Perhaps more than ever before, we are learning and witnessing – both through the pandemic and all of our climate challenges – the ways we need to learn to take care of one another and our island earth. In Hawaiʻi, we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and global warming; sea-level rise, catastrophic storms, rain bombs, and landslides to name a few. Thus, our natural environments – ancestors to the Native Hawaiian people – are calling out to all of us to abandon structures and practices built from racism so that we can collectively work towards aloha ‘āina: taking care of one another and our island home. 

In 2017, a diverse group of students, staff, faculty, and executive leaders from UH Mānoa collaborated on applying for the TRHT Campus Center designation. UH Mānoa was ultimately selected as one of 10 inaugural colleges and universities to be named as a TRHT Campus Center because of the potential and commitment we demonstrated in jettisoning racism and creating healed and transformed futures. 

Two guiding questions in the application were:

1. What will your community look like when racism has been jettisoned?
2. How will you create a positive narrative about race?

Given UH Mānoa’s commitment to becoming a Native Hawaiian place of learning and recognizing all that we can learn from Native Hawaiian culture, we grounded our TRHT response in Indigenous Hawai‘i. This is demonstrated in the vision we put forth:

“The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa TRHT Campus Center envisions a Hawai‘i in which each individual, family, and community can recognize and live into their collective and interdependent kuleana – irrespective of race – to aloha one another and all the ‘āina throughout Hawai‘i.”

We utilize the TRHT construct to frame our vision:

Some Truths 

• In Hawai‘i we recognize that due to generations of racism, settler colonialism and hegemony, we – both Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians – all require healing. There have been major interruptions in the knowledge systems that guide our kuleana to one another and Hawai‘i, the place that nourishes us with fresh water, fertile soil, clean air, and rich foods, no matter what race or ethnicity we are. Many of us have also been disconnected from our respective homelands around the world.
• Since its creation in 1907, the University of Hawaiʻi has largely reinforced racial hierarchy and American racial politics. This has resulted in different manifestations of racial inequalities and inequitable distribution of resources at our university that ultimately affect all of Hawai‘i’s communities.
• In Hawaiʻi, we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and global warming. Thus, our natural environments – ancestors to the Native Hawaiian people – are calling out to all of us to abandon structures and practices built from racism so that we can collectively work towards aloha ‘āina.
• Hawai‘i has a long history of living with purpose, creativity, intelligence, compassion, awareness, observation, trial and error, and sustainability in teaching, research and service in ways that were in partnership with the physical, natural, social and political world. At the core of this has been and always will be ‘ohana, aloha, and pono.

Racial Healing

Kuleana does not originate with race. Rather, kuleana emerges from knowing our mo‘okū‘auhau connections to both humans and non-humans and invites us to celebrate and take guidance from the many genealogical lineages, stories, and experiences that shape us and remind us of the reciprocation and interdependence required for sustaining life. This process of reconnection can begin to heal the disconnections caused by racism. 

Transformation

We build on Hawaiian knowledge, cosmology, worldviews and experience that recognize that ‘āina is not merely land. Instead, we see “‘āina as source, ‘āina as people, and ‘āina as ongoing connection and care” (Vaughan, 2016). Hence, our aloha ‘āina work is about: 

• Intimately knowing our sources – the spiritual and physical manifestations, food sources, water sources, and other natural resources throughout our environments.
• Recognizing Native Hawaiians who have intimate and ancestral knowledge of caring and living in harmony with Hawai‘i, and caring for them so that they can continue to teach us and help us realize how we can each contribute to this greater cause.
• Learning and making sense of the best practices of ongoing connection and care for those sources and people and elevating those practices so that we can continue to live and thrive in Hawai‘i now and into the future. 

By engaging truthfully, we re-examine and re-articulate the role race and racism have played in intergenerational trauma. We empower ourselves to self-reflect on a living, breathing, and growing narrative that illuminates who we are and how we can best work together to heal and move forward based on a set of core concepts and practices that are ancestral to Hawai‘i. 

Thus, we can transform to become fearless leaders in our aloha for ourselves, each other, and our natural and spiritual worlds to ensure the vitality of Hawai‘i for generations to come. 

In our initial three-year action plan the UHM TRHT advisory group decided to create a curriculum to test a process that we believed would support narrative change and relationship building, two of the TRHT framework foundational elements. These areas, we felt, were big gaps on our campus and in our communities. 

Building the curriculum

Our cohort experiences focus on:

A‘o: Learning from one another’s personal truths as well as collectively engaging in systemic truths 
Alu: Connecting with one another and finding our common humanity
‘Auamo: Engaging our individual and collective kuleana to reach our TRHT vision

Our cohorts

We have convened four cohorts between 2018-2020:

2018:

After committing to the creation of a curriculum and process that would support narrative change and relationship building, we piloted that curriculum with our original advisory board and other guests in spring 2018. This pilot cohort included UH Mānoa students, staff, faculty, executive administrators, and community members. We convened the 12-week program at Waiwai Collective.

We learned an immense amount during this pilot. We evaluated, re-designed, and planned for the next cohort. 

2019:

In spring 2019 we welcomed a UH Mānoa student and community cohort. We again partnered with Waiwai Collective for this 12-week program. The insights from UH Mānoa undergraduate and graduate students as well as community members were remarkable. We learned a lot about the process, curricular content, and facilitation. We took all those experiences and evaluated, re-designed, and planned for the next cohort. 

In summer 2019 we welcomed a UH Mānoa staff, faculty, and community cohort. Recognizing the unique needs of staff and faculty, we re-designed the curriculum for a one-week intensive program. We utilized space on campus, at Lyon Arboretum, and at Waiwai Collective for this programming. 

In fall 2019 we welcomed a UH Mānoa executive leadership and community cohort. Recognizing the incredibly busy schedules this group has to manage, we re-designed the curriculum into a nine-week hybrid experience, including seven weeks of asynchronous online modules and a 2.5-day residential retreat.

In fall 2019 we also started a monthly gathering to re-connect participants across cohorts and to continue to explore the ‘isms’ as well as Hawaiian concepts as they are showing up in our personal and professional lives. This programming continues through the pandemic in an adjusted online format.

2020:

In summer 2020, we invited participants from all four cohorts to join our TRHT Summer 2020 Summit. At this summit we re-connected, evaluated, and explored important areas for growth and expansion for our next 3-year plan.

Our next steps are also informed by findings from our longitudinal study led by Dr. Monica Stitt-Bergh and graduate research assistants Ha Nguyen and Adrian Alarilla. Click here to view the presentation on their findings. 

We have learned an immense amount over the last three years about what our campus and community needs from and can offer to the TRHT movement. A few high-level take-aways include:

• Racial Healing Circles are incredibly important. We need processes that can bring us together and help us recognize our common humanity. This is the pre-work for deeper engagement.
• Hawaiian knowledge and ‘āina are healing. While race and racism have disconnected us from our kuleana to one another and ‘āina, learning from Hawaiian knowledge and being in and with ‘āina can help to heal those disconnects and  help us to re-discover our kuleana.
• Hawai‘i is complex. There are many facets of Hawai‘i’s history, communities, and people. Racism and settler colonialism have definitely complicated things. We have much to uncover and share with one another in order to understand where we are, how we got here, and where we want to go as an island community.

Based on what we have learned, our next steps include:

• Preparing Racial Healing Circle facilitators. We are working on plans to bring facilitator preparation workshops to UH Mānoa and Hawai‘i’s communities. 
• Creating stellar online learning resources. We are working to bring stellar online resources that engage UH Mānoa and Hawai‘i’s communities in the TRHT Framework as well as the TRHT concepts we focus on in our Hawai‘i-grown approach.  This will also make online cohorts more possible in the future.
• Investigating Hawai‘i’s complex story. We are applying for funding to partner across both public and private sectors in Hawai‘i to launch a pae ‘āina-wide investigation and exploration of Hawai‘i’s stories, especially as it relates to racism and settler colonialism.

The work of UH Mānoa’s lead design team is to increase the capacity for our campus and communities to engage in this work for the long haul. After all, ending racism is a marathon, not a sprint.

With that said, we recognize that there is an urgency for action and change on individual, group, organizational, and systemic levels. With that in mind, here are some suggestions for steps you can take right now:

A‘o: Let’s teach and learn from one another.

• Visit our A‘o Page and begin to learn more about Mānoa and Hawai‘i. If this material is already familiar to you, plan ways you can share with others in ways that make space for truth sharing, healing of relationships, and taking care of ‘āina.
• Check out the TRHT resources below and read/watch something in an area you are less familiar with so that you can expand the breadth and depth of your knowledge in the intersecting areas of racism, settler colonialism, kuleana, and aloha ‘āina. You might ask yourself:
  • How do these intersecting areas shape my life?
  • How can I utilize these intersecting areas in my social justice work?
• Learn more about the TRHT work happening across the US continent at the links below:
  • National Day of Racial Healing
  • TRHT Framework
  • TRHT Implementation Guidebook
  • Rx Racial Healing Circles

Alu. Let’s connect & collaborate.

• Reach out to others who are interested in TRHT and start a conversation.
• Connect with UHM’s TRHT design team at trht@hawaii.edu.
• Share your TRHT-related resources with us via our Resources Form
• Reach out to colleagues from other TRHT Campus Centers (listed above).

‘Auamo. Let’s get to work.

• Everyone: Spark racial healing conversations.
• Students: Start conversations with your peers.
• Teachers: Create space for conversations in your classrooms
• Philanthropists: Connect with your giving community.
• Faith and spiritual ambassadors: Illuminate a path for racial healing in your organization
• Business leaders: Lead your organization down the path of racial healing and download the business case for racial equity