Discipline: Visual Arts

Pete “”Pedru”” Perez has been a cultural leader and practitioner in the movement to restore canoe culture in the Mariana Islands for nearly 20 years. He and his wife Emma co-founded the nonprofit 500 Sails where he was its Executive Director and lead canoe builder until retiring in April 2024. The canoes he builds are based on the historic record that describes the Chamorro sailing canoes that were banned and lost during two centuries of Spanish colonial occupation of the Mariana Islands. Canoe building is an art that has its origins over 3500 years ago when the Chamorros settled in the remote Pacific, and they are decorated today using Oceanic motifs and traditional designs that come from Chamorro cave art and jewelry found in ancient graves.

Since 500 Sails completed its first Chamorro “”Flying Proa”” in 2016, Pedru has sailed by canoe between the nearby islands and as far south as as Guam and Yap. His experiences on ocean inform both the design and decoration of the canoes he builds.

Discipline: Literature

Peter R. Onedera is a storyteller from Sinajana, Guam. He speaks, reads, and writes in a bilingual format incorporating the indigenous language of CHamoru along with English. His talk story skills began in childhood from elders in his clan. Through the years, he created additional skills using situational scenarios, costumes, props, and puppets in presentations abroad and in schools.  He has also written books, plays, poems, academic articles, and taught in the island’s school system from elementary to the University of Guam.

He is also a noted playwright, having written over one hundred plays and staged and directed nearly half of them on Guam, Saipan, Northern and Southern California, Hawaiʻi, and in the Festivals of Pacific Arts in Palau, the Solomon Islands, as well as Guam’s hosting of the 12th FESTPAC in 2016.

Discipline: Visual Arts

Peter manifests safe and creative spaces for ‘Brown Dance’ culture and the arts to thrive and grow equally in the traditional and contemporary expressions. Centering focus on Indigenous identities and voices in a moving dialogue addressing current local issues of urbanization and globalization. Through a NEA – Challenge America grant, Peter continues his journey towards articulating Pōhuli, reindiginization through the creation of his own movement modality and vocabulary reformed into the foundation of a new movement language paradigm for his dance company, Tau Dance Theater, the only professional dance company based in Honolulu directed by a Native Hawaiian. Peter is a 2022 recipient of the Western Arts Alliance, Advancing Indigenous Performances – Native Launchpad, was awarded a three-week Intercultural International Choreographer’s Creation Lab residency at Banff Center for the Creative Arts in Canada, and is round 2 Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists recipient.

Discipline: General Theatre

Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts

Pi‘ilaniwahine Smith is a Native Hawaiian contemporary artist and kumu hula, descending from a matrilineal genealogy of kumu hula within her ‘ohana. Her mother, Alicia Keolahouakamalama Keawekane Smith of Haleʻiwa, Oʻahu, is her kumu hula and the founder of the esteemed Hālau O Nā Maolipua.

Smith’s ʻieʻie weaving is deeply informed by her practice of hula kuahu, where the ‘ie‘ie serves as a manifestation of Laka. She is recognized in her community as a hula practitioner who uses her cultural knowledge and experience as a form of political resistance and activism, advocating for the protection of ʻāina and Native Hawaiian rights. Through her use of ‘ie‘ie, Smith reclaims the connection between people and place, reigniting conversations of the sacred with the sacred through Ma ka ʻike ka hana, a traditional Native Hawaiian worldview where continuity of knowledge informs future generations.

In 2024, Smith celebrated her artist debut with her solo exhibition, ʻIe holo ē, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hamilton Library, Hawaiʻi and Pacific Collections. The exhibition featured a nine-piece collection, culminating in a rare kiʻi akua hulu manu.

Today, Smith continues her family’s hula legacy as kumu hula of Hālau Mālamalamapiʻopiʻookalāpukakakahiaka.

Discipline: Theatre