Paddler promotes connectedness

By Katherine Nichols
Advertiser Staff Writer

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of occasional stories on paddler Donna Kahakui's effort to raise cultural and environmental awareness, which will culminate in a 200-mile solo paddle in Tahiti in October, a trip she'll take along with a group of Hawai'i children.

Donna Kahakui usually wins every paddling race she enters. But at last Saturday's event — a collaboration between Kai Makana, Kanaka Ikaika and the Chevron Environmental Education Celebration — at Poka'i Bay in Wai'anae, when asked how she finished, she shrugged and said, "not too badly. About halfway through the pack." Not bad at all, considering she started nine minutes after everyone else. When the gun sounded, she was busy planting a sprouting coconut with Wai'anae schoolchildren on the navigating heiau at Kane'ilio Point.

Donna Kahakui, who sees environment and community as one, helps niece Morrisa Kahakui, 9, and nephew Richard Kahakui, 6, plant a coconut. Walter Kamana observes. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Kai Makana, the non-profit environmental education organization she founded, means "gifts from the sea." But its motto is "ocean education through action." And when Donna Kahakui is involved, it's never about sitting around and talking.

People strolled toward the heiau with native Hawaiian plants, ready to enhance the area that has already improved dramatically due to Kai Makana and the community's replanting and cleanup efforts in the past year. Watering cans lined the lava rocks. Palms swayed in the wind. About 110 kayaks and outrigger canoes disappeared from the sandy beach where earlier Mike Judd, Jim Foti, and Kai Bartlett had given a canoe building and paddling clinic. Back on the grass, the pungent scent of fermenting kapa (the fermentation softens the bark cloth's fibers) wafted from a nearby lauhala mat. In another area, students cleaned taro and passed it to young people who straddled benches and lifted hand-made pohaku ku'i'ai (stone poi pounders) over papa ku'iai (breadfruit poi boards) to make the purple staple food that represents so much of their heritage.

"No lumps, Linda," Rebecca Gabriel told a friend. The 11th-grader at Wai'anae High School licked the sticky poi from her fingers. "You should've been there." She smiled, then gazed proudly at the area she and her friends help maintain. "We are here to give back to our land." She spoke about stream restoration, one of their most important efforts. "If you malama the land, it's going to malama you back."

Linda Collins, a fellow 11th-grader at Wai'anae High School, said, "It's a chance to go out and do something instead of sitting around and talking about it. We come here every Thursday to pick up rubbish and weed out the area."

Gabriel added, "We hope that more people of our generation get involved in this kind of work. Our kupuna aren't going to be around forever. It's up to us to teach the younger ones."

One of the younger ones in attendance was Kimberly Ervin, 10, a fifth-grader at Leihoku Elementary. When asked about her favorite part of the day, she flashed her blue braces and said, "We get to learn all different kinds of things about the ocean and how to keep it clean."

Not only was the area immaculate, new life appeared everywhere.

"The purpose of native planting on the heiau is to teach the cultural significance that there is a heiau out here," said Kahakui, who is a federal agent when she's not organizing Kai Makana projects. "I'm hoping that today, if nothing else, they give back to the community, and they learn about taking care of the environment, specifically the ocean."

Last Saturday's Chevron Environmental Education Celebration was a continuation of Kahakui's ongoing mission. Since 1997 when she started Kai Makana, she has raised awareness about marine debris and other environmental issues.

In 1998 she paddled her one-man canoe 78 miles from Maui to O'ahu. With master navigator Nainoa Thompson as her guide once again in 1999, she paddled 140 miles from 'Upolu Point on the Big Island to O'ahu. She also tackled 140 miles when she circumnavigated O'ahu in 2000. But the spectacular athletic endeavors are just ways to get people to focus on the real topics. The intention of Saturday, her upcoming trip to New York and the journey to Tahiti in the fall — when several Hawai'i youngsters will accompany her — is to encourage people to take care of the ocean, and instill cultural pride and leadership in teenagers.

"If more communities say, OK, this is a kid who has an interest in taking care of the environment as well as possibly being a leader for the community," said Kahakui, "we take these kids on these trips with us, to Tahiti or New Zealand, or wherever we go. They actually become the spokespeople for Kai Makana and the ocean. I don't really need to do these paddles anymore, which my body will greatly love," she laughed. "And they can teach the younger kids. And then it's kids teaching kids, and kids teaching their parents. And if we can get every single community in Hawai'i to buy into that — ha! Kai Makana retires. That's really what it's all about."

Her efforts have invited many people into this circle.

"Plenty of things have changed," said Uncle Walter Kamana, sitting in the shade with the sprouting coconut that he would plant resting between his feet. "The heiau, with the community, through her act, began to wake up. The community pay more attention to it. It took one outsider person" to restore it. "Her program is how to give the young generation, the children, something that can be usable. Some kind of Hawaiian culture."

"But it's not only the Hawaiians," he reminded. "Everybody who lives in Hawai'i is Hawaiian. No such thing as no more Hawaiians. Because you learn about the 'aina ... You learn aloha."

Watching children of all colors and backgrounds pounding poi together, Kahakui agreed: "You don't have to be Hawaiian to give back. The value is instilled in the heart."