Growing Leadership At Hoʻoulu ʻāina: Matching Up Gifts And Kuleana In Order To Heal Land, People, And Community

Abstract

Early literature on leadership focused on the traits of a single individual, usually male, who manages employees within a clearly defined hierarchy for a U.S.-based company. The last several decades have seen the concept of leadership expand to include followers, peers, supervisors, the public and the non-profit sectors, and culture across a diverse sample of populations globally. Indigenous leadership contributes to this discussion by including a social, historical, and political context that acknowledges connection to land. However, leadership theories have yet to address the topic of reconciliation and overall community wellbeing. To address this gap, this paper explored what leadership looks like in a more holistic community context where a community program that includes food production, native reforestation, cultural education revitalization, and healing are all meaningful components of leadership development and community transformation. The following questions were explored: 1) What does leadership look like when one seeks to provide people of a community the freedom and space to build meaningful relationships with land, each other, and themselves? and 2) How can we help leaders flourish in our communities to work towards this and other types of reconciliation? Using phenomenology as a method of inquiry, interviews and participant observations were used to capture the stories of staff and volunteers as part of program connected to a comprehensive health center in Kalihi. Leadership in this program is understood as the matching of gifts to kuleana. This leadership model recognizes the potential for all members of the community to fulfill meaningful leadership roles. The synergistic process of offering a gift, and having it valued is healing for both an individual and a community. Being in a safe and welcoming space offers an environment where people are free to explore what their gift and kuleana may be. Parallels between shared leadership, multicultural leadership, and Indigenous leadership are presented. This model of leadership contributes to the literature by grounding leadership in reconciliation and healing for all. This model and how leaders are developed within it are discussed.