The Hawaiʻi International Film Festival kicked off on Oct. 21, and its lineup of films is well underway.
The official theme for 2026 is "Voyagers & Visionaries," and among the films dedicated to this theme is a documentary by a team based in Minnesota about Indigenous dance.
The film is titled "Why We Dance," and it celebrates the practices and resilience of native communities that once had their culture and dances outlawed.
It follows Meskwaki dancer Oogie Push and other Indigenous artists as they connect across North America and Hawaiʻi.
To learn more, HPR spoke with Push alongside her collaborators Ryan Stopera and Jerod Pushetonequa about what went into creating the film.
"We all create with a foundation of relationships and trust, in addition to our desire to archive stories, and so the three of us really followed that kind of ethos throughout it all," Stopera, the film's videographer, said.
"The connected points across Turtle Island and to the islands of Hawaiʻi were all very united and brought us to each other."
The journeys they ventured on to create the film ended up bringing dance from different Indigenous communities across North America and the Pacific together, Push told HPR.
"Even though we have different styles of dance. We all sort of cultivate a similar relationship to the drums and the gourds and the dancing, and it lifts us up," she said.
"It feeds our spirits, and it's just such an amazing thing to be able to just witness other people's culture and style of dance."
Learn more about the film "Why We Dance" by clicking here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 26, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
