Lessons from the Loʻi: Hoʻokuaʻāina and Biocultural Stewardship

Abstract

Communities globally are advocating for their biocultural landscapes, which are increasingly threatened by extractive models of resource management. In Hawaiʻi, many ʻāina-based organizations (ʻāina: land, nearshore sea, that which feeds) have formed since the 1970s to care for people and places, but these organizations can struggle to receive adequate funding, volunteers, and research to sustain and scale their efforts. Hoʻokuaʻāina is an ʻāina-based organization in Kailua, Oʻahu that cultivates community through kalo farming and educational programs. My overarching project goal was to empower ʻāina-based organizations to share the perspectives of their community members with a broad audience. I achieved this goal by (1) supporting Hoʻokuaʻāina’s specific research interests, (2) developing an interview-to-essay methodological model, and (3) discussing these topics in relation to biocultural stewardship. Building upon two prior years of volunteering at this site, I partnered with Hoʻokuaʻāina to conduct and transcribe 40 interviews (30-90 minutes each) from 2020-2022 about peoples’ experiences with and perspectives on Hoʻokuaʻāina. Interviewees included staff and interns, children of the executive directors, organizational consultants, local elders, and a local elementary school teacher. I chose a group of 12 interviews that exhibited a diversity of perspectives and converted each of those interview transcripts into a short essay. I edited the essays with the interviewees and Hoʻokuaʻāina’s executive directors, which included adding, trimming, reordering, and rephrasing content. I produced 12 essays, each ~1500 words. I analyzed the essays for emergent themes using an iterative coding system to organize essay excerpts. These essays demonstrate that Hoʻokuaʻāina provides a healthy educational environment that creates the potential for personal and collective growth when people commit themselves to the place and its community, whether that is for a day, a season, or a lifetime. The essays highlighted that relationships filled with love were key to personal transformation at Hoʻokuaʻāina. This essay collection demonstrates the value of Hoʻokuaʻāina to the people that the organization serves, which will ideally increase awareness, understanding, and support of Hoʻokuaʻāina and other ʻāina-based organizations. This project may inspire future efforts to communicate the value of biocultural stewardship in Hawaiʻi and beyond.