When Auli i Cravalho spoke her breakthrough role as Moana, she was just sixteen years old. Eight years later, she is playing the same beloved Disney heroine at the premiere of the eagerly awaited Moana 2 sequel.
Vocalizing a character who isn’t scared to grab a demigod by the ear and take him on a journey across the sea is a ton of fun, Cravalho said in an email interview, referring to Moana’s superhuman buddy Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson). Playing Moana has been the opportunity of a lifetime.
In 2016, Moana embarked on her first big-screen journey.She employed the age-old method of way-finding, which finds a path or direction by using natural cues like the stars, wind, and waves.
Way-finding is a philosophy that may also be used to discover who you really are in the world. Additionally, Moana 2 expands on that first journey of self-discovery this year with a far more ambitious goal that may challenge her leadership: uniting various island peoples.
According to Cravalho, three years have gone by in the Moanaverse by the time we meet her in this sequel. It’s truly amazing to be able to witness Moana develop into the leader she was always destined to be, and I know I’m not the only one who is eager to see how far she can go!
Prior to Moana, Cravalho claimed to have drawn inspiration from a Chinese traditional heroine, another Disney figure.
Her Asian/Pacific Islander heritage and her commitment to family and culture struck a chord with me as I watched and rewatched Mulan. She was also the first princess to kick butt and dash off into combat! As I approach my 24th birthday, I continue to watch that movie, and she remains one of my favorites to this day, she added.
Cravalho’s and Hawaii’s multicultural heritage
Most viewers remember Moana as a Polynesian hero.
Her role “showcases way-finding and navigation by the stars, which is a true piece of Indigenous knowledge,” according to Cravalho, who expressed her satisfaction in honoring Pacific Islanders on the big screen.
Although her own Native Hawaiian heritage gives Cravalho some cultural ties to her character, she also has Chinese, Irish, and Portuguese ancestry in addition to Puerto Rico, an island about 6,000 miles to the east.
“I grew up with many traditions in my home and am proud to be of mixed descent,” she stated.
Cravalho claimed that the foods she consumed at home helped her feel more connected to her mixed heritage.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Cravalho would eat corned beef and cabbage, and on Chinese New Year, they would eat noodles for longevity. For graduation parties, they would eat Hawaiian cuisine like lau lau and lomi lomi salmon. Arroz with gandules and homemade pasteles According to Cravalho, Puerto Rican food was “staples” in her family’s refrigerator.
In some ways, the varied heritage of Cravalho represents a tiny portion of the much greater history of migration to Hawaii, including that of Latinos.
One well-known example is the ukulele, a musical instrument native to Hawaii that was introduced by Portuguese contract laborers who came to work on sugar fields there in the late 1800s.
In the same way that contract laborers from the Caribbean island migrated to Hawaii to work on sugarcane farms, as they had in Puerto Rico, an article about the “Porto Rican exodus” in the New York Times in 1901 detailed this phenomenon.
In the state of Aloha, other migrants who spoke Spanish also made their mark.
In the early nineteenth century, Hawaiians learned how to rope, kill, and raise longhorn cattle from Mexican cowboys. Actually, the Hawaiian word for cowboy, paniolo, is an aversion to the Spanish word espa ol.
Furthermore, nearly 90 years before James Drummond Dole founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, a Spanish sailor recorded the pineapple—Hawaii’s state fruit—for the first time in 1813.
In the most recent American Community Survey, little over 66,000 Hawaiians identified as Irish, representing less than 5% of the two other lineages of Cravalho’s mixed ancestry. Additionally, in a previous study, nearly 237,000 people indicated having Chinese ancestry (excluding Taiwanese).
Speaking about her adored character, Cravalho noted that Moana’s daring deeds change the way that women and girls can be seen as heroes in popular culture.
“I believe that Moana has genuinely permitted the terms “princess” and “hero” to be used interchangeably,” she remarked. “It s amazing to see the waves of her impact, not just for young women of Pacific Island decent, but for countless people across the world.”
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