Who we are

Individuals who actively preserve and promote indigenous art, traditions, and practices from one generation to another. We serve as custodians and guardians of a particular lineage, ensuring it’s continuity, relevance, and authenticity in an ever-changing world.

Our art forms, practices, and medicines are to be shared, but acknowledging that they also come from a specific culture, lineage, and ancestry long before modern trends, commercialization, and scientization. Culture Keepers is about highlighting and sharing authentically from a native perspective, amplifying indigenous practitioner representation, and amplifying our voicese in how we desire to perpetuate our practice for future generations.

Something about being here in Hawai’i …

as a 4th generation settler to this island, knowing how Kānaka Maoli lost their land and witnessing it continue to change and overdevelop, damage the landscape & ecosystem, but also the assimilate the unique culture that is Hawai’i, has been heavy on my heart. Something about being a yoga instructor and watching it develop into a huge profit industry moving farther and farther away from its roots of origin as a holistic movement medicine embedded in Ayurveda and Indian and Hindu practices. And now as a Chinese medicine doctoral student, seeing parts of our holistic medicine such as gua sha, or fire cupping, or even “dry needling” in some states, that are part of a comprehensive medicine (& in some states protected by law in our scope of practice) being misrepresented by massage therapists and physical therapists.

I’m here to be humble, yet firm in setting the records straight and protecting the way in which my medicine is projected onto unknowing patients. I’m here to perpetuate my ancestors medicines that have historically been oppressed, deemed as ineffective, and then revolutionized for profit once it could be scientized, to present it in a way that feels authentic to how it’s meant to be used, shared, and taught for all to benefit.

We, as a group, our here to represent and celebrate all of our gifts from our lineages. Our voice matters.