Typically, we speak words thoughtlessly, hoping to pass along an acceptable approximation of meaning. More often than not, the significance or gravity escapes us.
I have spoken about the profound kinship between these Native Hawaiian people and their land - ka ‘aina. And yet, my words now feel more superficial than a gaggle of drunk tourists at a commercial lu’au.
I am not a Native Hawaiian - not in full, not in part. I do not carry the blood that infects and inspires the species kanaka. All that I claim and carry is the proximate relationship to a deeply cultural-bound Native. ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani has been my husband for a couple decades.
As in most marriages: we sometimes share an empathy that touches souls; we sometimes stumble across the barriers of our own heritage and experience.
When I met a man twenty-two years ago, who had relinquished every benefit and reward of a lifetime of hard work in order to embrace the guidance of unseen ancestors, I was in awe, but not necessarily convinced.
He made absolutely no effort to convince me of anything other than his own faith. For the better part of seventeen years he walked his Islands - ten miles each day under the noon sun - to better hear and feel the words of his long-dead Grandmothers.
When he, and later, I put our heads down at night - those heads were laid upon the very ‘aina he walked. Yes, a tent, and at times an air mattress - but the sand of the Salt Pan Park was what cradled our dreams.
His Grandmothers called them his “years of grooming.” What had formerly been a successful businessman was transformed into a cultural practitioner who listened to the winds and the waves; who asked, and then listened, for answers across the invisible and inaudible, before taking a single step. For seventeen years, we lived without a house. It was a daily surrender, unmatched even by my humbling surrender to daily motherhood.
When, five years ago, a devoted supporter offered to buy ‘Iokepa and me a home. ‘Iokepa reverted to pre-colonial understanding. “There is no ownership. All of these Islands belong to all of us.”
Instead, he was offered an acre and a half of dense jungle that he would never own - and a house that would be ours indeed, if not in deed. The Grandmothers had found a way.
And now I come full circle: a kanaka maoli on his land.
This acre and a half was, and is, completely landlocked (forbidding work-ameliorating equipment to enter). The hills would be navigated on hand and knee.
Edge to edge, It was invasive Swamp Mahogany - a huge tree that sucks water from the earth’s aquifer, and keeps it for its own. Native trees, on the other hand, return the water to the earth for human and plant re-use. Think community - and don’t miss the metaphor.
Almost five years ago, ‘Iokepa began. On hands and knees, chainsaw in hand, he cleared the trees - narrow slice of ‘aina by narrow slice of ‘aina. Each year, more hillside was exposed. Each year, he cut massive logs and branches into manageable pieces, rolled them down the hills, and stacked them at the edges of our little acre.
It was near impossible to view the cleared land with equanimity - it looked desolate. A neighbor called it “apocalyptic.” But ‘Iokepa’s vision (coalesced in 17 years walking the Islands’ roads and pathways) was unfazed. He was a man on a mission - and the mission was forever cultural.
He began to plant. His first order of business: to feed the community. Five years later: bananas, papayas, mangoes, avocados, lemons, oranges are on our table - and hand-delivered, with equal regularity, to the beach park where we used to lay our heads. Our friends still live there.
We await the future’s coconuts, breadfruit, and macadamia nuts. These young trees lavish in the sunlight that ‘Iokepa’s back-breaking clearing now permits.
As a married couple, we’ve had to negotiate: time spent on ka ‘aina versus the time spent…well…otherwise. It has been settled: four days each week are his on the land. And those days are long. ‘Iokepa comes in dirty, sweaty, sometimes aching - but always filled with novella-length commentary…and benevolence. He is nearing his seventieth birthday and he has never been younger.
And still, I’ve not yet mentioned his fervor for the singular, culture-defining, ancestor-divining source of Native life - his lo’i. My poi consuming, leaf steaming husband bends over his little kalo patch with an ardor that, if it were another woman I’d have reason to complain. He returns to our table full of “family stories” about the keiki he’s transplanted or the corm (root) he has shared with a neighbor,
I have known ‘Iokepa for decades. But this man - this seriously Native Hawaiian man - is twice himself when he’s permitted the freedom to toil on his ‘aina. And this is not just the truth of one man, but rather, of a tribe of Native people. A people who’ve been pried off and denied the land of their ancestors - starved of that which literally and figuratively nourishes their marrow.
And still, I struggle to make words work for more - beyond the token ones: Native Hawaiians have a “profoundly kinship” with their land.
Spiritually - whether it’s on Mauna Kea or the Salt Pans; the coastal fishing and limu gathering beaches or the mountainous hunting and logging lands - these people cease to be kanaka maoli if obstructed from the passionate life support that is their Holy Land.