Friday, March 22, 2024

Our final day took place in the East-West Center, where we had a beautiful view of Mānoa stream on the Waʻahila side of the valley. The abundance of glass windows let in natural light, so we were able to appreciate the beauty of the valley for our final day of presentations. Our team also put up a Mahalo Wall, where we encouraged everyone to place sticky notes with the people they wanted to thank. Many of us put the names of our team members who got us to that last day together, and many others offered their thanks to their families and ancestors. 

We also had a special guest—one of our favorite people, Nōweo Kai, the curator of our campus arboretum. Our NHPoL office often has Mālama ʻĀina opportunities with Nōweo and her team, and we love every opportunity to spend more time with her. Everyone was really great about honoring the many mea kanu (plants) that we have on campus, because apparently we had a lot of curiosity about nā mea kanu. 

For the individual presentations, because of the large number of people in our cohort, we broke into clusters of three groups. Presenting among these intimate audiences was a great way to see the variety of our many distinct yet collective representations of responses to the same questions. I loved hearing each person speak—it was a profound opportunity to acknowledge the great distances of our journey throughout the week. Even the simple things are what’s important, like being able to better pronounce words in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi or more deeply understand a complicated term such as kuleana. Each group reflected on their pilina and connective commonalities to one another, and they offered art and (k)new knowledge in ways that are only capable of coming about in genuine spaces. 

Then, we transitioned into a larger sharing where we all gathered in one large circle and presented as the clusters of three groups. Group 1 offered an oli from Moku o Loʻe to honor that ʻāina as their piko, and they also gave an ʻōlelo noʻeau: he pūkoʻa kani ʻāina. This ʻōlelo noʻeau speaks about the coral head that grows into a reef and very slowly ends up becoming the papa and mokupuni—the reef flats that form an island in the sea. People may also embody coral in their learning and growing as they become more established, just like the students that so many of us interact with and help to guide. With Moku o Loʻe as their focal point, the group acknowledged that everyone who enters that space knows their work and purpose for their community and ʻāina because of their shared histories and stories of work of connecting to communities and resources. Another important piko was coral and, simultaneously, students. Also mentioned was planning for the future and the importance that future faculty should have pilina that connects them to place. 

The second cluster group shared that they had thought long and hard about their connections and shared kuleana, and they began to understand the importance of healthy ecosystems that in turn create and perpetuate well being in people and greater communities. Another commonality was that everyone used graphics in their smaller presentations, and there were many triads of concepts that appeared across their interests. Despite being in different silos of disciplines, each of them recognized their contributions to one another and also the power in coming together—everyone will have their part working together to support the next generations. They played the bird calls of Hawaiian birds in the background of their presentation, and I couldn’t help but admire the way I learned the importance of birdsong as both indicator and facilitator of a healthy ecosystem. 

Group 3 consisted of UH Mānoa employees who centered around kaikuaʻana to students and mentees. The infinite amount of paths of academia seems like a tangled web, especially for students trying to find their way as they are growing. How can an infinite web fit into a universal structure like choosing a major? They acknowledged that they help people to make such decisions, and in speaking to the commonality of fluidity and flexibility, they created a Möbius strip with the inner surface being kaikaina and the outer surface being kaikuaʻana. Both are the same side, yet distinct to represent the fluidity in standardization because the world is not as rigid as the systems we work within. Other group members contributed a comic strip and written letters that were combined by AI to form a cohesive piece, and they found that each group was doing the same exact thing, just in different ways. 

The fourth group commonly identified the importance of connection and the transfer of wisdom between people, communities, and even places. Individuals transfer wisdom, but how the information is transferred changes over time and after meeting new people and absorbing new dynamics. They spoke to how we gain tools throughout our lives and rely upon the wisdom of our ancestors to develop the set of deep wisdom that we will then pass onto future generations. All of this work requires connection and understanding among each other because we are all connected by this ocean and the time that we have with one another. These connections are out there and are capable of connecting us to the wisdom of the past and the tools we are putting together for the future. Connection for this group was always apparent, and it felt easy for them to find similarities as they talked more. 

Group 5 was perhaps the most honest and said that they had initially had difficulties finding some of their shared piko among their smaller groups. Although their focal points were not immediately obvious, they found connection in places that were not as obvious. For example, one group found their piko in that they were each from the Koʻolau windward side of their island, albeit across different islands. Other commonalities were their kuleana to ʻāina, communities, and institutions. Their creation of a star map was able to visualize the concept of piko as an undifferentiated stem cell student beginning their educational journey as they gain wisdom and move from the center to the outer layers. Another interpretation of the visual was an atom with a dense nucleus waiting to be formed with valence electrons on the outer rings—it is the kuleana of deans and directors to be looking beyond just their sphere of influence to provide additional resources to their learners. There is obligation along the outer rings to build support and break the isms that promote loneliness. And we can’t forget the eight googly eyes along the perimeter of the largest circle who are the kūpuna watching and guiding us.