We are not waves. A wave is moved by forces outside itself, carried wherever the water pushes, spending itself on a shore it did not choose. Kānaka have never been that. We are the people who looked at the largest ocean on earth and chose to cross it – who read the stars and the swells and set out on purpose, carrying everything we were in the hull of a canoe. Hawaiʻi sits at the northern apex of Polynesia because our ancestors voyaged to reach it.

Movement is not something that happens to us. It is something we do, and have always done, and it is written into who we are.

I am one of the Hawaiians who left. I have spent much of my adult life away from the Islands – in Aotearoa and now in Canada – teaching, building programs, and mentoring young Indigenous scholars.

I know that for some at home, a Hawaiian who lives abroad can invite a quiet question: are they still truly one of us? I want to answer that question – not for myself alone, but for all of us who have gone out. The answer is older, and prouder, than the question.

Consider Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia. Born in Kaʻū around 1792 and orphaned young, he boarded a ship as a teenager and sailed all the way to Connecticut. There, far from any face that knew him, he hungered for learning and began the work of setting his own language down on paper. He longed to bring that learning home.

He never made it; typhus took him in 1818, at age 26. But his last words, spoken in a New England winter, were “Aloha ʻoe” – my love be with you. His body lay in Cornwall for 175 years, until his people brought him home to Kona in 1993. One of the first of us to venture out carried Hawaiʻi within him to his final breath – and in the end, Hawaiʻi brought him home.

He was not the last. Through the 19th century, Kānaka shipped out aboard whaling and trading vessels and earned a reputation for being among the finest seamen afloat. Many settled along the Northwest Coast of the American continent, married into the Native nations there, and became beloved of them. They were called Kanaka – and they wore the name gladly. It stuck.

You can still find it written across the map, up and down the coast of British Columbia and inland: the homeland, planted wherever our people came to rest. Generations later, their descendants still turned their faces toward Hawaiʻi. A people do not leave their name across a coastline because they have forgotten themselves. They do it because they carry home so completely that they leave a piece of it everywhere they land.

And we did not only sail outward on others’ ships. We sent ourselves, deliberately, as a matter of national purpose.

Between 1880 and 1892, King Kalākaua and the Hawaiian Kingdom dispatched 18 young Hawaiians to study in six countries – Italy, Scotland, England, China, Japan, and the United States – in the program known as Hawaiian Youths Abroad.

They studied engineering, medicine, art, music, and military science, chosen to become the leaders of an independent nation. The going out was not exile; it was a commission from the crown. They were sent to gather the knowledge the lāhui needed – and to show the world that here was a nation of character, intellect, and talent, fit to stand among the nations of the earth. They were our representatives. We have never stopped sending them.

My own family is woven into this same current. My father, Herman Piʻikea Clark – whose name I carry – and his older brother, my uncle James Kalaeone Clark, both went from Punahou to Oregon State and into the National Football League.

My father, an all-pro guard for the Chicago Bears in 1955 and 1956, was later named to the NFL’s Half- Century team. Decades after his passing he was inducted into the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame by a committee that knew him only by reputation. My uncle, a guard for the Washington Redskins, came home to serve his people in the Hawaiʻi Legislature.

My great-uncles Duke and Sam Kahanamoku stood on Olympic podiums, Duke with three gold medals among the five he won across three Games, the brothers sharing the stand together at Paris in 1924. They competed against the whole world and beat it. Duke lived many years on the West Coast and carried Hawaiʻi with him wherever he went, becoming the man who gave surfing to the world. Not one of them became a drop less Hawaiian for having gone.

Even our treasures have made this journey and kept their meaning. In Chicago, Kulamanu McWayne Nash – a woman of aliʻi descent, connected by blood to Queen Liliʻuokalani herself – kept the kāhili, the feathered royal standards of our chiefs, through a lifetime far from home.

She carried her lineage and her mana with her, held these treasures in trust across the years away, and in 1949 gave them onward, knowingly, as Hawaiian things. The mana traveled. It was held, honored, and passed on. That is not the story of a people losing themselves at a distance. It is the story of a people keeping faith across one.

I left for the same reason my ancestors did: because the work I was called to do required knowledge that, at the time, I could not pursue at home. Years ago, I made the first attempt to begin a Native Hawaiian art and design course at the University of Hawaiʻi – the first taught from an Indigenous Hawaiian perspective – and it took root, carried forward by others after me.

But the deeper questions I needed to ask reached beyond what the institution, as it then was, could hold. I looked to Canada, to Australia, to programs across the United States, and I came to a clear conclusion: the world leader in the indigenization of higher education and the decolonizing of arts education was Aotearoa.

I was fortunate to be invited to live and work there as an academic, and there, as a Kanaka Maoli scholar, I earned my doctorate – supported and encouraged to study from within my own knowledge system. I stayed 20 years. I did not leave Hawaiʻi behind. I went to fetch what Hawaiʻi had sent me for.

And I am in good and current company. Kānaka Maoli now hold some of the most distinguished posts in the world.

Kēhaulani Kauanui is the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies at Princeton University. Noelani Arista directs the Indigenous Studies Program at McGill, one of Canada’s finest universities, where she organizes Hawaiian knowledge for a new century. The baritone Quinn Kamakanalani Kelsey based in Chicago is the premier Verdi baritone of his generation; he has sung the title role in Verdi’s Rigoletto on the great stages of the world, and not long ago came home to sing in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. I had the privilege of sitting in the audience in Toronto for his Rigoletto, swept up and overawed by the power and presence of that Hawaiian voice filling the hall.

These are not disconnected Hawaiians. They are among our finest – our leading minds and voices in the very fields of our excellence, representing the lāhui on the world’s largest stages.

This is why I believe we should think differently about our diaspora. With more Hawaiians now living away from the Islands than within them, the old anxiety – that to leave is to fade – has things exactly backward.

We are not refugees, scattered and diminished. We are voyagers and carriers, doing what we have always done: going out into the world and bringing our culture, our kūpuna, and our way of seeing with us, as a gift we give wherever we land.

Our diaspora is not a weakness to be explained away. It is an exemplar of our strength, our resilience, and our continuing excellence proven, as it has been for two centuries, in open competition on the world stage.

So, when someone asks whether a Hawaiian who lives abroad is still truly Hawaiian, I think of ʻŌpūkahaʻia with aloha on his lips in the Connecticut cold, and of the seamen who left our names along a far coastline, and of Kalākaua’s young scholars sent out to announce a nation. I think of a king who understood that to love your country can mean crossing an ocean for it.

We have always gone out. We have always carried home with us. And like ʻŌpūkahaʻia, in the ways that matter most, we always find our way back. We are voyagers still.

The post Nā Holomoana: We Are Voyagers Still appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

By Shani J.P. Butts

We just wrapped the 2026 King Kamehameha I Lei Draping Ceremony in Washington, D.C., and this one felt different. There was an air of excitement, celebration, and a call to action that left so many feeling invigorated and inspired.

Our mother, Darlene Kehaulani Butts, lovingly known as Aunty Kehau, was a pillar in the Hawaiian community and a constant presence at this event. She served as chair of the King Kamehameha I Lei Draping ceremony for decades.

Aunty Kehau had an appreciation and respect for protocol that went beyond the typical recognition for the necessity of order and procedures – she almost had a fascination with protocol and took pride in educating herself and others.

Combining Hawaiian and political protocol for an event on the East Coast honoring one of our aliʻi was no easy feat. As you might imagine, the Kamehameha Lei Draping Ceremony in D.C. was Aunty Kehau’s time to shine.

This year’s theme highlighted Kamehameha I’s last words: “E ʻoni wale nō ʻoukou i kuʻu pono ʻaʻole e pau” (continue the good that I have done for it is not yet finished). Those words have a whole new meaning for our ʻohana as we carry on our mom’s mission to honor our aliʻi on the East Coast.

May 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the Aliʻi Diplomatic Missions and Other Business Travel to Washington, D.C., project completed in conjunction with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. As shared in the publication:

“The inspiration for initiating this research were the leaders of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, ʻAhahui Kaʻahumanu, Hale O Nā Aliʻi O Hawaiʻi and Māmakakaua – Daughters and Sons of Hawaiian Warriors who traveled together to Washington, D.C., the week of September 13, 2003, to walk the halls of Congress and speak with U.S. Senators. These representatives of the Native Hawaiian Royal Societies sought support for the establishment of a process of federal recognition for Native Hawaiians as a step in the process of reconciliation between the United States and Native Hawaiians, to reaffirm the legal and political legal status as Indigenous sovereigns, protect existing rights and assure perpetuation of the distinct Indigenous Hawaiian culture through self-determination.”

In September 2026, Ke Aliʻi Makaʻāinana Hawaiian Civic Club, in collaboration with the Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī Coalition, are excited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this publication in our nation’s capital. We hope you will join us as we retrace the footsteps of our aliʻi in Washington, D.C.

The post Retracing the Footsteps of Our Aliʻi appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

Our lāhui is once again under direct assault.

The proposed FY2027 federal budget is the most sweeping and aggressive attempt to dismantle Native Hawaiian programs since Rice v. Cayetano (2000), when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Hawaiian-only voting for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA).

Far beyond a fiscal adjustment, this staggering $1.36 billion cut is a calculated maneuver to starve the resources sustaining our families and erase our political identity.

The Blueprint of Erasure

The roots of today’s attacks lie with the missionary descendants who orchestrated the 1893 overthrow. Desperate to protect their sugar profits and suppress Queen Liliʻuokalani’s constitution, this oligarchy manufactured a moral panic, smearing a sovereign monarch to disguise an illegal coup.

The blueprint was set: Invent a false narrative to justify a theft.

That 1893 blueprint never disappeared; it simply changed vocabulary. For over a century, this apparatus has weaponized U.S. law to maintain settler colonial control – beginning with the 1896 outlawing of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and the criminalization of hula.

Today, this false narrative relies on hijacked “civil rights” language. By seeking to reclassify Kānaka Maoli as a “domestic racial group,” the government manufactures a legal loophole to use civil rights laws against us, framing resource theft as a pursuit of equality.

The June 2026 lawsuit, Ryan v. Watson, already weaponizes the 14th Amendment to dismantle the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, falsely framing our political trust rights as “racial discrimination.” Under this guise of “equality,” the calculated maneuver does not just cut “social programs” – it starves the mandatory trust pipelines that satisfy a federal fiduciary debt and protect our vested property rights.

By designating us a “racial group,” the administration legally locks Native Hawaiian health centers out of federal block grants, putting $27 million at risk.

Our educational foundation remains similarly targeted: although a fragile, one-year reprieve was just secured for the $46 million Native Hawaiian Education Program (NHEP), the budget still zeros out $25 million for Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and $3.6 million for Career & Technical Education.

This mirrors the exact theories weaponized against Kamehameha Schools and OHA.

The Human Cost: Exiled in Our Homelands

The most visible failure of this settler-colonial system is the severe housing crisis, forcing Kānaka ʻŌiwi onto the streets of their ancestral lands.

Instead of fulfilling its century-old Hawaiian Homes Commission Act obligations – where 29,000 languish, untold thousands have died waiting, and the Ryan lawsuit seeks to open leases to non-Hawaiians – the budget eliminates the $22.3 million Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant (NAHASDA), freezing development.

Slashes to the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) starve nonprofits, accelerating our people’s coercive departure to the continent.

This assault collapses the safety net for our beneficiaries. The sheer scale of this erasure is evident in the defunding of critical programs: slashing SNAP/Food Stamps ($221 million) and Medicaid ($360 million) ensures keiki go hungry and treatable illnesses become emergencies.

Essential lifelines face total elimination, including civil legal aid ($3.8 million), LIHEAP/utilities ($7.7 million), broadband ($8 million), Job Corps ($30 million), health screenings ($1.8 million), and education grants ($8 million).

Furthermore, an 82% cut to Clean Water funds costs working-poor families $2,100 each. Most distressingly, a $150 million FEMA cut threatens Lahaina’s rebuilding, leaving the ʻāina vulnerable to outside land-grabs, while a 40% cut to the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations suffocates our capacity to self-advocate.

The Glaring Disparity: Domestic Slashes vs. Military Increases

This budget deliberately transfers wealth from our safety nets into the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, slashing domestic spending by $1.36 billion while surging military funding by $2 billion. As 65-year leases expire, the military is digging in – preparing to use eminent domain to seize our national lands, stripping our survival funding to finance their permanent occupation.

Navigating the Sovereignty Trap

We operate as the rightful stewards of our national estate, guided by patriot Joseph Nāwahī: “We are a nation; we have not lost our nationality.”

Because the United States never acquired Hawaiʻi through a lawful international mechanism – that is, no treaty of annexation was ever ratified – seeking “federal recognition” as a Native American tribe is a dangerous trap.

Under the Constitution’s “Commerce Clause,” Congress exercises plenary power over recognized tribes, allowing it to legally cut off funding with a single vote, which is exactly what it is attempting now. Accepting this false compromise trades our unrelinquished ea (sovereignty) for a fragile protectorate status they can unilaterally revoke. It is a calculated step toward total erasure, forcing us to abandon our international standing.

Holding the Line

The true danger of the U.S. courts is exemplified by Justice Samuel Alito’s 2009 Supreme Court ruling (Hawaii v. OHA). Alito gutted the 1993 Apology Law by dismissing its recognition of our national sovereignty as merely “conciliatory” words, establishing the exact blueprint now being used to defund us: weaponizing courts to neutralize Hawaiian protections without addressing the underlying crime.

We are watching this predatory playbook unfold.

In January 2025, the Interior Department issued legal opinion M-37083, explicitly confirming an “ongoing political relationship with Native Hawaiians manifested in hundreds of federal statutes.”

Today, driven by Project 2025, political operatives like Ed Blum and the Pacific Legal Foundation are backing Ryan v. Watson, and the administration is aggressively attempting to revoke this document.

They are burying their own legal admission, falsely reducing our political nationhood to a “racial group” as a pretext to defund the $1.36 billion protecting our vested property interests.

By erasing this distinction, they strip our ability to claim fiduciary damages owed for over a century of occupation, stealing our future to fund current wars.

Our aliʻi did not build a charity. Our leaders voluntarily relinquished absolute power to secure the people’s rights and build a progressive constitutional monarchy. We were overthrown because our peaceful sovereignty threatened what American businessmen desperately coveted: our ʻāina momona – our abundant lands – and our advantageous geographic location.

We are being defunded today because our continued existence threatens their occupation.

As Queen Liliʻuokalani declared, “The cause of Hawaiʻi and independence is larger and dearer than the life of any man connected with it.” Her words remain our sovereign mandate to fiercely protect our ʻāina, our wai, and our kai.

Our ea is not a domestic racial preference; it is not a charitable gift, and it is not up for negotiation. It is our unbroken legal and ancestral inheritance.

Elizabeth Ann Hoʻoipo Kalaenaʻauao Pa Nakea, Esq., has spent her career contributing to the collective work of Kanaka ʻŌiwi Ea through education and law. Formerly the executive director of the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council and president of Hui Naʻauao, she continues her lifelong advocacy for our lāhui’s ea and the protection of our ʻāina, wai, and kai. A Kamehameha and Richardson Law graduate, Elizabeth grew up across Liliha, Kāneʻohe Bay, and Kalihiwai Bay.

The post Budgeting Erasure: Defending Our Ea and Political Status appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

Every year, on July 31, the Royal Order of Kamehameha I Moku o Kohala, Hui Aloha Aina, and community members gather at Luakini Puukohola to commemorate Kamehameha’s unification by celebrating La Hoihoi Ea. Luakini Puukohola was built by thousands of warriors from six moku – a symbol of lokahi. Kamehameha I dedicated Puukohola to Kukailimoku, god of politics, government, resource management, and war.

Given recent attacks on Hawaiian programs, we look to our past for our path forward.

In 1895, Kuhio Kalanianaole was arrested for attempting to restore the Hawaiian Kingdom and imprisoned for a year. In 1902, he restored the Royal Order of Kamehameha I and became Hawaiʻi’s delegate to Congress, winning 10 straight elections. Kuhio advocated for county governance in 1905, Hawaiian Civic Clubs in 1918, and the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) in 1921; by doing so he used American law to serve Hawaiians.

The Hawaiian Humanitarian Alliance, Koa Kiai, and the Association of Hawaiian Home Lands which represent wait-listers, are uniting leaders on Moku o Keawe to focus on one bill in 2027 to end the Hawaiian Home Lands wait list under HHCA purpose 101:

1. “Return to their lands in order to fully support self-sufficiency for native Hawaiians and the self-determination of native Hawaiians”
2. “Establishing a permanent land base … to live, farm, ranch … engage in commercial or industrial activities”
3. “Historical government to government relationship … affirm fiduciary duty to faithfully administer … this act”
4. “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to … affect the rights of the descendants … of the Hawaiian Kingdom”

The lawsuits attacking Kamehameha Schools and now the HHCA continue a centuries old structure of genocidal attacks to eliminate Hawaiians in a two-step process: destroy and replace.

In my dissertation, Americanizing Luakini: White Supremacy Colonizing a Nation State, I use the term “Americanization Genocide” to describe the ongoing structure of attack. Despite the 1993 Apology Bill, Hawaiians and Hawaiian programs in our homeland continue to be targeted.

When Hawaiʻi state legislators vote against funding rehabilitation for wait-listers, and those wait-listers die on the waiting list, it could be construed as genocide. A key condition for statehood was the State of Hawaii’s acceptance of the fiduciary obligation to fulfill the HHCA compact. This is the only proviso in the 1959 Admissions Act.

Thus, they are knowingly withholding congressionally approved housing to mitigate the effects of Americanization Genocide. Many Hawaiians have died, and continue to die, on the wait list.

The Royal Order, East Hawaii Homestead Associations, and wait listers on Moku o Keawe continue to have positive discussions and are unified to advocate for measures that fund rehabilitation of wait listers – a 7 billion allocation in 2027 – and to change the 50% blood quantum application requirement to 1/32; called “Road to 7 Billion to Stop the Genocide.”

We are reaching out to other Homestead Associations, wait listers, civic clubs, royal societies, and Hawaiian organizations across the pae aina to unite and focus on one bill to advocate for the placement of Hawaiians on Hawaiian land. If interested contact: kupaaiwialoha@gmail.com.

Dr. Kalaniakea Wilson is a scholar of Indigenous politics, Hawaiian Kingdom law, and genocide. He chooses not to use diacritical markings.

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By S. Welaahilani Wāhilani

“One Hawaiian at a time” is a phrase Uncle Walter Kahumoku has used to describe the kuleana he holds in supporting Kānaka Maoli in accomplishing their goals.

At UH West Oʻahu, we apply that kuleana by endeavoring to bridge the gap between education and the community. With a collective vision to uplift the West Oʻahu region, nine individuals came together to create Kauluhāweo, a grassroots effort to deliver wraparound support services to students and their ʻohana.

We shed light on the importance of modeling Kānaka Maoli values within Western higher education institutions.

“Nā wai hoʻi ka ʻole o ke akamai, he alanui i maʻa i ka hele ʻia e oʻu mau mākua” are words spoken by King Kamehameha II that described the intelligence and excellence of Kānaka Maoli.

To model this type of excellence and intelligence, we employ Hawaiian epistemologies in our work to activate one another and our students to become extraordinary individuals. The use of the ʻohana structure, specifically the kaikuaʻana-kaikaina (older-younger sibling) model, enable us to shift how we practiced mentorship within our unit.

With this epistemological approach, my colleagues and I can model behaviors for our students that make them feel safe, seen, heard, and, most importantly, valued.

Since its founding in 2023, Kauluhāweo has continued to grow alongside the community it serves. What began as a collective of nine individuals has expanded to 11 staff and faculty members, six of whom hold master’s degrees and two with doctoral degrees.

While these academic achievements reflect professional preparation and expertise, they also represent something much deeper: a commitment to education as a pathway to serve, uplift, and give back to our lāhui and communities.

Many of us come from the West Oʻahu communities we now serve, and our educational journeys are not viewed solely as personal accomplishments, but as responsibilities carried on behalf of our ʻohana and poʻe.

By modeling this commitment to higher education, we intentionally demonstrate to our students that academic success and cultural identity are not separate pursuits. Instead, they exist in relationship with one another. Through mentorship, guidance, and daily interactions, we encourage students to see their own educational pathways as opportunities to become future leaders, advocates, educators, and caregivers within their communities.

In many ways, this reflects the kuleana of the kaikuaʻana within the kaikuaʻana-kaikaina relationship: to guide, protect, and provide for the younger sibling.

At Kauluhāweo, mentorship extends beyond academic advising or institutional support. It is rooted in pilina, reciprocity, and collective responsibility. We strive to model for our students what it means to uplift one another, carry ourselves with humility and excellence, and return our knowledge and experiences to the communities that raised us.

In doing so, we hope to cultivate future generations of Kānaka Maoli who not only pursue higher education but also understand the importance of using their education to serve others.

For more information about the Kauluhāweo program, email nhssp@hawaii.edu

S. Welaahilani Wāhilani is the director of Hui Kīpaipai: Early Academic Outreach at UH West Oʻahu. He is a graduate of Ka Papahana Kaiapuni, UH West Oʻahu, and UH Mānoa, currently pursuing an EdD. His work centers on integrating Indigenous culture into academia, challenging systemic barriers, and fostering decolonial praxis that supports both student and staff success.

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We are raising our Native Hawaiian grandson Kaimana, who is 6 years old. Kaimana’s mother, (our daughter) Jayna, passed away in 2019 from a ruptured brain aneurysm while she was pregnant with Kaimana. He was born extremely premature and spent five months in the NICU fighting for his life.

In April 2020, we brought Kaimana home and have cared for him ever since, providing unwavering love and support. Kaimana suffers from severe cerebral palsy and brain damage. He is blind, cannot speak, control his arms or legs, hold his head up, sit, stand, walk or eat normally (he is fed through g-tube).

I’m a service-disabled veteran. My wife, JoAnne, and I are living on a fixed retirement income. We could not have foreseen or planned for the tragedy that led us to adopt Kaimana, and this has strained our finances. Kaimana has therapies not covered by insurance and requires expensive special medical supplies.

Kaimana requires a wheelchair full-time and has multiple therapeutic medical and specialist appointments every week. He has grown so much we can no longer carry him easily. To ensure he can get to these appointments safely and comfortably, we are raising funds to purchase a wheelchair-accessible minivan.

The wheelchair ramp conversion and tie-down safety system will be covered through an assistance program, so every dollar donated will go solely toward purchasing the minivan itself. Without this van, Kaimana cannot access the care he needs to thrive.

We love Kaimana dearly. He is a blessing in our lives and provides us with a perspective that allows us to focus on the important things in life. We embrace the sacrifices and hardships but could really use a little help.

Our community has already shown us so much love, and we are humbled to have to ask for more. Aloha is a way of life and the belief that we are bound to one another; that the wellbeing of one is the concern of all. We believe that spirit lives in every person who has ever loved someone they would do anything for.

We are raising funds to purchase a minivan for Kaimana through Go Fund Me and no contribution is too small. Mahalo nui loa from the bottom of our hearts.

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By Naiʻa Ulumaimalu Lewis

The first time I crossed the threshold into the Kūpuna Islands was the summer of 2008. I had started working for Papahānaumokuākea the year before and was supporting the education and outreach team on a Pacific educators’ cruise aboard the NOAA ship Hiʻialakai for the International Year of the Reef.

Over a two-week expedition, we studied coral at its source and shared the work we’d been doing for years to bring back to our communities and classrooms. Most days were on the ocean, but we walked Nihoa, snorkeled in the waters around Mokumanamana – privileged to deliver Dr. Kekuewa Kikiloi, a UH professor, and Anan Raymond of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for several days on Mokumanamana.

What I came to learn the moment I slipped into the waters around one of our most sacred geographies, is that the ocean around an atoll has a way of clarifying you. The line that passes near Mokumanamana is Ke Alanui Polohiwa a Kāne, the Black Shining Road of Kāne, the Tropic of Cancer.

North of this line is Pō, the realm of ancestors and akua. South of this line is Ao, where Kānaka live. Sliding into the depths of the Moananui, I crossed the membrane. My experience returned me anew, newly clear about my place, my purpose, and the core of who I had always been.

This was reaffirmed by the transformation in Kekuewa and Anan when we returned for them.

In 2010, I was given a second chance to access the Papahānaumokuākea. Getting one chance is a privilege. Going twice is magic. Kūpuna intervention. Ironically, the U.S. federal government supported my access to some of the most sacred places to my Native Hawaiian community.

I am not saying this as a thank-you but as a reminder: there are many ways to leverage the present political situation toward pono, even when it takes longer than we’d like, and it does not feel as if we are moving the needle.

My second access was by plane. We landed on Kuaihelani (Midway). There, I put my feet on ʻāina that had witnessed nearly 28 million years of evolution and only recent human visitation.

Surrounded by thousands of nesting mōlī (albatross), I was once again given the ability to see myself at scale – very small in the vast natural world. Aboard the ship, the ocean was everything. On Kuaihelani, my feet were able to build a relationship with the sands of our collective birth across days.

As our ancestors would have it, our visit fell during the summer solstice. On the day we did protocol, we learned that at the same hour, colleagues aboard Hiʻialakai (the ship I’d sailed in 2008) were doing similar protocol near Mokumanamana. The veil went thin again. The 530 miles between us was real, but we transcended it.

What Mokumanamana clarified for me, Kuaihelani gave me the spine to act on. The distance between Ao and Pō is not a barrier. I came home with the courage for the hard decisions about my own path – decisions some people would prefer I not make, but I made them.

The Kūpuna Islands do not ask us to move there. They ask us to move with intent, here.

Naiʻa Lewis worked for NOAA Papahānaumokuākea between 2007–2016 and continues to act as the executive director for Big Ocean and is the lead author of “Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas: Guidelines for Design and Management” (IUCN Protected Planet series). She is the founder of Salted Logic and Studio Wā. Her current work centers on temporal sovereignty.

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By Melissa Kahili-Heede

Today, more than half of Native Hawaiians reside outside of the pae ʻāina. Some leave in search of opportunity, education, or stability. Others leave because staying has become too difficult.

Rising housing costs, limited economic mobility, and generational inequities make it unattainable for many families to remain in place. These conditions are not isolated. They are rooted in histories of dispossession, land loss, and political upheaval that reshaped Hawaiian life as we know it.

At Papa Ola Lōkahi, we understand our kuleana to improve Native Hawaiian health wherever Hawaiians live, work, play, and age. Therefore, in response to more Kānaka living on the continental U.S., we established He Alo a He Alo in August 2024 to explore how Hawaiian identity is lived, carried forward, re-envisioned, and challenged in all 50 states.

Through this project, our hope was to build pilina and expand our current understanding of Hawaiian identity and thus, the needs of Hawaiian wellbeing within Hawaiʻi and beyond.

He Alo a He Alo was a year-long project in which our CEO, Dr. Sheri Daniels, hosted face-to-face gatherings across the continent and in Hawaiʻi. The project was named He Alo a He Alo (face-to-face) to set the intention and methodology for our listening tour.

We believed that sitting, listening, and talking story face-to-face with Hawaiians across the U.S. would establish pilina and generate unity in our collective kuleana of being well for our future generations.

We partnered with hula hālau, Hawaiian civic clubs, college alumni, and Hawaiian-serving organizations across the continent to recruit and host talk story sessions with Native Hawaiian adults to unpack Hawaiian identity and the strengths and challenges that come with being Hawaiian.

Rather than positioning community members as subjects, the project was grounded in reciprocal learning. Participants were recognized as ʻike holders and collaborators in creating understanding.

Each region brought unique perspectives and stories, reminding us that while our experiences may differ, our connections to one another remain unwavering. Recognizing what affects our people’s ability to sustain identity as Kānaka within and beyond Hawaiʻi enables Papa Ola Lōkahi to strategically build relationships and promote awareness. We learned what will help guide future engagement, programming, and opportunities to strengthen connections across our lāhui.

Since the conclusion of listening/talk-story sessions, we have worked to prepare final reports with deep aloha and care for our continental ʻohana and hoa. We are currently in the process of reporting back to the communities who so graciously allowed us in, reporting regionally starting with the Pacific-West and working our way east.

We see these reports as a starting point rather than a conclusion. With the reports come recommendations from community members, rooted in participants’ voices. Our hope is that other Native Hawaiian-serving organizations will join us in caring for the health of Kānaka wherever they are, he alo a he alo.

E ola mau ka lāhui Hawaiʻi!

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By Wayne Chung Tanaka and Lenei Naipo

For many Hawaiʻi families who live in communities near or adjacent to military bases, the sounds of war and the byproducts of military training activities are woven into daily life.

One example is Waimānalo, Oʻahu, where children fall asleep to the thunder of explosions, the echo of gunfire, and the rumble of military aircraft shaking the windows of their houses on military training days. Meanwhile, along Kahawai o Pūhā, community members work to restore a stream that once sustained thriving loʻi kalo, fisheries, and food systems, while confronting contamination caused by decades of military occupation.

These impacts on ʻāina and surrounding communities demand far greater attention and discussion.

But they are only part of the story. What harms do military training activities, including this month’s Rim of the Pacific Exercises (RIMPAC), inflict on the ocean and its physical, cultural, and ancestral connections to Hawaiʻi and her people?

The Ocean as Ancestor, Relative, and Responsibility

Answering this question first requires an understanding of what the ocean means to Kānaka Maoli, and all who call Hawaiʻi home.

For Kānaka Maoli, the ocean is woven into genealogy, identity, and purpose. The Kumulipo traces the origins of life through successive stages of Pō, where early life emerges from the sea. It situates humans within a continuum of existence that begins in the ocean and extends through land, sky, and the spiritual realm, binding people to the natural world through ancestry.

This ancestral grounding shapes the kuleana to care for all ʻāina, including the ocean, which has fed families, connected communities, guided navigation, and provided spaces for ceremony and learning for millennia.

Ocean-based practices such as kilo (observation) and the management of loko iʻa (fishponds) reflect enduring pilina among people, ʻāina, and akua. The ocean also carries cultural memory and embodies long-standing genealogical responsibilities.

When our ocean is harmed, the damage is not merely ecological. Families lose access to gathering areas, cultural practices erode, and ancestral knowledge becomes harder to pass on. For Kānaka Maoli, harm to the ocean is harm to kūpuna and to the source of life itself.

RIMPAC, Military Exercises, and Our Ocean Waters

RIMPAC and similar ocean-impacting exercises extend beyond conventional Western measures of environmental harm. The following examples underscore the need for greater attention to these overlooked impacts.

Land-based pollution: On-land military exercises, including those that occur during RIMPAC, invariably introduce toxic contaminants to ma uka environments, where they can be transported into nearshore ocean waters via streams, runoff, and even air.

For example, testing has documented lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and additional contaminants in the wetlands of Waimānalo, just one of several areas used for combat training on Oʻahu. These pollutants pose risks to aquatic ecosystems and the local communities they sustain.

Other military training sites, like Pōhakuloa, have also been associated with high levels of toxic pollutants including PFAS “forever chemicals,” trichloroethylene, arsenic, beryllium, lead, and dioxins, as well as the historical use of depleted uranium munitions. These long-lasting contaminants can easily make their way to the ocean via groundwater and runoff into adjacent streams.

Finally, runaway fires from military training, such as the nearly 900 fires associated with military training at Pōhakuloa, also rapidly accelerate the spread of toxic compounds through the air, across the landscape, and inevitably into the sea.

Water pollution: RIMPAC 2026 will bring more than 40 ships and 25,000 personnel to Hawaiʻi. Environmental impact statements (EISs) indicate that when docked at Pearl Harbor, warships will offload wastewater for treatment, likely at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam facility.

Given its history of unlawful discharges and an $8.7 million Clean Water Act penalty in 2022, added strain on this dilapidated facility increases the risk of yet another massive sewage leak into our ocean.

At sea, ships may dump treated or untreated wastewater directly into the ocean, depending on their distance from shore. Sewage system failures, such as those that sidelined the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS George H.W. Bush, could also result in releases closer to land.

Other pollutants, from fire-fighting foams to oils, solvents, and other toxic chemicals used on military equipment, weapons, and vehicles, may also be released at sea or in port due to accidents, training exercises, deck wash-downs, or rain.

Wildlife and habitat impacts: The Hawaiʻi-California Training and Testing EIS contemplates mine warfare training using underwater detonations, including near Pearl Harbor, Barbers Point, and Pearl City Peninsula.

The document acknowledges that such activities, as well as “military-expended materials” and anchoring, may damage coral reefs and cause years’ worth of damage to marine life.

Military sonar, which has been linked to mass strandings of whales and dolphins in Hawaiʻi and elsewhere, is also projected to cause millions of disruptions to marine mammal behavior.

Hawaiʻi Island residents may recall the beaked whale that stranded itself in Hōnaunau in 2022 after the Navy confirmed its use of sonar off the Kona Coast. And Kauaʻi residents may remember the mass stranding of 200 melon-headed whales in Hanalei Bay in 2004 which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) later confirmed was the “plausible, if not likely” result of active Navy sonar use.

Whales are also at risk of fatal ship strikes. In 2023, the Navy reached its permitted limit of three whale kills from vessel collisions of the California coastline – prompting it to ask permission from the National Marine Fisheries Service to kill more whales.

This came after an Australian ship participating in a U.S. Navy-led multinational exercise unknowingly struck, killed, and dragged two Fin whales – occasional visitors to Hawaiian waters – into San Diego Bay.

Meanwhile, the Navy’s EIS for the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauaʻi proposes firing machine guns, rockets, and “inert” bombs at Kaʻula Island (located 23 miles from Niʻihau) up to 55 times annually, more than once per week on average, near native seabird nests and monk seal and dolphin resting areas.

The continuation of RIMPAC’s SINKEX exercises, in which decommissioned warships are intentionally sunk, threaten to damage deepwater habitats that take centuries to form.

Aquatic invasive species risks: Military activities and installations are well-known for their association with terrestrial invasive species, such as devil weed (first found on Oʻahu at the Army’s Kahuku Training Area) and the coconut rhinoceros beetle (first discovered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam).

RIMPAC’s influx of naval vessels and planned underwater training exercises carry the risk of introducing or spreading aquatic invasive species as well.

Even with guidelines to reduce the risk of invasive species introductions from vessel ballast water and biofouling – the source of 80% of our aquatic invasive species – the extent to which visiting warships will comply with these safeguards is unclear.

Significantly increased vessel traffic and underwater detonation exercises may also contribute to the spread of the current octocoral infestation in Puʻuloa. These reef-smothering soft corals already cover a 100-acre area and led to the shutdown of fishing and kayaking at Pearl Harbor due to the ease in which they can spread through fragmentation.

Should octocoral fragments escape the harbor mouth, the consequences for our coral ecosystems could be devastating.

Climate change impacts: Climate destabilization remains the greatest threat to our oceans. Yet the U.S. – the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels – continues to expand its impact through exercises like RIMPAC, reinforcing a cycle of military expansion among allies and rivals that accelerates the climate crisis.

These examples capture only a fraction of the impacts that RIMPAC and other military exercises may have on the ocean – an ancestor, caretaker, and the source of life for all living things.

The prevailing military narrative frames these harms as “necessary” for America’s “national security.” However, our pilina and kuleana to the ocean require a fuller accounting of their consequences for our ancestors, ʻāina, and future generations.

The authors wish to thank Rebecca Holloway and Dan Rempala for their research assistance.

Wayne Chung Tanaka is the executive director of the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi and a former public policy manager with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Lenei Naipo, a kupa of Waimānalo, is a law student and a summer law clerk with Earthjustice whose work focuses on environmental and restorative justice for Kānaka Maoli.

The post An Ancestor Under Fire: The Cultural and Environmental Impact of RIMPAC appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

By Kamanamaikalani Beamer, PhD

Wēlina mai ke aloha i ka ʻāina. In March, my appointment as the incoming Dean of Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge (HSHK) was finalized. It’s difficult for me to express the magnitude of this significant moment and the kuleana of becoming the next dean of Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge. Let me start by saying I am deeply in love with our school.

Hawaiʻinuiākea has bettered the lives of so many ʻohana, community, haumāna, and ʻāina in ways that I believe will be generationally transformative. Hawaiʻinuiākea is truly a momi (jewel) – it is a vessel that can be like a hulu kupuna (beloved elder) for our people for all time. All our faculty, staff, and community partners have played a critical role in this hana koʻikoʻi (urgent work).

Hawaiʻinuiākea is unique and vital to the overall success of our lāhui – the ea (sovereignty) of our ʻāina, the ola (health) of our ʻōlelo, and the education of the nation. We are like the ʻōhiʻa seedling birthed in the ʻāʻā after struggle. Every lālā (branch) of our school is critical to our overall success and I intend to serve each of us as we ulu (increase) toward new and formative outgrowths. So that one day there will be a forest of Hawaiʻinuiākea.

I am piha with mahalo (filled with gratitude) to the selection committee and all of you who contributed to the process that led to this moment. I am incredibly honored to follow former deans Maenette Benham and Jonathan Osorio to become the third dean of Hawaiʻinuiākea, and the first dean to hold a degree from one of our programs.

I believe that even in these incredibly challenging times when many of our efforts and the hana koʻikoʻi of generations are under assault, if we kūlike (stand together), if we can recall the magneti o ke aloha ʻāina (magnetic pull in the heart of the patriot), we will emerge from the hihia (difficulty) stronger, with greater clarity and resolve, me ka wiwoʻole (with fearlessness).

I believe a critical part of ea in these times can be achieved by creating the most highly functional organization possible within the confines of the structures in which we are embedded. So that one day the generations will look back at these vile times, when our aliʻi trusts were under assault and our aquifers were poisoned with jet fuel, and not wallow in sorrow but stand proudly because those who were living through these times, i kēia au nei, stood together with the strength and sentiments of those who came before us.

I know that great things are to come for Hawaiian education, ʻāina, and community if we can kūkahi (stand together) for what is pono.

Students and their parents are now making decisions on college attendance. The decision on where to attend college is one of the most special and significant choices for ʻohana. I want you to know that Hawaiʻinuiākea is a place for you. We have a record of nurturing and challenging haumāna to understand tools for accessing ʻike Hawaiʻi that have grounded and enriched the development of thousands of our students, many of which can be seen as leaders serving communities across our islands.

Our faculty are incredibly multi-disciplinary and bring their wealth of knowledge and experience into the classroom with courses that range from Hawaiian genealogies to mahiʻai kalo (taro farming). Some are on the ʻāina in field schools that advance Hawaiian geography, marine resource management, archeology, and food sovereignty. Others teach through immersive experiences in ʻōlelo, mele, and in the performing arts.

We have an entire center focused on supporting ʻŌiwi student success and enrichment and even an immersive international exchange experience with “Hawaiian Youths Abroad,” that has enriched the education of our students, enabling them to experience places such as Japan, London, Paris, Tahiti, and more.

But what really makes us unique is the relentless commitment toward a better and more just future for our ʻāina and community.

I believe we are the best place to nurture haumāna to make a positive difference for our islands that is rooted in ancestral knowledge while moving toward pono and ea. We have a moʻokūʻauhau (genealogy) that links us to some of our island’s most important researchers, scholars, and change-agents, and a dedication toward Hawaiʻi’s future, a hiki i ke aloha ʻāina hope loa.

For those that would like to know more about Dr. Kamana Beamer and his work to date visit kamanabeamer.com. Learn more about Hawaiʻinuiākea at manoa.hawaii.edu/hshk

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