 Welcome to Inventing Our Future on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Brittany Zimmerman. And I'm your co-host, Richard Ha. And joining us today is our guest, Kauilani Almeida, who will help us do a deeper dive into our K conversation. Welcome, Kauilani. Aloha. Hello. So Kauilani, the letter for today is K. Can you give us a brief introduction to what our K topic will be? The topic that I was asked to speak on is something that I invented. It actually came to light in 2018. I've been really, really involved in the Kanaka Movement for many years. And I woke up one day. And I said, I had this desire to bring out the people that I've worked with for a long many years and actually take them into conversation. So I created the Zoom, and I called it Kanaka Knowledge, the study of Kanaka. And why I call it the study of Kanaka is because I didn't feel that there was any platform for any of these community, community of advocates, I should say, activists, they were called activists. They were called many things. I wanted to make sure that they were given the opportunity to tell their journey. And so I created Kanaka Knowledge Zoom. And it took off. It was actually a weekly show. And I had an assistant, Leo Goldberg, that helped me do the Zoom. And basically, it was just about a one hour conversation with all of these individuals, sometimes couples that started their journey way back in the 60s from Kaho Olave, Waihawale Waihkane, the Yibikopuna from all different islands. And my request at that time, and has always been that you have one hour to voice your journey. What made you come from where you are today? What was that journey for you to be here today in this particular moment to say that I was involved in a Kanaka movement all for what reason, where it started. And just for one whole hour, the time was theirs. So for those of us who don't know what a Kanaka is, can you give us a little bit of background on what that term means to you? It could mean mankind. It could mean a man, a person. It could mean a native of somewhere. In fact, when you study some linguistics, the word Kanaka comes from the South Pacific. And so it's not limited to just, I believe, these connections going on in the Pacific. And pretty much it is as simple as that. I call myself a Kanaka Oevi because the word Oevi personifies that my Yibikopuna belongs to this land. Beautiful. And so in an earlier discussion with Richard, he had told some stories, right? And in his book, he's talked about how a lot of really important information gets handed down verbally within families. And so one of the things that I think is really important when you were originally telling me about Kanaka knowledge is I felt like this was another avenue via which a lot of the information that I think traditionally would come down in that way has a moderate way of getting dispersed, right? That may or may not have otherwise been disseminated. Is that close? Very close. We're an oral lahoi for people that I prefer to not call us native Hawaiians. I prefer to call us Aborigines. It gives it a lot more than just a United States census, what can I say, meaning? Because that's what we're registered under, native Hawaiian as a race. But Aboriginals, to me, puts us in our space where we belong, which is aloha aina, our connection to our aina, our affuas, our gods, has to come from that sort of rounding. And if you notice, like I said again, in the Pacific, a lot of the people from the Pacific and stuff, they carry that word Aborigines for that reason. Because then it feels like it's generational. It feels like it's something that is tangible. I feel it's more tangible, like our affuas. We can touch, we can eat, we can manipulate, we can cooperate, we can coincide. I just feel like it's more than just what people describe their affuas as spirits, spirits of the land. To us, it's more than that. They are us, we are them. We are the land, the land is us, and what the term Aboriginal means to me. And so I didn't think that one day in my life I'd be the interviewer. I was actually using my show as a way of allowing people to be, like I said, share their stories, share their mo'olelo. And it was with people that made featherlings, people that was just a regular person, fisher person, fishermen down at the ocean that if you could ask him any question about where he came from, what his purpose was in life to do. And he would be able to tell us in that way. I've had people on the show that were senators. I interviewed Senator Keohokalole. I interviewed the last term of the mayor of Hawaii County. I interviewed Mitch Roth and they were both, two people were running. Ikai Komarzo and him, and they came on Canaka Nology and shared the space. It was not ever to be an interview situation. So I just let them pretty much, you know, go. I did all the tell my, you know, ask of my assistant, Leah, too, that the chat box was open. So if it was something that was pressing, that the audience wanted to, you know, get, you know, a message or something across or they're feeling of some sort of issue. I required it to be posed in a question so that both people, candidates could, you know, address it. We had political parties of the Republican and the, for governor. We had a Democrat for governor come on the show and voice their whole journey. And it came from, it was kind of funny because the Republican person was Paele or what we call, you know, dark-skinned person and he came from Mississippi and he told his story. And the question that was pressing on the, on the chat room was, you know, do you think that you just landed here, not even like five or five years, and you're going to run for the highest office in the whole state? And his thing was, well, you know, it's because of my mom, you know, my mom is the one that, you know, single parent, that journey started in his dialogue. And it took off. And then we could see exactly why he did what he did in order to get to Hawaii. He was a coach at one of the high schools on Oahu. It just, the story just built and built and built. And before we knew it, it was time to end the conversation. And he was like, just getting going. Yeah. Well, then we can hold it for another show, you know. Yeah, for two. Yeah, you know, and then, you know, we will, but it is for Hawaii. And I truly believe this, a lot of the immigrants that came over to Hawaii learned the Hawaiian language and the language to them was led back from the Hawaiians. It was, everything was shared. Everything was shared. When you go to Luau's now and everything, it's, you know, our feast, right? It's, there's sushi, there's, you know, rice fish, there's laulas, there's poi, there's rice, there's, you know, beef stew. I mean, it's just a whole thing of sharing. And that's what I heard from the stories. It wasn't so much the plight of going on their journey and all of the obstacles that they got, you know, going on their journey. It became more of a sharing of, you know, how different people help them get to where they were going. Yeah. And the lessons learned, you know, was basically that they had to come back to their Hawaiian self. And the three rules that every, you know, child when we were growing up, I should say, I'm not sure if it's still the same way, but it was three rules in everybody's house. And it was, you hammer your nail, you hold all along here with your ears, and you look to the source by which information is coming to you. And if you're doing too much talking, you can't hear what that source is saying. Or in another way that we speak, actually, or Nisten is by watching people's expression. In Hawaiian language, we don't have too many words in the, you know, the old way. I would say the old way only because there has been a big leap of expediting the usage of our language that was dying and given to the little ones with toddlers, the babies. Yeah. In 1978, when I came to college, you know, college, my dream was to see the first O'Olelo Hawaii preschool in the state of Hawaii, only O'Olelo Hawaii in the preschool. I was already doing it at preschools on the island of O'ahu. But when I came to, I came home to Hilo, where my grandmother is from, was living actually. She was actually a Kumu O'Olelo as well in her community of Keopaha, and then to Pana Ewa, and she was known as Kumu Odoi. And what she taught me was that go back to college, go back to the college, because I know the professor there is going to be teaching the O'Olelo a different way. That's what you need to learn. She was actually through linguistics, and I went to the classes and everything. At that time, we still had Anteidic Pana O'Olelo Hawaii, and she gave us the cultural aspect of the language as well as the culture itself. We had plasters back then called Ethnobotany, Ethnobozoology, O'Hana of Ka'u, and every Friday's Anteidic would have this Kani Kapila. And all the classes that was available was able to come and bring their O'Olelo. So Ethnobotany is about flora and fauna. And so when we studied the plants and animals of Hawaii, for example, we studied the light up, the banana. And it wasn't just, you know, the Kadahto Owiwi there. It was Keppani, you know, haule, you know, pukeki, you know, pake, everybody was over there. And she would say, okay, you know, bring me a I, bring your Kani Kapila instrument and then come. And then I come from her haulao, okekuhi. That is Anteidic's name, kekuhi. And so the girls used to drop by and dance hula. You know, and so we would just, she would be on our ukulele and we'd be. And that room that she was in every Fridays was packed. Every class that she held, Ethnobotany, Ethnozoology packed, Ohana class is packed. And everybody in that class, like I said, we had the, say we had banana as the fruit of the week. She, we would make desserts, we would make, what is that? Poteles, we would make, and we would come, it would come and they would show how they made these dishes. So again, it goes back into sharing. And if I can be proud of, of how I was raised and how I grew up in relation to everybody in Hawaii that shares the same space with us, is that we all grew up sharing. We all grew up sharing. There was, we have friends, even till today, that, you know, when someone needs help financially, whatever, we all come together, fundraise, do whatever we can to help, you know, to help. So, I thought that by Happy Canaphanology, it would, the advocates, the activists that learned about, you know, their activism through what actually they were taking against, whether it was the bones, digging up bones, you know, on Maui. If they were like on Kaho Olavi and learning the stories from them about, it was just sitting there in the group. It was, now we, you know, like I said, I started like a 2000, 2019, you know, and when I realized that those stories weren't, they were just being held in their families and stuff. Yeah. But there's a bigger, there's a struggle. There's a movement and there's a struggle. The Hawaiians have always been in the struggle from Bebetan, before Bebetan, always in the struggle, moving all over it, struggling, struggling, struggling. The movement is able to create for an organized manner by which we can resolve some of the struggles that we have. So, I think that was very important to be expressed to Canaphanology, that there's a big difference between the word, we're in the struggle and we're in the movement. The movement is a movement thing. The struggle is an everlasting turmoil of things occurring different times, different outside forces coming in and having impact on that struggle. But as we went through Canaphanology, people were willing to come on and talk about the struggle, but that they were presenting as part of the struggle, the movement that they were involved in. And some of them came up with a lot of good ideas of how we could, you know, gain momentum in politics, internal, you know, native Hawaiian, you know, where we're looking at things now, very, very important aspect. You know, how do I feel as a Hawaiian in 2018? And now it's 2024. And then we take it even even farther and say, you know, when you bring those stories into the mix, there's an everlasting kind of movement inside that in itself. And that's the kind of stuff I was trying to reach back in and try to find out through the younger generation. You know, sometimes when we talk, it's so funny because we're seeing things like what our family, our mother and father said, like, oh my gosh, you know this music, you know. Oh, you know, that's not the Hawaiian way to say that, you know, or, you know, this is not what we think it means, you know, and those kinds of stuff. And then it's like, well, then tell me about it. Tell me about what it means to you on the island of Moloka'i, on the island of Maui, La Na'i. You know, your experiences in Kaho'olape, what, you know, where you go to that Aina and people on the outside who have never been there to go. You know, no more nothing on that island. And when you go there, it's everything. Yeah. You know, we don't have trucks. We don't have tarp trucks. Probably they have it now, but way back then in the 70s, I got it was like, no, they had it there, but we couldn't use it. But anyway, but it's just a different way to look at the whole genealogy and growth of all of the movement that has occurred. And we've had many of our or people like how many HRS who was very instrumental in a lot of the activists. And I want to say activists because they are, they're active, even though that they're why they're still active, they're still participating in that movement into making things better for Bakanako. Um, so that's where I was and am with an ethnology and I'm just, in fact, when we were talking about it one day, Brittany, I just slowly had to just sit down and just think to myself, it's about time that I resurrected. Yeah. You know, Richard, Richard always says like his job now is to sit there, smile and look wise, which I think might be the approach he's taking right now. But I'd love, I'd love Richard to chime in on this because I feel like there's a lot of similarities and synergies between a lot of the stuff that you're saying, Kari Lanian sort of stuff. I've, I've heard Richard say as well. Yeah. You know, from, from, from my perspective, the older I get, the more I see how I've reacted to various different things. And I see how I reacted to what was passed out to generations. You know, he just came down from my, my dad. And when you're 10 years old, you know, you, you absorb a lot of things and you really don't have to go to school. If, if, if, if it sits with you and, and, and, you know, you, you, you can understand what the whole big picture means. You know, like for something maybe simple, you know, like I'm not turning you back on the ocean. You know, when you think about that, that's really, really, really, really an axle. Do not turn you back on the ocean because you're going to get killed if you don't watch out. It's real simple. My dad would say something like, wait, what are coming? What are you going to do? And they were fishing, you know, with a bamboo pole and stuff like that with several friends. And I, I, I didn't know, he said, I climbed up the pole overhand and lifted up my feet. The wave went underneath. Then I jumped, you know, I, when I dropped back down, I took the bamboo pole and I fished my friends out of the water. Then he turned around and he looked at me and he said, you know, I knew what I was going to do before it happened. You know, just, just that story. Life tells you to plan in advance and all kinds of implications. So I listened to Kawi explaining stuff and it makes all the sense in a well to me. Yeah. So Kawi, how do we resurrect Kanaka knowledge so that we can get, you know, the sorts of stories that were passed down from Richard and his family and you and your family and all of these people that you've had, you know, with you before who shared all of their wise and beautiful experiences and the many more that I think still need a place and a voice to be able to, to share if they would like. Well, I was thinking about it. I got together with Leah, Leah Boker to, you know, what, what do you think? Leah, she was like, yeah, but I think it's about time we bring it back. Not only is it just to say that, you know, I took a hiatus because I wasn't well. And the more that I've been getting more and more better in myself and my, my health and stuff. I started to get attached myself again to people like Britt, me and, you know, and then a very beautiful journey so far. And what it made me realize was that I am here in 2024. What has happened from the time that, you know, even if it's four years, five years past, you know, where is everybody catch up with everybody, but mostly I want to take it into maybe another perspective, which is bringing back what when I left, actually I left. I think one of the last people that I had spoken to was, what was that your dream to do what you eventually did. And majority of them actually said no, because it just was something that had just been placed upon them. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but I believe that our, our children, my, my more opponent, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren to come, while I'm still alive. I think that the struggle that I spoke about before has interrupted so many of our generations. It's actually, the interruption has actually been to not encourage dreaming. Priner. Being just knowing that that's part of, to me, life. And when you take that aspect of it away, people don't grow. People don't, people stop growing at the way that they should be growing. So we get into a systems or systems in the struggle and then we get stagnant. I went somewhere and there were a whole group of high school kids because my grandson is a senior this year. And I just talk to them, what are you guys up to? What are you guys doing? And pretty much I told them, if you could, if you could design high school, what would it look like? Yeah. Great question. Many of them did not, many of them said, they didn't say, let's keep to the status quo. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody answered. I want it the same. Oh no, I just want this to be the way it is. You know, no, you know, these are our bright, our bright minds that we're sending to college, right? Yeah. Or just before we're sending them off, but it was interesting. They said that freshman year was really bad for them because they had so much boredom going on. So they joined groups, you know, gangs or whatever they didn't think they shouldn't have done. And what does that tell me? They weren't really going to school. So I said, so Dree, just throwing it out there. But rather being in computer classes all day, all night, whatever, you know, somebody said, oh, you know what? I would really like to have learned something like sports medicine, sports broadcasting, because they were athletes. They were talking about that that's like, like trade school versus. Yeah. So, you know, learning, learning mathematics and all these things to different kinds of of professions rather than sitting in a class. And, and part of it was because it depended on the weather. We have such beautiful weather. And then that patients that should have been outside becoming like a lifeguard or something. Why were they being able to get put over there to not starting to get jobs and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Why were they always being sent to college or school or whatever after going through what? 10 years or whatever of school or what? 12, 12 years of school and maybe summer and all that stuff. That's the kind of dialogue that, like I said, to me originated from. Did you dream these guys? What did you dream? What do you do? You know, did you guys ever think of what you're going to do? And all of them said, no. No. And I was like, so what are you doing to get ready for the rest of your life? Because, you know, once you make 18, anything you sign is legal. You know, I mean, you don't have your parents back. They're looking at me like half, you know, and it's a awakening for me. It was. And so I thought to myself, you know, I might try to do connoctinology. Yeah. On the, maybe the earlier ages, like. Oh, yeah, I think, I think that'd be super important. And Richard and I are both part of the Rotary Club and they put me in charge of the Rotary Youth Leadership Award this year, which means I get to take some really, really smart kids up to the Mauna actually in about two weeks. And it's really focused around just that coming. It's really. All right. What do you want to do with your life? What tools do you need to achieve them? And let's put the things in place to make that doable, right? So I'll have to, I'll have to tell you. Oh, there. I think you would like it a lot. So, all right, we're going to get a revival of connoctinology. We are all looking forward to it. We're super excited. So we're going to check back in and a bit, make sure that you have everything that you need to bring that back to life. So with that, Richard, do you have any last minute thoughts before we wrap up? No, I really enjoy listening to what you have to say. You know, it's inspiring. And I think very applicable, you know, especially when you're looking at young kids, young kids, pick up stuff earlier than most people realize. I wouldn't have known other than it happened to me when I was 10 years old and it lasted my whole life. You know, so now I look back and say, oh, man, I like that. That's we got to start there and earn you, Eve. Let's do it. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. This is inventing our future at Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you again so much, Carrie Lani for joining us. And thank you to you, all of our viewers for watching. If you want to get our email advisories to see a complete listing of all the shows, you can sign up for them on thinktechway.com. Well, we will be back in two weeks. So please tune in to do a deep dive into our Ellen Vengeant. Until then, I'm Brittany Zimmerman. And I'm Richard R. Sush.