Ohana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, including the football player, see Ohana (disambiguation).

Part of Hawaiian culture, ʻohana means family in an extended sense of the term including blood-related, adoptive or intentional. It emphasizes that family and friends are bound together and members must cooperate and remember one another. The term is cognate with (and its usage is similar to) the New Zealand Māori term whānau.

In Hawaiian, the word is ʻohana with the leading inverted apostrophe (ʻ) indicating a glottal stop or ‘okina.

The root word ʻohā refers to the root or corm of the kalo, or taro plant (the staple "staff of life" in Hawaii), which Kanaka Maoli consider to be their cosmological ancestor.

In contemporary Hawaiian life, an "ʻohana unit" is a part of a house or a separate structure on the same lot that may contain a relative but which may not be rented to the general public.

ʻOhana is one of the main themes of the movie Lilo & Stitch ("ʻOhana means family and family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.").