 My name is Mark Shkov. I am the host of Law Across the Sea here at Think Tech, Hawaii. Today, the title of my program is Before There Were Lawyers, There Were Warriors. Before There Were Lawyers, well, things weren't always settled in court. Disputes weren't always resolved with lawyers going back and forth and making arguments. Warriors would have to take over. And in the ancient days of Hawaii, warriors did settle a lot of disputes. And in a way, when you have to settle a dispute in that manner, it may help you determine what is really important, really important in life. Today my guests are Michael Maderos and Manny Matos. Mike Maderos is a senior engineer with the State Department of Transportation, Highways Division. He is a 1975 graduate of Kamehameha Schools, and he is a practitioner of Lua, Hawaiian martial arts, which is maybe the art form of the warrior. He's going to tell us a little more about that. He belongs to the Pa or school of Aloha Mitchell Eli. Manny Matos is a retired HPD officer who makes traditional Hawaiian weapons, often from Endemic Woods. He'll tell us a little bit about that and its connection with Lua. Many of the artwork that Manny makes are beautiful, but there's also a deadly aspect to them. So they're beautiful artwork used by lawyers, used by warriors, should be used by lawyers maybe sometimes, but used by warriors in the ancient days. So welcome, Michael Manny. Good to see you. Good to have you here. Aloha. Michael, I'd like to start with you and briefly tell us a little bit about Lua. What is Lua? For those who haven't heard about it or know much about it or heard the name, tell us more, please. Every indigenous race had some kind of martial arts, and Lua is the Hawaiian martial arts and the martial arts for the Hawaiians. It's the most basic form. It comes down to bone breaks, joint dislocations, and nerve strengths. Yes, close-quarter hand-to-hand fighting, emphasizing those three techniques. Okay. But it encompasses more than that, so that's the basic part, but it also encompasses lifestyle and healing. Okay, so let me ask you. Was I right in saying it's what Hawaiian warriors used to fight? Is that correct? Yeah, a lot of the fights, most of the fighting was all hand-to-hand, and Hawaiian didn't have standing armies, but they had standing warriors, and that was the Lua call. People trained, and most of them were, all of them were a lii. And then at times of war, the lii would train Makanda commoners in some simple basic things, and that's how they grew their armies to four, 10,000, whatever they needed. Okay, and with respect to the relationship of a warrior in the ancient days to warriors today, maybe I'm drawing kind of an impossible connection, but warriors settle the disputes, right? There was warrior. In fact, you would say, sometimes the armies wouldn't fight. They would send the champions, so your champion would fight their champion. To say that, and whoever won, that would settle the fight, the armies wouldn't fight. And we have lawyers in the pot, okay? Okay, so we have it. So Lua, what is the history and background of Lua? And tell us a little bit more about the techniques, please. Like I said, it's close quarter, hand-to-hand fighting, so you do a lot of bone breaks. You're up close. The leader was Olohe, which means hairless at the time, and even because he would shave all the hair off his body and all his body, there are times where so nobody could grab him. So they go to war, and they were all trained in the pod. They trained at night for secrecy. They didn't want, you know, if you're prepping for war, or if you're hand-to-hand fighting, you don't want the other guy to know what you know. So they had these big protocols. If you needed the password to get in, if you didn't have the password, the guard at the door would pull the string and this 500-pound rock would come down and crush you, or you would just stab you right there. But you couldn't just come into the pod. Okay, so the secrecy, now you've explained that. The secrecy behind the pod, or learning Lua, was based upon the hope or the desire not to share some of the secret techniques of fighting. Right, well, yeah, what you knew versus what, you didn't want to go in there and some of your opponent knew everything that you could do. Right. Or you didn't know if you were planning war, your strategy is that, okay, now we know what they're going to attack. So that's what the secrecy was so they would practice at night. And then Charles Ken, who taught Olímech, who I'm a student of, always said, but you keep secret what is sacred. So that's a big saying within the pod. Charles Ken? Ken, Charles Ken. Ken, Charles Ken, and who is Charles Ken? So back in the 70s, so Dr. Olímech Eli, who I train under. That's the head of our school, Pa. Him and several, just Jerry Walker. Jerry Walker, they're all martial artists at BYU. You speak church college back then. And they saw Kalte Magazine and it had a Hawaiian martial artist. And they said, did you know we had martial arts? I said, no, we kind of heard of it. And so they tracked down Charles Ken, who at first didn't want to train them. But after continuing pestering them, he finally really did not to train them, but to teach them Hawaiian history because he was a renowned historian, Hawaiian historian and cultural practitioner. Just knew about the culture. So that's what they did. So at some time, what I'm hearing is that Lua was sort of lost. And that Alohae Mitchell wanted to learn more about it along with a few others. How was it lost? Or what happened? And then how did it get back? It was probably after post-contact that there were the missionaries, that there wasn't a need for it. You know, as it came into Western eyes because you had these guys trained solely in fighting. So like I said, so it kind of went underground and then it was lost and people knew bits and pieces because as they were trying to research it before they found Charles, nobody seemed to have the whole story. And then when they found Charles, he was basically one of the last Lua masters. And he finally relented to teach them because he realized once he passed, it may not carry on. So after four years, he started with 12, went down to six and after four years, he graduated those six people. And so Alohae. And those became the teachers. Yeah. I see. Now, I just want to go back a little bit. In historical ancient times, what was the role of the warrior? What was the role of the warrior and Lua? Well, Lua was the fighting. That's what they fought. You fought with the weapons. So when you went to war. All Hawaiians, when they go to fight, they would use this technique or is- The Lua Kua were skilled. So the Lee were trained from young age. Nice. And that was one of the reasons Charles didn't want to train the Lua guys since they were too old. They were 27. They usually train them when they're like five, six, seven years old. They start very young. So they, the warriors were trained in that time of war. They would grab the commoners and then teach them some basics. So like I said, they didn't have a standing army. They didn't call, they couldn't call up an army anytime they wanted to. They had to go and train them. But there was people who were trained all the time, like K. Qualpio, that Jim and Kamehameha School. He was the guy that trained. He was Kamehameha, the great trainer. Oh, he was Kamehameha, the great Lua. So all he did was war from a young age. He would train, train in war, spear throwing, spear catching, using weapons, little Manu, that's all he did. And the Lua was used in war, but was it also used in peace? Or was it a technique that was used to help make things negotiated instead of thought about? Negotiated instead of fighting. You know that, I don't know. I mean, my recollection, I mean, if you get two little guys sitting down, you know, if you had Kamehameha grade and Kaikili looking at each other, and you know they're both great warriors, and they'd hope they would talk it out. And they know each other's skills and they know that they don't know everything about the other guys. So maybe they could work it out. And what I was thinking might be a negotiable point, is that if you have two strong people looking at each other, maybe they're willing to talk about it instead of fighting. Well, you know, one of the concepts of, and it was originally named as Kui al-Lua. He was one of the gods, major gods of Lua. And part of that is to strike the second blow. So in Lua, you would never be forward or be really aggressive. And so you wouldn't use it to go hurt people for no reason, or just to be a guy grassy, or you know the local term, panteran, you wouldn't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't make a big body just for that. So you strike the second blow, that's what it is. So use it to protect yourself, your family, your king, but you don't go all the way to hurt people. And I mean, so the thought that I had was that if, in those days, if they knew that you were expert in Lua, that would give them pause to do something stupid. Oh yes, yeah. It would say, well, let's talk about it, maybe. So that's where I was going, and thinking maybe that would be an avenue. Although it's extremely tough fighting, as I understand. So what happened after Charles Ken and taught these old youngsters? Older youngsters, they were in their 20s, yeah. So they graduated. So it was Pakui Lua, was their first school. And then that branched out to Pakui Lua and Pakui Hulu. So there were two separate groups that came out of that. And then, so I'm a student of Dr. Eloy Michiela who's the head of Pakui Hulu. And he has his training at Kamehameh Schools. And every, we're on all islands. We're on Hawaii Island, Maui Island, Kauai, and Oahu. And he's done training, the Eloy did training throughout all the islands to bring seminars. And that's what they do to the state. So we have our training coming up in July, what we call the 48 hours, that allows you entry into the plow. So you can't do it now. You'd have to do the 48 first. So the 48 is like an entrance exam. You really learn in a way. In a way, yeah. So that's when you get, you pass and then you get brought into the plow. They want to find out a little bit about where you're coming from. Yeah. And what is, just to go back a little bit. So what is the status now on learning Lua? As I understand, it was kind of lost until Charles Ken came along, taught these younger guys, these old young guys about it. And now what is the status of Lua within the community? In the community, just the people who've gone to their training, there's probably several thousand people that practice actively. We have people about 15 to 20 every Thursday practicing at commitment schools. Summertime it grows when the kids come back. Kids from college when they come back in. So our part is alive and well. And you still keep it secret, right? It's for Hawaiians only. You have to have native Hawaiian blood. We do practice at night. We wear black, you know, symbolize practice at night. We do practice at night. Keep it secret. Keep it secret. Keep it secret, right? We don't talk about it. We don't want a lawyer like a lawyer who says we don't do baby Lua house. We don't do weddings. I mean, you don't see a whole bunch. Yeah, you don't see us doing a lot of demonstrations. The stuff we do, we do the Memorial Day for the Veterans. We've opened that every year for the last six years. We do serious things like that, but yeah. Before we take a break, just tell me, what is the goal of the Lua today? What is the goal of the Pa and teaching the Lua? It's to raise Hawaiian people, men and women, because women are in the Pa, to a higher level, to better themselves, to feel better about themselves, to know that there's more in life that we can reach her, that we were, once we were warriors, right? So we can reach out and, you know, and to put, raise your mana, as we say, and raise your self-esteem, make you a better person in life. All those holistic things is all encompassed in Lua. And it makes you strong. It makes you stronger. It makes you strong, and you know that you have this inside you. When somebody talks to you, you know you have this behind you. You're strength and strong. You don't have to, you can't fight, but you don't have to. You don't have to. You can't get up and walk away. Yeah, yeah, but you know you're stronger. Exactly. Yeah, okay, I got it. Okay, we're gonna take a brief break and we'll come back and talk to Manny a little bit about the beautiful Hawaiian artwork weapons. Yeah, I'm falling asleep over here. I love you. Aloha, my name is Raya Salter, and I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii, which you can see live from one to one-thirty every Tuesday at thinktechkawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, community outreach specialist, and on Power Up Hawaii we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future? To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum, from clean energy technology folks to community groups, to politicians, to regulators, to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at one o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. Living in this crazy world. Santos, we're back and don't let this scare you. This is some beautiful artwork that you've created, and I'd like you to tell us a little bit about the connection between your Hawaiian weapons that you've made and the Lua. And Lua, tell me what the connection is, how you got involved, and what does it mean? What's it all about? Well, basically I got involved about 25 years ago by another HVD officer who taught me basically how to make one single leomano. Leomano is... Yeah, these native Hawaiian war weapons. It doesn't matter if you have one tooth or five teeth or ten teeth. So then I got fascinated by it and I started to do more research, more research, and the more research I did, the more fascinated and intrigued I got with it. Being my wife is a native Hawaiian and all my sons. And so I started to get access to koa wood for many years. I made them out of koa. Then I was lucky enough to get access to native Hawaiian endemic wood, like kawila, uhi, uhi. So the other one, yes. What's the difference between koa, uhi, uhi, and kawila? Tell me, so what? Okay, well, back in Kahiko times, a native Hawaiians would go through the dryland forest because that's where all the really dense native Hawaiian woods would grow because they were very special woods. They were endemic only to the Hawaiian islands. Koa was kind of a wetland and was used for different purposes. But the kawila, uhi, uhi trees that grew in the dryland forest to give you an example on O'ahu, the ever plains all the way up around Mokulia. That was the endemic dryland. So these trees would grow in that environment on a big island, Pubaaba, although Waikaloa coast. What's the difference between the woods? Well, koa is a medium dense wood. But when you get into kawila and uhi, uhi, it's very, very, it's one of the hardest woods in the world. It's so dense that it breaks my bandsaw blades. It sinks in saltwater. So it might make a difference if you're in hand-to-hand combat? Yeah, these woods were very durable. They didn't break in combat very rarely. And they were so heavy that you didn't have to use too much force to initiate the cutting of flesh and a breaking of bones. So the Hawaiians discovered that and used those woods as their, as the preference? Well, yeah, the native Hawaiians were very, very skilled in every aspect of their culture. They were, they were the product with the most intelligent of all Polynesia. And they discovered these woods when they first came here. And they immediately realized these are the woods that we need to make our weapons of war. So they went to this dry land and just with a stone chisel cut these trees down, carved it into these fantastic weapons that you see. And then they had the idea of the shark's teeth. Yeah, they were a stone age culture initially, you know? They didn't have any metal. They only had pohaka stone. And so they utilized the shark teeth, the tiger shark teeth that you see here, very large ones they would use, you know, maybe from inch and three, it's up to inch and a half, maybe larger in those days. And they would use the great white tooth. You know, there's some weapons in the museums, in the world that have great white teeth on it. Like this, this one here, this one is a Hawaiian war weapon. It's in the Museum of Archeology and Anthographics. And it has all great white. It's in Cambridge, England. This one, these are one of the few weapons that have the great white on it. And of course, this one here is a sacrificial knife with a great white. And the original is in New Zealand in the Old Man Collection. Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, when the so-called first people came here, you know, from Europe and all over, they were fascinated with this very primitive, you know, form of weapons. Okay, so what is the connection with Lua? I mean, I understand you use them, but there seems to be a tighter connection too. Well, what I can learn is because there was a hand-to-hand type of fighting and they needed something besides their fists and a piece of wood, never, to inflict maximum amount of injury and death. And they've learned that the teeth on the shark could easily sever flesh and juggler veins. And it was a very brutal way of defeating your enemy. But it did end the dispute one way or the other, right? Yeah, they didn't need lawyers back in the day. You know what I mean? They would be the old fashioned way, you know? If you didn't agree with his policy. Because Lua was very different, you know, and maybe in my, see, Lua created kingdoms. He created governments because you would conquer and you would create governments. So it was a different way of living, you know? And you kind of incidentally downstairs, you have a big mural of a husband and wife and she's kneeling and she's doing a hula pose. And here's a husband behind holding his ihi in a ali'i coat. So you can see how they really fed up on another. Lua as a native Hawaiian practice. Hula as a native Hawaiian practice. Is the feminine and the masculine together in one society? Yeah, yeah, they benefited. Lua created kingdoms, I think hula created and perpetuated the genealogy aspect of it and the, I would say the entertainment part of it. Could you briefly just tell us what each of these are in the woods that they're made of so we can get some idea of what we got here? Okay, this one I have here. This is made out of kawila, endemic kawila. In my hood? Yeah, it's a very rare endangered endemic. It's on the federal endangered species. And the teeth is tiger shark, huge tiger, it's about an inch and a half. And this one is an unusual design. There's only one in a museum, but that one has great white on it. And I think it was used more as a symbol or maybe a sacrificial knife. This one here is definitely a sacrificial knife because you have a great white and it was close hand. And the original in the Old Man Collection states it as a sacrificial knife. So you know they did. This one here was used, I think primarily for the older warriors. Like me? Yeah, like us? Yeah, he's still younger, yeah, he's still younger. But this was used by the older warriors, they would come up behind the battle and I didn't want to get too close to the enemy when it was lying on the ground. So they would have a larger weapon like this that was hollowed out because it wasn't as heavy because they would lean over and sever the juggle of the needle. They would cut it off as much as they could. Yeah, they would do it. And this one here is more of a weapon of choice. That's heavy, heavy. Yeah, and each Lua warrior was obligated to go to the dryland forest, cut the tree down and shape his own weapon and what he would prefer it to be, you know. So each Lua warrior was an artist also. Yeah, yeah, he was an artist, he was a farmer, he was a fisherman, he was a bodyguard, he incorporated all parts of the world. That's really good to know because in his mind, in the Lua mind, they know what they got. They know what's backing them up. They know everything. They know, just like Mike was saying, you know, when you sat down with somebody, you knew you could get up and walk away but you knew what you got. You knew what you got in your hands and in your mind and what you created, right? A Lua warrior would always carry his Leomano with him wherever he goes, maybe one or two. That's just like in modern-day society, guys that can carry a weapon carry a weapon. So you know you're safe. And so if you're in the presence of a Lua warrior, you know you're safe because these men and women would back you up. And because he or she made the weapon, they knew its strength. Yeah, yeah. It had their mana in it, too. Okay. It had the spirit of who they were. Tell me about this one. This one here is, this one is a very rare. This is one of the most rarest of Hawaiian woods. It's called Uhi Uhi. I was lucky enough to get a piece of log from Puvalava forest about eight years ago. And I was lucky to make this is one of them. This is, like I say, Uhi Uhi is the rarest. You don't see these trees. There's probably maybe 10 trees growing in the true dryland forest. But we're propagating it. But at one time, envision, like Lua, the ever plains, you know, thousands of acres of these trees that were growing. So, we like the Lua, the dryland forest and some of these endemic trees are, we're not, we don't see as much of them around. Although the Lua looks like it's coming back. Yes. Okay. What are we gonna do about these trees? What are we gonna do, Manny? Oh, fortunately, but unfortunately these trees take hundreds of years to grow. You know, they're very slow growing, you know. They can't grow in any other place, but the environment that the genes are used to do. So, but we're slowly propagating it. And so, it's never gonna become extinct. You know, we're slowly propagating. But before my time is, I wanna, you know, I'm one of the, I think the only non-Hawaiian jets is allowed to go into Oloy Mitchell's paw every Thursday night. And I honor that because what it does is I sit there and I look at all these men and women and I can see, I can go back to Kahiko time. I can see a little glimpse of native Hawaiian culture that not too many people can see. And it really makes me more aware of a native Hawaiians and how it's so important for. And, you know, let's go back and Mike, tell us how if you're a young person is interested in getting involved in this, Lua, learning about the weapons, how do they go about doing that? And tell us about what's happening in July. We got a little bit of time left, so please. We got, so we have our 48 coming in. So, you have to go to what we call a 48 hour training. Three weekends in July, the first three weekends of July. What do they find out about? They can email me, put my email up there. Well, tell me what it is. Put my email? Yeah. Oh, MKModeris for the number four at gmail.com. And we have applications. Okay, great. There we can go and I'll email me, I'll send it to them. And once you go through that training, then you'll be brought into the Pākuiholo. And then you can come Thursday night at Kamehameha. Prior to that, if you can, only special speakers are allowed. Yeah, you have to be, you have to have some kind of native Hawaiian blood to be a Pākuiholo. Yeah, you have to be a native Hawaiian. Native Hawaiian. You have to be a native Hawaiian. So, you know, I'm so blessed to be allowed to learn, you know, the remaining years of my life to see what the culture was about. Okay, and I think we can learn a lot about life from Lua and Hawaiian weapons. In a way, they teach us to know about ourselves, don't they? They teach us to learn about ourselves and our strength and our weaknesses and use them as we deal with other people. And maybe lawyers can learn some of that and learn how to approach things and resolve them and only go into the fight when they need to bring it to a... I think more importantly, it teaches you about your culture and who you are and where you came from. You know, your genealogy, your aspect of who you really are as a native Hawaiian. I think that's what I get from watching these men and women in there. When they step into that path, they are not anybody but native Hawaiians. And I think that's the most important lesson that I have learned. Thank you. It brings us into balance, Pono, we say, Kū and Hina. You're talking about the two sides, duality, Lua is two, Kū and Hina. So everybody tries to get Pono to get balanced. Gentlemen, thank you for telling us about this and getting us a little bit of information in the short time we had, and I appreciate it very much. Mahalo for having us here, we really appreciate it. Take care. Thank you very much.