Renowned Māhū Activist & Queer Filmmakers Share 15-year Creative Partnership
Kumu Hina, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson emphasize the necessity and urgency of their culturally-embedded work in Hawai‘i.
by Elle Vincioni for Ka Leo: The Voice of Hawaiʻi - October 29, 2025:
About 15 years ago, a creative partnership formed between Native Hawaiian and māhū activist, Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, and queer activist filmmakers Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer.
Since releasing their first documentary film, Kumu Hina (2014), they have since worked together on a multitude of films and local projects in support of Hawai‘i’s unique and diverse LGBTQ+ community, telling the stories of what it means to be queer in a Hawaiian and Pacific cultural context.
Currently co-directors of Lei Pua ʻAla Queer Histories of Hawai‘i, Wilson and Hamer shared their journey to Hawai‘i together as partners in life, filmmaking, and community activism.
Having met in Washington, D.C., Hamer had worked as a scientist at the National Institute for Health for over 35 years, while Wilson worked in the human rights field. They fell in love and married in 2004 in Canada before the legalization of gay marriage in the US. They published an announcement of their wedding in each of their hometown newspapers, the New York Times for Hamer, and the local paper in Oil City, PA for Wilson – reception was less than enthusiastic, particularly in comparison to the overall positive response received from New York.
Realizing the need for increased visibility of LGBTQ+ people in rural America, making a documentary, Out in the Silence (2010), opened a door of dialogue. They went on tour across the U.S., which finally brought them to Hawai‘i.
They organized a film competition for high schoolers, which led them to Farrington High School, where they wanted to personally give the winner their prize check. They were surprised by what they found.
“We had expected that a straight-gay alliance club in Hawai‘i would be like the ones we were familiar with back in Pennsylvania, which would be a couple of kids in the back of the school someplace with, you know, the art teacher guiding them,” explained Hamer. However, leading the football team at a school rally, they found a māhū student in high boots leading the boys in as they twirled a baton. They realized then this was unfamiliar territory.
In 2010, a mutual friend and filmmaker, Connie Florez introduced the strong trio we know today. Intrigued with her background and story, they began their partnership with Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu.
Kumu Hina recalled she had just returned after getting married and met the two for lunch at Kamehameha Shopping Center. “My immediate thought was, hm, what’s so interesting about me? I didn’t think I was an interesting person to film – subject material,” she said.
Prior to meeting Hamer and Wilson, she had been one of the subjects of only one film project, Ke Kulana He Māhū: Remembering a Sense of Place (2001), about the role of being māhū. She spoke about one of her most notable moments transitioning from Colin to Hina as an enrolled student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in the ‘90s.
“My hair was still short, but I put what little hair I had up with a stick or something in my hair. I had a cut t-shirt, and I had a palmdale wrap around my waist. I’ll never forget the look that, you know, the guys going in the bathroom had.” It was then she realized that it was an unsafe place for her.
Beginning estrogen hormones, she knew her body was inevitably going to change. “And so, I said, either I do it now or I don’t do it at all. And the next day, I came to school and I started using the wāhine [women’s] bathroom. And I used to get looks, too, but not in the same way that I got going into the men’s bathroom.”
This partnership has allowed her the opportunity to explore those formidable moments. “This narrative, as I characterize it, is a rough parallel but not an exact equivalent to the more Western approach that is the prevalent articulation of this experience in life,” Kumu Hina said.
Beyond the team’s first film, they have amassed a collection of queer media centering Hawaiian and Pacific Islander stories. “I think what connects the films for us is just the realization that [these topics] of gender, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships between people—most of the world has this very Westernized view of what is natural,” Hamer explained.
However, the history of Hawai‘i is quite different. In being in the islands, they have realized all the different forms of intimacies and relationships that can form between people in society. They have drawn connections between aikāne and same-sex relationships, or māhū and gender-fluidity, but realized the need to place queerness in its true Hawaiian context.
In traditional Hawaiian society, people were not as concerned with sexuality and gender but rather focused on relations, jobs, and positions in society, Wilson and Hamer explained. This knowledge they aim to share with others.
“Where I tend to diverge in my views are very specifically rooted into my political views about Hawai‘i and our relationship to the US,” Kumu Hina continued. For this reason, she explained the importance of being an anchor voice for her community, not only being māhū, but being fluent in Hawaiian language and having access to this platform to articulate the Hawaiian worldview. “For me — my strength, my ability to speak — it all comes from being absolutely rooted and centered where I am.”
She explained that identity in Hawai‘i and the Pacific is specifically rooted in genealogy and land. The westernized LGBTQ+ movement is still a reminder of being a colonized people and that their culture is often considered secondary.
For her, culture and rightful place and narratives are at the forefront. “For me, [these] have to be my first and foremost, and oftentimes, my only because the sea of voices that is everyone else out there is the dominant ocean current around me.” This identity is the one she chooses to acknowledge, viewing acceptance in accordance with one’s kulana — roles, rank, status, station, title, position, and one’s place — and kuleana – duty, obligation, responsibility, and sometimes jurisdiction and authority. This is what she said her people should be focused on.
Hamer and Wilson emphasized the importance of questioning the role of religion, colonization, and the social forces which have marginalized people. “For me it’s not about projecting identity, it’s really about countering these forces that are not challenged enough in my view that force us into all different kinds of boxes,” Wilson said.
Their work functions to empower others to be true to who they are and a voice for their community. “The kinds of storytelling that we do I think, whether it’s through film or the museum exhibition or a children’s book, whatever, its in my view ways of creating opportunities for people who are out there in the community who may not be strong enough in their own self right now or in a family where it’s safe to be fully who they are – to see positive reflections of themselves articulated and presented in the classroom, or in the theater, or on a youtube video that says there are people like you out here, and they are good, and they are powerful people in their own way,” Wilson explained.
Filmmaker Lisette Marie Flanary, a hula student of Kumu Patrick Makuakāne, recently released her film, Māhū: A Trans Pacific Love Letter (2025). Hamer and Wilson serve as executive producers, and Kumu Hina as one of the subjects. Their involvement traces back to when Hamer and Wilson first met Kumu Patrick in San Francisco at the Castro Theater, where they experienced the power of his shared chanting with Kumu Hina.
The trio looked at this as the culmination of a long effort of research, exploring Hawaiian queerness and the spiritual healers known as Kapaemahu—figures embodying both male and female spirits. These healers are honored by stones in Waikīkī, though the existing plaque does not mention their māhū identities.
The team conducted deep research into the story, creating a children’s book, a Bishop Museum exhibition, and storytelling performances through hula led by Kumu Patrick, performed weekly in Waikīkī through the end of the year. They advocate for more research to be done despite the difficulties of documentation.
“Much of the recordation of history was not necessarily done by people who we either know or acknowledge as having some sort of connection with this element that is understood as māhū,” said Kumu Hina. However, there is more research available on aikāne identities due to their history among chiefs and Hawaiian spirituality.
She explained that the Hawaiian language has always had a genderless pronoun, with a need to refer to sex or gender only when speaking of relationships, such as parents to children. “What is rather shocking, glaring, or new to an outsider culture is rather something commonplace and well-rooted in that traditional society.” This is a clear difference in approach.
This perspective stretches beyond Hawai‘i. Leitis in Waiting (2018), featuring Joey Joleen Mataele, premiered in London during the Commonwealth meeting in front of Tongan government officials. After the film won awards, it was finally approved for screening in Tonga, where the Crown Princess attended the first showing—though it was initially not even screened there.
“A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike i ka hālau ho‘okahi. Not all knowledge is found in one’s school and train of thought,” Kumu Hina shared. Despite facing pushback by some members of her community, she asserted they have done their due diligence in researching these stories and finding primary sources, courtesy in part to the UH archives.
Hamer and Wilson point to the multicultural history of Hawai‘i, including the influence of religions other than Christianity and the need for solidarity against the sugar plantation workers, as reasoning for why Hawai‘i politics and treatment of others, in their view, are more humane than in the Continent. They call on everyone to be part of reshaping the future to be more equitable, saying it is not solely the responsibility of those who were wronged to carry rewriting those wrongs.
Kumu Hina left students or locals not of Hawaiian descent some advice if they are seeking to work and act an ally to her community. “If you seek alliance and being an ally from the level of mainstream society that’s easy low hanging fruit. If you want to seek alliance through the pathway that’s going to take you longer and require more work then you’ll have to come and engage at Hawaiʻinuiākea Hawaiian school of knowledge and take Hawaiian language and start to see things from a different perspective.” She spoke of offering a Kānaka Maoli perspective that connects Hawaiian and global realities, allowing different realities to exist in a parallel.
Wilson and Hamer also wanted to emphasize the urgency of current political crises and right-wing movements worldwide. For them, their work in Hawaiʻi centers on self-determination, sovereignty of Hawaiian people, and solidarity, ensuring communities are not divided by identity. They all condemn U.S. leadership for creating global chaos.
Kumu Hina recalled stories from her grandmother of raising her mother and other children in the era of segregation and how it translated to current American politics and culture. “Everything I see now is merely a magnitudinal magnification of the experience my grandmother shared. And that reality has long been dormant in the states and now we see its ugliness,” she said. It fuels her commitment to Hawaiian liberation from US control.
She credited her mentors from the former Center for Hawaiian Studies in the ‘90s, including Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask who famously said, “We will never be American. We will die as Hawaiians.” This resonates now more than ever, as she envisions Hawaiʻi as an equal world nation, not under the boot of colonization and the U.S., and hopes the next generation will carry that vision forward.
Kumu Hina, Joe Wilson, and Dean Hammer’s work as filmmakers and activists showcase that Hawai‘i may offer a more peaceful and respectful vision of the world, where LGBTQ+ and Hawaiian queer identities can all honor their truths and unique realities together.