Spotlight On the Students Growing Kalo in Hawai’i

On a Friday morning in late September, the scholars in Naʻau ʻŌiwi gathered in Māhukona on the North Kohala Coast of Hawai’i Island to construct beehive packing containers. 

The apiary they’re constructing will produce honey for his or her secret recipe plans for the statewide Kalo Challenge, which is the fruits of their nine-month program that facilities the ancestral apply of cultivating the Hawaiian staple crop kalo (taro), and serves as a contest the place they do shows on their cultural schooling, in addition to current revolutionary recipes for competitors. 

Naʻau ʻŌiwi, which suggests “native intestine,” is in its third yr at Kohala Excessive College, as a part of the Hawai’i Division of Training’s Various Studying Applications, which companions with 33 schools throughout the islands and trades the traditional classroom for ʻāina (land)-based cultural schooling, the place college students can earn the identical credit for commencement.

The scholars of Naʻau ʻŌiwi wish to name this AlterNATIVE Studying and observe the ‘ōlelo no’eau, or Hawai’ian proverb “A’ohe pau ka ‘ike ka hālau ho’okahi,” that means not all information is taught in a single faculty.  

Three years in the past, this system began with solely two college students; now there are 12. They spend every day at a distinct farm, ranch, or cultural studying program space all through rural Kohala with varied organizations. At every location, they’ve plots with totally different kinds of kalo.

The primary yr, they gained with kalo pizza. Final yr, they offered them with “kalo-min”—which was a inventive tackle saimin—a facet dish of hō’i’o (fiddle-head fern) salad, and deep-fried panko-breaded kulolo, a kalo-based dessert, that was accompanied by coconut ice cream and a haupia drizzle.

Much more spectacular is that by their partnership with Hawai’i Land Belief, they harvested a kiawe tree log at Mãhukona and made gorgeous trays on which to serve the meals, and chopsticks for the choose’s utensils. 

In Māhukona, they constructed beehives underneath the tutelage of instructors from Ho’ōla Honey, a Native Hawai’ian-owned beekeeping enterprise and rescue. There, their accomplice group is Hawai’i Land Belief (HILT), which lately acquired the coastal lands to guard and preserve the world, that very similar to the remainder of Hawai’i, has deep cultural significance to many generational households, and can also be a historic coaching space for conventional Hawai’ian navigators who traveled by wa’a, or canoe.

In accordance with Keone Emiliano, the land steward and educator for Māhukona with HILT, when the scholars aren’t constructing beehive packing containers, they’ve been planting native crops, just like the kukui nut tree, together with tending their kalo patch.

“It’s not nearly what they inform us to do [with planting], it’s studying in regards to the place, about its historical past, the people who was there, what they did, the best way they lived and what they used it for, the instruments and canoes, and cultivating the land,” says Alex Faisca, who’s in his second yr with Naʻau ʻŌiwi.

Faisca provides that his dad and mom say he’s very fortunate that he and the opposite college students have this program, as a result of they by no means had something prefer it rising up. 

In actual fact, when their lead instructor Aoloa Patao was rising up, the one factor he realized about being Native Hawai’ian was what he noticed within the Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates, and he wouldn’t be taught extra till faculty. He then needed to be taught on his personal afterwards. 

Many have been on this boat. On account of colonial influences within the late 1800s, Hawai’ian cultural schooling in public colleges was suppressed for many years, till the cultural renaissance of the Nineteen Seventies, when there was extra demand for the reinstitution of this sort of schooling in colleges and faculties. Regardless of the state’s structure being amended to mandate it, instruction was restricted; nonetheless, extra initiatives began occurring through the years, notably after the establishment of the Office of Hawai’ian Education in 2015 alongside the event of the Nā Hopena A’o framework. 

Nā Hopena A’o is a department-wide framework to assist information the general public schooling system based mostly on Hawaiian values, tradition, historical past, and language, in addition to aiming to develop expertise and behaviors that honor the qualities and values of the indigenous language and tradition of Hawaiʻi.​ 

Patao is pleased to be a part of remedying that concern for the scholars. “It makes me be ok with their potential and the way forward for our group, and that they’re in a greater place to know who they’re and never should attempt to determine it out on their very own,” says Patao.

Different accomplice organizations are the voyaging nonprofit Nā Kālai Wa`a—the place the scholars be taught to attach the relationships between conventional crusing and kalo—LT Ranch, which prioritizes cultural studying for Native Hawai’ian youth, and ‘Iole Hawai’i, a brand new Indigenous studying lab on 2,400 acres, that mixes historic knowledge and fashionable know-how for sustainability options. 

“All these items, it helps in life. It’s not about what you’re doing, however how you’re doing it, with persistence, perseverance, and problem-solving expertise.”

“All these items, it helps in life. It’s not about what you’re doing, however how you’re doing it, with persistence, perseverance, and problem-solving expertise,” says fellow senior Daylan Kaitoku, including that it’s virtually like a school setting, as a result of he will get to study climate stations, pH testers and soil testers. “And on prime of that, there’s a cultural side to it,” he says. 

Every year, the scholars have additionally created an academic part for the world’s elementary children.

Within the first yr, the primary two college students had by no means heard the origin story of kalo till they have been juniors in highschool, so to verify the youthful technology didn’t should go so long as they did to connect with it, they made a kids’s e book in regards to the backstory, which is the Native Hawai’ian mo`olelo (story) of Hāloa, which includes the delivery of the Hawai’ian individuals and the connection Hawai’ians should kalo, not simply as a meals supply however as an ancestor. 

They handed the e book on to the elementary faculty kids, with the Division of Training backing them by printing 200 copies. The next yr, the scholars developed a card sport known as Go Kalo, impressed by the basic sport Go Fish, that includes all 22 elements of the kalo plant.

“It was a good suggestion, as a result of as a substitute of simply matching the playing cards [like in Go Fish], you possibly can be taught,” says scholar Ihilani Leong, who did a variety of the design. Every card tells what half it’s, its location on the plant, and what it seems to be like. 

Very like the plans for this yr’s Kalo Problem, what they’re doing for the youth remains to be being formulated. Nonetheless, out of all of the issues they’re doing with this system, Kaitoku hopes “that the seed that’s planted grows into knowledge, information, and hope for the subsequent technology.”