning the lūʻau last year because their custom clothing for performances, which are ordered from Hawaiian companies, takes months to make, according to Tengan.
Tengan said her parents, Kuʻulei Tengan ’98 and Ty Tengan ’97, traveled to Hanover for lūʻau from Honolulu. The two helped found the first lūʻau at Dartmouth in 1996, according to Kuʻulei Tengan.
Beyond clothes, Hōkūpaʻa members worked to bring pieces of Hawaii to campus. Zoé Manning ’27 — who helped organize the floral centerpieces for attendees’ tables — said the plants came from a farm 20 minutes away from her house in Waimea, Hawaii.
“It’s so neat to be in the middle of New Hampshire and have my culture here,” she said. “This is my people. This is like what I grew up with.”
Hōkūpaʻa also spent many weeks choreographing the dances and arranging for Hawaiian food, according to Tengan. While the lūʻau featured several dances, Kamikawa said many of the performers arrived with no hula experience.
“Working from scratch, from the bedrock foundation of hula and seeing it being performed at such a high skill level at the lūʻau was really a full circle moment,” he said. “It was really nice to see all of our hard work for the past eight or seven weeks pay off in that way.”
This year, Hōkūpaʻa made an effort to include dances from other Pacific Islands besides Hawaii, leading to the performance of Tongan and Fijian dances, according to Tengan.
“We had more Polynesian representation from all around because it has been — and still is — predominantly Hawaii-affiliated and Hawaiian people,” Tengan said. “But because we had more different Polynesians join us here, we are doing a few other dances other than hula.”
Jordis Lomu ’27, who is Tongan and taught the Tongan dance, said it was “hard” to explain the new style to student performers who had performed hula in the past.
“We had to go through every single step, even though it seemed easier to us,” she said.
Throughout the event, Hōkūpaʻa served Hawaiian food, including kālua pig, shoyu chicken, chicken long rice and poi. Hōkūpaʻa co-president Teani De Fries ’24 said aunts, uncles, parents and brothers came from Hawaii to prepare the dishes.
“I know a lot of us love that we’re able to work with our families because we’re kind of bringing home to us,” she said. “It’s really cool to work with people that we’re familiar with, comfortable with and be surrounded by people that we love.”
Kuʻulei Tengan said the Hawaiian community has grown since her time at Dartmouth, when the Hawaii Club hosted the first lūʻau.
“I’m excited to see how it’s grown and to see so many different people here,” she said. “There were 50 people [at the first lūʻau] and half of that was probably the Hawaii Club. Imagine maybe 25 outsiders. Now we’ve got 500 plus, and it’s so nice to come back. This is my first lūʻau coming back since I left in [1998].”
