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To Kaleʻa Raymond, kapa is something to be worn, lived in and loved.

“It is a reverent thing to have a piece of kapa,” says Raymond, owner of Laʻahana Creations, which sells handcrafted, wearable kapa accessories. “But a lot of Kānaka Hawaiʻi, when they receive a piece of kapa, or you know, they make a piece of kapa, it goes on the wall, or it goes into a cabinet. It’s loved and it’s precious, but it’s not used, right?”

Raymond, who learned kapa-making from her mother, kapa practitioner and teacher Lisa Schattenburg-Raymond, wanted to change that. “I wanted to start doing things where people could wear kapa again,” she said.

Her vision was to make wearable kapa pieces, so she started by making hat bands in 2021 and then earrings in 2022. “I’m still expanding the things that I make,” Raymond said, “but it’s pieces that people can wear every day.”

Each hat band features a uniquely patterned piece of kapa, set on felt and secured to the hat with a ribbon or Velcro. She offers the hat bands as custom orders, allowing her to tailor each one to the individual hat. The earrings come in different colors in wire frames, from circles to crescent moons to triangles to diamond shapes — each pair also uniquely patterned using native dyes.

Raymond is now experimenting with other kinds of products, such as belts, bracelets and necklaces, but wants to make sure that they stay affordable and wearable. “Everything that I make, I wear-test. I make sure that they’re going to hold up,” she says. One day, she would really like to add a lei hulu-style of kapa adornment.

Born and raised on Maui, Raymond attended a Hawaiian immersion school before earning a degree from UH Mānoa with a focus in costume design. She moved to California and lived there for seven years to pursue a career in costuming but felt a longing to return to Maui in 2019. It wasn’t until she moved back that she reconnected with kapa and found herself drawn to it.

“The pandemic was a really unfortunate thing for many, but it was really fortuitous for me because being with my parents, and with my mom in particular, she gave me a deep dive into kapa,” Raymond said with a laugh, amused by the memory. “I did the full immersion experience with my mother. And I’m very grateful for that and I’m still learning.”

The name of her business, Laʻahana Creations, is in reference to a moʻolelo about two sisters who are kapa makers. Lauhuʻiki is the one who is knowledgeable in harvesting and processing, while Laʻahana is skilled in decorating.

“When I first heard that story, and I was first starting on my kapa journey, I realized that Lauhuʻiki and Laʻahana are my mom and I,” she smiled, noting that her mom has the green thumb while she has a passion for art.

To make the kapa pieces, she and her mom grow, harvest, and process the wauke (paper mulberry) themselves.

“My mother and I, when we’re making kapa, especially the watermarked pieces, we usually tend to do large sheets instead of just a small piece, and that can take between 20 to 30 hours of beating,” Raymond said.

“We only do it in four-hour periods, otherwise your body just hurts.” It takes focus, she explains, as they must listen and watch what they’re doing to move the fibers over.

She uses traditional dyes to print the kapa patterns, harvesting plants and materials sustainably. “I make my own ink in a traditional way. I use all handmade ohe kapala (bamboo stamps) from Nalu Andrade of Nā Maka Kahiko. He hand-carves all my ohe kapala,” Raymond said.

Because the kapa is delicate, she fully encases all the earrings in resin to protect them. The resin is see-through and preserves the kapa for longer wear.

Raymond has a strong passion for kapa making, and dreams of there one day being “a hui of kapa makers together to make a 10-layer, 12-foot-long hula pāʻū and have somebody perform in it,” she said.

“With our growing connection back to our ancestors, we’re having more men wearing malo, but we don’t have a lot of women wearing pāʻū,” referring to history books about hula dancers and the kapa pieces that were worn.

While that may be her lifetime goal, for now she would like to see more people making and wearing kapa — and that’s what she’s working toward through her business.

Laʻahana Creations can be found on Facebook and Instagram, and Raymond sells at various Maui craft fairs and cultural events. She most recently attended the Kū Mai Ka Hula competition at Maui Arts & Cultural Center and the Kamehameha Day celebration at Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea.

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Through its Kamery Lee, Jr. Scholarship, along with mentorship and networking opportunities, the foundation empowers Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, whether living in Hawaiʻi or on the continent, to pursue their academic goals while perpetuating culture and traditions. Some are hula practitioners, paddlers and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi speakers, carrying traditions forward.

“And you know, their plan is that they want to continue that throughout their life and possibly come back home to Hawaiʻi and support the next generation in the community,” said JoNelle Sood, founder and president of the Hoʻomau Foundation.

Sood, a Kanaka Maoli born and raised in California, experienced firsthand how receiving a college degree opened doors to opportunities, leading her to high tech positions. But, Sood says, she noticed very little Hawaiian or Polynesian representation in the workforce.

She founded the Hoʻomau Foundation in 2020 to help change that by supporting Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander college students through scholarships, mentorships and networking opportunities. The Kamery Lee Jr. Scholarship is named in honor of her late father, who she says was a “proud Native Hawaiian man” who moved to California for better opportunities.

One of the foundation’s big picture goals is to create lasting generational impacts by inspiring other Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders to pursue higher education and continue serving their communities.

Their annual fundraising gala is the foundation’s primary method of raising funds for scholarships. The most recent one was on September 24 at the Outrigger Canoe Club.

“It was a fun night. We had a live music, hula, live and silent auctions, and a beautiful dinner,” Sood said. Hoʻomau scholars were also there to meet guests and “share their stories about how Hoʻomau Foundation has impacted them.”

Since its inception, the foundation has awarded six rounds of scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per person. And so far, eight recipients have graduated. The impacts of the program have been meaningful for students, who are growing their networks in their chosen fields and landing internships.

The 2025-2026 school year is the largest cohort to date with its 14 recipients. This year, 85% of them are from Hawaiʻi while the rest are from the continent. Sood says half of the students go to the continental U.S. for education while half stay in Hawaiʻi either on Oʻahu or another island.

“We’re excited to have our first recipient come back as a mentor,” Sood said. “That’s all part of our sustainability and growth plan. We hope a lot of these students come back and mentor the younger generation.”

Kauahoa Hermosura is the first Hoʻomau scholar to return as a mentor. When he applied for the scholarship in 2022, he was his school’s Pacific Islander club president and had founded his own nonprofit, Palai Foundation, focused on Hawaiian education and leadership on Kauaʻi.

“I first learned about the scholarship online while I was doing scholarship research for Native Hawaiian students,” Hermosura said.

Feeling aligned to Hoʻomau Foundation’s values, he applied. “As much support as we can get for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, especially going into higher education, I think is super important.”

Hermosura graduated with a degree in marketing and human resources from Menlo College in California in 2023. He’s now the associate director of marketing and alumni relations for the college but hopes to eventually return to Hawaiʻi and run his nonprofit full time.

Becoming a mentor now is a full-circle moment, as he is able to be there for a Hoʻomau scholar just as his own mentor was available to him. It’s a supportive relationship that can last beyond the year. “I also have great connections for my mentee, which is another part of it, in my eyes – being able to be a guide for them and a connector for them. I just support them overall,” he said.

Pairing scholars with mentors is also a powerful way to show students the kind of representation that Sood hopes to see more of in the future. It has the potential to create a change, not just in individual student’s lives, but across the community as more graduates thrive in various fields.

“Longterm, we’re hoping to see health needs change, education levels change, and the dropout level change,” Sood said.

And then, for the next generation, the hope is that they will be “seeing these individuals in their community having these types of roles, and realizing that they can do it, too.”

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A Kauaʻi food truck is gaining popularity as it has added two new locations within one year’s time. The Musubi Truck, located in Kapaʻa, Kōloa and Līhuʻe, has a nicely sized menu, with musubi, a poke bowl and bentos. But it’s the assortment of musubi, such as ʻahi katsu, miso chicken and kalbi beef, that makes you want to try them all. There’s even a deep-fried Spam musubi.

“Our vision pretty much was to just create a kind of basic food truck that kind of just put a little spin onto what we all grew up eating,” says co-owner Andrew Kakalia, who is also the chef at the Kōloa location. The idea also seemed fitting for Kauaʻi, since the island is said to be the birthplace of the Spam musubi.

“We just wanted to produce good food at an affordable cost, because everything is so expensive here on island,” Kakalia adds.

He was a fulltime lifeguard, when he and his wife, Kelly, opened the first location in Kapaʻa in 2020. They own the business with another Kauaʻi couple, Nicolette and Jeffrey Aguinaldo, the chef who came up with the recipes. ‘I call him ʻFood Lord,’” Kakalia says. “That guy is a genius with food.”

Although they had a well thought-out plan, Kakalia admits he had some doubts at first. “I was like, ʻWhat are we doing? This is crazy.’ The pandemic hit and I was like, ʻsee, I knew it.’”

Some of the delectable items on The Musubi Truck’s menu include (l-r): Miso Happy Chicken musubi, Chicken Katsu musubi and their fresh ahi poke bowl available three ways – “local” style, “spicy mayo” and “ginger soy.”

But instead of giving up, the owners stuck through it. Kakalia quit his job as a lifeguard to go full time and then COVID shut everything down. “It was logistically the worst time to quit my job, but I knew The Musubi Truck was going to work out,” he says.

Kakalia was right. When the shutdown ended, sales picked up. Last year, they added a second Musubi Truck in Kōloa. Within six months of that, they opened a third — their first brick-and-mortar location — near Kalapakī Beach in Līhuʻe.

It had always been a goal for them to expand, and they are living their dream. Now, they are looking into franchising the business. “Brah, honestly, our vision is to expand globally. I see a musubi truck, no joke, everywhere,” Kakalia says.

Feeding the keiki

Born and raised on Kauaʻi, Kakalia sees and recognizes the importance of improving the island’s food security. When The Musubi Truck first opened, he felt a desire to help the community. They started a Feed Our Keiki program three years ago and recently founded a nonprofit by the same name.

“When we first opened, I would just drive to the skate park every day and hook up all the kids with musubis,” he says. “And then we got a little smarter, and we started just printing out tickets.” Kids could then take the ticket and redeem a meal at one of their locations. One keiki meal consists of an OG Spam musubi with chips or mandarin orange and juice.

Donations of $5 feed one meal to keiki, who are in need. “We had someone donate, like, 1,000 bucks, so we got to go and give hundreds of cards to different people,” he says. Sometimes they’ll give a stack of cards to local school principals.

“Just the little smiles, just the smiles that you see on kid’s faces you know. It’s pretty radical,” says Kakalia, who is also a father of four. “You can see a little bit of shame in the family, sometimes in the parents, but you don’t see any of that in the kids. They’re just smiling ear to ear and the joy is radiant.”

The program, which is now in its fourth year, has served over 10,000 meals. “You know, a lot of people, this is local style, they’re not going to say they need a hand, you know. Most people they [tend to say], ‘Don’t help me, I got this,’” Kakalia says. “When our heart is like, ‘No, brah, we want to bless those that need it.’”

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Fifty years ago, when Hōkūleʻa set sail on its maiden voyage, the focus was to revive Hawaiʻi’s connection to ocean voyaging and then to perpetuate the tradition for future generations. However, as voyaging looks toward its next chapter, a challenge has emerged and it’s not one that can be ignored.

“The No. 1 challenge that’s coming up right now is climate change. It’s seriously a part of our conversation now,” said Chadd Paishon Pwo navigator and executive director of Nā Kālai Waʻa. The nonprofit launched Hawaiʻi Island’s voyaging canoe, Makaliʻi, 30 years ago.

“For us, the final factor in saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to go,’ or not, is weather,” Paishon said. “And now that weather has shifted so much, you know, will this be a factor of maybe we won’t sail long as often, but that’s what we have to continue to look at. Because even for our families down in the South Pacific, they’re seeing such a difference in their seasons right now that they’ve never seen before.”

Climate change is warming the ocean and storms thrive in warmer ocean temperatures.

In the last century, the temperature rose between one-half and one degree Fahrenheit, and Hawaiʻi’s average temperature could increase 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to the State of Hawaiʻi Climate Change Portal.

The hotter ocean temperatures intensify and fuel hurricanes. There’s no telling, though, how intense the storms will end up being.

“Essentially, we have to train harder now for the storm than we’ve ever trained before,” said Nainoa Thompson, Pwo navigator and CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. “It’s always been about our relationship with nature and we’re having to build a relationship to a fast-changing natural world, one which humanity has never faced before, in terms of the pace of change.”

The data scares him, he said, but he believes in the younger generation, and he wants them to be prepared for the storms. “What the data is showing is that there’s not necessarily more hurricanes, but it’s showing that they’re more intense, they’re stronger, and the length of time of dangerous days per storm has increased,” he said.

This means there could be shorter windows for canoes to sail between hurricanes, and plans need to be made ahead of time on how to avoid a severe storm if one appears. “It’s all about decisions on when to go and when not to go, where to go, where to hide,” Thompson continued. The places to hide are usually where there have been no hurricanes historically or at the Equator, where the Coriolis Effect prevents hurricanes from forming there.

“We’re like hurricane-hole-hopping. It’s much more complicated, but it’s required us to know a lot more about nature,” Thompson said. “We’re looking at Earth systems. And if you don’t understand the systems, you can’t predict the weather. But if you do understand the systems, then it helps you to be able to make better decisions.”

Hōkūleʻa is about to continue its Moananuiākea voyage, which is intended to travel 43,000 nautical miles to 36 countries. Thompson said that this voyage will be the most dangerous and riskiest because it crosses around the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea, where the ocean is the hottest in the world and where there is a high probability of hurricanes (known as typhoons in that region).

He said they have multiple plans in place depending upon the weather, ranging anywhere from not going at all to diverting to other places. Additionally, an escort boat will accompany Hōkūleʻa and sister canoe Hikianalia, and its crew will also help keep an eye on the weather.

Thompson said the changing climate is forcing them to ask different questions now than they did in the past. The crew is also using advanced technology to give them the most accurate weather and atmospheric information when they’re on the ocean.

Whether or not climate change would ever prevent voyaging in the future is unknown at this point.

“For us in voyaging, we’re going to keep voyaging. We’re going to keep sailing until the data shows us that it’s beyond the safety envelope,” Thompson said. “We’re not there yet. So we’re going to continue the voyage. But we have to alter. We have to adapt. We have to learn.”

One of the best investments, Thompson said, is in the future generations, as they will be learning and training with more information and research than ever before. These up-and-coming generations will be relied upon to tackle climate change and determine how best to weather the storms. “We’re in the most important time ever for the world to have explorers,” Thompson said.

“We need to help our young people be great navigators, not necessarily on canoes, but in the issues of making the best kinds of adaptation to change in the world.”

The post Riskier Voyages Ahead appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

These are issues that the initiative “Transforming Hawaiʻi’s Food System Together” (THFST) is trying to correct by engaging directly in food system planning.

“Our findings show that only 12% of Hawaiʻi’s population has an emergency supply of food and, in the case of a significant natural disaster, the state does not have the capacity to support all of the people who will fall into significant deprivation,” said Albie Miles, an associate professor of Sustainable Community Food Systems at UH West Oʻahu and the co-director of the UH’s Ke Ō Mau Center for Sustainable Island Food Systems.

Miles formed the THFST initiative with nonprofit Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute to bring together key partners who want to work toward the common goal of creating a sustainable, equitable and resilient food system — an all-encompassing socio-ecological system that involves food producers, distributors, consumers and its intersection with health, culture and environment.

“As a food system scholar, I felt like we needed to start coming together and start pulling together in a common direction so that we can achieve some larger structural wins on some of this stuff,” Miles said.

“The idea behind the initiative was to really convene stakeholders across the agriculture and food system landscapes in Hawaiʻi; to begin physically convening people to talk about the legislation that’s in front of our state legislature and begin constructing a common vision for food system change in Hawaiʻi.”

THFST has several objectives and a long list of hopes, first of which is “to reduce or eliminate hunger in Hawaiʻi,” Miles said.

Other objectives include: promoting public health and nutrition; building food system resilience and equity; amplifying or scaling bio-cultural restoration efforts in Hawaiʻi; supporting greater biosecurity measures to mitigate the number of invasive exotic species coming into the state; and promoting local agriculture and the economic viability of our local producers.

Since it began in 2020, the initiative has partnered with dozens of local organizations. The Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute serves as the backbone organization, managing logistics and coordination. Community partners include the Hawaiʻi Department of Health, the Hawaiʻi Farm Bureau, MAʻO Organic Farms, ʻUlupono Initiative, the University of Hawaiʻi, and Kamehameha Schools, among others.

The goal is not just to influence policy, but to advance the idea that it should be done collaboratively.

“One of our major initiatives was to craft the first Integrated State Food Policy Framework. If the food system is creating all these challenges or limitations in terms of public health and nutrition, household food insecurity, climate preparedness, etc., we need to be thinking about these things in concert,” said Miles.

The Integrated State Food Policy Framework, which covers everything from public health and nutrition to biocultural restoration to disaster preparedness was developed by subject matter experts and underwent a peer-review process. Each element is detailed with information on its status, policy and investment recommendations, and indicators and metrics for tracking progress. The framework is reviewed and updated every year.

The THFST’s annual Hawaiʻi Food System Summit is another way stakeholders stay informed. During the summit, Miles explained that its network of stakeholders spend time talking about what can be done at the state or county level to reduce barriers and implement needed infrastructure. They also review legislative bills that have been advancing.

“There’s quite a number of bills introduced by our stakeholders that have been a part of the Transforming Hawaii’s Food System initiative,” Miles noted.

One bill he’s currently watching is Senate Bill 1186, which would establish a statewide interagency food systems coordinator and working group. “That’s what we hope will serve as this hub of this work, to pull these different agencies together with resources and a coordinator to work on these issues more,” he continued.

“I think we have had some positive influence in shaping the conversation around the need for food system change and what that might look like,” Miles said.

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Thirty years ago, the Hawaiʻi Island voyaging canoe Makaliʻi launched from Kawaihae. A younger sibling to Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa, the waʻa kaulua was built to give voyagers and their students a way to continue the cultural practice on the island.

Since then, Makaliʻi has engaged with the community, teaching generations of voyagers. It’s also traveled to Tahiti, Satawal and Mokumanamana in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

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This year, Hawaiʻi Island and the waʻa community celebrated Makaliʻi’s birthday and all that it has accomplished at the Mālama Makaliʻi Ocean Festival. The event, led by Nā Maka Onaona, Kawaihae Canoe Club and Nā Kālai Waʻa, was filled with music, locally sourced food and included 25 different organizations sharing their missions with festival attendees.

“It was a day to celebrate all the great work that our community is doing and Makaliʻi gets to be a part of, and you know, for people to understand that what we do from the deck of the voyaging canoe really is because of the support of our community,” said Chadd Paishon, Pwo navigator and executive director of the nonprofit Nā Kālai Waʻa. “All the things that we’re able to do in voyaging, it starts from the island.”

The first Mālama Makaliʻi Ocean Festival was held in 2012, and the last festival was 10 years ago in 2015. Paishon said that after seeing the overwhelming success of the event, they want to throw another one next year.

Makaliʻi is born

Nā Kālai Waʻa, which means “canoe builders,” was founded by Clay Bertelmann, who voyaged on Hōkūleʻa and trained under Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug.

Bertelmann dreamed of a voyaging canoe for Hawaiʻi Island, and so he and fellow Hōkūleʻa crewmembers Tiger Espere and Pwo navigator Milton “Shorty” Bertelmann, who is Clay’s brother, started the grassroots project with the help of volunteers and contributions from businesses and community organizations.

For nine months, they worked at Parker Ranch inside a quonset hut until the voyaging canoe was finished. This would become the second canoe Nā Kālai Waʻa built. The first was Mauloa, a single-hull traditional sailing canoe, completed two years earlier.

Named after the navigator in the legend of Hawaiʻi Loa and Nā Huihui o Makaliʻi (the constellation also known as Pleiades), the 54-foot double-hulled voyaging canoe, Makaliʻi, was born on Feb. 4, 1995. She set off on her maiden voyage just 24 days later, meeting up with Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa in Tahiti.

The next pivotal moment for Makaliʻi came in 1999. “We sailed Papa Mau home to Satawal to his home island to thank him in front of his people for all that he’s done for us in Hawaiʻi and through voyaging,” Paishon said.

At the time, Clay asked Mau what they could give him as a gift in return. Mau responded: a canoe. Clay thought he was referring to a Micronesian canoe but that was not the case.

“They said, no, he wants a Hawaiian voyaging canoe so that when the people in his home island see the canoe they’ll always remember about Hawaiʻi and the connection that we share,” Paishon recalled.

Nā Kālai Waʻa built a second voyaging canoe, Alingano Maisu, and sailed it to Micronesia with Hōkūleʻa in 2007.

In between trips, Nā Kālai Waʻa focuses on educational programs, introducing students to voyaging and wayfinding. The organization also worked with Hawaiʻi Land Trust to save the lands of Mahukona in North Kohala from future development. Mahukona is a training ground for navigators and holds many historic cultural sites, including Koʻa Heiau Holomoana, one of the rare heiau dedicated to voyaging.

“The last voyage that we did aboard Makaliʻi, back in 2019, was out to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to make the connection between Mahukona and the island of Mokumanamana because of the navigational heiau that is here in Mahukona,” Paishon said.

Future plans

Makaliʻi’s next voyage will be its longest, taking about two years to complete.

“We’re looking to do another, probably within the next two or three years, to return back to Tahiti and to make that connection again, but then also to continue through the South Pacific, down to the Cook Islands to Samoa, Tonga, into New Zealand,” said Paishon. They would also like to sail through Micronesia to visit Mau’s home in Satawal before returning to Hawaiʻi.

Until then, Nā Kālai Waʻa is training the crew and preparing the canoe. “It will be our community that will be helping us to do all those things,” he said, “so that when we leave, we’ll be able to be successful.”

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