As keiki, we would weave in and out of our family’s busy kitchen as adults prepared for the lūʻau. Aunties, uncles, and older cousins would assemble in the kitchen. Each person was assigned a particular task depending on their skill level. The more advanced would receive a sharp knife to cut onions or tomatoes or hōʻio (fern shoot) while the less experienced were expected to wash large pots in an outside cement sink.
As the women chopped vegetables for side dishes, we would wander outside to help our dads and uncles with smaller ʻimu (underground oven) tasks. A slaughtered 300-pound pig, was splayed out onto a thick plywood, makeshift table. Stones – the size of two large fists – were pulled from the fiery hot ʻimu and stuffed into slits of the boar to ensure it would be fully cooked. Chicken wire was wrapped around the pig to hold it together. The men would hoist the wire mesh from the table and onto the hot stones. They moved quickly and with precision piling pre-cut banana stump and lāʻī (ti leaves) over the food, layering it with wet burlap bags, a tarp, and then dirt. The overnight cooking begins.
The practice of cooking food in an ʻimu is a beautiful childhood memory for me. And it is still alive and thriving in the kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) community. These images celebrate family, connections to ʻāina (land), our relationship to our ancestors, and the perpetuation of our cultural practices
