Go slow more ono.  Relish the flavor.

 

My one hānau is Kahoʻolawe.  But up until my one hānau, there was my only hānau.

 

I was born an American on the island of Kauaʻi, in the last 100 years.  Surviving, I have enterend this 100 years.   It is a quantum leap of time and space.  Those things that have remained the same, and those that have changed.   Puna Hikina, on the East Side, in the Wailua houselots, beneath Nounou, the sleeping giant, which sits next to the Wailua River, which comes from the north and south waters of Waiʻaleʻale.  My parents lived there. 

 

I was raised with my grandparents – both father & mother’s side.  My mother’s parents lived in the Grow Farm plantation, Puhi camp, where the Kauaʻi Community College and Pūnana leo are now located.    This was back in the 1950s.  Not much traffic.  One road accessing the shoreline from Poipū.   My fathter’s mother, Salai, used to cook for the Waterhouse family, riding by horse from Nāwiliwili and over the mountain, down into Kipukai.

 

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents back in the 1950’s.  My grandfather, a pure Hawaiian, was a train conductor.  Our family continues to participate in driving he train from the Koloa Mill to the Koloa dump at the annual celebration. 

 

My maternal grandfather was the last male survivor of the Kamehameha wars.  He arrived in Kipukai and eventually lived in Uleia, Halehaka where Namahoe was constructed (the Kauaʻi double-hull voyaging canoe) before moving to the Puhi Plantation Camp.

 

You might say I spent a lot of time with the kupunas.

 

I went to a Catholic School, St. Catherine, then Kapaʻa, then grad Kamehameha in 1971.  I began working at age13, in the 7th grade, with my own car, building boats for Smith’s Wailua River Boat Tours.  I was fortunate to help build three boats  in my 7th, 8th, and 9th grade years.  Doing lūʻau tours to Lono’s heiau at the Fern Grotto.  Always done at night. 

 

Graduating Kamehameha in 1971, I returned to Kauaʻi to work in the oldest hotel, the Coco Palms at the Wailua River, till 1975, when I left on Hokuleʻa, on her maiden voyage to Kauaʻi.  At Coco Palms I worked as a busboy, as a bellman, doorman, at the front desk, including the nightly ceremonies – lighting the torches, blowing the conch shell, beating the drum, paddling the canoe – every night at 7:30, at the torch-lighting ceremony.  This is where I met Herb Kane with Hokuleʻa in 1975, as the hotel cultural consultant, architect and artist.  

 

One of the most influential kupunawahine thet i met 1971-75 was my kupuna, pure Hawaiian Margaret Kupihea.  As a haumana, learning manaleo, lāʻau lapaʻau, kahea pule, reconnecting my identity to family and place, she taught me a lot.  I met her in 1971, stayed with her till she died. 

 

I left on the 1976 Hokuleʻa voyage; in February 1977.  Less than a year later, I was arrested on Kahoʻolawe as a fisherman, with a gallon of Opihi for the birthday of an 80 year-old kupunawahine from Huelo, named Sarah Aqui (Akiu), who was known as the kūlolo lady of huelo, because she was always making kūlolo, especially for fundraisers for the kids.  Her kūlolo was very special.

 

When I cleaned the opihis for her birthday, I was arrested. 

 

Then – life and death.  At the same party, Tribule, a Filipino kupunakane, dies after killing the pig with Boogie Kalama and myself the morning of the birthday.  It was my first time i had experienced having someone die while I tried to save their life, on the morning of her birthday.  It took a month to have the taste of his breath leave my mouth. It was like passing on your last breath as you go to the leina, passing on that essence.  It was an experience told to me by Margaret Kupihea – one that I will never forget. 

I tried to recall the prayers to save his life -- but in that moment, instead, I remembered a prayer  taught to me by Margaret Kupihea. I would need to reverse this, in order to turn the water back on.

 

So it became clear, why I would go back to Kahoʻolawe.  I would actually reverse the ceremony by turning the water back on, from the punawai,  the springs of life.  To find all the old wells and springs, and to rededicate the waters of life so that the island, like my older brother, Laukapalili, the taro, would  grow.  

 

Which is the first thing I do when I arrive as a volunteer part of the consent decree with the Navy in 1980, representing the ʻOhana.   Among the first four to go back to Kahoʻolawe as volunteers was Richard DeLeon from Kona - Kūkailimoku, where the old airport was, representing Hawaiʻi.  Uncle Les Kuloloio from Honuaʻula (that’s the district Kahoolawe sits in as part of the LLC awards), a lineal descenant, representing Maui, whose mother was auntie Alice, whose mother was the fisherwoman who lived on the kilo above the Makena landing.  They are part of an organization called Hui Alaloa o Makena, who ends up as lineal desc to the honokohua burial, where the alaloa goes through.   They were coming from the fight against the development of Makena. They were part of shutting down the development in 1988.  Like Uncle Eddie would say, connecting the dots. 

 

 These individuals are the of same families who have always been here.  They are here to malama the health of the land and the ocean and the kinolau, which are extremely important to our health. 

 

These individuals were an important part of my health, which means my identity, sustaining my traditional rights and practices.  This relation of aina and moana, malama.

 

In 1977, when I do get arrested, I am born as a Hawaiian.  That is why I mention my one hānau is Kahoʻolawe.

 

We are indicators of a healthy environment.  Because of a dormant trauma of ponoʻole – it reoccurs a past experience that breaks out in sickness.  We are affected buy the balance not being maintained.  We are the symptoms.  Like cold sores, impatigo – under certain conditions, it will break out again.  Because of those environmental indicators that have been absorbed, thiose indicators are very clearly seen therough health – which is in many different stages.  

 

With the loss of a limb or another body part, you will compensatewith another part.  Because of these ponoʻole factors, we do get affected – in our customary beliefs, practices.

 

With the loss of the medicine from the land goes the loss of the medicine of the ocean.  They go hand in hand in maintaining the balance of health.  TIME is one of the very sacred concepts in health.   Health being maintained if not increased, maginfied and multiplied.  And so health is indicated by two very distinct outcomes, which is medicine and food.  Or kinolau, which are very sacred in the caring for the quality of health and life.

 

What we bring as kanaka maoli is the catalyst that brings these two in sync.  We are the weights on the scale that tips the scale, either/or.  Our cultural beliefs help to maintain the balance.    Our ceremonies and prayers help.  Maginfy in order to maintain the balance of health.  

 

Now the two that go hand in hand are the Akuas and the Kanaka and the Akuas usually come down through those who dictate or control the power of life and death.  And that is usually in the realm of kings and queens.  It  is usually the responsibility of chiefs to provide what the people need, not what they want.   

 

It is usually only in a life and death situation that the difference between wants and needs becimes clear. Those indicators of health are based on an understanding needs, based on the gravity of suituation.   It is the essence of life that gives quality of life to the substance.   The quantity is our wants; the quality is our needs.  That is more essence.  Like when you pray.  You are very articulate in your clear, specific need.   Want is more general.  You want everything.   Health is similar.

 

Things that go out of balance affect us. We strive to maintain the balance of the health of the land, the ocean.  It is we humans who will change the balance.

 

We are told that we will suffer if we become healthy.   That is a catch 22.   In the word of life, so comes the word of death.  Because of the lies, mistrust, disease, continuing to believe what we hve been told. 

 

Being held accountable to many foreign beliefs has made us unhealthy.

 

The sacred medicines -- the kinolau, the body forms, life forms -- have been intentionally put here to provide that balance, to make thisngs pono.  However, in the natural state of time, that is one of the most precious medicines that we encounter daily in our lifes.  Time is one of the most important lāʻau lapaʻau.  Time will heal itself long after we are gone – w e just may not be a part of it.

 

We have progressed with technology to pursue more of what we want, and that has created a very unhealthy environment.   So the need for prayer for ceremonies, for mokuauhau, for articulating a chronology of the measurment of time as a scale for the measurement of health reminds us of pono and ponoʻole, and what we need to do, not what we want to do.  It addresses a very unhealthy belief called fear.  Fear that is self-inflicted.  Fear that is self-created.  Fear that draws upon a very unhealthy doubt of the unknown.   

 

Time as the medicine, as lāʻau lapaʻau, is looked at as a healing alternative called pono in a puʻuhonua, which is intended to restore things which are ponoʻole, out of balance.  So time becomes like medicine – a need to restore health, to restore balance of things that are out of balance.

 

It is a very sacred space of time which allows you to look at ponoʻole, a misunderstanding, and to articulate the chronology through the process of hoopobnopono, back to where it was pono, and understanding.   And to undo the misunderstanding, the ponoʻole, and to restore to a time when pono.

 

This is a very important part of healing – the creation of a puʻuhonua, a sacred space where health can be maintained in a very unhealthy environment.  

 

Hoʻoponopono -- When one is sick, we try to have some interpretation , and we try to restore the balance.  Wanting pono and needing pono are two totally different outcomes.   So with health, we need a puʻuhonua.   In order to have health you need a puʻuhonua.    In todays world, the puʻuhonua has become the hale ola, the hospital, the doctors office, the psychiatric ward or rehab hospital, ICU – they are there to provide specialists for eyes, speech, all the needs in how the human body works.  In the physical being as affected by the  mental state.   My granddaughter is in the rehab hospital with trauma to the head; she needs a lot of help from specialists – stop the swelling, adapt and adjust to the needs she has for healing.

 

What is health?  Is it the quality of life?   

 

The kuleana –aloha ʻaina, malama ʻaina, is very imprortant and that comes to maintaining a healthy relationship to of all life.  Whether we realize or not, we affect all life.  Whether it is an island like kahoʻolawe, or a a canoe like hokuleʻa or a family. Like mom, number one in the canoe, the hoʻokele, number two, and all the younger brothers and sisters, so that all things can grow, and piʻi i ka lewa, go up to the heavens.  And so health for Hawaiians comes through our traditional beliefs and practices and customary rights.  

 

The moana is an indicator of the health of the ‘āina.  Because the moana gave birth, and the ‘āina comes from the coean, and will eventually erode and go back to the ocean.  The toxins wash down into the ocean are absolved in the pa’akai of the ocean.  Kaho’olawe is a clear indicator of life.

 

Desecrating through bombs. Very unheathy for the shoreline foods and medicine.  Healing from the punawai.  Water.

 

Every island is a kahoolawe.   

We stopped the bombing. 

You have an island that becomes a testing ground – it is a scale that we can tip.

 

This continued occupatin of foreigners coming in, telling us what to do, what our culture is, or isn’t, has been very ponoʻole.  Their wants, our needs.

 

The world doesnt just need aloha. it needs aloha ʻāina, aloha kai.

 

The voyage for me is... We are going out into the world to heal ourselves.  To say, I think this belomgs to you.   The whole world is at war.   We stopped the world from bombing one island.     We are sailing out into the world because he world is at war.  We are saying it is time to come home.   No matter how far away, we need to go home before there is no home to go back to. 

 

The families need to come home.  The message needs to go out – it is time to come home.  We offered to bring those families back by canoe. 

 

We need to try to understand health.  To rededicate puʻuhonua where we can plant the seeds of pono.   We need to look at how we have traditionally healed ourselves, our lands, our families, our oceans. 

 

It is a time for me of the canoe, of the voyage.  In 1983, an 80 yearold kupuna was still born sovereign.   One sovereign voice.  One of those handful who never forgot.

 

Some say “Uncle, move out of the way - it’s our time”,  to define culture on their own.  When the new generation says our time is now, all i can say is be careful.

I am the total sum of my kupuna. 

 

Go slow – more ono.   Even when you lomi, by going slow it can be restored. 

 

The quality of health, that is pono.   The gills that we use on the land --  how soon did we forget where we came from?  If we want to get higher, we have to go deeper and wider.   Those are practices of health.  Like the double edge blade of pili, here we are.

 

That we live our days learning to look back, so we never foerget.  We learn to live our lives unconditionally, with no regrets.  

 

Our words, our choices, are either pono or ponoʻole.   It might be very complicated for most, but it is very simple for me.  As they all jump out one by one, it is the total sum of all of them.

 

Be careful.  What you want and what you need are two different things.  Health is not a want.  Health is a need. 

 

The need for prayer, for ceremonies, for moʻokuauhau, for articulating a chronology.

Lets rededicate the puʻuhonua. We need to dream.  That keeps us alive.   Thae hardest thing to do with dreams is to keep it alive, and share it. 

 

We are healthy.  It is the world that is sick.

 

The day I can heal kahoʻolawe is the day that the world will get healed.   I cannot just go out into the world saying aloha.  I can talk aloha ‘āina.