Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture officials have named Aaron Sala as festival director. Sala, who is Native Hawaiian and Samoan, will be in charge of the planning, coordination and execution of the 13th festival, which will be held in Hawaii for the first time in June 2024.
Known as the largest celebration of indigenous Pacific Islanders, the festival, which started in 1972, is hosted every four years by a different Pacific island entity. Hawaii was slated to host in 2020, but the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2024 festival, scheduled for June 6 to 16, is expected to attract about 2,000 delegates from 28 Pacific nations, including American Samoa, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand, Sala said.
“It’s a huge deal that Hawaii is hosting. The magic about that is Hawaii is home to many of these (Pacific Islander cultures),” said Sala, who attended the 2016 and 2008 festivals. “The work is daunting, but it’s really important for us to do right and to do well on behalf of Hawaii as a member of the Pacific Islands.”
He said his first priorities are working on an updated budget and fundraising campaigns. Other tasks include organizing the programming, managing contracts and filling other positions on his team.
Sala, a Kamehameha Schools and University of Hawaii at Manoa graduate, is currently director of cultural affairs at the Royal Hawaiian Center, an associate faculty specialist at UH West Oahu, and founder and president of Gravitas Pasifika and the Native Imaginative, organizations focused on Pacific Islander storytelling.
A Na Hoku Hanohano award winner, he also has worked as an assistant professor of ethnomusicology and Hawaiian music at UH Manoa and as a cultural and programming consultant.
FESTPAC, as the event is known, celebrates traditional practices through live performances, cultural workshops, hands-on demonstrations, storytelling and more, as well as providing a forum for discussions on pressing issues such as sea-level rise and social inequality.
The festival was last held in 2016 on Guam. Other recent hosts included the Solomon Islands in 2012, American Samoa in 2008, Palau in 2004, and New Caledonia in 2000.
In Hawaii, there are more than 157,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, who make up about 10.8% of the state’s population, according to 2020 census data. That number reflects census respondents who identified as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander alone. When including those who identified as NHPI alone or in combination with other ethnicities, that number more than doubles.
The Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association took the lead on the hiring process for the festival director position, and the event’s Hawaii commission voted to support Sala’s appointment Nov. 8.
The state Legislature appointed a temporary commission, similar to an advisory board, in 2018 to be responsible for the Hawaii-hosted festival. Its nine members, appointed by lawmakers and other officials, include community members and city and state representatives.
Kumu hula Mapuana de Silva is one of two community members on the commission. De Silva, kumu of Halau Mohala ‘Ilima, also served as the head or assistant to the head of Hawaii’s delegation to the past five FESTPACs.
She said she has stayed involved with the festival in volunteer roles for more than 20 years because she wants Hawaii to be well- represented. Hosting the event here “is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” particularly for locals to partici- pate in the festival’s activities and experience it without having to travel far, she said.
De Silva added that the festival leaves lasting impacts on many participants.
At the 2000 festival in New Caledonia, a collection of islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean east of Australia, the Hawaii delegation traveled for an entire day to a remote village, where de Silva said many people had never met a Native Hawaiian in person. She added that many people had walked for days to meet the Hawaii delegation and waited for hours before the delegation’s buses arrived in the village at night. Everyone was so excited to greet them, de Silva said.
“When we go (to other festivals), we are Hawaii,” she said. “We are immersed for that entire time in our culture and who we are as (cultural) practitioners. We have an opportunity to show our cousins across the Pacific how rich our culture is, how knowledgeable our people are and how connected we are to the deep cultures of our past.”
Sala, who spent some of his childhood in American Samoa, where his father is a high-ranking chief and judge, agreed that showcasing Hawaii’s cultural richness and the importance of connections is “paramount.”
“I’m really excited that we’re taking up the mantle, and we have the opportunity to rekindle relationships with our Pacific brethren,” he said. “There’s this real need for us to recognize our connections to each other, seeing ourselves in each other and seeing each other in ourselves.”
For more information on the festival and for updates on volunteer opportunities, visit festpachawaii.org.
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Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
