AWARDEE: Maile Andrade
NATIVE HERITAGE: Kanaka ʻŌiwi
LOCATION: Kilauea, Hawaii
AWARD: 2023 SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts
DISCIPLINE: Traditional Arts
PARTNER ORGANIZATION:
Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, KKV
WEBSITE: hoouluaina.org
ABOUT
Originally from O’ahu, Hawaii, Maile Andrade is a kapa maker and multi-media artist with a decades-long artistic practice. In addition, she recently retired from her position as Professor at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai’i-Mānoa, where she developed and taught in a Native Hawaiian creative expression program. Through her work as an artist and educator, she connects artists to both ancestral and contemporary traditions. Andrade received a Master of Fine Art degree from the University of Hawai’i-Månoa.
Andrade has received a variety of academic awards and was selected by the Folk Arts Apprentice Program to serve as an apprentice with Master Weaver Elizabeth Lee. In 1998, she received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Andrade has participated in several Indigenous Symposiums/Gatherings in New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Longhouse in Evergreen State College, Washington. She was an artist-in- resident in New Zealand, at the Alaska Heritage Center in Anchorage, and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM. She serves as an Affiliate Researcher at Bishop Museum and has presented and exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally.
The cultural bearers of kapamaking are few compared to the needs of kapa in ceremony, burials of iwi (bones) of our ancestors and in cultural practices.”
― Maile Andrade (Kanaka ʻŌiwi)
PROJECT
Andrade’s SHIFT Project, Hoʻoulu Maikoha, will grow a network of cultural resource gardens for the Hawaiian cultural practice of kapamaking. Andrade will mentor artists on preparing kapa and tool making and identify gardens for cultivating wauke on O’ahu and Kauaʻi. Lead Partner Organization Ho’oulu ‘Aina will collaborate with Andrade on programmatic activities and will document the project through talk-story debriefs and photography, and will share their journey through their website, social media outlets and other materials and presentations.
PARTNER ORGANIZATION
Hoʻoulu ʻĀina is a 100-acre nature preserve nestled in the back of Kalihi valley on the island of Oʻahu, cared for by Kōkua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services, a nonprofit community health center and Federally Qualified Health Center. Through four interwoven program areas, Hoʻoulu ʻĀina seeks to provide people of our ahupuaʻa and beyond the freedom to make connections and build meaningful relationships with the ʻāina, each other and ourselves. Here, the community comes together around forest, food, knowledge, spirituality, and healthy activity. As we restore this land to wholeness, giving back the values of our ancestors, we remember that healing is reciprocal.
