How did you get here?
After moving from Hawaiʻi in 2009, I convinced Seattle University Athletics to create a Tahitian dance class at the gym – it was my first job. I then volunteered as a choreographer and teacher for seven years with the Seattle University Hawaiʻi club as a student and alum. Feeling unprepared but motivated by my 4-year-old niece, in 2014 I began teaching a pre-K hula class with Families of Color Seattle (FŌCS) while also working at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Both experiences connected the arts with cultural identity, social justice and youth engagement.
Through the museum, I met healer and multimedia artist Julz Ignacio, who at the time worked at Arts Corps, a revolutionary arts-education initiative. Julz suggested I join as a “teaching artist.” It was the first time I heard those words. My mentor and Arts Corps Executive Director Eduardo Mendoça believed in me to fulfill a role as master teaching artist, where I led the after-school program Hula Mai ‘Oe for four years in elementary schools in the Seattle and Highline school districts.
In 2017, I opened Huraiti Mana, taking my independent teachings public for students of all ages, continuing conversations that I had enjoyed and that have challenged me over these years of teaching – “talk-story” about heritage, spiritual strength, intergenerational trauma, sisterhood, decolonization, community and inner power.
Through these people-of-the-land and organizations-for-the-people, I realized I wasn’t only teaching dance – I was a part of advancing access to the arts, re-indigenizing history and centering ancestral philosophy. From 2018 to 2024, I collaborated with educators of the Seattle Public Schools Ethnic Studies Program and Meridian School’s Diversity & Equity Program to create the Oceania curriculum. In 2025, I was invited to speak in schools across Seattle, (re)introducing Hawaiʻi to early learners and diving through layers of identity with elementary and middle schoolers as part of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging programs.
