Share Spotlight: Lilo and Stitch - Main Title (He Mele No Lilo)

Since we were talking about Hawaii last week, I thought I would share a good representation of both traditional Hawaiian music and hula dance. Disney really did their homework for the Lilo and Stitch movie.




Traditional Hula always tells a story, often about the Hawaiian gods and goddesses, including the daughters of Haumea, several of whom are given credit for the invention of Hula.
Schools for Hula are making a comeback in Hawaii, teaching both traditional Hawaiian Hula and a new style that is fusion of traditional and the more modern version created for the tourist trade.

Dwarf Planet Haumea

Haamea is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt (a band of space objects out beyond the orbit of Neptune) that was discovered in late 2004 by CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his team and in 2005 by Jose Luis Ortiz Moreno and his team in Spain. (There is some controversy there, but it outside the scope of this post.) Objects in the Kuiper belt are named after creation deities, so Mike Brown’s team’s name, Huamea, was accepted over the Spanish team’s name for the Dwarf Planet. They named the object Huamea after the Hawaiian goddess, in honor of the place where they had first observed it.

Artist rendition of Haumea and its two moons (A. Field via StScI)

As with many myths, Haumea is associated with many names and stories. Some stories equate her with Papa (also Papahānaumoku), giving Papa as her human form to the spirit form of Haumea. Papa, with her husband Wakea, is often said to be the origin of the Hawaiian people, or sometimes the entire human race.

As Huamea, she is said to have given birth to a number of children, not in the normal way, but from various parts of her body. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, sprang from her thighs while other children sprang from her mouth or her forehead. She is considered the goddess of Childbirth and Fertility.

This giving of herself to make her children is also the reason her name was picked for the Dwarf Planet. The DP Huamea was part of a collision long ago, which resulted in Huamea’s moons, Ki’iaka and Namaka, named for two of her daughters, and the dwarf planet’s oblong, rather than round, shape.

The goddess Huamea was also said to have been able to change her shape and age with the assistance of a variety of magical objects, some of which she obtained in return for assisting people with births. Huamea is often associated with the Kalihi Valley of Ohau, where she is said to have lived with her husband Wakea, once saving him from death by hiding them both in a breadfruit tree. The Kalihi Valley is now part of the suburbs of Honolulu and these local stories are only remember by a few people.