🏝 Aloha Aina 🌸
Inside NAU HAPA Club’s 17th Annual Luau
By: Danielle Doyle, McKinley Burnett and Molly Murphy
College is a great way to meet people from all over and experience a taste of different cultures too! Through our Office of Inclusion, NAU’s cultural clubs have a home to connect, teach and celebrate aspects of their culture with their clubs and the greater Lumberjack community as well.
Introducing NAU’s HAPA Hawaiian Club
The purpose of the NAU HAPA Hawaiian Club is to help the students of Hawaii, as well as non-Hawaii students’ transition into college and feel a sense of “ohana.”
Club activities give students the opportunity to bond with one another, participate in service activities for the community, and get involved with campus events. HAPA members not only spread the Aloha Spirit around NAU, but the Flagstaff community too.
One of HAPA Club’s longstanding traditions is the luau they host every year.
The annual luau is a great way to learn about Hawaii’s traditional foods, watch performances, and even win some prizes!
This 17th annual luau was named Aloha Aina which stands for “love of the land.”
The line up
The main portion of the night was devoted to the variety of different dances performed by both NAU’s HAPA and FASA Clubs.
Eleven performances full of dances, chants and more were split by a short intermission.
During intermission they held games and even raffles where you could win prizes!
The menu
The club provided a Hawaiian buffet with a selection of traditional food including chicken katsu and kalua pork.
On top of the buffet dinner, they also provided haupia cake — a Hawaiian coconut cake! Interested in making the real dish? Check out the tutorial below.
The variety of foods was a cool way to experience their food from home. If you wanted more food, the club members even sold take home bags — one of which being homemade spam musubi kits.
Practice makes perfect
Preparing for the luau takes weeks of practice with club members rehearsing the traditional performances.
Though this requires more of a time commitment, it is a really cool way of interacting with and understanding the significance and stories behind each dance!
A Hui Hou- Until we Meet Again
This night was a good way to get to know the Hawaiian culture and experience it with other Lumberjacks, faculty and staff.
If you haven’t been to a HAPA Club luau — you should definitely add it to your NAU bucket list!
