I Overcame Cultural Impostor Syndrome by Reclaiming My Hawaiian Ancestry

This APIA Heritage Month, we're talking about mental health. Because, for too long, it's been stigmatized among our community. That's why PS is spotlighting mental health journeys from APIA perspectives — to confront the shame around going to therapy, seeking help, and talking about our feelings. Read the stories here.

What does it mean to be Hawaiian enough?

If I'd been raised on the islands, then that would be an easy answer. I could point to my proximity to the Maui homestead land where my grandma grew up; my footsteps on Hamoa Beach, where my great-grandmother was born; my imagined ability to shift into speaking Hawaiʻi Creole English, otherwise known as pidgin.

But my childhood home was nestled in the suburbs of New Orleans, firmly placing me in the diaspora of Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians) raised thousands of miles away on the continental US. My earliest memories of playing outside take place in a landscape of Spanish moss and star jasmine, not lava-rock cliff lines and ʻulu (breadfruit) trees. I grew up with my toes in the sand along Lake Pontchartrain, instead of the Pacific Ocean. I knew the taste of kālua pig and cabbage served hot in my mom's kitchen, but her gumbo was met with equal excitement.

This dreamy youth spent under the low-hanging Southern moon is the only one that I would choose for myself. In my earliest years, I never played far from the ghosts of my father's ancestors, who staked their claims in the fertile soils of Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, and beyond. And even though I didn't tick every box of Southern womanhood — an agnostic in a deeply Catholic culture, a mischief-maker who ineptly puffed thin Black & Mild cigars in a boy's truck bed — there was never any wondering over whether I was a Boyanton. I just was. I just am.

However, the matter of my middle name, Ulu-Lani, and my connection to my mother's heritage is a different story. I always felt the pull of my maternal kūpuna (ancestors) but for so long didn't know exactly how to claim them. I saw them looking back at me when I analyzed my features in the mirror. I cherished the island traditions that survived Americanization: a fresh orchid lei at graduation and a birthday cake with the iced words "Hauʻoli Lā Hānau," or "Happy Birthday."

But in a state absent of Hawaiian culture beyond our household, I was unsure of how to defend my roots when they were questioned by loudmouthed boys — quick encounters that left me swirling with anger and self-doubt. Although I fiercely defended my roots in response, questions of my own bubbled inside. Meanwhile, when our class learned Cajun history, my peers always seemed well within reach of their heritage. Their preteen disinterest grated me — how could they take that for granted? I hadn't even stepped foot on the ʻāina (land) yet. And, so, my cultural impostor syndrome was in full bloom.

I couldn't have known then that, at 28 years old, in the Colorado mountains, I'd have conversations with another hapa (part-Hawaiian) girl from the West Coast who felt the same way. As a reporter, I'd interview sources with 12 percent, 25 percent, 50 percent koko Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian blood) who shouldered years of anxiety about their claim to the islands — despite the fact that blood quantum is a colonialist, not Indigenous, belief. They wondered if their inability to speak ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) or their landlocked childhoods discounted their genealogies.

With that, I realized cultural impostor syndrome wasn't only my burden to bear. We all felt unsure about our sense of belonging, but didn't that make us a collective — a group bound together by this shared experience, with Hawaiʻi at the center?

For me, reassurance came slowly, then all at once. I keep a photo of my ʻanakē (aunt) in her ʻpaʻu (hula skirt), who always tells me that we are proudly "chop suey" — Kānaka ʻŌiwi, Chinese, and white. And when family trips brought me to Kauaʻi at age 25, then Oʻahu two years later, I recognized myself in so many other mixed Hawaiians that make up 25 percent of the islands' population.

I watched my kaikaina (younger sister) stand on a surfboard for the first time; I ate poi fresh, not frozen, like my kalo (taro) farming kūpuna did in the village of Keʻanae. My face and fingers were left sticky from sugary malasadas, Portuguese filled doughnuts. I fell in silent reverence at an ancient heiau (temple) and chatted with elders who urged us to move back to the islands. I stood at the edge of a cliff in Poʻipū, and I jumped.

Each of these moments over the past three years assuaged my cultural anxiety, little by little. Still, my cheeks colored when I bungled a word's meaning — confusing a conversational reference to lomi lomi salmon with lomilomi massage — or let my nerves twist my tongue into mispronunciations. Then, I'd replay the faux pas in my mind on a loop, shaming myself for small mistakes.

Back on the continent, after bouncing from New Orleans to Phoenix to Washington DC, I finally found a group of islanders in Denver. The local Hawaiian civic club generously offered me scholarship money to return to school for my third college degree — an associate's in Hawaiian studies — and dive into our history and moʻolelo (stories).

I gathered birth certificates with my name, my mom's name, and my grandmother's name, next to which "Chinese-Hawaiian" is printed in block letters. And just like that, a college on the islands gave me a green checkmark: student of Kanaka ʻŌiwi lineage.

Today, flashcards with words like "nūpepa" (newspaper) and "waihoʻoluʻu" (color) stick to the walls throughout my apartment. I theorize with my relatives about our potential ancestral link to Aliʻi Alapaʻinuiakauaua, Chief of Hawaiʻi. Most importantly, I recognize my kuleana (responsibility) as a journalist to elevate Hawaiian voices and issues. I write and write and write about paʻakai (salt) makers, ʻulu farmers, and distillers of ʻōkolehao, a Hawaiian spirit.

I dream of one day spending some time in a home of my own in Hilo or Honolulu. I want to watch the hula dancers at the Merrie Monarch Festival, and hope to help rebuild Lāhainā Town. I plan to pass my middle name on to my eldest daughter — a family tradition. I hope to feel the pride of living on the same lands where my ancestors stood and the joy of knowing that my descendants will possess the knowledge of our people that I sought throughout my lifetime.

But, for now, I settle for not letting anyone tell me who or what I am — because I know.

Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton is an award-winning reporter covering Denver's neighborhoods at The Denver Post. She previously reported on social inequities in business, agriculture and trade policy, the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Peru, socioeconomic issues in Guatemala, parliamentary affairs in England, White House press briefings in Washington DC, and the cannabis industry in Colorado.