Exploring My Cultural Identity: A Hawaiian Perspective

Everyone has a background, a past and a cultural identity. Our cultural identity identifies who we are and where we come from. My cultural identity shows how I talk, what kind of language I speak, what kind of foods I eat, the way I dress and the way I look. Your cultural identity has a lot to do with where you are from and where you are going in life. The first characteristic of my cultural identity is my language. The language I speak and how I speak plays a large part in my life. My primary language is English. I speak English everyday however, I was also raised learning to speak the Hawaiian language because it is a part of my culture and many of my ancestors spoke Hawaiian. I am not fluent in Hawaiian but I was taught many words and their meanings. Every little bit of the Hawaiian language I know helps to keep our Hawaiian language alive and strong. As Hawaiians and people who live in the islands we also speak Pidgin which is slang for the English language. For example, in English someone might say “hey, let’s go to the beach.” And in Pidgin we would say “eh, like go beach”. My second characteristic of my cultural identity is the kinds of foods that I eat. We eat much of the same foods our ancestors ate in old Hawaii before Captain Cook and other mainlanders came to Hawaii. We eat kalua pig and cabbage, lomi salmon, poi, poke,

Hula is a dance that Hawaiians use to tell stories about their culture using hand gestures and expressions. They tell stories about places in Hawaii, people such as Kings and Queens of Hawaii, the Gods that the Hawaiian people believe in and many other things such as plants, rocks, and volcanoes and so on. I began dancing hula as a young girl and my mom is also a hula dancer. It is a way for us to not just share stories about our culture but to also learn more about our culture and where we are from and to bring us closer as a Hawaiian community and