Faith Nālani Kanakaʻole

Faith Nālani Kanakaʻole was born and raised in Hilo within an eight-generation hula lineage. She was the daughter of Edith Kanakaʻole, the celebrated chanter and kumu hula who founded Hālau o Kekuhi in 1953. Nālani and her sister Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele inherited not only a school but a kuleana: responsibility for a rigorous body of movement, chant, genealogy, ceremony, and place-based knowledge.

Hālau o Kekuhi is particularly identified with ʻai haʻa, a vigorous bent-knee mode whose grounded stance, stamina, and force differ sharply from commercial stereotypes of hula. The National Endowment for the Arts describes the sisters' mele hula as "danced poetry," led by chant and percussion, and emphasizes the linguistic, historical, and protocol knowledge required by mele oli. Kanakaʻole's work therefore cannot be separated into dance on one side and scholarship or spirituality on the other.

Following Edith Kanakaʻole's death in 1979, Nālani and Pualani carried the family hālau forward. Nālani later shared leadership with her niece Huihui Kanahele-Mossman. She taught generations of haumāna and helped position traditional knowledge as lived practice rather than a museum remnant. Her approach linked choreography and performance to ʻāina, genealogy, volcanic landscapes, ceremonial responsibility, and the Hawaiian language.

Kanakaʻole was also an alumna and educator within the University of Hawaiʻi system. She studied art history at UH Hilo in the early 1970s while her mother was pioneering Hawaiian studies on campus, and returned to earn a bachelor's degree in art in 2001. With her husband, artist Sig Zane, she co-founded Sig Zane Designs in 1985, extending culturally grounded visual vocabulary into design while maintaining family and community accountability.

In 1993, Nālani and Pualani received the National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honor in folk and traditional arts. Their work demonstrated that preservation was inseparable from cultural agency: the hālau remained rooted in inherited protocol while speaking with authority in universities, festivals, museums, and contemporary arts contexts.

Hālau o Kekuhi appeared at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, presenting the tradition on a national stage under Indigenous leadership. In 2025 the Hawaiʻi Academy of Recording Arts honored the Kanakaʻole sisters for lifetime dedication to Hawaiian chant, mele, and performance. Nālani died on January 3, 2026.