Land and People

Part I of a two-part conversation with Jermy Uowolo, who was born and raised on the island of Fais in the State of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). He received his bachelors degree from University of Hawai`i at Hilo and served as a conservationist for the Watershed Alliance in Hawai`i, the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project and is the President of the Micronesians United – Big Island (MU-BI) organization in Hawai`i. His knowledge spans the remote atols of his home state, to Guam, Palau, the Mariana Islands and beyond. He shares with us the prehistory and the recent immigration, military and colonial struggles in places like the Marshall Islands, and the challenge of preserving cultural practices and knowledge.

Archie Kalepa Is a retired ocean safety officer who served the County of Maui for 32 years. Archie is not only a world renowned ocean safety expert and dedicated advocate for Hawaiian culture with decades of experience in rescue operations, cultural preservation and team leadership. He is a pivotal leader in West Maui, as one of the first responders on-scene after the Lahaina fires organizing the ocean delivery of needed food, water and essentials to people stranded and desperate for help. While his big wave surfing and ocean rescue accolades are many, he tells us about how helping and connecting people to the land, ocean and each other--especially in times of crisis--are among his most difficult and rewarding experiences.

Abigail Romanchak was born and raised on Maui and is a native Hawaiian printmaker who conveys the Hawaiian environment–the sounds, bird songs, human footprints across Haleakalā–through the medium of printmaking. She has both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Art with a specialty in printmaking from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and her work has been shown and collected by museums and institutions throughout the world. She takes her inspiration from uncovering the hidden, sometimes minute patterns in nature and art–from nearly invisible watermarks made by Hawaiian kapa beaters on wauke (or mulberry) to the rings made by trees that mark cycles of drought. Through her bold use of abstract lines and geometric shapes, her work is an intentional departure from commercial representations of the Hawaiian landscape, specifically in the following work: her Kahea series (or the visualization of Hawaiian bird calls), the silence of Haleakalā as represented by sound waves in the Ke Ano series, the Pilina series of prints made with ash from the Kula 2023 fires on Maui, and her Tracked series of human conservation activity.

In this live recording for the 2024 Hawai‘i Conservation Conference, co-hosts Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht interview keynote speakers Kapuaʻala Sproat, professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Kekai Keahi, Maui Komohana community leader in the opening session “What Water Rights in West Maui Can Teach Us About Fire & Conservation."  In an emotional interview for 1,400 attendees, they revisit the 2023 Maui fire catastrophes one year later, recounting historical land care battles dating back more than a century, as well as their own personal struggles, triumphs and lessons. They demonstrate how the fight for land, people and water is a responsibility we all share to make possible a thriving future for all of Hawai‘i's people. For more information about this plenary panel, click here: https://www.hawaiiconservation.org/conference/2024-keynote-name-2/

Born and raised on Maui, Hina Puamohala Kneubuhl is an artist, co-founder of Kealapiko clothing, rare plant botanist, Hawaiian translator and scholar. Her knowledge base spans both conservation and the humanities, as her lineage of healers and musicians includes her great-grandmother Nana Veary and her grandmother, renowned Hawai`i singer Emma Veary. We traverse many worlds--from her work in Hawaiian language translation, her work in rare plant conservation to her recent activism against the proposed military telescopes atop Haleakalā, Maui. She connects economic and environmental sustainability for all of Hawai`i's people to the importance of indigenous sovereignty both in Hawai`i and abroad.

Co-hosts Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht give you a *sneak peak* of Season 3 coming up very soon!

Scholar and historian Dr. Davianna Pōmaika`i McGregor is a founding member of the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa's Ethnic Studies Department and a pivotal force in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement beginning in the 1970s. Now retired, she taught oral history, environmental and cultural review and assessment to many students for 49 years. She speaks to the importance of upholding basic living standards for Hawai`i's people and how her work spans countless struggles across ethnic lines--from her involvement with the Protect Kaho`olawe `Ohana which helped successfully transfer the former bombing range to indigenous stewardship by native Hawaiians to her scholarship and activism that aimed to prevent Chinatown evictions of former plantation workers on fixed incomes.  She speaks to the importance of framing political struggles along class lines while at the same time promoting indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections for the benefit of all.

Dr. Gerry Carr, Emeritus Professor of Botany at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa has studied and taught the evolution of plants in the silversword alliance, a unique group of Hawaiian plants encompassing an extraordinary diversity of forms and habitats. In this episode, we talk about the importance of plant taxonomy in understanding the interrelations between seemingly disparate species and get into harrowing and fun stories of his fieldwork--from Haleakalā, Maui to Ohikilolo in the Wai`anae mountains of O`ahu. His passion for photographing the unique features of plants spans many decades and can be found here:

https://s10.lite.msu.edu/res/msu/botonl/b_online/vascular/default.htm

Entomologist Dr. Ken Kaneshiro at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa has studied and taught Hawaiian evolution and biology to countless generations of students through the story of the 1,000+ species of Hawaiian drosophila, picture-wing fruit flies descended from a single ancestor. His passion for conservation biology began as a dishwasher on the drosophila project, and has extended to his founding of the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology Graduate Program which has trained many of today's conservation stewards in Hawai`i. As the Program Director for the Center for Conservation Research & Training at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center, he continues to connect students of all ages to the life sciences which stems from his advocacy for a close relationship to nature across all disciplines, social and ethnic backgrounds.

Dr. Scott Rowland has studied and taught geology at the University of Hawai‘i volcanologist for 41 years, having earned teaching distinctions including the Board of Regents and President’s awards. He shares with us his research into remote-sensing volcanology to help determine the ages of different lava flows across the Hawaiian Islands. We also revisit the processes that caused the 2018 Kīlauea volcanic eruption which devastated homes, roads, beaches and harbors in Hawai‘i as well as several destructive Hawaiian earthquakes in the 19th and 20th century. Through his telling, we gain an extended sense of time from the formation of the Hawaiian archipelago 80+ million years ago to the present day. To learn more about Scott and download his roadside geology guidebooks go here: https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/FACULTY/ROWLAND/