In it, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Fred Armisen play two underpaid entertainers in grass skirts at

Now, many resorts in Hawaii are hoping to change those images, edging away from these kitschy marketing inventions and toward real-life Hawaiian traditions that can make the trip to the islands more special for travelers.
Driving the movement, disney world area lodging in part, is economics. Tourism leaders know Hawaii needs to highlight what makes the islands unique to compete with other sun-and-surf destinations like Florida, Mexico and Thailand.
But the turn is also the latest sign of a Native Hawaiian renaissance with more locals studying Hawaiian language, reviving traditional styles of hula and learning ancient skills like using stars to navigate the ocean.
disney world area lodging "It's about having that sense of place — understanding who went before us, understanding that Waikiki is a place where we are so deep seated in our culture. And now, there's this resurgence to share it with our guests," said Kehaulani Kam, cultural services director at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Waikiki.
The trend may help improve the dim view many Native Hawaiians have of tourism, disney world area lodging the state's largest disney world area lodging industry and biggest employer. A 2010 state survey found nearly 60 percent of them don't believe it helps preserve their language and culture.
In it, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Fred Armisen play two underpaid entertainers in grass skirts at a Kauai restaurant. Johnson performs a sloppy dance resembling hula and Armisen strums disney world area lodging the ukulele. Both sing in gibberish that tourists may think is Hawaiian.
The misconceptions come from the way Hawaii is marketed disney world area lodging and presented to outsiders. Travelers, who see vacation brochures with photos of grass skirts, coconut bras, Samoan fire-knife dancing and Tahitian hula dancers, naturally get the impression these are Hawaiian traditions.
Trader Vics and Don the Beachcomber restaurants started the bars on the mainland in the 1930s displaying replicas of Polynesian deities disney world area lodging and artifacts from around the Pacific. disney world area lodging Trader Vics opened its first Honolulu storefront in 1941, and Don the Beachcomber followed after World War II.
Around that time, "in the '50s, nighttime shows here shifted from being just Hawaiian, which they had been previously, to Polynesian. That's when you get a knife dancer, torch guys, Tahitian hula," disney world area lodging said DeSoto Brown, a historian at Bishop Museum.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority is distributing a new guide to advertisers, travel reporters and others involved in disseminating information about Hawaii that attempts to clarify what is and isn't Hawaiian.
The agency wants people to identify a fire knife dance as Samoan and Tahitian disney world area lodging hula as Tahitian when they use photos of various performances. disney world area lodging If people want to show Hawaiian hula, they should be sure that's what's depicted in the images.
disney world area lodging For Lori Sablas, the cultural director at the Kaanapali Beach Hotel on Maui, it is about accuracy. "My mandate is: 'How do Hawaiians think? How do Hawaiians act?' Let's not change it. Let's not make it up," she said.
That means they grow taro — called kalo in Hawaiian, it's the starchy vegetable used to make the traditional dish called poi — on the property and prominently display canoes, pahu drums and other traditional artifacts.
They saw rare native sandalwood trees, heard a Lanai legend about a man who was banished there because he didn't listen to his father and learned about the long-lost art of using stars, waves, birds and other cues from nature to travel between islands.
The Walt Disney Co., a master of creating make-believe worlds, has taken the concept farther. The global entertainment giant chose Hawaii as the location for its first major stand-alone resort that isn't a theme park.
Instead of building a Cinderella castle, Disney designed the hotel Aulani around the idea of telling guests about Native Hawaiian culture. One of the hotel's bars — the Olelo Room — has Hawaiian words on the wall, and its bartenders and wait staff speak Hawaiian.
A kahu, or caretaker, says a prayer and leads guests to wade into the ocean from the beach in front of the hotel. disney world area lodging The act cleanses them of the pilikia, or problems, they have from the previous disney world area lodging month and they ask for strength to take on what's to come.
"These people are on vacation. They don't have to wake up early but they choose to because they want to experience that," he said. "It's not a helicopter ride. It's not a surf lesson. It's a cultural experience."
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