{"id":32917,"date":"2026-07-28T16:47:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/?p=32917"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:20:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:20:41","slug":"cultural-connectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2026\/07\/cultural-connectors\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Connectors"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Calvin Hoe \u201967, the countless contributions he and his wife, Charlene Hoe \u201968, have made to uplift Indigenous communities in his native Hawai\u2018i and beyond can be summed up by two words: lizard speaking. Understanding this phrase requires an understanding of the Hawaiian language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hoes, who live on the island of O\u2018ahu, raised their three sons to be storytellers. Their middle son, Liko, who studied the Hawaiian language in college, helped Calvin understand the origins of the term mo\u2018olelo, meaning story. It\u2019s derived from the words mo\u2018o (lizard) and \u2018\u014dlelo (to speak).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs Liko explained to me, the lizard has this long tail that\u2019s connected to the brain through all these tiny bones of its backbone,\u201d says Calvin. \u201cOur stories are our connections to the place we come from and to our ancestors. Our ancestors\u2019 bones are still here, and we are still here. Every day, I know that my ancestors are with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The duo has dedicated their lives to ensuring their cultural knowledge, arts, and right to their land endure in Hawai\u2018i, despite the islands\u2019 history of colonization. As with many Indigenous communities across what\u2019s now the United States, Native Hawaiian culture was \u201cnearly decimated with the influx of America,\u201d Calvin notes. \u201cOur old ways of storytelling and dance were banned. We lost our language, and we had to bring it back. We have been able to preserve our history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\tAfter graduation, Charlene and Calvin returned to Calvin’s native Hawai’i and took up taro farming. Decades later, their hands are still in the soil teaching the next generation to carry Hawaiian culture forward through food, music, and art.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tAfter graduation, Charlene and Calvin returned to Calvin’s native Hawai’i and took up taro farming. Decades later, their hands are still in the soil teaching the next generation to carry Hawaiian culture forward through food, music, and art.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tAfter graduation, Charlene and Calvin returned to Calvin’s native Hawai’i and took up taro farming. Decades later, their hands are still in the soil teaching the next generation to carry Hawaiian culture forward through food, music, and art.<\/span>\n\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t \t\t<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\t <\/swiper-gallery>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Calvin met Charlene, who grew up in Minnesota, at Macalester, and they married after graduation. They spent a short stint volunteering through the Peace Corps in Micronesia, a nation of more than six hundred islands midway between Hawai\u2018i and Australia, before returning to Calvin\u2019s home in Hawai\u2018i.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter leaving Macalester, we wanted to help people create their own well-being within their communities,\u201d Charlene recalls. \u201cWhen we got to Chuuk in Micronesia, it was very eye-opening to see that some families were self-sufficient, but others had very little to ensure their well-being.\u201d That experience prompted her lifelong efforts to uplift Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination through environmental, educational, and cultural activism. Although Charlene is not Native Hawaiian, she has worked to become a strong ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calvin feared seeing the disparities he\u2019d witnessed in Micronesia take hold back home in Hawai\u2018i amid the rapid population growth underway in the 1960s. The couple took up taro farming only to realize that water was being diverted from the Hakipu\u2018u area on O\u2018ahu to neighboring valleys for development. The Hoes participated in the Wai\u0101hole-Waik\u0101ne Struggle, a series of grassroots protests in the 1970s against urbanization that defended residents\u2019 right to remain on their ancestral homelands. But the water issues persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlene, who was working as an educator, served as a delegate at the watershed 1978 Hawai\u2018i State Constitutional Convention\u2014a \u201clife-altering experience\u201d that brought together representatives from across the islands to advocate for their communities\u2019 needs. They called upon the legislature to establish an independent water regulation agency to ensure people were prioritized over profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe amended the state constitution to protect the fresh water,\u201d Calvin recalls. \u201cBecause if you protect the fresh water, you\u2019re also protecting the ocean. In our culture, there\u2019s no division between the land and the sea. It\u2019s all one, and we have to protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Hoes, art is another form of activism, particularly when it comes to authentic Indigenous representation. They purchased the Wai\u0101hole Poi Factory in 1971 and transformed it into an art gallery to showcase Native Hawaiian artwork (as well as Charlene\u2019s own creations). Around the same time, Calvin dedicated himself to crafting and performing pre-contact Indigenous musical instruments, such as the \u2018ohe hano ihu<\/em> (nose flute). Today, he\u2019s considered one of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s premier Native artisans. Liko runs the Poi Factory, a restaurant serving up traditional dishes, including its namesake taro-based starchy staple. And Charlene and Calvin still maintain a small art gallery there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout a cultural base, we lose the rich integration of thinking, acting, and working within communities,\u201d says Charlene. \u201cYou want to help people be proud of who they are and where they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, the duo is working to preserve Hawaiian culture by passing it on to the next generation. Encouraged by their kupuna (community elders), the couple founded the public charter school Hakipu\u2018u Academy in 2001 to do just that. Known to their students simply as Uncle Calvin and Aunty Charlene, the Hoes believe education provides an opportunity to instill values-based leadership skills\u2014much like their own college experience did for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing students at Macalester, we were exposed to the whole world,\u201d says Calvin. \u201cThere will always be conflict in the world because people think differently. But we can work things out if we choose to. In Hawai\u2018i, we have a system of working things out based on values called ho\u2018oponopono<\/em>. The most important Hawaiian value is aloha<\/em>, which is love\u2014and it\u2019s a good way for the world to be. We\u2019re all connected as brothers and sisters, and our stories are forever intertwined.\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate Nelson, an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member, is an award-winning writer and editor in Minneapolis.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Calvin Hoe \u201967 and Charlene Hoe \u201968 have dedicated their lives to championing Indigenous rights.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":32919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_link_url":"","custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"Kate Nelson","article_type":[8],"post_thumbnail_style":"default","flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_downloads":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32917"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33067,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32917\/revisions\/33067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}