About Us
Nice to meet you! We are Bear and Lola, two Vancouver-based professionals building a community around a love for Hawaii. We have a Goldendoodle dog named Gilly who is very much a part of our family.
We only discovered our love for the islands in 2019 when we took our first trip. Since then, we have been hooked.
It is hard to explain our love for Hawaii. We ended up there for the first time on a whim - a brief work trip that was meant to last only four days. Every time we’ve returned we’ve fallen more in love with it. While we know that we have only ever been there in the “vacation” mindset, what we hold dear from Hawaii seems like the “everyday”. The warmness of the people. The approach to life, work, food and culture. The sea, the mountains, the lushness of it all.
Hawaii has lit a fire in us that we carry with us. We find we see reminders of Hawaii on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times per day, almost to an uncanny level. We feel drawn to the islands and hope to one day make them our home.
About Our Blog
We started this blog as an outlet for our passion for Hawaii. We wanted to collect our memories of Hawaii and share them with the world in an intentional, organized way. We hope to create a community of “aloha lovers” - those called to Hawaii just as we are. The shaka zone is a place for those who want to engage in a knowledge exchange about all aspects of the islands. The shaka zone is a place to share in our passion for Hawai’i. We hope you will share your insights with us as well.
Hawaiian Lands
We would like to acknowledge that the topic of our blog is Hawai’i, which is a land with significant political, economic, traditional and societal histories that define the relationship between the land and its inhabitants. The original people of Hawai’i are the kānaka ʻōiwi (Native Hawaiian).
Through our studies on Hawai’i we have learned that her majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Hawaiian territories under duress and protest to the United States to prevent violence toward the Hawaiian People. We have learned that the surrendering of Hawa’ii means that the reality for Native Hawaiians today is shaped by a history of racism and white supremacy. As uninvited guests on Hawai’i, we are committed to supporting Native Hawaiians in their efforts to preserve their livelihoods, culture, traditions and lands in a genuine way.
We write about Hawai’i as settlers on the lands of the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. These are lands currently occupied by “Canada”, in the area of “Vancouver”.
We would like to thank the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and Hawaiian Nations for allowing us to live, work, travel and play on their lands as uninvited guests. We acknowledge that as Indigenous peoples from separate traditional territories (Lola), and immigrants from other countries (Bear), our relationship with Indigenous peoples is complex. Nonetheless, as uninvited guests we are putting careful thought and reflection into the realities of colonialism and white supremacy. We are working everyday to better engage in reconciliation in a meaningful way.