Noho Hewa: Awards, Interviews & Quotes

Read what others are saying about Noho Hewa

Interviews & Quotes

Just as the geographic scope of militarization pulls back to include the US meddling around the world, so too Kelly expands her analysis of occupation to include the systemic context which supports the military occupation of Hawai’i. Promoting strong native voices of dignified resistance and critical analysis throughout the film, Kelly deconstructs the institutions of rabid tourism, corporatized academia, the food industry and manipulative politics. In doing so, she exposes a deeply complex system of enforced servitude, state and corporate collusion, and internalized racism. (Read full review in The Journal of Pacific History)

Tina Ngata, educator, activist, cultural practitioner and writer (The Non Plastic Maori)

Through Noho Hewa, Kelly has carefully illustrated how the militarisation of Hawai‘i both produces and is enabled by broader processes of land alienation, indigenous social dislocation, and late capitalism. (Read full review in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology)

Teresia Teaiwa, author, poet, professor at Victoria University of Wellington

Keala Kelly attempted something very difficult with her film: to have a story without a narrator. The characters, interviewees and events themselves tell the story, and few films are more brutally powerful.

Umi Perkins, Kamehameha Schools faculty and University of Hawai‘i-Manoa College of Social Sciences faculty

Noho Hewa hits viewers with the emotional weight of what it is like for Hawaiians living under US occupation of our homeland. The film explores the diverse impacts of this occupation: desecrated burials, contamination by agribusiness, commodification of culture, militarization and over-development. Noho Hewa should be essential viewing for anyone interested in Hawaiʻi, and especially for tourists, investors, military service people, and educators. It will make you ask yourself, “what responsibilities do I have, now that I have heard this story?”

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, author, co-founder of Halau Ku Mana, associate professor at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa (“The Seeds We Planted,” University of Minnesota Press)

Noho Hewa is seemingly not reality to those who aren’t in touch with it. It is not just a recent time event in history but one of a long truth being ignored regarding the destruction of a people at peace with Mother Earth. I have no doubts that the revealing of an antiquated way to treat Life will be obsolete when more are informed with Noho Hewa. Decisions have been made from a far off place with no experiences as the Hawaiian Nation have had, but now one is given the choice of how to proceed after seeing Noho Hewa.

Tiokasin Ghosthorse – Host of First Voices Indigenous Radio~ WBAI in NYC

As in the best activist film-making, the alternative analysis and testimony provided in Noho Hewa recruits the viewer, in part by suggesting that complacency in the face of desecration is itself a wrongful occupation.

Paul Lyons, author, professor at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa

…As ethnic studies scholars now call for a new, critical ethnic studies that considers the roles of ethnic minorities in the context of U.S. settler colonialism, Noho Hewa is a necessary primer that helps us understand settler colonialism and the radically different stakes for indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. Noho Hewa is one of the most important films ever made.

Candace Fujikane, author, editor, professor at the University of Hawai‘i- Manoa

Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i is an intense, exceptional, and important film that shows settler colonialism and the destructive effects on the Kanaka Maoli people, their land, and their way of life. This film is critical for all to see!

Lloyd L. Lee (Navajo), author, editor, assistant professor at University of New Mexico (“Dine Perspectives: Reclaiming Navajo Thought,” University of Arizona Press)

Through its inclusion of a range of political actors—academics, community organizers and educators, lawyers, farmers, environmentalists, people struggling to maintain their homes on public beaches, members of organizations ranging from the Revolutionary Communist Party to Nuclear Free/Independent Hawai‘i to Kūlana Huli Honua—who eloquently address settler colonialism and occupation from different disciplinary angles and perspectives, the film also debunks the “there are two sides to every issue” approach to politics that stymies thought and limits action. (Read the full review in The Contemporary Pacific)

Cynthia Franklin, author, editor, professor at the University of Hawai‘i- Manoa

…Kelly has created something akin to a contemporary multimedia kanikau (mourning chant). My analysis of Noho Hewa examines the ways in which mourning acts as a central cohesive element that relates many of the issues portrayed in the film. The theme of mourning speaks to intergenerational trauma from which many Native Hawaiians suffer in the aftermath of the US-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. (Read the full American Indian Quarterly review/essay)

Marie Alohalani Brown, assistant professor at the University of Hawai‘i- Manoa

The Hawai’i that exists in our imagination is not the real Hawai’i. The real Hawai’i is a land that is under cultural, psychological, economic, ecological, and military siege… It has the highest concentration of GMOs anywhere in the world. It has more endangered species per square mile than anywhere else in the world. (Read full review at Deep Green Resistance News Service)

Owen Lloyd, Deep Green Resistance News Service

For more information about Keala’s work, go to annekealakelly.com