Western Aloha

My family hails from the Island of Hawaii, near Honoka'a, on the Hilo side. They're some hard working, family-comes-first, no bullshit kind of people. They're also Portuguese, and arrived on the Big Island in the 1800's to work the cane fields. My grandmother and her siblings were born in a plantation home on the Kuka'iau Ranch during the Roaring Twenties. She was one of ten - nine girls and a boy.

All but her brother, Antone, the first born and only male of the bunch, would leave the islands following WWII. My grandmother, for example, traveled to Honolulu when she was 26, met a tall fella from Eastern Washington after the War, and then moved to the mainland in 1951. But Antone stayed, and his son, Anthony, carries on a tradition that's little known outside of the Hawaiian Islands. The Paniolo are the original American cowboys. Born from necessity, they were trained by the vaqueros of Mexico and have maintained the livestock of HI since 1832.

Photographed for Western Aloha