From the mountains, to the sea…

Mt San Antonio/ Mt. Baldy

The Port of Long Beach

The Mainland Maoli Perspective of Mauka i Makai

Hawaiians.

We are inextricably connected to the sea, to the land, to each other. Those photos were taken  May 1st, which, all Kanaka Maoli know is May Day (and it is not only in Hawaii that the phrase “May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii”…it is wherever any one of us is…keep reading…). I was on a field trip with my Oceanography Lab class, my professor, one of those people who is so very passionate about what she does…she unwittingly reminded me of who I Am, at least in my own life, in the lives of those who I love the most, in the life that I live as a Hawaiian person born and raised on the Rockinʻ 9th island of California.

I learned a whole lot from this professor, but most of all, I learned how much I love my ʻaina…yeah – Southern California. I will not apologize for it, and neither will I ever make another excuse for this love, because it is where I was born.

It is my Hawaii. In fact, there are a lot of us here, in this state…it is OUR ʻAINA, and no matter what, like Kumu Mark Kealiʻi Hoʻomalu says…“Wherever I Am, Hawaii is there, too…”  and I totally live by that sentiment.

This is The Rockinʻ 9th, and he is one of our Rock Stars.

Again…this is All Us Guys over here on this side of the Pacific…this is OUR HAWAII…

I was born Kanaka Maoli, and my mom gave me a big gnarly Hawaiian middle name, taught me how, as a human being, I needed to behave, and most of all, she taught me, through her own show of aloha, by example, at least until I began to mold my own ways to my own self as a person, how to Malamaʻaina, how to live a lifestyle of Alohaʻaina.

She taught me to appreciate our love for the land, no matter where that land is, and she taught me to be very curious about the living natural world around us.

She taught  me that part of Mauka i Makai….to appreciate all I Am, and, as well, to appreciate my place in the energy that is protecting our ʻaina, Mauka i Makai…from the mountains to the sea. 

It took  little more than 49 years for me to understand what is my own love not just for the land, but also, my very deep love, my obsession for the ocean and all of its life beneath the surface.

I would…I Am a Pisces.

All Maolis -we are oceanic…in fact, all Polynesians are oceanic.

All Pacific Rim people…all oceanic.

We do things, #AllUsGuys, through the teachings that were passed down through the generations, from the ancient chiefs all the way to …haha…yeah – me, and everyone in my generation, on either side of the ocean….it is inherent, for us all….the concept of having a very deep love and respect for our lands, our oceans, and everything and everyone in between.

It took me time to really have love for the behemoth Pacific, the ocean which, as a child, and even until now…I felt powerless next to Her.

I knew, very young, that there is this instinct that all ocean people have…we know the power of the sea, and we know that we are here as stewards of the land we all live on, here to connect with the ground beneath our feet, and no matter where you live on this planet…the dirt that lots of folks want to believe is somehow not okay, will kill us, will not ever come off of our bodies if we do not hurry up to get some sort of detergent on it…because …you know – having dirty feet is somehow bad for us…. us Hawaiians do not adhere to that thought, at all, unless we are going to eat…and sometimes, some of us, donʻt care then, either …yeah, itʻs gross but….still, the dirt is not going to hurt you.

It isnʻt. This is just what we were told, just what our Ancestors were made to believe,  a very long time ago, and long before any one of us was alive, even most of our parents and grandparents.

It is not a sin, first of all, to love the olive toned skin you are in, and no – not now, nor has it ever been a bad thing to get your hands AND your feet dirty, to get your manicured hands into some dirt and feel the life that is there.

That energy that you feel is not some nasty critter that is going to make you sick. That is your own aversion to having dirt on your hands because you were taught that it is shameful to have dirty hands.

No the fuck it ainʻt.

In fact, for a whole lot of us, and many whose lives I have, even for a brief moment, been an influencing factor in, in terms of remembering what too many of us have not ever been told….because, for the most part, it is just inborn, in all Maolis, in all Native Peoples…please…hoʻolohe mai….pay attention…

We are a part OF the Earth…and never have been apart FROM it…

On May Day this year, I went on a field trip with my Oceanography class at school.

I have not been the same since. I have come to love my fellow humans, even as they are fairly misguided, egotistical when it comes to their own carbon footprint, believing that by right of their birth into this consciousness as Ka Poʻe O Ka Wai – The People of The Water – that somehow, by some sort of Ancient magick they are excused from the ancient “thing” that we all know about, because we are raised to know it….to Malamaʻaina…to care for the land, again – no matter where it is that you call Home….you gotta malama your ʻaina, no matter what. 

Being born Pacific…you are most responsible, with your Kuleana in place and in your face….you have to do what your ʻAumakua have been SCREAMING AT YOU TO DO, which is CLEAN YOUR DAMNED MESS..no be lazy, yeah?

It is one thing to know that we are part of the vast Pacific Ocean, but, is quite another thing to experience this knowing while on a boat on this side of the Ocean, in my ʻaina, called Southern California, right here at the Port of Long Beach.

It was one of the best, most spiritually Kanaka day I can recall, and one that I KNOW my ʻAumakua chose, specifically for me, for nothing else than to be able to remember Who exactly it is I Am.

And it was my haole teacher from Germany who was once one an Earth Sciences  Professor at Texas A&M, who chose to teach at the JC level, so that she could plant it in the heads of students who would choose to go on to University level studies in anything having to do with the environment, the epitome of this great love for the sea.

It seemed impossible to me, until that day, for me to think that anyone who was not somehow culturally connected to the ocean to love it as much as anyone Maoli does.

This woman from Texas, originally from Germany,  proved me WRONG.

She was all over that boat, not even really making a big huge deal, at least not immediately, about the idea that all of us were just in awe at the day  – beautiful, bright, sunny, even as it was a little chilly. It was the very epitome of #TheRockin9th island which I love so damned much – California.

The reason that we went was that it was a requirement, and I know that the reason why I had to wait to pass that class and why it took as long as it did…it was because even as I have always known who I am in the Hawaiian way, I still did not know what it meant to appreciate what is here, as opposed to there in the Motherland of Hawaii, in terms of our environment.

It was like being a 7 year old kid, all over again, first time on a boat on the Pacific Ocean, the wide and bright sky above us, the birds chasing us….and yeah hahahahahahahaaa…dolphins…lots and lots of happy, playful dolphins, surrounding the boat (they LOVE the waves created by the boat) and right out there, just a little ways away from the port.

Out on the surface of the water, even though for a long while, I have had issues with feeling confined, of feeling like if I do not feel comfortable someplace that I have to have a way out….#PTSD is a son of  a bitch if it is not controlled by the person who experiences it…for the first time in a long time I was free.

There is a group of people who knew, and still know, that I was freaking out until that day, which was a day that, like just a very few others, made a huge, permanent mark on my psyche, and all the way down to #TheBonesOfTheSoul in me.

The only other dates?

Feb 8, March 8, March 11, June 17, July 19, July 24, April 8, June 8….

I donʻt have to tell anyone what the significance of those dates are.

They just are.

Mauka i Makai 101

So, we had this assignment, and that is why every term, this professor assigns two field trips for all of her classes. Little had any of us known that the project that we were assigned that we presented yesterday for our final exam was part of the reason for our going on the CalState research vessel….the Yellowfin…

On that day I came to terms with my fear of closed spaces, even though we were in the  most open space that this state can even think it has – off the coast here in California, on a research vessel, out on the vast Pacific Ocean which connects all of Polynesia, and all Polynesians.

That day taught me a whole lot, but, the thing that it taught me the very most about is how dearly we humans, but very very dearly all us Maoli people, are connected, not just to the sea, but to the land…Mauka i Makai….from the mountains to the sea….

The Sea, she taught me much on that day.

She taught me to appreciate everything that is ours at birth, and as a Maoli mom who has always taught her Kanaka kids this way of life, I see through the eyes that are the Ancients, that are my ʻAumakua, that told me the story in completion as our time on the boat grew nearer to a close. Going back to the harbor was not the same experience I had had in the past.

This time, when I looked at the surroundings, and even when we went to the Southern California Marine Institute I could sense my ʻAumakua there with me, speaking to me as I looked into the live tanks of black sea bass, “petting” them as they circled near me in the pool they were being observed in and that was no where near what they, in the wild, are used to.

On the ride back to Mt Sac the feeling in my soul was that I knew my place, that I had already been there, in that place, and that it was, through that professor and her prompting us that the reason we study the ocean is because the ocean gives us what we need in more ways than we believe it does – and there is no DC hired scientist who will be able to get it past ANY Polynesian person, but specifically not this one writing this, that we are not making a bigger mess of this planet every single day, that we are not fooling ourselves, that, worst of all, we are not making the excuse that we each wonʻt live forever, so we might as well party not just like rock stars, but rock stars like Motely Crue AND Def Leppard, back in the 80s and 90s, at the same party, without any sort of thought in our heads that the damage we do, no matter what, impacts life on this planet.

I had a lot of time to think about our health and wellness in terms of the environment, and my professor…hahahahaa…told me when we were choosing our topic that since I was choosing what I know so well – the creation of health and wellness using only what we are and have, no matter what our body type is, from the damages done to us in the emotional, and sometimes physical sense, that a lot of us encounter in life through domestic abuse.  She, even as she laughed about her own comment regarding Yoga and meditation and picking up cigarette butts off of the beach, had no idea what I would be presenting when I told her that I would be “presenting the very Hawaiian way of life called Alohaʻaina,” and that through it, I would also tell my younger classmates about their part in all of this caring for the land that they are part of.

In 18 weeks, in a lab classroom on a college campus in Walnut, CA, I learned and remembered what is so vital to us as Polynesians, as a tribal people who has collectively endured, all the way down to our very DNA, the atrocities that people the world over are very dearly aware of.

If we are to save ourselves, we must carry the energy that is malamaʻaina, and it HAS TO BE MAUKA I MAKAI – from the mountains to the sea, no matter what part of the world you call home.

Wherever we are, our Ancestors walk with us, live within us, teach us through others what we so dearly need to know.

Through these 18 weeks I remembered who I Am.

I remembered that as Kahuna, I have a Kuleana, NOT to practice the weird things that I love about all things spiritual, but, that it is my duty to live as the example, no matter what it is that I am doing. 

Whether I am explaining that there is no such thing as “earthing,” or that Hula is not just some pretty dance done primarily by brown-skinned women from across the sea, or that aloha is not just a word to us and it is not the fuck for sale…. no matter what, it is my duty to teach others that it is a gift to be part of, rather than believing that we are all apart FROM the earth. (and for the record – EARTHING IS A STUPID NAME FOR SIMPLY TAKING OFF YOUR SHOES AND BEING A NATIVE HUMAN BEING….it is FUCKING STUPID…eh – haoles….stop renaming ancient things as though your fuckinʻ asses “discovered” something new…taking off and going no moʻ shoes is a NATIVE thing– we ainʻt the ones who invented shoes – that would be YOUR ancestors. Leave Ancient Things ANCIENT…I said it…deal with it…)

The time, you folks, is now, to remember who you are in the great big WE who is the collective of Native Peoples around the world. It does not matter one bit that your car is nice, or that you live in a giant house in a private community –  you folks are the ones who I Am shouting this to the very loudest and the very most. 

We are not now, nor have we ever been apart from the ground beneath our feet.

We have believed the very colonial way of thinking that we are here to be in servitude to the almighty dollar, but what happens when currency no longer has the capacity, simply because there just is not enough, to clean up the messes we have, as human creatures, made, all in the name of having a better car, a nicer house, a big fat business that ignores the needs of this planet that we are all living off of, like parasites without regard to what we are doing. 

We must malamaʻaina, live in the energies and actions that are Alohaʻaina, must think about it every time we decide that throwing that plastic water bottle on the ground or those grocery bags that too many creatures have met their demise because of, and in some cases, have become extinct, into the storm drains, or even into the wrong waste bin provided by your city. 

No one can make the Ancient Soul within me, and neither can any human erase the message that the ocean told me, through the birds, the dolphins, the water surrounding us all that day in May –  no one can tell me that we are not responsible for any of these things that are daily, by the minute, killing our common Ancestor, the mother who is all of ours. 

No one can tell me, namely if the only thing that anyone will say to me is that the earth was here long before we were, and it will be here after we are gone. This is the truth – but, what those people do not understand is that whatever we do or do not do now, in service to, through constant stewardship, through Alohaʻaina, for this planet, we also do or do not do for our own descendants.

You either care or you are careless.

You either know that everyday is a chance to lend to the healing of the planet, or, you know that you are making it worse with your indifference, and by that inaction, might as well just stand at the storm drains and pour chemicals into them without regard, might as well dump your used motor oil, your pet waste and some soiled diapers there, too. 

You know that you are ON the planet, that you do not own it, that you truly do not even own everything that actually owns you, all by right of how much you spent on it, or how long it took you to have it, and it is a rare person who can look past all of that to the truth. And the truth is fuckinʻ ugly, because the truth tells us all that we are who has caused this damage, some of it irreversible, most of it by things that a misguided populace has been told to take as not being something that we can do anything about. This is the biggest lie of all. 

The thing that we can do the most is remember that we are part OF, not apart FROM this planet. Once a person does that, everything else falls into place. 

Imagine, if you will, what it would look like if All Us Guys practiced this, for real, for just one day. One day of our lives to love our common ancestor – Mother Earth. 

Once we, as human beings, and more, as Keiki o kaʻaina, even if the ʻaina is NOT Hawaii Nei, ACCEPT our Kuleana as stewards of the land and place ourselves in that energy, it all changes immediately.

All it takes is a clue and a whole lot of Aloha.

Do like your Tutu Aunties taught you, taught us all….clean up your damned mess, you folks! No make messy….

Indeed…no make messy…need to be all pau making messy….

#ListenToTutu #MalamaAina #AlohaAina #NoTMT #ProtectMaunaKea #NoMakeMessy #LosAngelesKahunaRox #SoulFusion22 #PlantMedicine #LaāuLapaAu #AncientThings #NoMoShoes #SCMI #ARISE #ANAPISI #MtSac #Aspire #DREAM