Noelle MKY Kahanu is a bridge builder across art, policy and social justice through her work as a museum curator, legal scholar, Hawaiian rights activist, and teacher. She is a University of Hawaiʻi Specialist and Interim Director for Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program, having worked for fifteen years previously as a curator and program lead for the Bishop Museum. Noelle tells us of traversing the many worlds of art and activism, beginning in her youth with close family and friends who were involved in class struggles. In this interview, Noelle speaks to a lifetime of "heart work" that combines deep empathy, fortitude and analytical skills–from repatriating Hawaiian human remains to ethnographic and contemporary art exhibitions around radical renewal and healing among often overlooked communities.

Dr. Ty Tengan is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa whose work emphasizes ethnic studies in relation to Hawaiian identity and masculinity, sovereignty, land, and militarism. His activism and work extends to running oral history field schools, cultural workshops, water rights and burial site protection. In this conversation, Melissa and Clay talk about Tenganʻs work in native Hawaiian repatriation, and the profound significance of ʻiwi kupuna burial practices perpetuating indigenous worldview. We discuss the “forced amnesia” of colonization and the re-learning and re-membering Hawaiian traditions and practices, especially those around Hawaiian masculinity.

We continue our two-part conversation with Dr. Ross Cordy, Pacific Island Hawaiian-Pacific studies at University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu. Trained as both an archaeologist and ethnohistorian, Dr. Cordy’s specialty is reconstructing the history of Hawai‘i as told from multiple data sources. In the second half of our discussion, we consider settlement patterns across the Hawaiian archipelago, as well as the rise of countries and kingdoms within the islands themselves. We also talk about the significance of cultural jewels like Wai‘anae and Kukaniloko on O‘ahu and the histories of places in Micronesia.

Trained as both an archaeologist and ethnohistorian, Dr. Ross Cordy is a renowned scholar of Pacific Island Hawaiian-Pacific studies at University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu, specializing in reconstructing the history of Hawai‘i as told from multiple data sources. Beginning with his study of the Hawaiian coastal village of Lapakahi in Kohala, his career in Oceania spans fifty+ years–from Huahini, Aotearoa, and Micronesia to the Hawai‘i State Historic Preservation Division where he undertook the challenging task of cultural site protection. In this two-part series, we first look at the voyages and settlement patterns of people across the Pacific to Hawai‘i. Dr. Cordy also addresses what is known and what is not known about long distance voyaging between Hawai‘i and elsewhere.

Dr. Patrick Kirch is a University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa anthropology professor specializing in historical anthropology, archaeology and the deep-time history of the peoples of the Pacific. In this interview, Melissa and Clay talk with him about how his growing up in Mānoa valley among kānaka maoli and Bishop Museum mentors influenced him early on, and how his field research has taken him from Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, to Tonga and Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Hawai’i. We come to understand the adaptability of people in ancient times through transported world views, plants, animals, and diverse agricultural practices–lifeways that continue today.

Co-hosts Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht reflect on the past two seasons of Land and People, the most poignant and most difficult moments in the podcast, as well as their shared work at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in helping to reduce wildfire risk across the Hawaiian landscape.

Billy Kinney is a storyteller, cultural practitioner, connector and land back advocate whose family traces its lineage, care and kuleana to Kauaʻi’s north shore. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s during Hanalei river’s “boating wars,” Billy unpacks the challenges and opportunities for local people to connect and reconnect with ʻāina amidst unrestrained tourism and development, thereby redirecting the future of sacred places like Hāʻena. As the Assistant Director of the Hui Makaʻāinana o Makana he carries forward the group’s mission to interpret, restore, care and protect the natural and cultural resources within the Hāʻena State Park. He shares how he traverses many worlds--both western and Hawaiian--and how his intimate traditional stewardship knowledge can sometimes complement or come into conflict with his academic background in urban regional planning.

Justin Hite has worked with some of Kaua‘i’s rarest forest birds like the ʻAkekeʻe and the ‘Akikiki, down to the last individuals in the remote ʻAlakaʻi rain forests. As the former field supervisor of the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project over a decade, he helped track and collect eggs of these incredibly rare birds for captive propagation to establish “emergency” populations in the event of their extinction in the wild. His career as a birder spans decades across multiple continents and countries to Kauai where he spent over 1,000 field nights camping in remote terrain. He talks about his field adventures and his current work on the Birds Not Mosquitos project which aims to reduce the most serious existential threat to Hawaiian honeycreepers: fatal diseases carried by mosquitoes.

Melissa Chimera, co-host of the Land and People podcast is a Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 visual artist whose work consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. In this interview, Melissa talks with Dr. Jaimey Faris, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at UH Mānoa on how environmental justice can be expressed through “undisciplining” or pursuing the links between art, science and ethics of deep care. They talk about how her paintings (Inheritance: Maui Nui, Not Even the Fiercest Wind, Endless Blue: Mauna Kahalawai) address endangered species, the Maui fires and the transformative potential of Chimera’s public installation “Hulihonua: Transformed Landscapes”. The installation consists of 360 deer antlers, native vegetation and flowing water at Foster Botanical Garden. Their conversation contributes to the Hawai‘i Contemporary’s Hawai‘i Triennial 2025, an international exhibition whose theme of “Aloha Nō” encompasses artworks that express solidarity, interconnectedness, care and reciprocity between people and their land.

Nic Barca grew up on Kaua`i and learned to hunt while in his teens. His hunting experience ranges from bow and arrow, to dog and knife hunting pigs, goats and most recently shooting black tail deer. For the past 17 years, he has worked as The Nature Conservancy’s Field Coordinator trapping and hunting animals from the far reaches of the Alaka`i plateau’s bogs to Wainiha valley. He reveals his insights into seasonal animal movements, the evolution of efficient trapping and snaring programs, and the importance of documenting invasive animals–from determining what they are eating, how often they are reproducing, and the density of animals in a particular ecosystem.