Dance For The Land Quotes

“Aloha. It meant welcome and homecoming. It meant love.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“Pretty small island if everybody fighting everybody.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“Kate had thought hula was something for tourists, girls in plastic skirts dancing to will songs about tiny bubbles in the champagne. Mehana's hula was different-a way of telling stories without words, a kimd of body poetry.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“In the old days, when Hawaiians wanted to give a gift, they doesn't have Safeway. Or any money. They had to take from nature what the gods gave them. Gather the flowers, make the twine, string the flowers. Lots of time and effort. We do the work just to say, 'I love you.' No meaning when we buy a lei in the supermarket.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“We gave away our land and our water-ka wai ola, our life source. But we forgot to tell the haole they should love then like we do. That the streams are our brothers. That the earth is our mother.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“They took our land, then they took our water. But Hawaiians lost more then that. The haole took away our pride. They called us 'natives'. They told us our language was no good, that our gods were evil.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“So much hate to go around, it's hard not to hate back. Much harder than learning to fight back.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“Hawaiians believe a baby's name should tell you what that person will grow up to be.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“Your full name, Kama Ho'omaluhia i ka La'i, means 'child who brings peace.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“The music started up. Mehana called out the verse, and Kate glided into the first kaholo, losing her self in the dance.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“The day had arrived-the day, hour and minute Kate had been having nightmares about for months. She was about to leave the house she loved in Pasadena, California, for a place she doesn't even like. And she was leaving behind her dog, Boggs.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“In California she might have been called fat. But that was not a word Kate would have used to describe her. She had what Hawaiians called Mana. It meant spiritual power, a kind of inner strength people were drawn to.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land

“She would move around the kitchen, humming the words and dancing with her hands. The music was moving through her, filling an emptiness she hadn't known was so deep.”
― Clemence McLaren, Dance For The Land