Ko'u Huakaʻi

The idea that I want to convey with my photo collage is that the world truly is such a beautiful place. Recently my life has been nothing but stress and worry. Growing up you always hear people say “don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.” and I always took that quote literally. I always thought to myself “why would I stop to smell some flowers when I have places to be or things to do?” Little did I know it was never just about smelling some flowers, it was about seeing how beautiful life is.

On my journey through this internship, it has always been about self discovery and connecting back to my roots here in Hawai’i. The beauty my collage shows is truly the beauty of nature. There are so many bright colors to be seen, memories to be made, growth to be had. My journey of self discovery and connecting back to my roots has also opened my eyes back up to the world around me and through this discovery, I believe I have found a place to start. This journey is not something that I’m going to learn over the span of one summer break. This is a journey that I could possibly spend the rest of my life trying to follow, but at least now I have the footing to start somewhere.

Growing up as a military child, I never had the chance to connect to my roots the way I would like to. Having to constantly move around, I never felt like I had connections anywhere. Especially since I have such strong familial ties to Hawaii, one of my ancestors being Kawika Kapahulehua Being a part of this program to me, meant starting that connection and learning where I came from and how I can incorporate this into my day to day life.

Comparing current versus historical use of land in terms of agriculture and finding a middle ground between societies needs and restorative efforts.

The first step in the right direction would simply be to seek education about these specific topics. I myself never saw myself doing this line of work but yet here I am.

there are so many amazing and talented people who are already doing so much to make change happen. Such as Kari from Create(X). She has been working on creating VR, AR, and XR for research purposes.

Some other absolutely amazing people we had the opportunity to work with were Adam Hanohano and Jesse Mikasobe-Keali'inohomoku. These two amazing people are doing such amazing work in Kunia and blessed us with the opportunity to come work along side them. They provided us with amazing information and new insights.

Another step in the right direction is to simply try. It doesn't have to be anything grand but growing your own foods, growing indigenous foods, just growing something in general can go a long way for the future.

The idea behind my ho'ike project is to find a middle ground between societies needs and restorative efforts. In a sense, my journey through this internship has been the same thing just with a personal focus. This internship opened my eyes to ways that I can begin this process of ultimately healing.

Being a military child, growing up and moving from place to place really made me feel disconnected to the land, my culture, and ultimately my own identity. I knew deep down I wanted to build pilina and mend those relationships. As Kamuela Enos once said as a reference to one of his brothers art pieces, "where does the hana end and tie into the world." The way I interpreted this was that hana will always tie into the world, and being able to hana ultimately helps people grow. My reasoning behind joining the malama pu'uloa program was in hopes I would be able to grow. To grow into a better, stronger, more kind person. I now know what it means to hana, and what it means to malama not only nature and our communities, but also malama myself. This is something that took me 21 years to learn, and in a sense I am still an infant. This internship gave me experiences and opportunities that I can take with me for the rest of my life and still continue to grow, and also understand that growth isn't linear. This is something that I could possibly spend the rest of my life trying to achieve, but I now know that as long as I'm taking steps in the right direction, then everything will eventually be okay.