-: Camera, but we can go ahead and start.
Mahalo everyone's patience.
Mai ka piʻi a ka lā i Haʻehaʻe
a hiki i ka mōlehulehu ʻana i Hōlanikū,
aloha pumehana kākou!
Mahalo no kēia launa ʻana o kākou i kēia lā.
-: From the rising of the sun at Ha'eha'e,
to the setting of the sun at Hōlanikū,
we greet you with the warmest aloha.
Welcome to Mokupāpapa Discovery Center's
Third Thursday by the Bay Lecture Series.
We have over 550 people who have registered,
and we mahalo all of you for joining us today.
ʻO wau nō ʻo Kanoeʻulalani Morishige
Kanoe: My name is Kanoe'ulalani Morishige,
and I'm the Native Hawaiian Program Specialist
for NOAA Papahānaumokuākea.
And I'm very pleased today
to have my co-host introduce themselves.
-: ʻO wau nō ʻo Malia Evans.
I am the Oʻahu Education and Outreach Coordinator
on behalf of Papahānaumokuākea,
and we have our colleague Justin Umholtz joining us today.
Justin, would you like to say aloha?
Aloha mai.Justin Umholtz koʻu ʻinoa.
I'm the education coordinator
over at Mokupāpapa Discovery Center.
(reverb plays)
-: Somebody's, there's some reverb going on.
Kanoe, are you still there?
-: Yes, I'm still here. (speaking in Hawaiian)
So these webinars are provided by
NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
and are great opportunities to connect with those of you
who are interested in the exploration, research,
and discoveries occurring across our sanctuary system.
-: So all of you are coming in
to go to webinar in listen only mode.
You don't have the ability to mute or unmute yourselves,
but there is a question and comment box
on your control panel.
So if you're having any kind of technical difficulties,
please post it in the comment box
and Justin will be right there
to help kōkua you.
During the Q and A segment,
which we'll have after Pelika's presentation,
you can put questions and comments in there as well.
We will be recording this webinar
and we'll have it publicly available online.
So we like to begin our webinars
with Hawaiian cultural protocol
to set that space for the giving and receiving
of information and ʻike, knowledge.
So I will turn it over to Kanoe.
-: Mahalo.
(Kanoe chanting in Hawaiian)
Mahalo nui e Kanoe.
ʻO ka Mahina ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi kēia a ola nō
ka ʻōlelo makuahine i ʻō a i ʻaneʻi o ka paeʻāina o Hawaiʻi.
Na NOAA PMNM i kākoʻo nui i ka hōʻola ʻana
i ka ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi ma nā ʻano like ʻole.
Ma o ka alu like ʻana me Ke Keʻena Kuleana Hawaiʻi
a me Hale Kuamoʻo ma ke kulanui o Hawaiʻi ma Hilo,
hana ʻia kekahi mau palapala ʻāina
e hōʻike a hoʻomohala i nā inoa kūpuna o nā mokupuni a pau
mai ka pali kū pākū i ka makani o Nihoa
a hiki i ke one alohilani o Holanikū.
-: (speaking in Hawaiian) I'm having technical difficulties
right now with pulling up the slides,
so (speaking in Hawaiian) try and grab those slides again.
Hold on just a moment.
Justin, can you confirm that you can see the slides?
Justin: I only see your desktop.
-: Okay.
Oh, so much pilikia today!
Okay, I am looking for the slides.
If you folks can just be patient.
Justin, can you make me the presenter?
Justin: You are set as presenter.
I can take it off and put it back.
-: Okay, I'm so sorry folks.
Okay, there we go.
All right, are we good?
We are good.
Okay.
Thank you guys so much for your patience
as we work through all this pilikia.
So NOAA's Papahānaumokuākea is committed to
the revitalization of ʻŌlelo Hawai'i,
the Hawaiian language across the Hawaiian Islands,
In the past few years, partnerships with NOAA,
the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and (speaking in Hawaiian)
created maps of the ancestral islands
of Papahānaumokuākea with descriptions
of the names from the wind resisting cliffs
of Nihoa
to the shimmering sands of Hōlanikū.
A laila, ola ka ʻōlelo i ka hoʻokumu ʻana o Papahānaumokuākea Cultural Working Group
i ka papahana Nomenclature,
ma o ke kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi e hānau ʻia ai kēia mau inoa
no nā mea ola kai o ke kai lipo, nā manu, a pēlā wale aku.
-: Furthermore, ʻŌlelo Hawai'i lives through
the cultural working groups nomenclature subcommittee,
creating an ever-evolving process to define and articulate
a collective present day relationship
with the newly discovered
deep sea limu, algae and corals,
birds and other creatures.
A laila, ʻo ka hana nui ke kākoʻo ʻana
i ka hoʻoikaika ʻana i ka pilina me nā kula kaiapuni
ma o ka noiʻi moana nui.
Kākoʻo ʻia ke kūkulu ʻana i ke kahua e aʻo aku ai
i ka ʻepekema moana mai ke kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi.
E mau ana ka ʻōlelo makuahine e paʻa ai i ka ʻike kuʻuna
e wili ʻia e ka pilina i ka ʻāina a ka lehulehu o nā kūpuna.
He pilina wehena ʻole ka ʻike kuʻuna a me ka hana o kēia lā.
We support community partnerships
with the Ocean Exploration Trust,
hosting live ship to shore interactions
with Hawaiian language immersion schools and local schools
with a collective vision of building
ʻŌlelo Hawai'i STEM curriculum
grounded in Hawaiian knowledge systems.
ʻŌlelo Hawai'i is woven into composing oli, chants,
and the perpetuating of ancestral practices of oli
and all facets of cultural protocol.
-: Today Kānaka 'Ōiwi continue to perpetuate
ʻŌlelo Hawai'i as one of many foundational elements
perpetuating ancestral knowledge systems
to build pilina to places and strengthen
communities of kilo, or keen observers,
towards ʻāina momona,
healthy and thriving communities of people and places.
We hope that today's webinar will shine light
on the deeper interwoven layers
of weaving diverse knowledge systems, tools, values,
and practices of our 'Ōiwi,
or Native Hawaiian leaders and communities today.
So we'll go ahead and add
some ʻŌlelo Hawai'i resources in the chat.
Before we start today's presentation by Pelika Andrade,
we wanna give you a brief introduction to Papahānaumokuākea,
the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Serves as a trustee for network
of more than 600,000 square miles
of marine and Great Lakes waters.
Located in the Central Northern Pacific,
roughly 3000 miles from the nearest continental land mass,
Papahānaumokuākea is part of
the remotest archipelago in the world.
This isolation has led to the evolution
of many unique plants and animals.
Papahānaumokuākea encompasses over 580,000 square miles
of the Pacific Ocean and is one of
the largest marine protected areas in the world.
Papahānaumokuākea is considered the ancestral homeland
of Kānaka 'Ōiwi or Native Hawaiian people
with sacred cultural and archeological features
and is internationally recognized
as a UNESCO cultural and natural world heritage site.
-: So Mokupāpapa Discovery Center
on Hilo's historic bayfront was established in 2003
to bring the story of Papahānaumokuākea to the community.
Most people will never have an opportunity
to visit these ancestral kupuna islands,
so our facility serves to bring the place to the people.
Our exhibits including 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium
with native reef fish, educational programming,
and outreach activities inform and engage
thousands of visitors yearly.
So we have a kuleana,
a responsibility and a privilege
to protect these special places today and for tomorrow
for the numerous generations that will come after us.
And we are so honored to have Pelika joining us today.
Mahalo nui, we're gonna ask Pelika
to please turn on your camera right now
and we'll do a brief introduction.
A Native Hawaiian born and raised on the island of Kauai,
Pelika Andrade is a founder and executive director
of Na Maka Onaona, a Hawai'i-based nonprofit
and extension agent for the University of Hawai'i
Sea Grant College Program.
She has a long history working with Hawai'i's communities
throughout the archipelago as a community member,
Hoa ʻāina, and researcher.
For the past 14 years, she has been developing
alternate approaches to monitoring Hawai'i's watersheds
and supporting implementation of management strategies
that support ʻāina momona,
healthy, balanced, and thriving communities.
So without further ado, we present Pelika Andrade.
Pelika, you can share your screen and take it away.
Mahalo.
-: Mahalo, aloha kākou.
So just bear with me.
This is a new platform.
Oh, can we see that everybody?
(speaking in Hawaiian) Malia, can you see that?
Malia: Yes.
-: Awesome.
Okay, aloha nui kākou. ʻO wau o Pelika Andrade. No Kauai mai au.
little bit nervous
as this is another platform
and I cannot see anybody or anything,
so I'm just kind of talking to a screen.
So apologies for rushing or going too slow
or feeling like a robot,
'cause I feel like a robot right now,
but aloha kākou, welina mai.
I know this is
a focus of Mahina 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi,
our Hawaiian language month.
This talk will be in English, but we will be covering
some really important Hawaiian concepts and words
as the title of this talk speaks to pilina and ʻāina momona.
Without further ado, I'm just gonna jump in.
Again, this is really awkward,
because I can't see anybody,
but aloha kākou, for joining.
So before we jump into some of the tools
that we're gonna talk about further along in the talk,
I wanted to give some background and some genealogy
to the work that I do and the people
that I get to work with.
In my introduction, it said that
I have been building these tools,
but these tools have been developed
through many, many partnerships, collaborations, community,
community engagements and participation.
So this is a collective journey, first and foremost,
which starts a little bit before Nā Kilo ʻĀina,
but we've landed on Nā Kilo ʻĀina
being one of our broader programs.
So through this broader program of Nā Kilo ʻĀina,
we've been implementing a lot of research,
a lot of community outreach, and support and collaborations.
And I wanna touch on this name,
this program name, Nā Kilo ʻĀina.
We're gonna start with ʻāina.
So I know a lot of you have heard ʻāina before hopefully.
A lot of people refer to ʻāina as land.
And we wanna kind of expand this idea of ʻāina.
So ʻāina, if we look at the foundation of that word,
which is kaʻāina, it really talks about sustenance,
it talks about feedings.
And when we talk about feeding, we also acknowledge
that there's other types of feedings.
So there's physical, spiritual, emotional,
and mental feedings.
So when we are referring to ʻāina
and the work that we do and these collaborations,
we really are addressing all the ʻāina,
all the things that feed in all the dimensions.
So ʻāina becomes our ourselves as individuals,
as we provide feedings to our communities, to our families,
our families are ʻāina, our organizations are ʻāina,
our churches are ʻāina, our schools are ʻāina,
they're all of these feedings that are happening
and are really, really important to our overall health.
The other thing about ʻāina that is really important
from Hawai'i is this idea of,
not idea, this value of reciprocity.
So ʻāina in, sorry, in existence is based on reciprocity.
The feedings that we receive from ʻāina
are very much dependent on the feedings that we give.
So we give as good as we get actually, right?
So ʻāina is is one of those things.
Kilo is a word I think that is just beautiful word
that's been used more and more every day
and it's really, really exciting.
But I wanna expand it as we've done with ʻāina.
So kilo is a type of observation
and it's a process of observation.
It's not simply to observe.
So when people go, "hey, let's go and kilo the clouds,"
it's not simply going outside and looking at clouds.
The kilo process is tied to a decision
that is being made, right?
So we have other words for look, right?
But we wanna go and look, we wanna identify,
we want to see how those dots that we identify
connect to the story that is being told.
And then what are those stories informing
in the decisions that we're trying to make?
So Nā Kilo ʻĀina is about building communities
of observers of the many things that feed us
so we can start to understand that reciprocity
and our feelings become valuable
and generous in that way, right?
So the feedings coming back to us are along the same lines.
So that's Nā Kilo ʻĀina and that's the foundation
a lot of the programs and the tools that I'm gonna get into.
Another really important thing
that I think all of us should consider or include
in all of our actions and our initiatives is our goals.
I think it's really, really important
for us to align our goals and be very clear of our goals.
So our goals for Nā Kilo ʻĀina are ʻāina momona.
We strive for thriving and productive communities.
The alahula ʻāina momoma, alahula is this beautiful word,
it's a path well traveled
and that is our wish for our communities
to create a path well traveled
to thriving and productive communities.
So how do we go about doing that?
And through the journey that we've been on,
we really acknowledge that all of it
is founded on relationships, pilina.
Everything that we do, how we see the world,
how we interact with the world, how we care for the world,
how we care for ourselves, all depends on relationships.
So at the foundation of all that we do,
we're really, really aware, if you will,
about how we relate to things
and actually creating that space
where relationships are established and strengthened
in all the work that we do.
Oh, I'm gonna go back one more time, sorry.
So these relationships, when we talk about kilo,
when we talk about how we observe to make decisions,
we are looking at that observations relationship.
So if we haven't dove deep
into expanding those relationships,
we kind of see and observe and make connections
and really read stories very, very differently
unless that expansion happens,
and that's a lot of what we do in Nā Kilo ʻĀina
we're trying to build and expand on relationships
so we can start to address not only the challenges,
but it expands the opportunities of solutions.
So we talk about indigenous literacy.
And I know everybody kind of sees these words
and thinks of different things.
Literacy is a way of receiving information
and being able to share it back out in a comprehensible way.
And when on this journey of academics
and on this journey of kilo
and in this journey of ʻāina momona,
we started to engage a lot with our places,
and really tried to understand
what these stories were from our places.
And then we came across an article
that really talked about our landscapes
as our knowledge repositories.
And if you will, our knowledge are our libraries.
And our ability to read our libraries over time
has become less and less.
And we've lost the vocabulary, we've lost our fluency
of accessing the libraries of our environment,
the libraries of the world around us,
the libraries and the knowledge that our kupuna,
which are our winds and our rains
and our corals and our oceans, are trying to share with us,
but we no longer have the tools and the grammar,
the vocabulary if you will, to listen and read.
And that's kind of what we're leaning into
with this indigenous literacy.
Accessing the landscapes, the knowledge repositories,
being able to read these libraries,
and becoming fluent again in that exchange.
So in allowing a place to start to contribute
to its own story, because we all come in
with all these biases and the external world
keeps telling us what we see.
And it's really interesting over time we see things,
but we always default
to what someone else is trying to tell us.
And this journey is about going back
and letting a place tell us what to do without those biases
and without those other external inputs.
So, excuse me, I'm gonna take you through
some really, really simple, but they're so simple
everybody kind of passes over them,
on that process for us
and what we kind of simply just engage in,
which means the world to Nā Kilo ʻāina.
So one of it is be present and paying attention.
And this is so simple, a lot of people kind of underestimate
the power of paying attention and just being in place.
And you have to do those two things together.
Also pilina, right?
Going back to relationships,
they determine how you are present
and how you pay attention.
So it's part of that is building relationships
as well, right?
But paying attention.
And everybody pays attention different.
Everybody pays attention according to their experiences,
they pay attention to what they are exposed to.
So again, relationships once again.
So if you can think back and really look at
your four years of high school, right?
You were there, everybody was there,
but how well were you paying attention?
Can you tell me outside of the classes you went to,
the bathroom you ran to and maybe some of us, including me,
the principal's office you went to, who else was present,
what kind of bird people were there?
What kind of plant people were there?
When were they fruiting and seeding and dying back?
When were birds coming in?
Kolea, did you notice when temperatures dropped,
when humidity became high, right?
So there's all of these things that the natural world,
our kupuna, are telling us,
and we were there for four years,
but not a lot of us can reflect on that time
and really tell us and give
some really well-informed guess, not guesses.
Yeah, well, guesses of what was happening,
because again, according to our experience,
we weren't really paying attention.
So it's really, really about building that
and broadening our attention
and what we look at and who tells the stories.
So first one, be present and pay attention.
The second is mana'o lana and mana'o i'o
and this came from Manu Meyer who did a talk years ago
at UH Hilo that I got to listen into and attend.
And it's kind of like ma ka hana ka 'ike right?
In one doing one knows.
But it's another beautiful way of how our language
and the words that we use
bring a different imagery and a different kind of power.
So mana'o are ideas and concepts,
this is word is gonna come up again,
and lana means to float, i'o means meat and flesh.
So taking mana'o lana and turning them into mana'o i'o,
taking ideas and concepts that float about us,
which is our whole academic journey most of the time, right?
We talk about a lot of things,
but rarely do we ever get to infuse ourselves into it.
And the the goal and the challenge is to do it,
to infuse ourselves, our whole selves into it,
until it becomes that of the flesh.
And then you start to change relationships, right?
Up on your left corner, there are three of our young men
tending to the manawai at Limahuli.
and we are looking at the intake for our patches,
our taro patches, and you have teamwork,
and you have all of that.
But now they're asking questions about stream systems
and larger watersheds and clean water
and what happens when you don't have
a healthy upper watershed
and the ecosystems up there aren't diverse?
And what happens when the native ecosystems
change into an invasive or an introduced monocrop,
if you will, right?
So there's all of these questions
that come simply from damming up water for the intake
for our lo'i.
The boys in the middle are patching the loulu hale
and most don't and can't recognize loulu.
But now we're asking questions about what is loulu?
What are these palms?
Where do they grow?
How do we bring those forests back?
What were their importance
in the broader scheme of things, right?
So all of these other questions that pop up
and then we have to the right,
and Kanoeula is in that photo collecting salt.
So these are from the salt beds at Kalaemanō
which we've done about 14 years of research at.
And we have this beautiful history about salt collection,
and we have all of these assumptions
of how that looks and what has to happen.
And then we started to collect salt.
And let me tell you,
over half of our assumptions were wrong,
even though it made sense in our head.
By simply doing the mana'o lana,
taking the ideas of what we think is happening,
doing it, and that reality starts to shift
and then other things become real.
I talk about realities and we talk about
the stories we tell ourselves.
And this is a huge part of this growing process.
It's making their realities yours and vice versa.
And this is broadening relationships,
broadening experiences, so you can see the world
through different lenses, right?
A lot of our conflict happens,
not because we don't agree on the end goal,
it's because we don't agree on how we get there.
We have right now in our conservation world,
a lot of conflict with hunters and fishermen
and a lot of the stories that are told
put hunters and fishermen in a negative kind of space.
But in reality, when you get to talk to fishermen
and you get to understand the pride of catching a fish
or catching a lot of fish and being able to mahele
that out to your community and share
and put food on the table and understand
what they see through their lens and through their eyes,
you start to broaden an understanding
of a very complex system, not only naturally,
but socially as well.
It also allows us to grow our vocabulary.
Remember, I was talking about indigenous literacy, right?
We lack the vocabulary to read our landscapes.
And by opening up the conversations to other users,
to other people that exist in these spaces
and not seeing it through one lens,
you start to broaden your vocabulary base as well, right?
You see from a non fisherman point talking to fishermen,
you see limu beds differently, you see tides differently,
you see wave and current action differently.
Hunters, you appreciate rain differently
and fruit fall differently and temperature differently.
So there's that growing of vocabulary
and the existence of vocabulary
changes depending on your relationship to place.
Back to pilina.
The other step in inclusion in our journey
is the utilization of multiple knowledge systems and tools.
And I'm really, really, I stand very strong
on the statement that STEM: science, technology, engineering,
and math does not belong to the west.
And even though we do know this, we tend to use it
as a product of institutions,
as a product of the western world.
And just wanting to really be clear
that every culture in the world has STEM.
We all have our science, our inquiry of the world,
and how we define it.
We all have technology and how we utilize that
within our spaces.
Engineering, we all have math, right?
So utilizing all of these knowledge systems as tools
are really, really important, because one,
it expands our vocabulary and it helps us
understand the world around us
through, through many lenses,
again, growing the pilina.
And the last, but actually the most important, I believe,
is revisiting and redefining our narratives and beliefs.
What's the story?
Whose is it?
And who does it belong to?
So I think we're gonna have a poll go out right now,
(speaking in Hawaiian) and I have a question.
Excuse me?
Go ahead.
Sorry, go ahead.
We have a poll, right?
Malia: We do.
-: Okay, awesome.
So the question is, what is the story
and who does it belong to?
So the story, I want you guys to think about healthy.
And look at these four pictures
and I want you to tell me which picture
represents healthy.
We all have a story in our head of what healthy looks like.
Malia: All righty, so you guys take a really good look
at these photos, because this is gonna be part of the poll.
So go ahead and select your answer.
Which image shows that healthy shoreline.
So we have about a quarter of you have voted.
We're gonna spend about another couple of seconds
to give you guys a chance
and I'm gonna shut down the poll in about three, two, one
and let us see what our audience thinks, Pelika.
I'll share the results with you.
So for your information, look at all of that!
66% that said all of them.
Are they correct?
-: Oh, that's so awesome!
Yes.
So if you'd pick number five, all of them, you are correct.
And you know what?
It's really, really funny that,
and I'm super happy about that poll,
because about five years ago,
almost a hundred percent of people
when asked that question would say number two,
because we all look at number two, that lushness, right?
As a healthy ecosystem and a healthy shoreline.
But in actuality, all four pictures
represent health depending on season.
And it's really great to acknowledge and to accept
and know what naturally is supposed to be happening,
not only on our shorelines,
but if we take this idea of health
and we put it on ourselves
and we kind of feel like number one, right?
Real sparse and a little dried up,
is that really an unhealthy state
or is it just a natural healthy place to be
in the swing of life, right?
Another thing to think about on the shoreline
with these pictures is if our managers,
and unfortunately it's less and less today,
but unfortunately before, if our managers were to come in
and some of our families still do this,
they come in on one
and they see this really desolate, really dried up,
the limu has all dried back and they see that,
they get really scared and they try to force it
to look like number two.
So we start to put rules and regulations,
and we set the alarms for emergency care
and we do more damage than good.
And I think that's the point is to understand that story.
So, healthy.
Congratulations you guys.
But what else?
What other stories do we have?
What other stories do we hold
and who do they belong to, right?
We have the healthy story.
We have smart story.
We have poor.
We have disadvantaged.
And we have productive,
what are those stories, right?
We hear productive a lot.
If you are in indigenous conversations a lot,
I hear poor and disadvantaged way too much.
If you are a parent, you hear smart all the time
or comparing smarts of our children.
And that follows our people through their whole life.
And what are those stories and where do they come from?
And I wanna give an example of poor disadvantage.
I was in a workshop and we had
some Native American aunties, if you will,
talking about their roles in leadership
of bringing production, if you will,
back to their communities.
And they talked about how their grandparents
were poor and disadvantaged and
they defined it and described it as,
"oh, my grandfather had to wake up really early
and need to go out and fetch the water from the river
and feed the chickens and do all of these chores."
And in the back of my head I'm sitting back and going,
"oh, that sounds pretty cool to me," right?
So you know, whose story is it?
I think our people would be more rich.
If they all had to wake up early and go get their own water,
I think we'd have a different appreciation of our resources,
appreciation of life in general,
of collective contribution, right?
So there's all of these lessons
that are buried in very simple stories
that we carry around us.
So recalibrating and redefining and revisiting
these narratives and beliefs are really, really important.
So I wanna jump into ancestral instructions.
We were left with so many instructions
that sometimes it's really, really hard
to wrap our heads around.
Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine
because we have this long history of influences
and sometimes application looks a little messy,
but hey, that's the journey and that's the guidance
that we have.
We have all the instructions
and we're supposed to be experimenting and going into it.
So I'm gonna pull us into context.
We have instructions that have us in the context
of season, in moon cycles, that are in the context
of place, in our own life styles.
And then you also play a role in the context
of how these instructions play out.
And I'm gonna get into these tools,
but before we get into the tools,
I wanted to kind of have you take a look at the screen,
at this tide chart calendar.
So early on in about 2009,
we started to look into, excuse me,
starting to look into seasons
and wanted to explore kilo
through what was happening seasonally.
And about the same time,
we had a lot of moon cycle initiatives happening,
which are beautiful in itself, right?
We have all of this movement, but we had to choose between
moon and season and we wanted to go into moon,
but something kept pulling us back into season.
So in order to show how moons behave within seasons,
because again, right, there's all of these partnerships
that happen in the instructions.
We have kupuna that talk about moon phases
advising the work that we do.
But if you don't put it into the context of season,
then we don't optimize the production if you will,
or optimize the win.
So in this chart, I took a tide chart from a calendar,
I cut it up from new moon to your left,
full moon in the middle, and new moon to the right,
the January up at the top, right,
so it's halfway through our winter.
So if you can notice, there's winter at the top and bottom,
and took it across the whole year.
And if you notice, I have a red circle and a green circle
on there in just winter and spring,
in new moons and full moons.
And that's when the tide went above the second line.
I just looked at the chart.
And that's extreme highs and extreme lows.
So the consistently, we have full and new moons
that have extreme highs and extreme lows,
but they're only happening during winter and summer.
The other really cool thing about these highs and lows
is in Hawai'i we have the two high tides and two low tides.
The highest of the high tides in the winter months
happen in the AM hours and the highest of the high tides
in the summer months happen in the PM hours.
So when we talk about this moon phase,
which might be māhealani
and you're gonna see high tides in the morning,
that's only true during the context of season.
And then it flips.
And then it doesn't happen during spring and fall, right?
You have this wacky thing that happens
in the middle of our equinoxes, our spring and fall,
and then it flips to summer to a high tide in the afternoon.
So that changes a lot of behavior, right?
If you're fishing, if I'm trying to cross the river
to get to my lo'i, all of those high low tides matter
and what time of the year, the time of the month,
they all matter.
So just in that simplicity,
there's the context of season and moon.
There's also this mooshing
that happens in the spring, right?
We have two high tides, two low tides
that merge to become one really long high tide
and one really low tide that only happens
in ʻole moons in the spring and the fall, right?
So moons have kind of like a similar behavior
across the year, but they go into
these extremes if you will, or these really,
what would the word be?
Specific behaviors depending on the season.
So that was really, really important for us
to kind of take into consideration
while we developed some of the tools
that we wanted to use to help us again,
broaden our vocabulary and be better kilo.
So in that recognition we've developed,
the first tool I wanna introduce is huli'ia
and it helps us track seasons.
It lets a place, that knowledge repository, our library,
contribute to the narrative,
allows us to read our library
and address this indigenous literacy.
What it does, we record the data on paper,
we do that, but it's not the end goal.
It's a byproduct of a broader end goal, right?
The product for us is you and me.
We want to build communities of people of place.
We want to build communities that are indigenous literate.
Yeah, we are in a world now that values a little too much,
I think, the things that we put on paper.
It's valuable, but so are the abilities to memorize,
the ability to internally analyze.
The ability to strengthen the muscles
that this current system doesn't allow us to strengthen.
And huli'ia is this tool to help us do that, right?
So building memory, creating conversations.
So what does huli'ia look like?
We meet minimally once or twice a lunar month,
we do a group activity.
So this is not going in your corner,
writing down your own observations,
it's about the sharing.
And we discussed dominant behaviors.
Not so much that it rained yesterday and it's sunny today
and then it rained again and then it was sunny again.
It was really about dominantly over the month,
what did we, ʻike maka, what did we observe
with our own senses?
If it did rain and sun and rain and sun.
That's what we call bipolar activity in weather.
So we record our dominant behaviors
that we recognize like fruiting and seeding,
and weather, south winds coming a lot,
north winds coming a lot, et cetera.
We recalibrate to each other in that discussion.
Sometimes some people say it's hot, sometimes it's cold.
And then we're forced to kind of recalibrate
to what that means to the group.
We also, in that sharing, are able to expand
our experience base because not everybody sees the same.
So everybody kind of beautifully adds their own,
adds at least one new observation.
So if you have a group of 10,
you walk away with minimally nine new things
that you're looking for
that you've never ever looked at before.
And I think that is kind of the beautiful thing.
If doing this every single month, by month three,
you are seeing more than you could imagine
and you're just exposed to so much.
So that conversation is really, really key.
And then we have one collective record
that every month gets added to and added to.
What huli'ia does not look like.
So we don't do, again, like I said,
we don't do personal journals or data sheets,
because there's a sharing that is absolutely more important
than writing it down.
And we don't designate kilo times or days.
And the reason we don't do that is,
again, we're trying to build the capacity of our people,
of our communities to pay attention.
And when unfortunately, when you designate a time
to do something, you also designate
a time to not do something.
So when, unless you're a navigator
or you're trying to figure out something
like really, really specifically,
the broader kilo is just doing what you do.
Go out in the world, go do what you gotta do.
And you slowly, even though it's not as quick
as a lot of people want it to be,
slowly just naturally start to reflect on,
ooh, I didn't notice the wind today, right?
So we don't do that designation
because we really want people to be engaged 24/7
and not on a clock in and clock out way.
So this is a really, really old data sheet.
It's the first one that we created
in like 2009 or '08 or or whatever.
And it's just really funny,
'cause those places to write are way, way, way too small.
But it's a facilitation sheet,
it's something that one facilitator runs everybody through
and we have a discussion and we take notes
and we log everything down
and then we just have this conversation over and over.
And this master is meant to grow with everybody,
because Big Island, there's not a lot of river systems,
but it doesn't mean we don't want to consider it,
because once in a while those rivers flow, right?
Over here, we don't have lava fields on Kauai,
but we don't wanna take it out of the conversation because
there are some places that,
and some observations that could bring some insight into the
broader system.
So once you go through all of this and you recalibrate in
to each other in the world around you, you start to read,
if you will, the world starts talking to you, right?
We build our vocabulary and just a reminder,
we're not supposed to see what our ancestors saw, right?
We have a lot of conversations about
if we don't see what they saw pre-contact,
we're not Hawaiian enough or we're seeing it wrong.
And that's absolutely wrong.
The communities have changed so much since then
that the storytellers have changed.
Some are still the same and we value that,
but some are different.
It doesn't mean the story is important to hold onto.
There's still stories being told
and we're still able to read that.
We're supposed to see how they saw.
And that's really important.
So this is Hāʻena during the winter, right,
lots of salty breeze, temperatures are cold,
flowering puakenikeni, shoreline smells like limu,
large limu kohu patches,
aholehole and manini have fat gonads.
A lot of recruitment for ʻopihi, et cetera, right?
And these really bold storytellers
start popping out by season and by place.
And because of these, and here we fall
on another ancestral instruction with ʻŌlelo no'eau.
So I'm sorry, I'm gonna go back here.
So we have all of these dominant things
now popping out at us and now we have ʻŌlelo No'eau.
And historically we have these beautiful ʻŌlelo No'eau
pala ka hala, momona ka ha'uke'uke.
That comes from that slide before, right?
They made observations.
They saw dominant things happening.
And then they were able to take that wisdom,
put it in a easy memory and pass it forward.
But the question I ask everybody is,
are these ʻŌlelo No'eau like pala ka hala momona ka ha'uke'uke,
which brings us to our second poll question,
are they ʻŌlelo, are they no'eau, or are they both?
So ʻŌlelo, concepts, ideas, some things we say,
and no'eau, that wisdom and wise.
So are they something we say, are they wise,
or are they both?
And I'm gonna let Malia throw that poll up there.
Malia: Alrighty friends, let's get this poll launched.
All right, so ʻŌlelo or no'eau,
go ahead and then register your vote.
Are they ʻŌlelo, are they no'eau, are they both?
I see about half of you have voted.
You guys are quick this time!
All right, I'm gonna shut down the poll in three, two, one
and let's get those results for you, Pelika.
Oh, interesting!
95% of you said both.
-: Nice!
Okay, so I'm gonna like flip, spin all of this on everybody.
So what makes it ʻŌlelo?
All of you are right, actually.
Some are just ʻŌlelo, some are just things that we say.
Some are no'eau, some are wise, and some are are both.
And the reason why I say that is
let's look at pala ka hala momona ka ha'uke'uke.
Who eats ha'uke'uke, right?
Who has hala in their community as a storyteller?
We don't have the hala groves that used to be
and sometimes we don't live around them.
So I think the lesson for us is it is an ʻŌlelo
and just an ʻŌlelo if it doesn't exist
within our world at the moment,
if they're not your storytellers, right?
There are places where pala ka hala momona ka ha'uke'uke,
like Kawaihae on the Big Island,
that that's just an ʻŌlelo.
It's just something people say.
There's wisdom in it, but it's just something you say
because there are no hala storytellers in Kawaihae, right?
But what are the storytellers in Kawaihae
that tell us momona ka ha'uke'uke?
One, Kawaihae it is the crown royal,
crown royal crown, ooh, that's where my head is going.
The crown flower plant.
When the seed pod starts to break and flutter
all over the place, that white fluff,
that's the time when momona ka ha'uke'uke, right?
We have other ʻŌlelo no'eau and (speaking in Hawaiian),
I'm sure if you are ocean person in Hawai'i
and like wana, you've heard that before.
Well, I challenge anybody to tell me
where neneleau is.
I've only seen a neneleau grove
once in my life, not while it's blooming.
So for me, that is just something I say.
It's just an ʻŌlelo.
It becomes the ʻŌlelo no'eau
when saying when I can use it
and it's a storyteller within my life
and I wanna just in include everybody in that
to kind of again, what are the stories we tell ourselves,
and it's okay to have other storytellers.
So let's move on.
So huli'ia has taken us on this beautiful journey.
We were able to do about four years
at Kalaemanō and four years
with Kure atoll and look at storytellers
and through those years that we continually recalibrate
and recheck to see if they're still
the continued storytellers, we get ʻŌlelo no'eau,
those saying that are not just said,
that they add wisdom to our daily life and they advise us.
So Ke piʻi nā nalu ʻulupā pōhaku,
pulu ka papa a ulu ka pāheʻe which talks about
when the boulder crashing waves arrive,
the papa becomes wet and limu pahe'e grows.
And this tells us a whole lot of things.
It tells us that it can get really, really rough
at Kalaemanō, that it's rough enough
to tear pieces of the cliff and throw them on the shore,
which we've actually witnessed.
It talks about pahe'e being there
and limu pahe'e is a limu all of us did not know
until Kalaemanō introduced us to it.
Tells us the season of when we like to go down there
especially to harvest and share that out,
because a lot of our kupuna remember limu pahe'e
but don't have access to it anymore
because they don't know where it grows
because a lot of people don't go shoreline walking
during really, really rough weather.
We also were able to work for four years
with Kure Atoll or Hōlanikū with their field crew
up in our northern atolls and
Hōʻea mai ka ʻewaʻewa,
kokoke ka haʻalele ʻana o nā mea hoʻoilo
which is a beautiful storyteller of the 'ewa'ewa,
which is a sooty tern and as they arrive,
winter is on its way out, and we know we're coming into
the transition into summer.
So we have stories continually being told to us
and our job is to recalibrate
and to update the storytellers
because our landscapes are different.
Whether we like it or not, they're different.
We have different storytellers.
Our winds have shifted, because our forests have shifted.
We're not gonna see the same kind of weather
and then we have climate change.
So it's like, you know, there's a bunch of things
that are changing and those storytellers
are really important to acknowledge
and to, again, continually read.
So this is the full one of the byproducts of huli'ia
which is this visual story of Kalaemanō
talking about how the sunset colors change
to the rising and setting of our suns
and the location on Mauna Kea,
which is at the piko during the equinoxes,
how our shorelines change,
and then how the recruitment of our intertidal species
happen with spawning, et cetera, et cetera.
And then also the story of Hōlanikū,
of the flowering plants that happen there.
And these beautiful scents that kind of dominate seasonally
that align with different,
with some of our manu kai
that are the majority out at Kure Atoll.
So that's Huli 'Ia, and that's one of the tools
to really have us understand and engage in space
and let us story contribute to its story
and trying to get rid of those narratives.
The second tool I kind of wanted to introduce to you,
and I know we're running out of time,
but I kind of wanna get through this is Ku'u Mo'o ʻŌlelo.
So if we can go back to ʻāina,
we can go back to understanding that we are ʻāina,
and we feed and the ability for us to feed
depends on the ability to be fed
and to understand our productivity
and understand our thrivingness, if you will.
So now that we understand seasons
and one way to track and to really understand
what's happening, we went into moon cycles.
And then before blasting it out into practice,
we wanted to understand how moon phases and seasons
affected us as ʻāina.
So I have this really, really smart friend, Naia Lewis.
She's my birthday super twin.
And I had developed kind of a tool
to really look at moon cycles
and how could I track and assess and analyze
my own relationship with the moon.
But she's an art artist, this beautiful artist,
with this beautiful work
and mine was just like really, really ugly.
And I saw her one day and I showed her my work
and I'm like, "hey, can you make this look nice?"
And I explained to her what it did
and she just kind of smirked at me,
opened up her computer,
and she had almost exactly what I had,
but already beautiful.
So we merged our two tools and we created a journal
to help us look at our personal story
and our narrative with the moon and her cycles.
And through that journey, assess what we tell ourselves,
the story of production.
Are there really non-productive times,
and then really understanding
like healthy and happy and sad.
Every state having and contributing
to production and health.
So this is our journal.
I'm old school, so I still like the hard copy
that I get to write in.
Naia is releasing the app coming up,
so keep your eyes out for that if you're interested.
But it's a way for us to channel your inner geek.
And it's a tool to help us understand our story.
It's really pushing us to be descriptive and honest
about ourselves again, right?
How do we measure and assess ʻāina of ourselves?
So what it looks like is you have an inside spread,
two pages, that represent every moon phase.
And if you aren't, if you're not familiar
with the Hawaiian words for moon phases,
because these are in different places,
there's different names for each moon phase and month,
we just took the most commonly used one.
So please feel free to change it if you want,
but they're numbered also.
So you can refer to the numbers if you like it that way.
And so in Makaliʻi,
in the first month of the year, on a Hilo moon,
at the end of the day, you kind of journal in your thoughts.
Like, "today was really slow,
I had a hard time getting up," you know, blah blah, blah,
or really energetic.
And then if you can kind of pay attention
to the numbers at the end.
So it's a way for us to assess,
and I'll get into how that journaling looks after.
But I wanna go into the numbers.
So we wanted to, and this is Naia's genius.
She was like, "let's quantitatively look at this."
And so we had kino, mana'o and na'au
as the first three that were brought up.
And kino is your physical energy,
mana'o is your mental clarity,
and na'au is emotional resilience.
And notice I'm not using negative, positive words,
because again, all states have a purpose
in our holistic health.
So those three, but then over the past four years,
I've noticed that we have,
there's other things we wanted to track.
So there's gender cycles.
And just because you don't have,
you're not a wahine,
and if you're a kāne,
you also have a gender cycle.
There's a universal attraction.
And what I mean by that is the times you leave your house
and you hit every green light and you go to the store,
you get good parking, go in a store,
go straight to the cashier, everything's breezy, easy to go,
that's higher numbers, right?
For universal attraction.
And then there's some days you jump in your car,
like you almost get hit, you hit every red light,
you cannot find parking, someone yells at you in the store.
Yeah, that's the lower numbers.
And then there's body image.
And I thought this was really important,
because I had been on a diet for a really long time
and I religiously weighed myself and I noticed
that the number on the scale did not equate
the way I felt about my body and they had no relationship.
So I started to track it and I noticed
that there is a cycle, a body image perception
in the lunar month, through the lunar month.
So because I ask people to do this, I did it myself.
And of course, and I share it openly,
because I think it's fascinating to see
what the moon does to us in different states.
So this is just kino, mana'o, and na'au.
And as you can see, there's kind of squigglies
and then it goes up squiggly,
and then it comes down squiggly.
And what I found is in partnership with the journaling,
that there are these three windows that pop up for me
and I share them with others that are doing this as well.
And what we notice is that everybody pretty much
has these windows, they just don't align
on the same moon phases.
So across the board, similarly,
we all experience these types of windows.
They just don't happen at the same time, right?
So this is another thing, right?
Within context of season, within context of you,
within context of your geography, right?
There's all of the, the equation is much larger
than moon phase alone.
So in the ʻole moons, I start to rise
and I go into my first phase of cocky window, right?
This is the charge window.
This is when I get myself into a lot of trouble.
The stewing window happens after,
where I have so much information
and there's so much things to talk about,
but nothing makes sense.
So this is a time where I don't force it,
I let it just come in and out of my head.
I clean if I feel like it, right?
This is the times where I cut the grass
and go weeding, or wash the dishes, scrub the floor.
Stuff that I don't have to really analytically think about,
because everything is just like a good pot of stew.
Just needs to miko a little bit.
And then right after that there's a stars aligned window
where there's some clarity and all of those things
start to make sense.
And that's when you put your head down and that's what,
not you, me, put my head down,
and I start to do that kind of work.
That optimizes that kind of product, if you will, right?
And then this is the journaling, right?
So (speaking in Hawaiian), this is all my journals.
So as you journal, just like huli'ia, right,
you're going through what are the dominant things happening.
So you go through your journal at the end of it,
and you only need like three or four through the year,
and you start to see dominant words that pop up.
That's why you have to be very descriptive
and open and honest.
And you still see like slow and steady,
mind is good, getting through things, but a bit overwhelmed,
tired fast and easily.
Dragging.
Same as mahoe hope.
So there's a lot of things that are happening
that dominantly align to a certain moon phase for me.
And then we have the ʻOle Kūkahi
and I wanted to show you,
this is my cocky window, right?
As I go up feeling myself getting punchy,
smart ass, and a little bit playful and naughty.
And it's really funny because I have no entries
and it's just like, who has time to write during that time?
And that's in itself, the no entry
is a descriptor in itself.
So what does this mean, right?
So how does this increase our capacity and our insight?
How does these ancestral instructions left to us,
how do we recalibrate, how do we reassess,
how do we bring it into the present?
How do we make it applicable to us?
These answers, the lunar cycles, seasonal cycles,
our kupuna recognized aligning with optimal times
to do things, to not do things, right?
Those instructions are still there,
we just need to learn the vocabulary,
build our capacity to be literate again
on that idea of indigenous literacy,
understanding those cycles and then aligning our actions,
making again, the kilo.
Observing, so now that we can make some decisions
and actions in place that optimize success, if you will.
Optimize success to stay in and have
a Netflix marathon because that's what it's called for
for your body to rest and your mind to rest.
And you can laugh, because it's really true.
We beat ourselves up for doing things
that someone else's story has told us is not productive.
But in reality, the resting or the social engagements
or the social non-engagement, those are all states
that are really beneficial to lean into
and revisiting those narratives and beliefs
and reselling relationships
and recalibrating to the world around us.
And this all goes into changing our practice, right?
Revisiting narratives and beliefs
and then going into our best practices
and asking if they're good practices.
So we have another poll,
I know we kind of jumped through this,
but through huli'ia and through other kinds of inquiries
and reassessing and having another vocabulary
and opening ourselves to other informants, if you will,
other storytellers and other libraries to be read,
and really understanding that we had to reassess
and recalibrate our narratives and the stories,
we started to look at these ideas of best practices
and really asking ourselves, wait, are they best practices,
but are they good practices?
And I work in fisheries a lot.
So these are two what are considered best practices
that I wanna ask you guys about if they're good practices.
So this is our last poll, I believe.
These are stories we are throughout Hawai'i
taking only what you need.
So oh, we have 'em together.
So yeah, are they good practices?
Yes, no, not sure.
Malia: All right, so we have about a quarter of you
who have voted.
So we will close this down soon,
because we are running out time and so much ʻike
being shared today by Pelika.
So I'm gonna shut the poll down
and get you those results, Pelika.
All right, so majority, 79%, say yes.
They both are good best practices that are good practices.
18% said not sure, and 4% said no.
-: Okay.
Okay, mahalo.
Mahalo everybody for participating.
Okay, so I'm gonna make everybody uncomfortable.
So my belief is that they are not good practices.
Taking only what you need, right?
Every fisherman, every family says this,
"oh, Iʻm a lawaiʻa pono, I'm a good fisherman,
because I take only what I need."
But the reality of the situation is
your needs have nothing to do
with the production of a system and a fishery, right?
What if a hundred people just needed one fish,
but the fishery itself couldn't give us a hundred fish?
Are we still doing damage?
Absolutely, right?
So taking what only what you need is a good practice
or is considered a best practice, but it's not really,
it's not really a good practice alone, right?
What if we flip that script?
What if we challenge that story and said,
"hey, why don't I fish to what a place can provide," right?
Could I still get what I need?
But now I'm changing the strategy of fishing.
And the answer is, yes, you can still get what you need,
but now the strategy is targeting species, sizes,
locations of fishing, by what that system can provide you
in a sustʻāinable, in a healthy way.
So again, right?
Taking only what you need alone.
If a hundred people need a hundred fish and a place can only
provide 50, we still do damage.
So it's kind of like those really like delicate answers.
It's like, yeah, it's a good step, but let's not stop there.
I have this thing about fisheries, right?
You know certain things about fish.
We know that bigger fish are better producers.
They are supposed to stay there,
because they give us more babies, right?
You have a two foot papio or ulua
that produces the equivalent
of a hundred papio half it size.
If you need to feed 20 people,
most people would go out and get that two footer
so they would get what they need
and feel good about themselves.
But that two footer was equivalent to a hundred small ones.
Or you could have gone out if you fished
to what that place could provide you,
go get 20 half size papio,
you still would not be doing damage to that fishery
in the same way, still getting what you need,
but actually leaving more in the system
than what you actually take out
in production quality, right?
So also resetting the idea that every fish is created equal.
They have production qualities that change through maturity,
change through size, et cetera, et cetera.
Real fast, leaving fish when they're spawning.
Again, a spawning fish and there are important spawners
and not important spawners,
whether they are spawning or not.
Let me repeat that.
You have important spawners
and not important spawners.
Whether they're spawning or not.
Is that hard to get?
So the idea behind that is that ulua,
that two foot long ulua is an important spawner.
Whether it's having babies or not having babies,
it's still important.
So when we leave fish, when they're spawning,
but go and get them when they're not spawning,
we're still taking out really, really important fish
in the ecosystem and in that fishery.
And we are forgetting that our ancestors fished to ono.
If you look back in our history and you talk to the kupuna,
you talk to old people, they talk about,
what is the word?
In the Cooks, they call it weka,
and it's that richness, right?
That's found in the fats and the gonads
and all of that nice reproductive organs
that provide this flavor and this richness to our food.
We eat all of those.
So we are bypassing that consideration as well.
So I'm just challenging it,
because we have to grow and we have to take steps
and the world is telling us this,
our fish are telling us this,
our weather is telling us this,
and we just have to be open to resetting those narratives.
I think that's the whole goal.
So I know we are running enough time
and kind of are out of time,
but I just wanna mahalo all of you for listening
and jumping in.
There's so many people that are part of this journey.
That's just a list of a few of 'em.
And yeah, I'm gonna open it up
to comments or questions or, yeah.
Mahalo.
Mahalo again, everybody.
Malia: Mahalo nui, so waiwai. Mahalo nui Pelika,
for sharing the space with us today
and for broadening and deepening our understanding
of living and thriving ʻōiwi knowledge systems,
practices, and communities as we work towards
ʻāina momona today.
So we apologize that we are unable to get your questions,
but we will submit the unasked questions to Pelika
and we will send that all out to you folks
with the email that you registered with.
Kanoe: Yes mahalo, Pelika.
If some of you are wondering about
viewing this presentation in the future,
we do have a webinar archive of our past presentations,
but it takes about two weeks
to get them captioned and online.
So you will all get a follow up email with that link.
And if you have any questions,
you can contact us at sanctuary.education@noaa.gov.
Malia: And you'll also be getting a certificate!
So let me pull that up so you folks
can see what it is that you're gonna be getting
just for attending today's presentation.
So it's for one contact hour of professional development.
Kanoe: And we are working on confirming
next month's webinar, so please stay tuned.
Malia: And so we look forward to seeing all of you
at future events.
When you are signing out, you folks please can take
this very short four question evaluation
and it'll take you only about a minute.
So for mahalo nui for doing that.
Kanoe: If you are a formal or informal educator,
we kindly ask you to fill out a short survey,
which will take you about five minutes.
NOAA education community recognizes
that currently educators and students
are using live and on-demand multimedia content to learn,
and we wanna ensure that NOAA produced resources
meet the needs of all these educators and students.
-: So with that, we want to express our deepest
mahalo to Pelika for sharing her time
and her ʻike and her mana with all of us.
We hope that you all walk away
with new thoughts and inspiration.
Mahalo to everyone participating in today's webinar.
Aloha. A hui hou.