Lua aloha shirt

 The Hawaiian Force

Craig and Luana Neff founded their clothing company, The Hawaiian Force, as a way of sharing Hawaiian values, culture, thoughts and untold histories with people. Activists at heart, much of their work has a strong political, yet often humorous, slant. In their shop in Hilo on Hawai’i Island, they stock a large range of political and cultural t-shirts and screen-printed aloha wear. The fit of their shirts, like their attitude, is relaxed.

Shirt as a psychological weapon

This aloha shirt features an array of weaponry associated with Hawaiian warfare. The depicted weapons include a lei o mano (shark tooth club), ku'eku'e lima lei-o-mano (shark tooth knuckle duster), maka pahoa (double edge eye dagger), ka?ane (strangling cord) and ihe (spear).

Craig Neff comments that he has had clients, both male and female, select this design to wear to challenging meetings, with the aim of ‘pulling the kupuna (ancestors) and the mana from those images into the meeting’. One client ordered his lua shirt in red.

Wearing your culture

For the Neffs, a well-chosen aloha shirt is a way in which people can ‘wear their culture’.

‘… it’s like wearable art, so you have to pick and choose wisely… (it) actually has a deeper significance that’s political, that’s spiritual, that’s fun, that’s a little bit of everything, but also has a message that people can relate to. People can see that you understand.’ – Luana Neff, 2017

Co-collecting in Hawai'i

This shirt was acquired by Te Papa during a co-collecting trip to Hawai'i in 2017. Te Papa worked with Noelle Kahanu,a cultural specialist from the University of Hawai‘i, to develop collection of aloha shirts that reflects the ways in which Hawaiian culture has been historically represented, and misrepresented, through the aloha shirt, and the ways in which contemporary native Hawaiian designers are utilising the aloha shirt to communicate indigenous cultural values. This shirt was purchased at The Hawaiian Force store.

Te Papa’s co-collecting programmes are guided by the principle of mana taonga – the sharing authority with stakeholder communities.