On Sunday, April 14, the Pacific Islander Association (PIA) hosted their 18th Annual Lu’au. Located mostly in the Alumnae Ballroom, the event included stations to learn craft making, including weaving and braiding bracelets. The performances began with a reading of poetry by PIA’s co-president, Salote Vakatawa ’25. Both poems were about Samoa, noting especially a connection to the land beyond its exoticisation as a vacation destination.
Olin’s Fire Arts club performed in the amphitheater outside Alumnae Hall. Following this performance, attendees returned inside to enjoy a catered meal, which included many staples of beloved foods and dishes from the Pacific Islands, including spam and rice wrapped in seaweed, and Suafa’i, a Samoan banana and coconut pudding.
After everyone had finished their meals, performances started back up again, kicked off by a hula performed by PIA’s e-board. Hula is a traditional Native Hawaiian dance, which can serve as both storytelling and religious practice. In a 2022 article for National Geographic entitled “The surprising history of Hawai’i’s hula tradition,” Māpuana de Silva, a kuma hula (hula teacher), explained hula in their own words.
“Hula is our highest expression of who we are. It’s our language put into motion. The stories encompass not just our way of living, but our existence, our world,” de Silva said.
Following this, Uesili Kuli ’26 performed the tau’olunga, a cultural Tongan dance. It evolved from a combination of the Samoan taualanga and the Tongan ula dances. In the Tongan language the word tau’olunga “connotes something high in space,” as described by Adrienne L. Kaeppler in her 1970 article, “Tongan Dance: A Study in Cultural Change.” The dance has also evolved in who typically performs it, but its costume and performance remain a significant event. Kuli’s performance of the Tau’olunga was particularly special to them because they are the only currently registered Tongan student at Wellesley.
“It used to be a really special dance reserved for daughters of village chiefs. But nowadays, usually when a Tongan wife has to be married on her wedding day, she will dance it before the ceremony, kind of like this graduation into married life. Certain specific trademarks of the dance include the costume, which includes a teunga the costume or skirt that one is wearing, including the rope used to tie it, a kafa and then vesa, wristlets and anklets that you wear … it was especially important because when I think of celebration as a Tongan American, I’m thinking of the Tau’olunga and to be the only Tongan enrolled at Wellesley right now … when I think of celebration I’m thinking of that dance.”
Kuli explained that learning and practicing for her performance of the Tau’olunga was time consuming, and something she had to consider carefully before deciding to perform, because it is typically learned over a much longer period of time.
“This is a dance meant to be learned over many months. Everything is important, [down to] the song that’s picked. Who you learn the dance from is important. But since I’m not on the island, and am here at Wellesley, learning it had to be condensed into maybe just under a month. And I felt conflict about whether reducing the time practicing was going to make it genuine or not. But with the encouragement of both my parents and my grandparents, they said, if you just work hard to perfect it, then it should be fine. … I made sure to practice really fervently because the nature of the dance is storytelling through these kinds of gesticulations with your hands, it’s really important that every detail is correct. Everything you’re saying is with your hands, your face and your body. So I would be at the back of the bus [to Boston] just practicing [by] myself, any spare time I had was dedicated to learning,” she said.
Kuli also explained that tau’olunga is a living practice that is evolving and changing overtime, with a notable period of change being the 1950.
“The biggest transition point for the Tau’olunga was around the 1950s when Queen Salote was ruling the island, she made it way less conservative. … The Tau’olunga as a dance used to be a way for girls to show off. Whereas in school your entire body was covered. But [in the dance] usually your bare arms will show, below your knees will show. And so it was already more liberal than traditional conservative practices of Tonga. And then in the 1950s Queen Salote changed it further. She added that the girls could actually move during the dancing. When before it was completely standing still. But she was like, let the person perform storytelling,” Kuli said.
She noted that she was grateful that the Lu’au had been able to celebrate and showcase a variety of different Pacific Island cultures, and to share her own Tongan culture in particular.
“These are islands that don’t get talked about, they don’t even enter the conversation typically, when people are talking about Pacifica studies, because the main focal point is Hawaii. I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to share my own heritage and Pacific Islander education,” they said.
In thinking about the future of PIA Kuli explained her hope for improving and increasing education about the Pacific Islands.
“We have always been such a small minority, you could probably count on one or two hands how many Pacific Islander students are enrolled in one academic year, at a time. I think our main mission [as the PIA] is always going to be to advocate for the education of Pacific Studies and culture at Wellesley, if not to just bring more Pacific Islanders into higher ed. And with that comes events centered around not just Hawaii, but reframing this to cover many islands, many different cultures. … Pacific Studies are absent from formal education and informal, frankly. … There needs to be more clarity regarding how the island people got to be, and why we live the way we do now,” Kuli said.
