Human Flower Project
The Lei Day Dilemma
May 1 is Lei Day in Hawaii, and May 2, those leis honor the Ali’is, or Hawaiian chiefs.
Lei Queen
Photo: City of Honolulu
Starting in 1927, May 1st was declared Lei Day in Hawaii, through the combined initiatives of a poet, a musician and a newspaper columnist. “The first celebration and exhibit of leis was at the Bank of Hawaii. In 1928, the first lei queen was Nina Bowman.” Like France’s muguet custom, here’s an example of popular culture glomming onto folkways—a process that, depending on your perspective, looks like cultural rescue or theft. Perhaps it’s only in the cultural sphere that these forces hula together.
Certainly Lei Day has become a flamboyant celebration, complete with beauty contests, lei-making competitions and exhibitions, and, more recently, heightened awareness of Hawaii’s dwindling species and vanishing floral habitat.
Kauai News reporter Dennis Fujimoto writes that commercial lei makers assert, “ ‘If I don’t pick ‘em, someone else will.’… This type of attitude would’ve earned a quick slap on the mouth from kupuna in other times, but in today’s society, it is accepted, with the result being the depletion of many of the lei materials growing in the forests.” The Kaua’i Museum presented its 25th Anniversary Award to Kirby Guyer for her lei made of backyard materials. Another prize went Jodi Gardner, for a garland woven with “the grass found growing near Nawiliwili Harbor” and agapanthus (blue lily) blooms: one part ecology, another part Martha Stewart DIY.
In lei day, we see culture’s choppy water—crosscurrents in the idea of preservation alone. How does one celebrate and sustain the islands’ custom of lei-making and protect the endemic flowers too? More on this topic at a later date—with insights, we hope, from you.
Leis from Honolulu’s contest
Photo: City of Honolulu
On May first, these beautiful garlands are the main attraction. May 2 is more ceremonial: “The contest leis will be taken to Mauna `Ala, the Royal Mausoleum at 2261 Nu`uanu Avenue,” starting at 9:00 a.m. The public will be invited to “drap(e) the leis on the crypts and tombs of our ali`i” (chieftains).
Maybe the ancestors will suggest a way out of Hawaii’s floral conundrum.