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피자베아 (Pija Bea) 🍕🐻

@waterbearfoto

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Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada
Professor with a pahu paʻi kiʻi.
Surf + Studio
I mostly take pictures at the most epic secret spot. Also #shutdownredhill

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Hawaiʻi has a long legacy of women who charge big waves. They are legends (though often unsung) in their own rights, but did you know that Hawaiʻi's history of big wave women goes back to our legendary Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, youngest sister of Pele?

Hiʻiaka and her companions Wahineʻōmaʻo and Pāʻūopalaʻā ended up in an argument with the aliʻi wahine of Hilo, Punahoa, because of a misunderstanding, and Punahoa challenged Hiʻiaka to a surf competition with her life on the line. Hiʻiaka tries to warn Punahoa not to go back out in the water because the conditions have changed and the wave is breaking differently, but Punahoa doesn't believe her.

Hiʻiaka replied, "I am a kamaʻāina, well-acquainted, to this thing known as surfing. The break that I surf in the sea of my ʻāina is out amongst the long-backed swells of the deepest parts of the blue ocean. Once the waves are big enough to block out the peak of Maunakea, that's when my waves have come.”

Punahoa does not listen to her and Hiʻiaka ends up having to use her magical hand named Kīlauea to save Punahoa from both the waves and a shark that is pursuing her.

Hiʻiaka ends up not having to surf in the competition, but we get to see Hiʻiaka's big wave prowess later in the story. She and her companions arrive on Kauaʻi to save Pele’s lover Lohiʻau, who in this version of the story has been killed by moʻo. The final part of the healing ritual involves surfing, and Hiʻiaka takes Lohiʻau out at dawn. They line up so far offshore of Hāʻena that they are barely visible. There the waves were said to block out Waiʻaleʻale. Hiʻiaka beckoned forth a huge wave, and turned her pāʻū into a board for Lohiau to ride. And do you know how Hiʻiaka rode this giant wave? She bodysurfed it!

They rode that huge wave all the way to shore, joined by noio and ʻakihi birds along with the akua Kānemilohae (wearing a rainbow malo) riding on a giant pāpaua shell. A rainbow arched from the wave to shore, thunder boomed and lightning flashed.

So mahalo to all the hard-charging wāhine following in this great tradition who can’t wait until the waves are big enough to block out the peak of Maunakea. E ō! by @waterbearfoto

For those of us who ride waves, we know that it is often a profound experience. The joys are obvious: gliding along the surface of the water, feeling the seaspray on our face. But we know it’s more than that too. There is something about waveriding that pulls at us; when we get a good wave, the feeling is more than the chemical interaction of adrenaline in our bodies. There is a connection to our naʻau, a feeling that we are doing something that is a part of more than just us. And ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi gives us a clue as to why.

The roots of the English word “wave” just refer to its to-and-fro movement, but the word “nalu” refers to so much more. It is the word for the waves we ride in the ocean and the waves in the grain of wood, but it also means to ruminate or ponder or meditate on something. When you nalu i loko, you think deeply and reflectively.

How often does waveriding (and even waveriders) get dismissed as frivolous or merely a diversion? Yet nalu connects the waves to a vital aspect of our existence as kānaka. Our manaʻo. Our way of thinking about the world and all the things that happen in it. Nalu shapes how we view the world and how we move through it. When aliʻi would make important decisions, they were often described as having to nalu. So when you heʻe nalu or slide/ride the nalu, you are moving along more than just the waves, you are sliding along your thoughts.

Nalu is also so much about connection. It is also the word for amniotic fluid, the protective nourishing liquid that surrounded all of us as babies. Nalu is what encircles us from the earliest times of growth, enabling us to develop and thrive. The fact that a single word means wave, deep thought, and amniotic fluid is not just an accident of meaning. It is a Hawaiian recognition that all of these things are connected. So the next time you are slotted right in the pocket with a long steep wall setting up in front of you remember that the joy you are feeling comes from being connected to the ocean, your self, and your ancestors.

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#surfphotography #surfphotographer #longboard #surfing #olelohawaii #slideladyslide by @waterbearfoto

What do you say when a surfer is doing really well? That they’re ripping? Shredding? Killing it? One way Hawaiians expressed admiration was to compare good surfers to birds. In the moʻolelo of Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, the akua Kānemilohae is described as a kaʻupu hehi ʻale, an albatross treading the billows of the sea, because of how he glides across the face of the wave. Surfers are sometimes said to halakau, or perch like a bird, while they are moving gracefully along the wave. The closest word to ripping and shredding used to describe surfers is kaha, which can mean cut, but the aspect of the word connected to surfing means to swoop, like a kite or a bird.

Granted, surfing has changed much since these descriptions were in wide use, though an 1870 article in the Hawaiian-language newspapers describes a break on Hawaiʻi Island and warns readers that just because they know how to surf other spots doesn’t mean that they can handle this one, so maybe it has not changed all that much. But the difference in the words used to describe surfing still speaks to a less adversarial relationship with the ocean, where to be successful does not mean to conquer the ocean or to rip/shred/kill it.

Unlike mainstream Western society, Hawaiians do not make as much of a distinction between land and sea. It is still part of “that which feeds,” making it part of ʻāina, making it our family member. Reefs and other underwater areas of the ocean have moʻolelo and mele about them just as on land, and Hawaiians have pilina, or deep relations, with them just the same. One of our most well-known sayings is “i ka ʻōlelo nō ke ola, i ka ʻōlelo nō ka make” (in language there is life, in language there is death), so the words we use matter and how we characterize surfers’ waveriding impacts how we think about our relative the ocean. Check out the captions of these photos of @eweleiula, immersion student and current ISA junior under-18 world champ, for a different way to describe surfing.

1: Halakau i kehu me he manu lā (Perched in the seaspray like a bird)

2: Kāhiko ʻia i ka lei hunehune ehu (Adorned by a lei of sea spray)

3: Hiʻi ʻia i ka poli o ke kai (Embraced in the bosom of the sea) by @waterbearfoto

Fresh reviews dropped for NYLA INNUKSUK’s IN THE HEART OF THE SOUTH! ✍️ ♥️

Commissioned by the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund, 2026 Fellows Melissa Chá and Bryan Kuwada share their insights on the film.

Check out the previews here and head to our blog for the full pieces!
🔗 https://www.indigenouscinema.org/ifc26-reviews

🗓️ Remaining TIFF Screenings:
📍 Tonight (Sep 12) at 9:15 PM
📍 Sep 18 at 9:00 PM by @waterbearfoto

We're excited to begin sharing the next micro-review from the 2026 Indigenous Film Criticism (IFC) Fellows.

IFC is a fellowship for emerging Indigenous writers exploring meaningful storytelling at every scale, from indie productions to major releases. The program includes online workshops, screenings at imagineNATIVE, and a writing intensive at the Banff Centre. 🏔️✍️

Think of these as quick, fun observations to entice your watchlist!

Next up: Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada reviews fellow Kānaka ʻŌiwi filmmaker Noah Keone Viernes' ambitious and inventive documentary feature, EA. Grounded in their shared heritage, Bryan notes that this powerful film "roots sovereignty in our communities and calls on us to breathe, to rise, and to assert our ea." ✨🌱

Stream it online at watch.imagineNATIVE.org until Sunday, June 14, 2026!

Partners:
📖 Curating Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty at York University
🏔️ Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity @banffcentre
🎬 imagineNATIVE @imaginenative
❄️ Arctic Indigenous Film Fund @aiff.no by @waterbearfoto

Announcing the 2026 Indigenous Film Criticism Fellowship participants!

Curating Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty at York University, in partnership with the @banffcentre, imagineNATIVE, and the @aiff.no, is proud to announce the participants for the inaugural Indigenous Film Criticism Fellowship.

This new program supports emerging Indigenous writers who want to shape the future of criticism in Indigenous screen culture. It responds to the long-standing gap in writing about Indigenous film and recognizes that strong, informed criticism is essential to a thriving Indigenous screen industry.

Congratulations to the participants, Sonja Hammer, Cameron Watts, Mádeli Melissa Chá Sontay, Ninah Hermiston, Sunná Nousuniemi, and Dr. Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada. This Fellowship will be mentored by Janine Windolph, Jason Ryle, and Leo Koziol.
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#IndigenousFilmCriticism #IndigenousFilm #FellowshipAnnouncement by @waterbearfoto

I don't know how other photographers pick who they shoot, but I'm often like, ooh, that person's outfit is a nice color. So I took a lot of shots of this guy because his yellow shirt complemented the blues and greens of the water so nicely. Good thing he actually got some nice waves too!

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#surfphotograph #surfphotography #fuckice by @waterbearfoto

Some slow shutter from yesterday's late afternoon by @waterbearfoto

I feel like I haven't posted in like a year, so I'm going to post twice in one day... So fun to see everyone on the morning crew on the silliest day of the year. No fatalities this year, I think, though Lōkahi's hat almost drowned a few times.

Also they pressured me to go to breakfast after, so I'm also going to blame them for my having eaten both a breakfast burrito and a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream... by @waterbearfoto

It was a lot of fun to come back and shoot on one of my favorite days at the secret spot. by @waterbearfoto

We worked so hard during this shot to get a really nice combination of blue light with the red bar of light across her eyes and Nane stood there so long, but so patiently, wearing that big headpiece. But then in post I was like, hmm, I kind of don't want the blue, so I sent this one to @jocelynkng as an option, and she ended up liking it too. But it's really Nane's eyes that make the shot.

Two more days to see the show at Arts at Mark's. Or maybe one more day. After I came back from Aotearoa, I still don't know what day it is. by @waterbearfoto

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. @benjamin.johnasen late afternoon at Mākaha. I didn't know him when I shot this, so I didn't realize that I had this picture of him until like a year later.

I'm stuck at home sick right now, but looking forward to shooting all you filthy animals soon :)

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#surfphotography #surfphotographer #longboard #longboarding by @waterbearfoto