"The Grand Unifier: Wai" with Ulu Ching

Welcome to the last episode of Season 4! This conversation with Moana Pōmaikaʻi Kauluwehiokaʻala Ching, aka Ulu, is a beautiful reflection of our deep connectedness with and through wai. The grand unifier. Ulu is so grounded in who she is and offers us a wonderful weaving of storytelling, genealogy of self, finding purpose, and seeing service to others as a service to ourselves.  Ulu Ching is an Island of Hawai’i wahine, kanaka oiwi, mother, and “conservationist” by profession, a term we reflect on in this episode. Ulu shares understandings beyond scientific analysis and procedural approaches, rooted in a spiritual kanaka oiwi place of knowing. She graciously challenges initiatives that are heavily saturated by technical approaches and often catastrophizing language is used in the climate and environmental space.  Ancestral knowledge provides a more interconnected worldview with cultural values that hold our resources as sacred elements. That perspective approaches crises much differently. Ulu offers us a way to pause in our daily lives that are often distracting or demanding, and invites you to practice more aloha for wai and by virtue of that, give more aloha to yourself and the world around you. It is all connected, just as we are all connected through wai. As Ulu shares, doing this daily act is not just "the right thing to do" for the environment but is essential to the healing and wellbeing of our spirits.  Thank you for joining us for this episode, we can't wait for you to hear it! 

This episode is a little love letter to wai in commemorating World Water Day 2022, this year's theme being “Making the Invisible, Visible” with a focus on groundwater to highlight the urgent need to protect it, which comes at a time of great relevance and reverence for us here in Hawaiʻi. Almost all of our liquid freshwater is groundwater, supporting drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. In some places, we simply do not know how much water is down there. But what we do know is that our groundwater and aquifers are essential to our lives and will continue to play a central role in our survival, adapting to the climate crisis and ongoing destabilization to come. But we created this episode to recharge our spirits by amplifying the beautiful connection that we have to wai and one another with mele (song), and mo’olelo (story). We did a little callout and have a diverse set of wahine sharing a piece of themselves with us.  The order of the pieces will be: "Flow of Life" by Anna Chua who is the Red Hill organizer at the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi and member of this podcast team with a soul awakening poem about water as life, warrior, and leader of resistance. Followed by Estrella Marin- Ethnic Studies Major at UH Manoa and scuba diver honoring her place of solace and solitude with  “Mother Ocean”. Next is powerhouse lawyer, mother, and advocate Rachel James share an empowering story, “Wai-We Gotta Talk About It”, that confronts the years of disconnected thought forced upon wai and one another. And last but not least we finish with epic beats from ʻIhilani Lasconia- Native Hawaiian student, artist, and organizer with Hui Aloha ʻĀina and Af3irm Hawaiʻi gifting us with conscious hip hop, inspiring us to come together to liberate wai, ʻāina, and ourselves- titled “Ola i ka Wai.” Photo credit: Jong Marshes

This episode is packed full of information on water law, historical cases, community organizing on Maui to end water diversions from private companies, and wahine, womens’ roles in the movement to restore wai. Our avid listeners may know that water is a public trust by law in Hawaiʻi, held as a human right for the benefit of all people. Bianca Isaki, Ph.D is one of those advocates with a wealth of experience and offers us some legal analysis on water rights and issues, a rigorous and detailed insight into an array of water protection movements that make up just a fraction of the broader landscape.  She is very intentional and specific throughout this interview to help us understand her role as a partner to empower communities with legal expertise, always doing her best to give credit to the ones on the ground doing the work. But with all that Bianca shares about law, processes, water science, and community struggle; we know she is certainly putting in the work herself to be a strong ally to kanaka maʻoli and advocate for aloha ʻāina. 

In this episode we have the esteemed pleasure to have a talk-story session with two beloved water protectors about historical and present day struggles. Both of them uplift the brilliance in water and land protection movements that continue to be a force of resilience against decades of extraction, diversion, and disconnection.  Eric Enos is co-founder and Executive Director of Kaʻala Farm Inc.- whose mission to reclaim and preserve the living culture of Poʻe Kahiko (people of old) stretches back all the way to the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970’s, and Jonathan Scheuer, Ph.D who consults clients in managing environmental conflicts involving cultural, economic, and conservation stakeholders and sits on the Hawaiʻi State Land Use Commission.  In this conversation, we get a snapshot into the water struggle Kaʻala led to restore water sheds in the Waiʻanae Moku after years of depletion from sugar plantation diversions. But through community organizing and solidarity during an epic era of activism throughout Hawaiʻi, Kaʻala was birthed as a farm, cultural education center, and an oasis for local people to reconnect to and heal through ʻāina. Jonathan offers an analysis of the structural inequity in institutional decision making and resource distribution of water management affecting the health of our waterways.  The conversation was empowering, filled with deep knowledge and passion for our wai embodied with insight into the ongoing struggle that kanaka and allies have endured to protect it.

"Militarism and water do not work well together. Because fresh water is everything... to destabilize ʻāina, you destabilize water."  In this episode we have the extreme pleasure of talking-story with the epic human- Sean Connelly who shares his journey from an elementary student concerned about ocean plastics to they're work today at the nexus of art, architecture, teaching, and aloha ʻāina activism. Sean has dedicated the past twelve years of their lives to research, education, and artistry that contemplates the meaning of urbanism, "militourism," and settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi.  This is such a beautiful weaving of storytelling, critical history, and grassroots organizing to defend our water systems, highlighting issues around the Ala Wai Canal and Fort DeRussy in Waikiki, and the major issue facing us in this moment, the U.S Navy's perpetuation of environmental violence and threat to our water supply with their fuel storage facility at Kapūkaki. Sean ends this conversation with a beautiful vision and current effort to revive and reclaim ahupuaʻa systems and systems thinking to build a just future.  Just a note that this episode was recorded on Oct. 26, 2021. Sean talk's about the Red Hill Fuel Facility as a apart of their longstanding work on this issue but would surely have said post the fuel leak in late November. Access to clean water and healthy water systems is absolutely essential to our ability to live and thrive in Hawaiʻi and around the world.  We invite you to take a moment to think about your relationship to wai and as always, stay rooted.  Photo courtesy of alohahawaiionipaa.org

If you've been listening to the news or following social media the past month, you know water has been on everybody’s minds recently. Every day there is more happening at Kapūkaki, aka Red Hill. This episode was recorded on Dec. 7, 2021, shortly after Oʻahu's Board of Water Supply shut down the Halawa shaft to prevent possible contamination. At the same time there was historic rainfall throughout the paeʻāina with major impacts to the coasts, exacerbating already eroded areas. All just a sobering reminder to us all that the climate crisis is here and we all have a role in protecting the place we call home.  Professor Noelani Puniwai offers a rich perspective on reconnecting to the cultural, historical, and spiritual relationship of wai as a path forward to aloha ʻāina and ʻāina momona. Her work as an academic, conservation scientist, native Hawaiian community member, science educator, and a mother, is dedicated to ensuring the health and wellbeing of aina and wai. She does this all through storytelling to meaningfully connect and awaken to place.  We hope this episode enriches you fills you with curiosity and aloha for the place you call home in Hawaiʻi nei.

O la i ka wai. Water is life. And what a time to be talking about it. Oʻahu is experiencing a water crisis as a result of the Navy's continued negligence. Mauʻi suffers on-going stream diversion from reckless profit-seeking landowners. The climate crisis continues to threaten access to fresh water. The list goes on. There are many struggles to protect and defend water systems from foreign interests, militarism, and profit seeking landowners happening across our islands. But in true RCR fashion, we spoke to with grassroots water protectors throughout our islands to capture the many place-based struggles and sought to weave a thread of deep reverence for wai's resilience.  To start our season, check out this short episode to get a rundown. You will also get to meet our guest host, Lala Nuss; a regenerative practitioner, local wahine, and soulful storyteller who weaves her deep admiration for wai, social justice, and aloha ʻāina with grace and power! Our beloved Tina took a break to finish her dissertation and is now on the frontlines organizing against the Navy. Though she is missed, we are grateful for her fearless voice and leadership on the frontlines resisting the military industrial complex and calling for a decolonized future! 

We finished up our season full of questions unpacking how our energy system works, who all the players are, and how to approach it in our daily fight for collective resistance and liberation from extraction and colonialism. One thing we do know, is that the energy system does impact every moment we use or communicate through our devices. And right now it is doing harm to communities hosting industrial scale energy facilities, our ʻāina, our native species, and the pocketbooks of working families struggling to make ends meet.  For all of the above, we are sharing two bonus episodes from recent panels hosted by grassroots statewide leaders and the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi as a complement to the Hawaiʻi Energy Conference to raise up indigenous and community voices often ignored in the mainstream.  Native Hawaiian intelligence and indigenous perspectives shouldn't just to inform our transition to renewables, but lead the dialogue in this space. The ike of kupuna is not something added after the fact but should be at the inception or lead to the conception of an idea. The right foundation of knowledge can steer us back to the path that worked on our islands that worked for thousands of years before colonial contact- corporate power- and profit driven models. On the panel are: scholar, kumu, and kiaʻi Dr. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele, s Tēvita Kaʻili, and Ikaika Hussey. Moderated by Todd Yamashita- President of Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative we spoke with for episode three this season. If you haven’t watched them, we think you should. The presentations were powerful and visuals would help with many of the references made, especially by the brilliance of Dr. Kanahele on Nā Kiʻiki Akua- Godly images. But the conversations were transformative and the reverence for ʻāina was palpable. Give it a listen, friends. 

Closing out this mini-season on a high note with the members and partners of the grassroots created Hoʻāhu Energy Cooperative Molokaʻi and Shake Energy Collaborative. We've been talking a lot about the many layered and interconnected forms of oppression inherent in our privatized, corporate controlled, for-profit energy system. But these Molokaʻi community leaders are flipping the script and taking control to make community-led and owned energy development and distribution a reality.  Also, we will be taking a little break this summer but please stay posted on upcoming episodes in the fall. As always, stay rooted. 

Welcome to part two of our conversation with Kahuku on their struggle for energy justice. In the first part of this episode, gave us the rundown on the AES Na Pua Makani wind power project. They talked about the issues with the project and the many ways, over several years, that they tried to intervene in the project. In this episode, we pick back up right to where the struggle got super kuʻe and Kahuku engaged in more than a month long blockade to stop the turbines from being constructed. In this part of the conversation, you will hear a lot of what we can think of as distributive justice- where rural, working class, BIPOC communities are disproportionately burdened by the energy system. But Kahuku isn’t just sharing what they are fighting, they are laying a vision of solutions created by the people. Because they are facing many threats to their community beyond our energy system. On top of that, they are already feeling the impacts of climate change. Their vision takes us away not only from fossil fuels but from an extractive capitalist society to one that is rooted in ʻāina and the places that we call home.  Make sure to tune in to another powerful conversation and stay rooted. Art credit: Jenica Taylor