In Hawai‘i, we typically honor our mākuahine (mothers) with lei and brunch. Keeping her favorite flower in mind (for my mother, pīkake and pakalana), we buy or make a lei and hope it complements whichever Manuheali‘i dress she decides to wear. Then, arriving arm-in-arm with her, we treat her to a meal in honor of all the times she made our school bentos and financed our crackseed-store visits. As we sip our mimosas, we give the final gift—the gift of “talking story,” so mom can reminisce about the days before and after she raised us, and relive all the cherished moments in between.
The creatives in the following pages find inspiration in their mother’s teachings and character; Mihana and Nāpali Souza.
The creatives in the following pages find inspiration in their mother’s teachings and character; Mālia Ka‘aihue and Micah and Keānuenue DeSoto.
Mari Matsuda and Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence at their family residence.
Beadie and Donne Dawson
“Be clear in what you believe in and advocate for those things. Always fight for what is just and pono.” – Beadie Dawson, to her daughter Donne
Deep in the lush recesses of Nu‘uanu Valley is the Dawson residence. Here, words like kuleana (responsibility), ha‘aha‘a (humility), and mālama ‘āina (take care of the land) have been passed down through generations, spreading like educational roots that connect one Dawson to another. The late Annie Kanahele, her daughter Beadie Dawson, and her granddaughter Donne Dawson have lived by these values. This is shown in their activism, conservation endeavors, and efforts to educate others on Hawaiian rights.
Kanahele had witnessed and mourned the deterioration of ‘Iolani palace since the Overthrow, which began in 1893, three years before she was born. In 1965, her daughter Beadie proposed that the Junior League of Honolulu’s next project be the restoration of the historic building and the reclaiming of its original furnishings. Beadie’s fellow league members agreed to undertake the large project, primarily relying on word-of-mouth to track down the original décor. Today, the palace nearly resembles its past self, and it continues to be restored by The Friends of ‘Iolani Palace.
Beadie’s protection of Hawaiian rights did not end there. In 1997, she volunteered to legally represent Na Pua a Ke Ali‘i Pauahi—the student, teacher, alumni, and parent beneficiaries of Princess Pauahi’s trust—as they fought to reform the trustees’ actions. For years, the Bishop Estate’s trustees had been accused of using trust funds to benefit themselves over the school’s beneficiaries. As Na Pua’s lawyer, Beadie ensured that the investigation into the trustees’ actions was objectively conducted. When the report became public, it confirmed years of misdeeds by the trustees and garnered more public support for the beneficiaries.
Today, Donne Dawson has found her own form of activism. As the Hawai‘i State Film Commissioner, Donne ensures that Hawai‘i’s lands and oceans are protected and Hawaiian culture is accurately portrayed during filming. She also decides which film projects are allowed to be produced in the state, taking into consideration her culture when doing so. “There are times when I’ve come under attack for feeling strongly about my culture and environment,” Donne says. “But I do not waiver. It’s in my DNA, I think.”
Deep in the lush recesses of Nu‘uanu Valley is the Dawson residence. Here, words like kuleana (responsibility), ha‘aha‘a (humility), and mālama ‘āina (take care of the land) have been passed down through generations, spreading like educational roots that connect one Dawson to another. The late Annie Kanahele, her daughter Beadie Dawson, and her granddaughter Donne Dawson have lived by these values. This is shown in their activism, conservation endeavors, and efforts to educate others on Hawaiian rights.
Kanahele had witnessed and mourned the deterioration of ‘Iolani palace since the Overthrow, which began in 1893, three years before she was born. In 1965, her daughter Beadie proposed that the Junior League of Honolulu’s next project be the restoration of the historic building and the reclaiming of its original furnishings. Beadie’s fellow league members agreed to undertake the large project, primarily relying on word-of-mouth to track down the original décor. Today, the palace nearly resembles its past self, and it continues to be restored by The Friends of ‘Iolani Palace.
Beadie’s protection of Hawaiian rights did not end there. In 1997, she volunteered to legally represent Na Pua a Ke Ali‘i Pauahi—the student, teacher, alumni, and parent beneficiaries of Princess Pauahi’s trust—as they fought to reform the trustees’ actions. For years, the Bishop Estate’s trustees had been accused of using trust funds to benefit themselves over the school’s beneficiaries. As Na Pua’s lawyer, Beadie ensured that the investigation into the trustees’ actions was objectively conducted. When the report became public, it confirmed years of misdeeds by the trustees and garnered more public support for the beneficiaries.
Today, Donne Dawson has found her own form of activism. As the Hawai‘i State Film Commissioner, Donne ensures that Hawai‘i’s lands and oceans are protected and Hawaiian culture is accurately portrayed during filming. She also decides which film projects are allowed to be produced in the state, taking into consideration her culture when doing so. “There are times when I’ve come under attack for feeling strongly about my culture and environment,” Donne says. “But I do not waiver. It’s in my DNA, I think.”
Mālia Ka‘aihue and Micah and Keānuenue DeSoto
At the beginning of the year, the Ka‘aihue and DeSoto ‘ohana set personal goals and then share them among their growing family of 10. (The youngest child, Wailana, was born on December 30, 2018.) These include practical goals like paying rent and getting a 4.0 GPA. But Mālia Ka‘aihue, the 39-year-old mother of this family, also pushes her husband and children to focus on building character. Her 21-year-old son, Micah, is working on being more present and grateful. His 15-year-old sister, Keānuenue, wants to be more patient. Mālia, an entrepreneur and community leader, is determined to be more engaging and mindful in her day-to-day life.
When she was a freshman at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Mālia became pregnant with Micah. For the next decade, as she pursued four degrees, she was both a mother and a student. While studying for her PhD, Mālia would start her day at 6 a.m., preparing her children for school, attending class at 9 a.m., and then making time to write her dissertation. After attaining her doctorate in political science, Mālia taught in higher education and then joined the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Then, in 2013, she founded DTL Hawaii, a Hawaiian strategy studio committed to asking this question: How can DTL provide the highest level of inclusion of culture and community into Hawai‘i’s big projects that will shape Hawai‘i for the next 10 generations?
Meanwhile, her children have followed her advice to be “the designers of their own lives.” When Micah was a junior in high school, he walked his first fashion show for local designer Manaola. The following year, he signed with Nomad Mgmt, a modeling agency based in New York and Miami, which gave him the opportunity to model in Thailand and walk at New York Fashion Week twice. Today, Micah continues to model locally and abroad. Keānuenue, a sophomore at Kamehameha Schools, is also an entrepreneur. In 2015, she founded Anu Hawai‘i, a swimwear brand. In October 2018, she held a fashion show for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. Now she is working with a factory in Bali to mass-produce her line.
Micah admits that the DeSoto children don’t always follow their New Year’s resolutions. But creating yearly goals echoes an important lesson from their mother: “Don’t wait for things to happen, make them happen.”
“Be mindful of your culture. Never be shame of who you are.” – Mālia Ka‘aihue, to her children Micah and Keānuenue
At the beginning of the year, the Ka‘aihue and DeSoto ‘ohana set personal goals and then share them among their growing family of 10. (The youngest child, Wailana, was born on December 30, 2018.) These include practical goals like paying rent and getting a 4.0 GPA. But Mālia Ka‘aihue, the 39-year-old mother of this family, also pushes her husband and children to focus on building character. Her 21-year-old son, Micah, is working on being more present and grateful. His 15-year-old sister, Keānuenue, wants to be more patient. Mālia, an entrepreneur and community leader, is determined to be more engaging and mindful in her day-to-day life.
When she was a freshman at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Mālia became pregnant with Micah. For the next decade, as she pursued four degrees, she was both a mother and a student. While studying for her PhD, Mālia would start her day at 6 a.m., preparing her children for school, attending class at 9 a.m., and then making time to write her dissertation. After attaining her doctorate in political science, Mālia taught in higher education and then joined the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Then, in 2013, she founded DTL Hawaii, a Hawaiian strategy studio committed to asking this question: How can DTL provide the highest level of inclusion of culture and community into Hawai‘i’s big projects that will shape Hawai‘i for the next 10 generations?
Meanwhile, her children have followed her advice to be “the designers of their own lives.” When Micah was a junior in high school, he walked his first fashion show for local designer Manaola. The following year, he signed with Nomad Mgmt, a modeling agency based in New York and Miami, which gave him the opportunity to model in Thailand and walk at New York Fashion Week twice. Today, Micah continues to model locally and abroad. Keānuenue, a sophomore at Kamehameha Schools, is also an entrepreneur. In 2015, she founded Anu Hawai‘i, a swimwear brand. In October 2018, she held a fashion show for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. Now she is working with a factory in Bali to mass-produce her line.
Micah admits that the DeSoto children don’t always follow their New Year’s resolutions. But creating yearly goals echoes an important lesson from their mother: “Don’t wait for things to happen, make them happen.”
Mari Matsuda and Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence
“Remember your power.” – Mari Matsuda, to her daughter Kimiko
Most children don’t learn about intersectionality, patriarchy, or systemic racism until they’ve reached college. But Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence is an exception, having been raised by Mari Matsuda and Charles Lawrence III, both professors of law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. In Kimiko’s childhood home, critical race theory and feminist theory were discussed around the dining table. Renowned scholars and theorists like Catharine MacKinnon are among her parents’ good friends. Mari, the first female tenured Asian American law professor, took her children to protests in between sewing Halloween costumes and chaperoning school field trips.
Making a home in Washington D.C. and then Honolulu, Mari immersed her children in both political climates. Whether they joined her in the law classroom or at national conferences, Kimiko and her brother, Paul, glimpsed a world that awaited them. While Kimiko was attending Harvard for her undergraduate degree, the daily campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, published an anti-affirmative action story questioning the qualifications of its black students. In response, Kimiko created “I, Too, Am Harvard,” a photo campaign featuring 60 black students and their experiences at the university. In the campaign, black students held up whiteboards displaying racist statements others had said to them. Since its debut in 2014, “I, Too, Am Harvard” has inspired similar projects at universities from Yale University and University of Iowa.
Today, Kimiko lives in New York, where she is a writer and playwright, and Mari teaches law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Both mother and daughter continue to make community activism an integral part of their relationship. In December 2018, Kimiko visited Hawai‘i to partake in the usual holiday festivities. While she was home, she also joined her mother in protesting U.S. militarism and reef destruction in Okinawa.
Most children don’t learn about intersectionality, patriarchy, or systemic racism until they’ve reached college. But Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence is an exception, having been raised by Mari Matsuda and Charles Lawrence III, both professors of law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. In Kimiko’s childhood home, critical race theory and feminist theory were discussed around the dining table. Renowned scholars and theorists like Catharine MacKinnon are among her parents’ good friends. Mari, the first female tenured Asian American law professor, took her children to protests in between sewing Halloween costumes and chaperoning school field trips.
Making a home in Washington D.C. and then Honolulu, Mari immersed her children in both political climates. Whether they joined her in the law classroom or at national conferences, Kimiko and her brother, Paul, glimpsed a world that awaited them. While Kimiko was attending Harvard for her undergraduate degree, the daily campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, published an anti-affirmative action story questioning the qualifications of its black students. In response, Kimiko created “I, Too, Am Harvard,” a photo campaign featuring 60 black students and their experiences at the university. In the campaign, black students held up whiteboards displaying racist statements others had said to them. Since its debut in 2014, “I, Too, Am Harvard” has inspired similar projects at universities from Yale University and University of Iowa.
Today, Kimiko lives in New York, where she is a writer and playwright, and Mari teaches law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Both mother and daughter continue to make community activism an integral part of their relationship. In December 2018, Kimiko visited Hawai‘i to partake in the usual holiday festivities. While she was home, she also joined her mother in protesting U.S. militarism and reef destruction in Okinawa.
Joyce Okano and Kenna Reed
In 1984, while she was still in college, Joyce Okano left her job at Gucci to manage the first independent Chanel shop in the United States. She did so to be able to make her own rules. The store drew customers from Japan who were already familiar with the brand, and Okano found ways to attract Hawai‘i residents as well, choosing merchandise with a local flare and even turning the top floor of her shop into a local art gallery. Because of her wise management of this first shop, Okano was asked to help open Chanel stores across Hawai‘i and then the U.S. West Coast.
Okano’s 28-year-old daughter Kenna Reed has also chosen to be her own boss. Growing up, Reed didn’t realize attending fashion weeks in Paris and New York were atypical experiences for kids her age. While immersing her three daughters in the fashion world, Okano made sure to dissuade them from following the toxic messages of runway. “I told my daughters, those models up there on the runway are freaks of nature,” she says. “No one is naturally that skinny.”
But early in Reed’s photography career, she found herself in a local scene similar to her mother’s, shooting thin models and then having her images Photoshopped to achieve unnatural beauty standards. So Reed turned her lens to subjects she was personally drawn to, both human and inanimate, and the resulting aesthetic got her recurring photoshoots with Kaka‘ako flower shop Paiko. Today, the freelance photographer enjoys pursuing and refining the craft she loves. Reed hopes that her professional journey will one day inspire her two daughters, who are 1 and 5 years old, to be relentless in pursuing their own creative passions.
As Reed’s creative ventures were growing, Okano retired from Chanel. Now she is president of the nonprofit Friends of the Hawaii State Art Museum. Over the years, she has converted her Kahala home into her own private gallery. The paintings and sculptures within harken back to family excursions to the Louvre and MoMA. Of all the memories from fashion-week trips, Okano and Reed recall these museum visits most fondly.
“I feel like the best advice has always been way more about her leading by example.” – Kenna, of her mother, Joyce Okano
In 1984, while she was still in college, Joyce Okano left her job at Gucci to manage the first independent Chanel shop in the United States. She did so to be able to make her own rules. The store drew customers from Japan who were already familiar with the brand, and Okano found ways to attract Hawai‘i residents as well, choosing merchandise with a local flare and even turning the top floor of her shop into a local art gallery. Because of her wise management of this first shop, Okano was asked to help open Chanel stores across Hawai‘i and then the U.S. West Coast.
Okano’s 28-year-old daughter Kenna Reed has also chosen to be her own boss. Growing up, Reed didn’t realize attending fashion weeks in Paris and New York were atypical experiences for kids her age. While immersing her three daughters in the fashion world, Okano made sure to dissuade them from following the toxic messages of runway. “I told my daughters, those models up there on the runway are freaks of nature,” she says. “No one is naturally that skinny.”
But early in Reed’s photography career, she found herself in a local scene similar to her mother’s, shooting thin models and then having her images Photoshopped to achieve unnatural beauty standards. So Reed turned her lens to subjects she was personally drawn to, both human and inanimate, and the resulting aesthetic got her recurring photoshoots with Kaka‘ako flower shop Paiko. Today, the freelance photographer enjoys pursuing and refining the craft she loves. Reed hopes that her professional journey will one day inspire her two daughters, who are 1 and 5 years old, to be relentless in pursuing their own creative passions.
As Reed’s creative ventures were growing, Okano retired from Chanel. Now she is president of the nonprofit Friends of the Hawaii State Art Museum. Over the years, she has converted her Kahala home into her own private gallery. The paintings and sculptures within harken back to family excursions to the Louvre and MoMA. Of all the memories from fashion-week trips, Okano and Reed recall these museum visits most fondly.
Mihana and Nāpali Souza
“You can do anything.” – Mihana Souza, to her son Nāpali
Nāpali Souza remembers hiding under his mother’s mu‘umu‘u as a child while she played music. The flowery folds of Mihana Souza’s dress draped over him, but he was still able to hear the sounds of the bass she cradled and the Hawaiian melodies she sang. Today Nāpali isn’t sure if the memory is real or a dream, but the imagery is nevertheless telling of how his life turned out.
Nāpali, who is 36 years old, is enveloped in fashion as a cofounder of Salvage Public, a Hawaiian-inspired clothing company based on O‘ahu. Some of Salvage Public’s designs draw from Nāpali’s musical upbringing with Mihana, who is a member of Puamana, an all-female family trio. Mihana played the upright bass against her stomach when she was pregnant with Nāpali. Once he was born, Nāpali entered into what he jokingly calls “the brown version of the Von Trapp family.” With the famous Hawaiian composer Irmgard Aluli as his grandmother and a handful of cousins and siblings who had also been taught to harmonize and dance hula, music is the core of his family.
When Mihana had late-night performances young Nāpali could not attend, he would wait patiently on the front steps for her to come home. Now, sitting in the backyard of this same Kailua home, Nāpali sings a lyric from a song by Auntie Irmgard that inspired an early Salvage Public T-shirt design. “Pau ka hana, time to play,” he gently croons, and Mihana chimes in, finishing the lyric with her son.
Nāpali Souza remembers hiding under his mother’s mu‘umu‘u as a child while she played music. The flowery folds of Mihana Souza’s dress draped over him, but he was still able to hear the sounds of the bass she cradled and the Hawaiian melodies she sang. Today Nāpali isn’t sure if the memory is real or a dream, but the imagery is nevertheless telling of how his life turned out.
Nāpali, who is 36 years old, is enveloped in fashion as a cofounder of Salvage Public, a Hawaiian-inspired clothing company based on O‘ahu. Some of Salvage Public’s designs draw from Nāpali’s musical upbringing with Mihana, who is a member of Puamana, an all-female family trio. Mihana played the upright bass against her stomach when she was pregnant with Nāpali. Once he was born, Nāpali entered into what he jokingly calls “the brown version of the Von Trapp family.” With the famous Hawaiian composer Irmgard Aluli as his grandmother and a handful of cousins and siblings who had also been taught to harmonize and dance hula, music is the core of his family.
When Mihana had late-night performances young Nāpali could not attend, he would wait patiently on the front steps for her to come home. Now, sitting in the backyard of this same Kailua home, Nāpali sings a lyric from a song by Auntie Irmgard that inspired an early Salvage Public T-shirt design. “Pau ka hana, time to play,” he gently croons, and Mihana chimes in, finishing the lyric with her son.
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