Root Cause Remedies Root Cause Remedies

Welcome to the last episode of Season 4! This conversation with Moana Pōmaikaʻi Kauluwehiokaʻala Ching, aka Ulu, is a beautiful reflection of our deep connectedness with and through wai. The grand unifier. Ulu is so grounded in who she is and offers us a wonderful weaving of storytelling, genealogy of self, finding purpose, and seeing service to others as a service to ourselves. 

Ulu Ching is an Island of Hawai’i wahine, kanaka oiwi, mother, and “conservationist” by profession, a term we reflect on in this episode. Ulu shares understandings beyond scientific analysis and procedural approaches, rooted in a spiritual kanaka oiwi place of knowing. She graciously challenges initiatives that are heavily saturated by technical approaches and often catastrophizing language is used in the climate and environmental space. 

Ancestral knowledge provides a more interconnected worldview with cultural values that hold our resources as sacred elements. That perspective approaches crises much differently. Ulu offers us a way to pause in our daily lives that are often distracting or demanding, and invites you to practice more aloha for wai and by virtue of that, give more aloha to yourself and the world around you. It is all connected, just as we are all connected through wai. As Ulu shares, doing this daily act is not just "the right thing to do" for the environment but is essential to the healing and wellbeing of our spirits. 

Thank you for joining us for this episode, we can't wait for you to hear it! 

This episode is a little love letter to wai in commemorating World Water Day 2022, this year's theme being “Making the Invisible, Visible” with a focus on groundwater to highlight the urgent need to protect it, which comes at a time of great relevance and reverence for us here in Hawaiʻi. Almost all of our liquid freshwater is groundwater, supporting drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. In some places, we simply do not know how much water is down there. But what we do know is that our groundwater and aquifers are essential to our lives and will continue to play a central role in our survival, adapting to the climate crisis and ongoing destabilization to come.

But we created this episode to recharge our spirits by amplifying the beautiful connection that we have to wai and one another with mele (song), and mo’olelo (story). We did a little callout and have a diverse set of wahine sharing a piece of themselves with us. 

The order of the pieces will be: "Flow of Life" by Anna Chua who is the Red Hill organizer at the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi and member of this podcast team with a soul awakening poem about water as life, warrior, and leader of resistance. Followed by Estrella Marin- Ethnic Studies Major at UH Manoa and scuba diver honoring her place of solace and solitude with  “Mother Ocean”. Next is powerhouse lawyer, mother, and advocate Rachel James share an empowering story, “Wai-We Gotta Talk About It”, that confronts the years of disconnected thought forced upon wai and one another. And last but not least we finish with epic beats from ʻIhilani Lasconia- Native Hawaiian student, artist, and organizer with Hui Aloha ʻĀina and Af3irm Hawaiʻi gifting us with conscious hip hop, inspiring us to come together to liberate wai, ʻāina, and ourselves- titled “Ola i ka Wai.”



Photo credit: Jong Marshes

This episode is packed full of information on water law, historical cases, community organizing on Maui to end water diversions from private companies, and wahine, womens’ roles in the movement to restore wai. Our avid listeners may know that water is a public trust by law in Hawaiʻi, held as a human right for the benefit of all people. Bianca Isaki, Ph.D is one of those advocates with a wealth of experience and offers us some legal analysis on water rights and issues, a rigorous and detailed insight into an array of water protection movements that make up just a fraction of the broader landscape. 

She is very intentional and specific throughout this interview to help us understand her role as a partner to empower communities with legal expertise, always doing her best to give credit to the ones on the ground doing the work. But with all that Bianca shares about law, processes, water science, and community struggle; we know she is certainly putting in the work herself to be a strong ally to kanaka maʻoli and advocate for aloha ʻāina. 

In this episode we have the esteemed pleasure to have a talk-story session with two beloved water protectors about historical and present day struggles. Both of them uplift the brilliance in water and land protection movements that continue to be a force of resilience against decades of extraction, diversion, and disconnection. 

Eric Enos is co-founder and Executive Director of Kaʻala Farm Inc.- whose mission to reclaim and preserve the living culture of Poʻe Kahiko (people of old) stretches back all the way to the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970’s, and Jonathan Scheuer, Ph.D who consults clients in managing environmental conflicts involving cultural, economic, and conservation stakeholders and sits on the Hawaiʻi State Land Use Commission. 

In this conversation, we get a snapshot into the water struggle Kaʻala led to restore water sheds in the Waiʻanae Moku after years of depletion from sugar plantation diversions. But through community organizing and solidarity during an epic era of activism throughout Hawaiʻi, Kaʻala was birthed as a farm, cultural education center, and an oasis for local people to reconnect to and heal through ʻāina. Jonathan offers an analysis of the structural inequity in institutional decision making and resource distribution of water management affecting the health of our waterways. 

The conversation was empowering, filled with deep knowledge and passion for our wai embodied with insight into the ongoing struggle that kanaka and allies have endured to protect it.

"Militarism and water do not work well together. Because fresh water is everything... to destabilize ʻāina, you destabilize water." 



In this episode we have the extreme pleasure of talking-story with the epic human- Sean Connelly who shares his journey from an elementary student concerned about ocean plastics to they're work today at the nexus of art, architecture, teaching, and aloha ʻāina activism. Sean has dedicated the past twelve years of their lives to research, education, and artistry that contemplates the meaning of urbanism, "militourism," and settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi. 

This is such a beautiful weaving of storytelling, critical history, and grassroots organizing to defend our water systems, highlighting issues around the Ala Wai Canal and Fort DeRussy in Waikiki, and the major issue facing us in this moment, the U.S Navy's perpetuation of environmental violence and threat to our water supply with their fuel storage facility at Kapūkaki. Sean ends this conversation with a beautiful vision and current effort to revive and reclaim ahupuaʻa systems and systems thinking to build a just future. 

Just a note that this episode was recorded on Oct. 26, 2021. Sean talk's about the Red Hill Fuel Facility as a apart of their longstanding work on this issue but would surely have said post the fuel leak in late November. Access to clean water and healthy water systems is absolutely essential to our ability to live and thrive in Hawaiʻi and around the world. 

We invite you to take a moment to think about your relationship to wai and as always, stay rooted. 

Photo courtesy of alohahawaiionipaa.org

If you've been listening to the news or following social media the past month, you know water has been on everybody’s minds recently. Every day there is more happening at Kapūkaki, aka Red Hill. This episode was recorded on Dec. 7, 2021, shortly after Oʻahu's Board of Water Supply shut down the Halawa shaft to prevent possible contamination. At the same time there was historic rainfall throughout the paeʻāina with major impacts to the coasts, exacerbating already eroded areas. All just a sobering reminder to us all that the climate crisis is here and we all have a role in protecting the place we call home. 

Professor Noelani Puniwai offers a rich perspective on reconnecting to the cultural, historical, and spiritual relationship of wai as a path forward to aloha ʻāina and ʻāina momona. Her work as an academic, conservation scientist, native Hawaiian community member, science educator, and a mother, is dedicated to ensuring the health and wellbeing of aina and wai. She does this all through storytelling to meaningfully connect and awaken to place. 

We hope this episode enriches you fills you with curiosity and aloha for the place you call home in Hawaiʻi nei.