The Brothers Cazimero are going to great lengths — and distance — to bring their celebrated Island songs and dances to East Coast audiences in Washington, D.C., this weekend. At a Smithsonian Institution museum, no less.

At Celebrate Hawai'i, the third annual Hawaiian cultural festival held by the National Museum of the American Indian, Robert and Roland Cazimero will make an imprint on the cultural map, sharing their Hawaiian songs and dances — the traditional and the contemporary — in a free outdoor concert tomorrow that's expected to draw fans from D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Robert Cazimero also will showcase his award-winning hula artistry and savvy tonight, in both live and filmed performances. Fans quickly snapped up all the free tickets for the screening.

At a time when Hawai'i is experiencing severe dips in visitor counts, The Caz should be applauded for doing a lion's share of promoting one of the traditional reasons folks come here: to sample the riches and traditions of Island culture. It's a formula that has worked for decades but may have been lost in recent decades when trend shapers neglected to market cultural tourism.

Timing couldn't have been better: The Caz's stellar "Destiny" CD was among the nominees for best Hawaiian album of the year at last Tuesday night's Na Hoku Hanohano Awards. (The award went to Holunape's "Ahea? 'Ano!")

So the American Indian museum, which clearly recognizes the merits and magic of Robert and Roland Cazimero's stature as advocates of their roots in Hawaiian music, should also get a lei of aloha for magnifying their magic.

There are parallel goals and challenges, after all, for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians.

The weekend event in the national capital will assemble hula halau, whose members will give hula lessons. And old-time Hawaiian games, from no'a (top spinning) to konane (similar to checkers) will be demonstrated.

There will be demos of poi pounding and vendors will provide a taste of Hawaiian kaukau, with food displays depicting the original journey of such staples as bananas, yams and coconuts from other Polynesian islands to Hawai'i.

Some of the Islands' top scholars and practitioners of Hawaiian art — floral guru Marie MacDonald and lei-maker Bill Char among them — are assembled in D.C. to celebrate what they do in their daily lives.

Sounds like something our Waikiki architects could learn from — or should draft — for prospective Island visitors.

Sooner, rather than later.

If anyone should advocate such excursions to the past, shouldn't it be us, who would reap the benefits?

There's something natural and exotic, when artisans show how kapa (tapa) is made. How natives stamped images on bark clothing. How crafters make ordinary flowers into stunning lei creations, for the neck and for the head.

Storytellers will share a basic manner of how Hawaiians of the past perpetuated their legends and their history — orally — long before they were written and recorded for future generations to enjoy and learn from.

Area hula disciples will perform and teach the dance.

One of the enduring and enlightening elements will be film — specifically, Lisette Marie Flanary's award-winning documentary "Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula," which screens at 7 p.m. today.

The 57-minute film (free, but reservations are required) chronicles kumu hula Robert Cazimero and his halau's journey from Honolulu to Hilo and the fabled Merrie Monarch Festival, the hula classic, which they won in 2005.

The filmmaker and the kumu will be there to discuss the film, and halau dancers will give a live performance following the screening.

Back in Honolulu next week, The Brothers Cazimero also will open the Waikiki Aquarium's summertime series Ke Kani O Ke Kai on Thursday — a chance for their Island fans to see the duo in an informal outdoor space.

Not exactly the Smithsonian, but the kind of rah-rah spectacle that the visitor industry needs to embrace to celebrate Hawai'i ... in our own front yard.