Hoʻokupu Learner & Teacher Resource Guide

Hoʻokupu is a Hip Hop anthology of Hawaiian history created by a masterful team of Hawaiian cultural historians, Hawaiʻi's top MCs, educational consultants, teachers, Nā Hōkū Hanohano award-winning hip hop artists, producers, hip hop lyrical advisors, and academic professors. This collaborative project can be used in classrooms as a rich and engaging resource to teach Hawaiʻi's history. 

As an initiative of education through arts and culture, we optimized this project by creating supplemental resources. Each song is treated as a unit in this Learner & Teacher Resource Guide. Each song unit includes a brief introduction, followed by the lyrics, several writing and discussion prompts, and a poetry sample and prompt. A recommended list of sources that can be used to supplement the content areas covered within the song is also included. We are alchemizing the meaning of oral storytelling by telling our story in a truly traditional fashion blended with the highly influential modern catalysts for social change, hip hop, education, and media. This Hoʻokupu album is available to stream and download on various musical platforms.

Hui O Kuapā ("HOK") is a 501(C)(3) non-profit charitable organization founded in 1989 by communities on Molokaʻi to assist in the grassroots effort to restore the Molokaʻi fishponds back to productivity. The objective being to increase food production from both the loko iʻa and adjacent lands in order to feed and educate the community and serve as a model of a flourishing ahupuaʻa mauka a makai, empowering others to do the same. This is in alignment with Molokaʻi's vision to become a model of self-sufficiency and a center for cultural knowledge and practices. We are training new generations of practitioners, leaders, and producers who can live the values of aloha ʻāina (love for the land) and kuleana (reciprocal responsibility).

Tanya Mailelani Naehu, Hoʻokupu Hip Hop Project Director

Queen Maile a.k.a Tanya Mailelani Naehu is a Kanaka Maoli Boricua, educator, performer, artist, community organizer, and activist of aloha ‘āina from the island of Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi. As a mother of three and co-founder of Ka Hale Hoaka, an online school of Hawaiian knowledge, her teachings are grounded in Indigenous philosophies and practices such as moʻolelo, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, hula, and oli. She is also the director of the Molokaʻinuiahina project, a multi-generational community art project that is founded on traditional storytelling. By teaching via various art mediums through the vessel of moʻolelo she emphasizes the great importance of building communication skills, self-confidence, and a new generation of storytellers. It is based on the belief that the ancient wisdom of our ancestors is the answer to our modern-day problems. Kumu Maile, as most refer to her, is Vice Chair and Program Director for Hui O Kuapā, 501c3, and the Hawaiian cultural arts consultant for Kualapuʻu Public Charter School. As a cultural practitioner she has represented Hawaiʻi as a delegate in the World Wilderness Congress-Spain, a presenter for WIPCE (World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education), a panelist on, “Feminism in Hawaiʻi,” at the Hawaiʻi People's Congress,  and serves as a Hawaiian cultural consult and policy builder for ocean conservation with Taiatea-Aotearoa, a partnership with The World Wilderness Federation. Together, Maile and her husband Hanohano share the hip hop stage as "The Paniolo Prince and his Queen Maile."