Issuu

T he CURRENT o f H AWA I ‘ I

F/ W

COVER: 1/ 2

2026

NO. 51

F L U X H AWA I I . C O M

ART & DESIGN: ERICA KARAWINA, UNKO’S HOUSE, AND NEW CLIMATE FICTION.MAOLI: THE LEGEND OF KAULULĀ‘AU, AND KOA WARRIORS. CULTURE: TACKLING WATTLE ON MAUI, AND A SONIC FILIPINX DIASPORA. EXPLORE: KALIHI’S GRIT & SOUL, AND HOW OKINAWA HOLDS FAST. LIVING WELL: ALANA KYSAR’S CULINARY HOMECOMING, AND SEED BANKS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

_ DEPARTMENTS

F/W 2026

PHILES

FEATURES

24 _ GLASS ART

72 _ LIFE AFTER WATTLE

Erica Karawina

32 _ MAOLI

After the 2023 Upcountry fire, Kula residents work to reverse a century of ecological damage caused by an invasive tree.

Lāna‘i

86 _ UNI AT UGAT 42 _ LITERATURE Climate Fiction

54 _ VINTAGE Unko’s House

A HUI HOU

Creatives across the Filipinx diaspora discuss the shifting bounds of culture, expression, tradition, and identity.

98 _ KOA WARRIORS A rare glimpse inside the Hale Koa barracks documents how the kāne of the Kamehameha Day parade prepare to honor the islands’ first king.

R IGH T , I M AGE BY _ JO H N H O OK

L EFT , IM A GE B Y _ VIN C ENT BER C ASI O

168 _ IF TIME IS A MOTHER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

_ DEPARTMENTS

F/W 2026

EXPLORE 116 _ OKINAWA Activism

126 _ KALIHI IMAGE B Y _ J O H N H O O K

World Wide Walls, Helena’s, & Aloha Tofu

LIVING WELL 144 _ COOKBOOK Alana Kysar

156 _ CONSERVATION

I MAGE BY _ JOSIAH PATTERSON

Seed Banks

ART & DESIGN CULTURE FARE SUSTAINABILITY STYLE POLITICS SOCIETY

Nobody makes golf clubs the way we do. Period.®

The Longest and Fastest Driver on Tour* #1 Iron in Distance Testing* Thousands of

5-Star Reviews

But the Only Score That Will Ever Matter Is Yours. We’re obsessed with one thing: helping golfers play better. The proof is everywhere. Now find out what it means for your game.

P XG . C O M / T H E S C O R E | 8 0 8 . 2 3 8 . 2 4 1 0 *Based on Aldrich Potgieter’s 2026 PGA TOUR ShotLink rankings in Driving Distance (331.1 yds avg.) and Ball Speed (190.05 mph) as of August 16, 2026. The use of any trademarks is for reference purposes only and does not imply endorsement by their respective owners. *Rob McGarr, “We tested 81 golf irons - and this one went 10 yards longer than anything else,” Today’s Golfer, July 2, 2026. The use of this article for reference purposes only and does not imply any affiliation with its publisher.

V I S I T YO U R LO CA L P XG F I T T I N G LO CAT I O N S HOAKALEI COUNTRY CLUB

91-1421 Keoneula Boulevard Ewa Beach, HI 96706

BAYVIEW DRIVING RANGE

45-285 Kaneohe Bay Drive Kaneohe, HI 96744

PRO AM GOLF SHOP

1159 Kapiolani Boulevard Honolulu, HI 96814

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IN FLUX TV

CULTURE _ KOA WARRIORS ARTS _ MEALA BISHOP MUSIC _ TJ KEANU TA R I O LEI MAKING _ MELEAN A E S T E S

Stay current on arts and culture with us at: FLUXHAWAII.COM @ fluxhawaii @ fluxhawaii / fluxhawaii

1 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

_ VIDEO

O‘AHU | M AUI | BIG ISL AND | K AUA‘I | M AUIDIVER S.COM

CONTENT

_ ONLINE

FLUXHAWAII.COM

STREAMING VIDEOS, NEWSLETTERS, LOCAL GUIDES, & MORE We’ve updated Flux Hawaii for a more dynamic viewing experience. Watch all the original episodes from our themed seasons, find ways to support local small businesses, and sign up for our weekly newsletters curated with Pacific-related reads. You can also browse past issues of the print magazine for purchase.

ON THE COVERS

Images, L to R, by:

Reflecting the dynamism of stories in every edition, our new issues are released with multi-cover runs to express the kaleidoscopic and shifting landscape of the islands. L to R: 1. Leiolani, a mural by JT Ojerio in Kalihi-Pālama; 2. Unko’s House owner Makoa DeVincent photographed with wife, Brianna, and their son, Kūla‘ioka‘ena, in Mililani.

1. Brandon Shigeta

1 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

2. Shiloh Perkins

Your Kaua‘i Escape. Transformed.

OUTRIGGER.com

A tropical oceanfront oasis connected to legends and local culture.

MASTHEAD

_ F/W 2026

TO SUBSCRIBE, VISIT SHOP.NMGNETWORK.COM/FLUX

FLUX HAWAII

IMAGES

ADVERTISING

_ JASON CUTINELLA

_ PF BENTLEY

_ SIMONE PEREZ

PUBLISHER/CEO

_ VINCENT BERCASIO

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

_ TASHA JAHRMARKT _ JOE V. BOCK

_ NANI WELCH KELI‘IHO‘OMALU

_ COURTNEY ASATO

PARTNER/GENERAL MANAGER, HAWAI‘I

_ CODY LANG

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER

_ JON LETMAN EDITORIAL

_ JOSIAH PATTERSON

_ RACHEL LEE

_ SHILOH PERKINS

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

_ LAUREN MCNALLY

_ CHRIS ROHRER

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

_ BRANDON SHIGETA

_ MATTHEW DEKNEEF

CREATIVE SERVICES

GENERAL INQUIRIES: CONTACT@FLUXHAWAII.COM

DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL STRATEGY & STORYTELLING

_ GERARD ELMORE

BY COPYRIGHT AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT

VP FILM

THE EXPRESSED WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE PUBLISHER.

_ EUNICA ESCALANTE DEPUTY EDITOR

FLUX ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES

_ CHRISTIAN BOWMAN

ADVERTISED HEREIN. ISSN 2578-2053.

CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR _ TAYLOR NIIMOTO MANAGING DESIGNER

NO. 51 _ OCTOBER 2026

_ KAITLYN LEDZIAN STUDIO DIRECTOR/PRODUCER

_ ELEAZAR HERRADURA DESIGNER

_ ANTHONY BANUA-SIMON EDITORIAL PRODUCER

_ JOHN HOOK SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

_ BLAKE ABES FILMMAKER

_ N. HA‘ALILIO SOLOMON ‘ŌLELO HAWAI‘I EDITOR

_ JHANTE IGA VIDEO EDITOR

WORDS _ ARRIANA VELOSO _ DONAVAN KAMAKANI ALBANO

DIGITAL BRAND DESIGNER

_ MIA ANZALONE _ SARAH BURCHARD

_ LAUREN LUKE

_ SERENE GUNNISON

VIDEO INTERN

_ ANNABELLE LE JEUNE _ JON LETMAN

OPERATIONS

_ NATALIE SCHACK _ N. HA‘ALILIO SOLOMON

_ GARY PAYNE

_ ALICIA UPANO

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

_ LINDSEY VANDAL _ SABRINE RIVERA OPERATIONS DIRECTOR _ JESSICA LUNASCO OPERATIONS MANAGER _ SHERI SALMON TRAFFIC MANAGER

1 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Green Flash Sunset Pendant with Opal Inlay, Diamonds and Tsavorites in 14K Yellow or White Gold

An incomparable collection of Hawaiian and Island lifestyle jewelry O‘AHU • MAUI • KAUA‘I • BIG ISLAND OF HAWAI‘I BELLEVUE • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS • DENVER • LAS VEGAS • MONTEREY NEW YORK • ORLANDO • PHILADELPHIA • PLEASANTON • PORTLAND • ROSEVILLE SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SAN JOSE • WASHINGTON, D.C. NaHoku.com

•

1-800-260-3912

HAWAII’S BEST People’s Choice Awards The Star-Advertiser 2014 – 2024

CONTRIBUTORS

_ F/W 2026

MIA ANZALONE is a Hawai‘i-grown, New York City-based writer. She studied sociology at Occidental College and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Her reporting about art, culture, and immigration has appeared in Flux Hawaii, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Documented, Hyperallergic and The New York Times’ T Magazine. While reporting for her profile on Alana Kysar, on page 144, Anzalone spent the summer of 2026 back home in Kailua, eating mangos and lychee gifted from family and friends. The intertwined relationship between community and Hawai‘i-grown produce was the basis of her conversations with the Kula-raised cookbook author, whose newest collection of recipes transforms local veggies into beloved plate lunch-style dishes. Her favorite part about writing the profile was making the dishes herself, both in Kailua and in New York City. “Alana’s culinary success comes from her embrace of local cooking, not an aversion to it,” Anzalone says. “She’s not reinventing the wheel — she’s making it better.”

SARAH BURCHARD is a Honolulu-based freelance editor and writer. Her work is driven by local food, culture, and travel and can be found in publications such as Hawaii. com, Hana Hou!, Flux Hawaii, Forbes.com, Hawai‘i Magazine and Honolulu Magazine. For this issue, Burchard spotlighted three classic and contemporary Kalihi collectives for a guide, on page 126, about the working-class neighborhood. “Not being from here, I never realized how much of a stigma Kalihi has until I began dating my partner who was born and raised there,” Burchard says. “It troubles him that he was one of the only kids amongst his peers to ‘make it.’ That it would have been so easy for him to end up in jail or let drugs drag him down a dark path, solely based on where he grew up.” Through this neighborhood guide, Burchard hoped to highlight the pride, creativity, and strong sense of community that thrives in Kalihi, and its qualities that are too often overshadowed by narratives focused solely on the neighborhood’s challenges. Read more of her stories at sarahburchard.com.

SERENE GUNNISON was born and raised on Maui’s north shore, where she spent her childhood surfing competitively before discovering a deeper calling in conservation biology and the islands’ native and endemic species. Today, she works as an outreach associate with the Maui Invasive Species Committee, helping connect community members to the work of protecting Hawai‘i’s fragile ecosystems. She is also currently pursuing a degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Hawai‘i Maui College, returning to school as an adult learner with enthusiasm. For this issue, on page 72, Gunnison wrote about the Kula Community Watershed Alliance’s efforts to remove invasive wattle and restore native forest in Upcountry Maui’s Kula moku. “Writing this story reminded me what’s possible when a community comes together,” Gunnison says. “I feel so grateful to work alongside the people making this restoration happen, and to see, up close, what collective care for this land can accomplish.” When she’s not in the field or in class, she can be found in the water at Ho‘okipa Beach Park or exploring Maui with her husband and her 70-pound English Pointer, Max.

Being born and raised on the island of Maui fueled TASHA JAHRMARKT with endless inspiration to create. Jahrmarkt grew up surfing everyday, spending most of her time outside, surrounded by the beauty and the community that makes Hawai‘i so special. Always fascinated with cameras and taking photos since a child, Jahrmarkt was gifted a 35mm film camera by her grandma at 16 years old, which changed everything. She shoots primarily on 35mm film and other analog formats. “I find myself shooting a bit of everything,” she says. “Landscapes, family and portrait work, brand campaigns, and editorial pieces,” hoping to convey a sense of feeling, nostalgia, and intimacy with a subject’s world. Jahrmarkt photographed cookbook author Alana Kysar for the profile, her first for Flux Hawaii, on page 144. “Walking into Alana and her partner’s home to shoot this piece, I was met with warmth and welcome, something I believe shines through into her food as well,” she says. “I love capturing a person in their element, and seeing Alana through my lens surrounded by her color-coordinated bookshelves, her liliko‘i vine that she pollinates by hand, and watching her work in the kitchen with her two dachshunds at her feet was like sneaking a glimpse into her everyday life.”

1 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

CONTRIBUTORS

_ F/W 2026

CODY LANG is a photographer born and raised in Kula, Maui. His photography has appeared in Outside, Hawai‘i Community Foundation, Fairmont Kea Lani, and other publications and organizations. Raised surfing Maui’s coastlines, his images of the water work between documentary and fine art, a sensibility that he extends to his editorial photography. His work is rooted in the people and places of Hawai‘i — documenting loko i‘a restoration and coastal stewardship at Waihe‘e with Hawai‘i Land Trust, and the long recovery of Lahaina after the 2023 wildfires. “I’m drawn to stories of connection to ‘āina, and the generational work of caring for it,” he says. For his first story in Flux Hawaii, on page 72, Lang photographed the Kula Community Watershed Alliance, documenting the grassroots organizations’ ongoing conservation efforts in his hometown of Kula. He lives Upcountry, where he continues to tell stories close to home.

Since moving from Osaka to Kaua‘i in 2001, JON LETMAN has been reporting on Hawai‘i, Asia, and the Pacific with a focus on how militarism impacts human rights and the environment. Following Hawai‘i’s 2018 “Ballistic Missile Threat” false alarm, he has reported extensively on the development, use, and legacy of nuclear weapons and the pursuit of arms control and nuclear abolition. He also writes about biodiversity and the conservation of nature, reporting for National Geographic, The Guardian, The Diplomat, and other outlets. A Flux Hawaii contributor since 2010, Letman previously wrote about a Marshallese violinist, Kaua‘i’s Hindu monastery, the Russian Far East, and women-led peace efforts on the Korean peninsula. In his tenth article for Flux Hawaii, Letman interviewed Yokohama-based Welsh journalist Jon Mitchell about his book Why Are We in Okinawa?: A History of Violence, on page 116. Recalling their conversation, he says, “Speaking with Jon Mitchell about Okinawa’s rich culture, history, and natural beauty was a powerful reminder of why the Okinawan people have such a deep commitment to non-violence. Based on his years of research and dogged reporting, Mitchell illuminates why Okinawa is an inspiration for peace around the world.”

Currently based in San Francisco, LINDSEY VANDAL keeps a strong connection to the 808 through continued work with an array of NMG Network publications. Her favorite stories for Flux Hawaii include profiling Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei and championing O‘ahu’s female lifeguards. In this issue, on page 24, Vandal writes about the late artist Erica Karawina and the luminous stained glass works she crafted for churches and public spaces throughout O‘ahu. To research “Hawai‘i’s First Lady of Stained Glass,” the author relied on archival interviews and the artistic biography Painting With Light, The Stained Glass Works of Erica Karawina in Hawai‘i, written by admirerturned-friend Marilyn Alper. “You can look at anything Erica Karawina designed, from her compact pieces to these tremendous, massively complex mosaics, and get a sense of the incredible patience that must have guided her to such high levels of detail and nuance,” says Vandal. “Beyond technical mastery, she shares a profound communion with the elements of light and color. Her affinity for Hawai‘i’s land and culture comes through on every canvas.”

1 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Elevated comfort food, handcrafted pizzas, signature cocktails, and all-day dining in the heart of Waikīkī.

EXPLORE THE MENU

WAIKĪKĪ BEACH WALK 227 Lewers St Ste 118 Honolulu, HI 96815

(808)818-8018

giovannipastrami.com @GiovanniPastrami

CLIMB W

WORKS

“Once

you

have

seen

pure

color

come

life,

you

are

never

satisfied

with

anything

e l s e .”

—

Erica

Karawina

FLUX PHILES

IMAGE BY _ JOHN HOOK

FLUX _ PHILES

_ GLASS ART

O, Holy Light THE RADIANT ARTWORKS OF ERICA KARAWINA, HAWAI‘I’S FIRST LADY OF STAINED GLASS, SERVE AS AN ENDURING LOVE LETTER TO HER ADOPTED ISLAND HOME.

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

TEXT BY

_ LINDSEY VANDAL

IMAGES BY

_ JOHN HOOK

Whether Erica Karawina was crafting a stained glass window for a house of worship or a monumental public mural, she regarded the natural light surrounding her creations as vital as the glass itself. Often called “Hawaiʻi’s First Lady of Stained Glass,” Karawina is revered for her transparent tapestries of color defined by illumination, imagination, and a sense of place. Born in 1904, in Wittenberg, Germany, Karawina frequented art galleries and museums, and marveled at the ornate stained glass windows of early Gothic cathedrals. At age 19 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to study art, eschewing formal classrooms for apprenticeships with working artists. Under the influential American stained-glass artist Charles J. Connick, Karawina spent months researching the history of medieval stained glass before working in the centuries-old method of arranging 1/8-inch-thick colored French antique glass fixed with lead cames, the H-shaped strips of malleable metal used to join the individual pieces of colored glass together. In 1933, she collaborated with her mentor on church windows in Denver, Paris,



THROUGH

KALEIDOSCOPIC

STAINED

GLASS, ERICA KARAWINA TRANSFORMED HAWAI‘I’S SPACES INTO BRILLIANT THRESHOLDS OF LIGHT AND COLOR.

and New York City, including the Great West Rose Window in NYC’s Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, an impressive 10,000-piece circle which Connick described as “a unique adventure in active prismatic color.” Following an extended stay in China’s Yunnan province, Karawina settled on Oʻahu in 1949, where her husband Dr. Sydney Hsiao joined the zoology department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Invigorated by the island’s diverse color palette, she experimented with dalle de verre (slabs of glass), a contemporary stained glass technique in which chunks of colored inch-thick glass

PHILES

_ GLASS ART



ALTHOUGH SHE ENJOYED PAINTING, DRAWING, LITHOGRAPHY, AND SCULPTURE, KARAWINA FOUND THAT STAINED GLASS PROVIDED THE SENSE OF DYNAMISM SHE SOUGHT.

(dalles) are hammered by hand to create faceted surfaces, then embedded in a matrix of epoxy or concrete. The bejeweled qualities of this faceted glass were an extraordinary fit for Hawaiʻi’s ample sunlight. “Glass is naturally kinetic, without any gadgets,” Karawina, who balked at the notion of floodlighting, explained in a 1984 episode of the documentary series Artists of Hawaii. “It’s alive.” She worked closely

2 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

with architects, scrutinizing the natural renowned artists took notice of the dazlighting of a space before sketching out a zling vignettes; French-born artist Jean design, cutting all her glass by hand, and Charlot praised her bright, playful panels obsessively designating just the right detailing the story of Noah’s Ark and epishade for each component of her multi- sodes from Jesus’ life in the local paper as “a richly illumined prayerbook.” faceted mosaics. Karawina’s prolific work in Oʻahu’s In 1957, Karawina completed her first Hawaiʻi commission in traditional religious sanctuaries — including stained glass: six storybook windows for 15 Biblical windows at Liliʻuokalani the Children’s Chapel at the Salvation Protestant Church in Haleʻiwa, and the Army Waiʻoli campus in Mānoa. Even towering Chi (X) Rho (P) monogram of

PHILES

_ GLASS ART

Christ at Mānoa Valley Church — set a tone of cheerful reverence and often wove in elements of Hawaiian mythology and culture. In her series for Epiphany Episcopal Church in Kaimukī, an archangel is depicted wearing a malo and Baby Jesus lies swaddled inside a kapa-patterned blanket. In Punahou School’s Thurston Memorial Chapel, designed by Vladimir Ossipoff in 1966, Karawina’s abstract vertical-stripe windows feature jostling squares and rectangles that refract a spectrum of rainbow colors as they graduate around the altar. “The work functions as both art and teacher,” observes Joshua Hayashi, the lead chaplain. “It introduces fundamental ideas: color as temperature, light as energy, the rotation of the earth. The chapel itself becomes

a living instrument, a quiet curriculum that unfolds in light.” Through two larger-than-life designs in downtown Honolulu, commissioned by the Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Karawina proved her skill in coordinating complex stained glass projects and hand-delivered dalle de verre to a broader audience. In her 1976 installation for Kalanimoku Hale, four top-floor corner murals spanning 2,200 square feet feature Hawaiian gods alongside rainbows, petroglyphs, mountains, and other emblems of Hawaiʻi — all aligned with the sun’s trajectory. On the east-facing corners, Kakahiaka and Awakea welcome the warming hours after sunrise; on the building’s west side, ʻAuinalā and Pō salute the gradual dimming of the day.

2 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M



KARAWINA OFTEN STUDIED A SPACE’S NATURAL LIGHT BEFORE SKETCHING A DESIGN. ABOVE, PUNAHOU SCHOOL’S THURSTON MEMORIAL CHAPEL.

Entitled Kapa Lele O Hawaiʻ i, Karawina’s stunning skylight above the central atrium in Kaʻahumanu Hale unites sixty geometric-patterned panels in a 960-square-foot Hawaiian quilt. Installed in 1983, the piece honors kapa-making, where wauke bark is pounded and tinted with natural dyes to make cloth, as well as the local flora from which the dyes were traditionally sourced. During her life, Karawina also created many freestanding, portable dalle

PHILES

_ GLASS ART

de verre compositions that allowed her complete artistic freedom. In works such as the 15-by-15-inch tilted square, Our Paradise from Which We Are Exited by Some Cosmic Misadventure, and the suspended disc-shaped Black Sun, currently on display inside the Kaimukī Public Library, she explores themes of divinity, nature, and the metaphysical with a more personal, unfettered flair. In 2003, Karawina passed away at the age of 99. Her luminous stained glass

endures in Hawaiʻi’s schools, churches, retirement homes, and libraries, not simply as visual statements, but as invitations to see the everyday spaces we inhabit in a new light. She likened creative work to religion and found avid joy in sharing her brand of enlightenment with local eyes, telling the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, “Once you have seen pure color come to life, you are never satisfied with anything else.”



KARAWINA’S MOST PROLIFIC CONTRIBUTION WAS TO O’AHU’S CHURCHES, WHERE HER WORKS OFTEN CAST DEVOTIONAL SPACES WITH A CHEERFUL REVERENCE.

3 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

ORIGINAL ART | ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINTS

HAUNANIHESS.COM BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

FLUX _ PHILES

_ MAOLI

He Moʻolelo no Lānaʻi o Kaululāʻau

‘O KA WAIWAI O KĀ KĀKOU LOHE ‘ANA I KĀNA MO‘OLELO I HA‘I MAI NEI, ‘O KA ‘IKE ‘ANA I IA MEA HE KINOLAU NO KE AKUA E LIKE ME KONA ‘ANO E HO‘OKINO ‘IA MAI NEI I KĒIA AU HOU A KĀKOU E OLA NEI.

THIS

STORY

FLUX

HAWAII’S

PART

HAWAIIAN-

LANGUAGE REPORTING SERIES FEATURING

ARTICLES

PRO-

DUCED IN ‘ŌLELO HAWAI‘I.

READ

ENGLISH:

THIS

STORY

FLUXHAWAII.COM/

SECTION/OLELO-HAWAII.

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

KĀKAU ‘IA N A

_ N. HA’ALILIO SOLOMON

PA’I KI I ‘ IA NA

_ PF BENTLEY

Mai ka lā hoʻopuka i ka lae ʻo Kumukahi a ka lā hoʻohuelo i ka mole ʻolu ʻo Lehua, aloha kākou ā nui wale. Hauʻoli ko ʻoukou mea kākau i ka hoʻolaha hou aʻe i kekahi kaʻao no Lānaʻi o Kaululāʻau ma luna o ke kino lahilahi o kā kākou ʻelele waha ʻole. I puana hou ʻia aku ua nanea nei i hana hana hoʻoluana no ka poʻe makamaka makeʻe moʻolelo, a no ke kākaʻikahi hoʻi o ka moʻolelo no ua mokupuni kaulana lā e ʻau ana i ke kai hoʻokelewaʻa ʻo Kealaikahiki, ke kai mālie ʻo ʻAuʻau, a me ke kai hānupanupa ʻo Kalohi. Mai lohilohi mai i ke kau pū mai me mākou i kēia huakaʻi mākaʻikaʻi a kākou, i Lānaʻi nō! ʻOiai, he nui nā mana o kēia moʻolelo, e hili hewa ana paha kahi manaʻo ke ʻole ke kūkākūkā no kēia kupuʻeu ʻo Kaululāʻau. Ma ʻaneʻi, e haʻi ʻia ana ka māhele i loaʻa mai iā kākou mai loko mai o Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, a ka mea kākau ʻo P. M. i kākau ihola i ka M.H. 1912. Eia ke haʻi ʻia aku nei ma lalo, no ka mea, he mana na kekahi kupuna paʻa moʻolelo nāna i haʻi mai, aia hoʻi kāna mana ke waiho ala ma ka nūpepa. E nīele mai ana paha kekahi, no ke aha i koho ʻia ai kēia moʻolelo, ʻoiai he mau moʻolelo hou aku ko Lānaʻi? Ua kamaʻāina

nō hoʻi kou mea kākau i kēia moʻolelo no ke kalohe wiwo ʻole a me kāna mau hana āiwaiwa ma Lānaʻi, eia naʻe, ua haʻi ʻia iho nei nō hoʻi kekahi māhele o ka moʻolelo aʻu i lohe ʻole ai ma mua, he māhele nō ia e wehewehe aʻe ana i kekahi ala ʻokoʻa e hoʻomaopopo ai kākou i ua moʻolelo nei, a he ala nō paha e kāhāhā ai ka mea heluhelu. Penei ka moʻolelo: No Lahaina, Maui ʻo Kaululāʻau, ke keiki i kipaku ʻia akula e kona mau mākua i Lānaʻi ma hope o kāna huhuki kolohe ʻana i ka ʻulu a kukui hoʻi ma Lahaina. I ia wā, makaʻu kānaka i nā akua o Lānaʻi. ʻO kona noho ʻana ma kēia ʻāina akua lapu he nui wale, pēlā nā mākua i hoʻopaʻi ai i kā lāua keiki. He manaʻo naʻe ko kēia keiki hoʻokalakupua e lanakila ma luna o nā akua o Lānaʻi, a ʻo ka hōʻailona o ia, he ahi e ʻā ana ma ke kumupali pōhaku ʻo Kahalepalaoa, he ʻāina e huli ana iā Lahaina. Loaʻa aʻela iā Kaululāʻau he wahi e noho ai, aia nō ma kekahi ana ma ia kumupali. I ke ao wale nō naʻe ʻo ia i noho ai ma laila, a mōlehulehu mai, hele ʻo ia i ka holoholo, no ka mea, ʻike



I PUANA HOU ‘IA AKU UA NANEA NEI I WAHI HO‘OLUANA NO KA PO‘E MAKAMAKA MAKE‘E MO‘OLELO, A NO KE KĀKA‘IKAHI HO‘I O KA MO‘OLELO NO UA MOKUPUNI KAULANA.

_ MAOLI

PHILES

ʻo ia, ma ia wā nō e kaʻi hele ai nā akua, ke hōʻea aku hoʻi lākou i kona ana e noho ana, ʻaʻole ʻo ia, aia nō ma kahi ʻē. ʻO Pahulu hoʻi, e noho ana ia i Lānaʻi, ʻo ia ke aliʻi o nā akua. He kolohe maoli nō ia nāna i kiʻi i ua poʻe akua lā e pepehi iā Kaululāʻau. Iā Kaululāʻau e holoholo ana, kakali ʻo ia a lohe i ka hauwalaʻau o nā akua e hele ana. I loko nō o ke kapalili o kona houpu makaʻu, ulu aʻela ka manaʻo koa i loko ona e hoʻopūhili iā lākou. ʻO kāna hana mua o ka pepehi ʻana iā lākou, pane aʻela ia me ka leo nui, aia i ke opu nohu kahi ona e noho ana. ʻIke nā akua i kahi e loaʻa ai ʻo ia, a no laila, kauoha aʻela ʻo Pahulu i ka pūʻulu akua e iho lākou e huli hoʻi i ua keiki lā, a e pōʻalo aʻe i nā maka me ka hoʻihoʻi iā Pahulu, ʻo kona kino, na ka pūʻulu akua ia. Hauʻoli nā akua i ka loaʻa mai o kekahi mea pāʻina o ia pō. ʻO ka iho akula ia o nā akua he kanawalu ko lākou nui. Noke akula lākou i ka huli hele ʻana i ia keiki, ʻoiai ʻo ia e hoʻoipo ana me Niolopua. Hehi ka pūʻulu akua i ke opu nohu, ʻo lākou nō hoʻi ka i pau i ka make i ke kukū o ka nopu, koe ʻelua o lākou. Hala nō ʻelua lā, ʻaʻole i kipa hou aku nā akua i ko Kaululāʻau wahi noho. I ke kolu o ka lā, iho hou nā akua me ko Pahulu hahai ʻana aʻe iā lākou. ʻIke akula lākou iā Kaululāʻau e kū ana i luna o kekahi ʻōhuku pōhaku, kahi āna i kuʻu mua ai i kāna ʻupena. Nīnau akula ʻo Pahulu i ka loaʻa me ka ʻole o kāna iʻa,

a hōʻole aʻela kēlā, no ka mea, ʻaʻohe nāna e hoʻohū mai ka iʻa. No ka pākela ʻono loa o Pahulu i ka iʻa, kēnā aʻela i kahi poʻe akua e luʻu aku, pēlā lākou i hoʻohei ʻia ai i ka ʻupena. A pau ia poʻe iʻa kukū o ka ʻāina i ka hei i ka ʻupena, ʻo Pahulu wale nō koe. I ia manawa, pane aʻela ka ʻeuʻeu o Lahaina i ke aliʻi o nā akua o Lānaʻi, “Ke ʻike nei au ke hoʻi hou akula ka iʻa i uka.” Pīpī holo kaʻao. Ma ʻaneʻi paha kāua, e ka mea heluhelu, e kamaʻilio ai no ka manaʻo o kēia moʻolelo. He hiki nō ke noʻonoʻo ʻia, ʻo ia ihola nō ka moʻolelo ma kona ʻano ponoʻī, a he ʻoiaʻiʻo kēnā, a he pololei nō. Akā naʻe, ke haʻi mai nei kekahi o ko kou mea kākau kumu, ʻo Puakea Nogelmeier hoʻi, i kāna moʻolelo no Lānaʻi, a me nā akua o laila. Penei kā māua walaʻau ʻana: FLUX HAWAII: Ke mahalo nui nei au iā ʻoe, e kuʻu kumu, kou ʻae ʻana mai e kamaʻilio me aʻu no kēia papahana a kāua. E haʻi mai paha ʻoe i nā māhele o kēia moʻolelo i paʻa i kou naʻau? PUAKEA NOGELMEIER: ʻO nā māhele o kēia kaʻao i paʻa iaʻu, ʻo ia ke keiki kolohe ʻo Kaululāʻau, keiki na Kākaʻalaneo mā, uluhua auaneʻi ka makua kāne i ka hana kolohe a kāna keiki, a kipaku ʻo ia i ke keiki e noho ma Lānaʻi, he ʻāina i kaulana i ka weliweli o nā akua me nā ʻuhane, me ka manaʻo paha o ka makua kāne e make ana ma laila, akā, e pau ana ka pilikia. Uluhua ʻo ia, ua pau kona ahonui. Kipaku aku iā ia i laila, a hele ʻo Kaululāʻau me ka makaʻu me ka ʻike i laha i ia manawa, he ʻāina noho ʻia

PHILES

_ MAOLI

e nā akua e nā ʻuhane lapu. A launa auaneʻi ʻo ia, hana maʻalea ʻo ia a lanakila ma luna o lākou a hoʻopalekana ʻia ka mokupuni, noho ʻia e kānaka, i ka hopena, ʻo ia ke ʻano i hoʻokahua ʻia ai, i noho ai kānaka i laila.

o Pālāwai, ua kaulana i nā kiʻi pōhaku, he e hula ana, mai ka ʻākau a i ka hema, he nui ma laila, kupanaha nō hoʻi kēlā mau ikaika, a hoʻokahi paha mile ka laula o kēia kiʻi pōhaku. Iā mākou ma laila, ua palaha laulā o kēia mau pali. Ma hope pono ona, ke taea, a paʻa mākou i laila i ke kali ʻana hoʻokū maila ka makani i kekahi puahioa hiki mai ke kanaka hoʻoponopono hio, aia ʻelua, ʻoni kekahi ma hope o kekahi. taea. E kali ana mākou i laila, pā ana ka A ʻoni aʻe, ʻoni aʻe, a kū maila ke kolu o kēia. makani. ʻOiai he lua pele ke ʻano o ka ʻāina, Me he mea lā he pou, ʻaʻole naʻe kū pololei, he palaha nō hoʻi, he ehu lepo hunehune ʻoni maila, holuholu maila i ka makani. He aeae ʻulaʻula, nui ka halakahiki o ka wā i haneli paha kapuaʻi kona kiʻekiʻe, he mea hala, pau i kēia wā, koe naʻe ka lepo huna- nui! Me he mea lā, he kino e ʻoni mai ana. huna. ʻOiai mākou i laila, huli ana ka maka A, kū auaneʻi ka hā, ʻo ka ʻike akula nō ia iā kai, papaiāiulu he ʻōwili makani a kū o mākou i ka lima, e ʻoni wale ana kekahi maila he puahiohio. Ma ka lihi o Pālāwai ma hope o kekahi, me he kaʻina kanaka Pali ma ka ʻaoʻao kai, hoʻokino ʻia he pua- lā, a i ka hiki ʻana aku ma kai o ka ʻaoʻao hiohio ikaika, me he mea ala e ʻoni mai ana, hema, ua iho akula, a pio ihola nō hoʻi ka

Mahalo, ʻo ia nō hoʻi kaʻu i heluhelu ai. I ko ʻoukou kipa ʻana i Lānaʻi, he aha ka mea a ʻoukou i ʻike maka ai? Ua kipa mākou ʻo Hauʻoli Akaka me Tuti Kanahele no ke kamaʻilio ʻana me kahi kupuna kāne o laila, ʻo Kaʻōpūiki kona inoa. Iā mākou i mākaʻikaʻi ai i kahi i kapa ʻia ʻo Luahiwa, he māhele ʻāina ma ka ʻaoʻao

3 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

ʻAʻole, ʻaʻole, ʻo ia ka mea a mākou ʻekolu i haku ai (kani ka ʻaka), a noʻonoʻo ihola. ʻAʻole nō paha i haʻi ʻia mai kēia moʻolelo iaʻu. Ma ka heluhelu wale nō koʻu ʻike. Akā, hiki i nā mea ʻelua ke ʻoiaʻiʻo. Noʻonoʻo au he ʻano hoʻokino paha kēlā puahiohio no ke akua, he kinolau paha, a hiki nō i nā mea ʻelua ke ola mai. Noʻonoʻo ana mākou i ia wā, inā ua lilo ʻo Pālāwai he ʻāina mahi ʻia, ʻaʻole paha ʻEā, e ke kumu, ua haʻi maoli ʻia anei ʻoe, e ʻike hou ʻia mai ana ka puahiohio lepo. pēlā ka manaʻo o kēia moʻolelo, ʻaʻole Pau ka puahiohio i ka mahi ʻia o ka ʻāina, paha ia he akua maoli ka mea e noho aia mau nō paha ke akua ma kahi ʻē. Inā ana ma Lānaʻi, ʻo ka ʻoiaʻiʻo he lepo i pau ke ānuenue, pau pū anei ke akua, ʻaʻole paha. He mea maʻamau ma ka hoʻopuehu ʻia i puahiohio?

puahiohio mua, a ʻoni mai ka lua i kahi o ka mua, hoʻomaka e pio iho. Aia paha he ʻehā, ʻelima ma ka wā hoʻokahi. Iā mākou e kū nānā aʻe ana i kēia mau puahiohio, hoʻohaliʻa ʻia maila kēia kaʻao me ka ʻōlelo, “Kēia paha kekahi mea a ka poʻe o Maui i ʻike ai! I ka mahuʻi ʻana he akua wale nō ko ʻoneʻi, he lapu, he mea hoʻokalakupua ko kēia ʻāina e weliweli ai ka poʻe.



HE ‘ĀINA NOHO ‘IA E NĀ AKUA ‘O HAWAI‘I NEI ME KONA MAU MOKUPUNI A PAU, UA ‘IKE MAKA PAHA KĀKOU. A E LIKE HO’I ME NĀ AKUA O KĒIA PAE‘ĀINA, HE MAU KINOLAU KO LĀKOU.

PHILES

_ MAOLI



‘A‘OLE KĒIA MO‘OLELO A MĀUA E HA‘I AKU NEI IĀ ‘OUKOU E LILO HE PANI HAKAHAKA NO KE KE‘AO KAHIKO O LĀNA‘I O KAULULĀ‘AU, ‘A‘OLE KA MO‘OLELO O KE AU HOU KA MEA E PAU AI KA MO‘OLELO O KE AU I HALA.

Pākīpika nei, he lehulehu nā mana o ka moʻolelo hoʻokahi.

kaʻao hoʻi ka huina. Kapa ʻia nō ia e ke kanaka hoʻokahi ma nā huaʻōlelo ʻelua.

I kou hoʻomaopopo ʻana, he aha ka mea e ʻokoʻa ai ka moʻolelo i ke kaʻao?

He aha ka puana, ka ʻike, ka haʻawina hoʻi a kēia moʻolelo e hoʻonauao mai ana iā kākou i kēia mau lā?

ʻAʻahe mea ʻokoʻa, ʻoiai ma ka wā hoʻokahi, kapa ʻia kekahi moʻolelo he moʻolelo a he kaʻao nō hoʻi. ʻO kekahi i laha aʻela kona ʻano he kaʻao, kapa ʻia he moʻolelo. ʻO ka mea i kapa pinepine ʻia he moʻolelo, kapa ʻia nō hoʻi ia he kaʻao. ʻO ka moʻolelo o Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, mai kānalua, he kaʻao nō ia. Hiki paha ke ʻōlelo ʻia, ʻo ka moʻolelo, ʻo ia paha ke ʻano o ke kaʻina o loko, ʻo ke

3 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

ʻĀ, like me nā moʻolelo a kaʻao like ʻole, he mau haʻawina ko loko o laila. I kahi manawa, hoʻokohu ʻia ka haʻi ʻana i ka moʻolelo i mea e kohu ai ka poʻe hoʻolohe. A no laila, me kēia nui nā haʻawina o loko. ʻO ke keiki kolohe i ulu ā mōhala maikaʻi maila, a i lanakila, ka ʻalo ʻana i kahi mea hoʻopilikia a hoʻoholo i ke ala e lanakila

ai, he mea waiwai nō. ʻO ka uluhua o ka pāpā i kāna keiki kolohe a kipaku nō iā ia, he haʻawina ko laila. ʻOiai he ʻāina weliweli ʻo Lānaʻi, ua lilo i mea e hana pono ai kamaliʻi, o kipaku ʻia auaneʻi lākou i laila. He mea nui a waiwai hoʻi ka ʻike ʻana o kamaliʻi i ka hopena o ka hana kolohe. He aha ka waiwai o kēia moʻolelo hoʻokahi ke haʻi hou a hoʻomau hou ʻia i loko o kēia wā, ʻoiai ua loli nui ka ʻāina a me ke ʻano e hoʻohana ʻia nei? Hoʻākāka mai i ke kaʻina o nā loli o nā makahiki i hala, penei ka ʻāina i ka wā e

PHILES

_ MAOLI

ola ana ʻo Kākaʻalaneo me Kaululāʻau mā, a ua loli paha, he ʻano kahua kēlā e kūkulu ʻia ai ka ʻike. ʻO kekahi mea nui naʻe, mea ʻole ka loli o ka ʻāina, he oia mau nō ka loaʻa o ka haʻawina e aʻo mai ana iā kākou. Loli nui kēlā ʻāina, eia naʻe, he ʻano puka komo nō hoʻi kēia e hiki ai ke hoʻohālike, me ka ʻōlelo pū, ua ʻoi aʻe ka maikaʻi o ka nohona i kēia wā, ʻoi aʻe paha ko ke au i hala, ma laila ka hoʻohālike ʻana.

ala kēia no kākou e hoʻomaopopo laulā aʻe ai i kēia kaʻao kahiko o ka ʻāina. He ʻāina noho ʻia e nā akua ʻo Hawaiʻi nei me kona mau mokupuni a pau, ua ʻike maka paha kākou. A e like hoʻi me nā akua o kēia paeʻāina, he mau kinolau ko lākou. ʻO ka waiwai o kā kākou lohe ʻana i kāna moʻolelo i haʻi mai nei, ʻo ka ʻike ʻana i ia mea he kinolau no ke akua e like me kona ʻano e hoʻokino ʻia mai nei i kēia au hou a kākou e ola nei. Eia hoʻi, ʻaʻole kēia moʻolelo a māua e haʻi aku nei iā ʻoukou e lilo he pani hakahaka no ke kaʻao kahiko o Lānaʻi o Kaululāʻau, ʻaʻole ka moʻolelo o ke au hou ka mea e pau ai ka moʻolelo o ke au i hala. Noho mai nō ʻoe, e ka mea heluhelu, a e hoʻomanaʻo aʻe, he mau mana ko ka

*** E ka mea heluhelu, ma ʻaneʻi paha kāua e kamaʻilio no kēia nanea a kākou i walea iho nei. I loko nō o ka haʻi maoli ʻole ʻia aʻe o nēia moʻolelo i ko kāua hoa kūkākūkā, he

moʻolelo kaʻao hoʻokahi. A nui aʻe nā mana o ka moʻolelo, nui aʻe kona mana. ʻO ka mana nō hoʻi o ka moʻolelo Hawaiʻi ka mea e puana ai ka waha o ke kamaʻāina puni kaʻao, “Pīpī holo kaʻao.”



A E HO‘OMANA‘O A‘E, HE MAU MANA KO KA MO‘OLELO KA‘AO HO‘OKAHI. A NUI A‘E NĀ MANA O KA MO‘OLELO, NUI A‘E KONA MANA.

4 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

We'll take you here

Your Adventure, Our Aloha Sightseeing Experiences Maui | Oahu | Kauai | Hawaii Island

www.polyad.com | 1-800-622-3011

FLUX _ PHILES

_ LITERATURE

Homeward Bound TWO O‘AHU NOVELISTS, WHOSE DEBUT NOVELS TAKE VERY DIFFERENT CLIMATE

APPROACHES

FICTION,

DISCUSS

“CLI-FI,” WHAT

SPECULATIVE

MEANS

WRITE

IN THE FACE OF NATURAL DISASTER AND EXPLORE NEARFUTURE RESILIENCE.

TEXT BY

_ ALICIA UP ANO

IMAGES BY

_ JOHN HOOK

Shay Kauwe is my debut book twin. We’re two Oʻahu-based novelists whose first novels were published nationally this year, but Shay’s the elder. Her novel, The Killing Spell, entered the world this spring and mine, Everything to the Sea, is a summer baby. After she returned from her West Coast book tour, Shay and I gathered in Kakaʻako over drinks and pūpū. When I asked her to define her specific subgenre of fantasy, the passing server couldn’t help but interject. “Fairies?” the server asked. “Are we talking about fairies?” Not quite. The Killing Spell is an urban fantasy set on a Hawaiian homestead outside of Los Angeles where beastly mo‘o and schools of language magic reign. The post-apocalyptic novel follows headstrong Kea Petrova as she fights for her family and land, encountering some hot magical men in the process. The book is both a wild ride and big-hearted. In contrast, there is nothing fantastical about my book. Everything to the Sea is grounded in the islands, following characters Jane and Kenji as they fall in love the summer before a tsunami levels their hometown of Hilo. Love twists with loss, as they work to rebuild their lives over nearly a decade in both Hawaiʻi and California. In any continental context, our books might never be paired. Not only do our genres differ, but so do our backgrounds; Shay is hapa Hawaiian, I am Ilokano-haole. But on O‘ahu, where we were born and raised, we have lots to discuss. Our dialogue, edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations, delves into the space where our debuts meet: Hawaiʻi, disaster, land and food insecurity, as well as the balancing act

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

_ LITERATURE

PHILES

between fact and fiction, and who we write for.—Alicia Upano

even then you can’t do it forever. It’s not sustainable.

ALICIA UPANO: Natural disaster and loss of land is a thread that connects our books. Why do you think that is?

AU: This has to do with craft, too. In writing a story about a natural disaster, there’s a point at which the reader needs to see ground zero, to physically grapple with the loss, and so that’s why Kenji returns to Hilo after the wave. Awful things happen, but in the aftermath, really beautiful things happen, too. Some people have described my shelter section as harrowing, but I love the characters in the shelter, what they’re trying

it is for people to live here. One in three families struggles with food insecurity in this place where people drop a bunch of money. I mean, 80,000 children are hungry. That’s criminal. We’ve both written these dramatic climactic events. Were they also a way for us to reflect on something about the communities that we live in? Like the natural disaster is a vehicle to talk about things that are not as large in magnitude, but are very real in Hawaiʻi. What do you think?

SHAY KAUWE: I was at a conference last year and somebody mentioned that all fiction now is climate fiction, and I was like, “Yes, I agree.” It’s almost not realistic to have any book that’s written in the modern day that doesn’t at least briefly touch on climate, regardless of genre, because it’s so relevant to our lives, and it makes for more insecurity. Hawaiʻi is such a fragile ecosystem; we’re very dependent. You’ll rarely find a climate change denier — they’re almost nonexistent here. It’s almost impossible to find somebody who doesn’t care about the environment. AU: Totally. In your book, a flood sinks Hawaiʻi, and in mine, a tsunami destroys a town. I mean, it’s not far-fetched. SK: Very relevant. In Hilo, we know the history. Tsunamis happened. Technically I wrote this book way before the Kona Low floods, but the floods also did happen in Hawaiʻi. AU: I feel like it’s been happening. SK: Exactly. I’ve gotten some feedback from readers, where they were like, “I kept forgetting Hawaiʻi was gone.” There’d be a casual reference to the world, which was set 200 years in the future where the Hawaiian Islands are submerged underwater, and then the story just moved on. But that’s how it is here in Hawai‘i, too. We’ve experienced so many natural disasters stacked on top of each other that it has become a normal thing that is often mentioned in passing. There’s this idea that the world stands still in a natural disaster, but life keeps moving. It’s not the focus of all your attention and time constantly, unless you are like your characters, Kenji and Loralei, in the midst of it. That was a choice they made, and



ALICIA

UPANO’S

EVERYTHING

TO THE SEA IS A LOCAL LOVE STORY IN THE AFTERMATH OF A DEVASTATING TSUNAMI.

to do, and their resilience. I’m always humbled by the response in Hawaiʻi to these real disasters. If a terrible thing is going to happen to your home, you could not wish for a better community. SK: Yes, exactly. The Lahaina fires were three years ago, and recovery is still going on. The problem is not solved, but the community is also still there. AU: After the wave in my book, people lose their homes and struggle with having enough food. I think about how hard

SK: I agree with that. Food insecurity is not something I specifically struggled with in my own family, but in the community I grew up in? Absolutely. As a teacher, you see it all the time, and it’s systemic. There’s also land insecurity. I don’t know anybody my age, or any age really, who has the money to buy their own house or property. And honestly, the “owning” isn’t so much a big deal to me as it’s just having a place to grow. To know that you never will be removed permanently from the place you call home, which is super traumatic. AU: I want to talk about depicting Hawaiʻi. It’s easy to talk about what people get wrong, but what would it mean to do it right? SK: I think it’s the nuance about Hawaiʻi. It’s more than a backdrop for a story. So many times I’ll read a story about Hawaiʻi, and it could have been written anywhere else. There’s nothing to make it special or unique to the place. It could be in Thailand, it could be in Mexico. But in both of our stories, they literally can’t be anywhere else. It doesn’t make sense in any other setting. AU: Your story isn’t in Hawaiʻi at all, but it could never be anywhere other than a Hawaiian homestead. SK: Yeah, Homestead [the fictional LA homestead in The Killing Spell], or the diaspora. Even major plot elements centralize around that. It just doesn’t work elsewhere.

PHILES

_ LITERATURE

That’s what makes Hawaiʻi exciting too, because the perspective here is very unique. Hawaiʻi is a contradiction in a lot of ways. Like, we’re very mixed, multiracial, right? At the same time, both you and I made a point to make our characters ones that don’t really question their own identity when it comes to race or ethnicity. It’s more about their belonging, community, home.

one of the underpinnings which allowed Slovenia’s separation to be relatively bloodless, among other reasons. Their distinct language was like a cultural glue that made it simpler to proclaim independence. He had great disdain for the idea of language reclamation as decoration only, using it for performance and dance. It just hit home, because at the time, I was like, “Oh, that’s really what we use Hawaiian for.” Why not imagine what the world would look like in the future and think about the political implications of Native

AU: That was actually really important to me. My book can be read as a comingof-age story and that’s typically an identity story, right? And when I read mixedrace characters on the continent, those novels are often really concerned about how they don’t fit into whiteness. And we have plenty of issues in Hawaiʻi in terms of identity— SK: But that’s not one of them. That’s very true.

SK: The tsunami’s coming and they’re wondering what their identity is? [Laughs] I appreciate that.

SK: A sovereign Hawaiʻi is a fantasy for a lot of people. I don’t believe that, but that is the idea, so let’s do that thought experiment. What would it actually look like? What would it take to get there? What do we need? Obviously language isn’t literal magic, but the thematic underpinning in the book is the power of language as a holder of culture that you can use to base real sovereignty off of. I studied in Slovenia, which is a country of the former Yugoslavia. There was a horrific war there in its breakup, and my professor believed that language was

4 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

SK: I empathize. I think in the end, our job is to be a storyteller. Like, we’re not cultural experts, we’re not anthropologists or linguists. Our purpose is storytelling, and that is powerful. We care, and want to do our best, but we can never perfectly mirror the real world. I know not everybody will feel that way, but the fact that we even have that care is so important because the truth is so many people go in without it, yeah? Like, it’s not in their frame of reference. AU: Do you ever have a feeling like, “I have an idea and in order to write the story, I need to get a PhD in X, Y, Z?” That you need to be an expert in this thing. Then it’s like, “If I’m an expert in that thing, then I’m not becoming an expert in storytelling.”

AU: The characters have so much other stuff going on. They’re falling in love, they’re losing their families. I didn’t want them to be like—

AU: You mentioned the importance of using storytelling to imagine new futures of sovereignty for the lāhui. You’re also a fantasy writer. Can you tell me more about that?

more complex of a place than I could ever render. And so, in my author’s note, the first thing I say is that this is my imagined Hilo; it’s not the real one. I mean, this is a real place that I have always loved and imagined, thanks partly to other writers from Hawaiʻi Island. But that’s not my home.

SK: Yeah, I agree. Like my book features several languages. Can I speak eight languages?



SHAY KAUWE‘S THE KILLING SPELL TURNS FANTASY AND MYSTERY INTO A VEHICLE FOR CULTURAL CRITIQUE.

Hawaiians learning their own language beyond what’s nice for culture? It’s also about progression towards independence or self-determination or sovereignty, too. AU: So you use fantasy to imagine not only new worlds, but also new possibilities in ours. I want to talk about that line between fiction and nonfiction. I will tell you about when I went back to Hilo. I visited as a kid, obviously, but I’d started drafting this book during the pandemic and when I went back the first time to research, revise, see friends, that sort of thing, I remember thinking, Hilo is way

AU: You’d be a spy. SK: I definitely can’t speak eight languages. I’m worried about that for my next book, too. It has many cultural tales, and they’re interspersed with things I made up, but it fits thematically. I think it’s OK to keep things mysterious. If this were a cultural book and we were just revealing everything right away, that does a disservice to the community. Megan [Kamalei Kakimoto] wrote, “Hawaiʻi is not meant to be easily understood,” and I agree with that. AU: So even though we make things up, I do want to admire the work you did to ensure the book had a Hawaiian touch on every level. Starting with the language,

PHILES

_ LITERATURE

“It’s the nuance about Hawaiʻi. It’s more than a backdrop for a story. So many times I’ll read a story about Hawaiʻi, and it could have been written anywhere else.” _ shay kauwe, novelist

you had fluent speakers review your book. What was that process like? SK: I made a video on TikTok. I’m not even joking. I literally made a video, and I was like, “Will anyone read this? I will pay you.” AU: We share an audiobook narrator, Barrie Kealoha. I was talking to her the other day, and I think she slid into your DMs? SK: Thank God she did. The publisher gave me audiobook narrator options; nobody spoke Hawaiian. So I reached out to Barrie, and I was like, “Look, I have a problem. Can you record an audio sample?” She did and I was able to send it back to the publisher, and say, “Here is another option.” So, shoot your shot. That’s the takeaway. It does not hurt to shoot your shot at all. AU: I wanted to ask you about the writing communities you’re a part of because I’m always amazed at how large the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander writing community is. SK: I’m in Pacific Islanders in Publishing, which is an online group. It truly was just

4 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

born out of necessity. The exact statistic is that 0.2% of all published authors are Pacific Islanders, across all genres, so that group formed as a way to offer mental, emotional, and literal support. I joined when I had a manuscript and a dream. It is predominantly Hawaiian and Māori, but we are pretty intentional about trying to make sure there’s focus on Micronesian and Melanesian authors, too. There are people from all over! Hawaiian writers in Japan, Hawaiian writers in Norway, Tahitian writers in Aotearoa. The group is over 1,000 members at this point. AU: How did this group help as you began your own journey towards publication? SK: Really, like, everything. Help with what agents to look out for, who’s looking for a Pasifika story, critique partners, knowing about scholarships and different opportunities, and even just commiserating and celebrating. The local group that I help run, Honolulu Writing Meetup, is how I found out about the Native Hawaiian Storytelling Writer’s Immersive Program through Native Hawaiian Philanthropy. There was a writer there, she’s amazing. Hauʻolihiwahiwa Moniz, who is a slam



NATURAL

DISASTER

AND

LAND

LOSS CONNECT THE TWO WORKS, SUBJECTS THAT KAUWE SAYS ARE “ALMOST

NOT

EXCLUDE

FROM

LITERATURE.

REALISTIC”

CONTEMPORARY ABOVE,

KAUWE

PHOTOGRAPHED AT HER HOME IN WAIMĀNALO, O‘AHU.

poet, writes children’s books, and is an educator as well. She did the program first, and she was like, “You should apply.” So, I did. AU: Wonderful. It goes to show how actually showing up and being in community is valuable. Do you have an audience in mind as you’re writing?

SK: The Killing Spell, I would hope, has a pretty large audience. I think this idea of relearning your mother tongue is a powerful one that crosses cultures. Colonization affects everyone, and Americans to a large extent. AU: I mean, I don’t speak my family’s language, Ilokano.

PHILES

_ LITERATURE



IN THE KILLING SPELL , KAUWE BUILDS A MAGIC SYSTEM ROOTED IN ‘ŌLELO HAWAI‘I, USING THE POWER OF LANGUAGE AS A REPOSITORY OF CULTURE AND A FOUNDATION FOR SOVEREIGNTY.

SK: Yes, exactly. So I see it as an emotional audience rather than a specific demographic. The people who can relate to that experience of learning or losing language, it’s for them. AU: I hear a lot of local and/or Hawaiian writers say specifically they want to write to the islands, or to the diaspora. Whereas I feel like I grew up as a Book-It kid, right? Trading in my pin at the Kāneʻohe Pizza Hut. I got a lot of my books from the Scholastic Book Fairs, or whatever I could find at Times

5 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

or Waldenbooks. I was just exposed to things that were widely available, and that says a lot about publishing and class. So, when I think about writing, I’m not sure I’m specifically writing to Hawaiʻi. That doesn’t mean I’m not; I care very much about depicting this place in a way that feels real to me in the best way that I can. But I think about all the books from elsewhere that I enjoyed reading, and so in some ways, I feel like I am writing for a curious, smart person elsewhere who wants to understand.

THE LEGEND CONTINUES... see you in Kona

dukesrestaurants.com

PHILES

_ LITERATURE



ALTHOUGH EVERYTHING TO THE SEA IS PARTLY COMING-OF-AGE, UPANO AVOIDED CENTERING QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY,

PARTICULARLY

AROUND

WHITENESS. ”THE CHARACTERS HAVE SO MUCH OTHER STUFF GOING ON,” SAYS UPANO, PHOTOGRAPHED IN EAST O‘AHU. “THEY’RE FALLING IN LOVE, THEY’RE LOSING THEIR FAMILIES.”

SK: We were talking earlier about the right book at the right time. What’s the thing they’re always talking about? Windows and mirrors? Writing is both. That magic of when your book will find somebody who needs a mirror, or who needs a window, right when they need it.

never have Hawaiian characters unless they’re, like, a side love interest or something. I think it’s about time we’re not the help. That’s my request to the universe. That’s why your book scratched an itch for me! But it definitely was not a rom-com. [Laughs]

AU: What are you looking forward to in the future of Hawaiʻi fiction?

AU: Sorry! Yes, as you said, my book is definitely a local love story, but not a romance. But it’s on the way! Somebody else will write that story. I’m looking forward to all the amazing novels that I know are coming. Your next book, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto’s novel, Kristiana

SK: Oh, I want a romance. I want a contemporary romance set in Hawaiʻi with Hawaiian characters. I’ve read so many romances set in Hawaiʻi. They

5 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Kahakauwila’s novel. I mean, I could go on and on. SK: It’s crazy that we have a list! AU: I’m also excited about the people we don’t even know. SK: I’m excited for that, too. Like, there’s more, they’re coming. I’m pretty stoked.

FLUX _ PHILES

_ VINTAGE

History to a Tee AT UNKO’S HOUSE IN WAHIAWĀ, VINTAGE COLLECTOR MAKOA DEVINCENT BRINGS A HYPERLOCAL NUANCE TO THE NOSTALGIA CRAZE.

TEXT BY

_ NATALIE SCHACK

IMAGES BY

_ JOHN HOOK AND SHILOH PERKINS

A shirt is not always just a shirt. Not when it was the one your dad wore every weekend toiling under the hood of his car or when its faded logo reminds you of grocery runs with your tūtū. At Unko’s House, Makoa DeVincent has built a place for finding such relics. His Wahiawā storefront, on the second floor of a postwar office building along Kilani Avenue, is a cozy emporium crammed full of if-you-know-you-know curios. At the entrance a clothing rack houses deadstock T-shirts with deep-cut local references (poi dogs, jan ken po, LavaNet) and collectible vintage alohawear (during my visit, there’s a Manuheali‘i dress that’d make any collector jealous). Along the back rests an array of tchotchkes: cassette tapes of Kapena, Kalapana, and Kaʻau Crater Boys; a commemorative ashtray for Kuhio Grill; aloha print patchwork quilts ripped right off your grandma’s couch. When Unko’s House opened in January 2026, it did so with relatively little fanfare beyond DeVincent’s circle of local collectors. For years, he’d grown a modest eBay following as a vintage reseller with a knack for hunting down grails, supremely covetable items that are hard to obtain in thrift-speak. But

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

PHILES

_ VINTAGE



MAKOA

DEVINCENT’S

SHOP

EMPORIUM OF NOSTALGIC EPHEMERA, FROM FRANK DE LIMA VHS TAPES TO DEADSTOCK HAWAIIAN BAND TEES.

in the weeks after he opened his doors, word spread beyond his expected crowd, fanned in no small part by Instagram posts of his weekly restock drops. The featured garments, shot against the shop’s now-signature Pegge Hopper painting backdrop, were charmingly hyperlocal and oftentimes rare, making the posts particularly shareable on social media. “People reposting my weekly restocks is big,” says DeVincent, whose Instagram following grew from just over a thousand to 4,317 within eight months. “I usually pick around eight of my favorite

5 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

tees in the restock and people will repost the shirt that they like the most.” The store’s first post upon opening — a carousel of a Pegge Hopper graphic tee, Yick Lung merch, and a shirt screenprinted with the Mona Lisa as a moʻo — was reshared 147 times. “It was surreal how strangers were so supportive of what I was doing,” says DeVincent. “Now, a lot of those strangers I would now consider friends and we can talk story in the shop for hours.” Virality aside, what sets Unko’s House apart from the current cadre of resellers

is DeVincent’s approach to curation. There’s none of the stockpiled chaos one might expect from a vintage shop, where a ’90s Disney sweater hangs next to bedazzled Y2K jeans next to a faded Kahala button-down. At Unko’s House, the clothes, pins, cassettes — everything down to the Merrie Monarch ticket stubs encased in a koa wood frame — are chosen to tell a story. The inspiration reaches back, as it often does, to family. One of DeVincent’s favorite childhood places was his uncle’s house, which he describes as a veritable

5 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

_ VINTAGE



UNIQUE FINDS, LIKE THIS 1995 EDDIE AIKAU BIG WAVE INVITATIONAL POSTER, REFLECT WHAT DEVINCENT CALLS, “A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE ON HAWAI‘I VINTAGE.”

PHILES

collector’s paradise where shelves over- sporting comedian Frank De Lima’s face, flowed with treasures collected over the for instance, or a muʻu painted with artist years: weathered Kodak and Canon cam- Diana Hansen Young’s reclining women. That sense of familiarity feels espeeras displayed alongside Territorial-era Waialua Soda Works bottles; boxing and cially at home in historic Wahiawā, swimming medals from his uncle’s time in where generations of local families like the U.S. Marines hanging beside a gallery DeVincent’s still hold roots, many stretchwall of family pictures, framed Hawaiian ing back to the plantation days. It’s probaprints, and magazine clippings. Much of bly one of the reasons why Unko’s House it was off limits to his little hands, which doesn’t depend on tourist foot traffic. The only enhanced their allure. “It was messy, majority of his customers are locals themlooking back,” he recalls. “But when I was selves who are inspired to make the pilgrimage to his store because of a school little, it felt like all these treasures.” DeVincent’s grandfather, who he lov- shirt they wore as a student or a classic ingly calls Papa, added another layer. uniform for a shop their grandparents While his uncle’s house overflowed with once frequented. In fact, it’s that very connection collectibles, Papa kept a smaller collection excavated by his own hands. A con- between history, people, and places that struction worker, he was always bringing really draws DeVincent to each of his home period bottles and unusual rocks curated finds. While his vintage-hunting he’d dug up. “He didn’t have as much journey may have started more personjunk as my uncle,” DeVincent says. “But ally — seeing traces of his own experihe did have his own curated little knick- ences and reminders of his own family knacks and things he liked.” Occasionally, in the objects he came across — he now Papa regaled him with their origins — also considers how those echoes of noswhere that antique bottle came from, talgia might resonate for someone else. where this peculiar stone was picked up. “Is this something that someone might Long before DeVincent became a cura- be tied to, in some way that I wouldn’t tor of his own, he learned the stories that understand?” he wonders. Often, that answer is yes. objects held. DeVincent says it’s not uncommon for Soon enough, DeVincent fell into his own rabbit hole. Born and raised in customers to share deeply personal stoWahiawā, he began to hunt down vin- ries as they browse the shop. One woman tage Hawaiʻi band tees in his early twen- came looking for a Ka‘a‘awa Country ties, a collection that now numbers over Lū‘au shirt her father used to wear. As she 70 shirts. “That’s kind of how all of this described it in great detail, DeVincent started,” says DeVincent. “That’s what I paused. “I was like, ‘Wait, I think I actuwas trying to find a long time ago.” Those ally have it.’” He disappeared into their band tees — ranging from Ooklah the storage and returned with the exact red Moc to Kalapana — still hold a place of tank top she was envisioning. Alongside such sentimental moments pride in his personal collection. From there, the hunt widened into is the simple joy of rediscovering the what he describes as “a local perspective past. “It’s fun to be able to go back 20, on Hawaiʻi vintage” — garments, home- 30, 40 years, and then be refreshed with ware, and mementos with a history something new even when it’s old,” says peculiar to his birthplace, more familiar DeVincent, who often gets inspired by than famous, with references that only the creativity of Hawaiʻi designers circa fellow locals could grasp. A graphic tee the ’80s and ’90s. He points to a Makiki

PHILES

_ VINTAGE



FROM

THE

OUTSET,

DEVINCENT

KNEW UNKO’S HOUSE BELONGED IN HIS HOMETOWN OF WAHIAWĀ. TODAY, IT

OCCUPIES

POSTWAR

OFFICE

BUILDING ALONG KILANI AVENUE.

Shell gas station commemorative tee as a particular favorite, where a surrealist robot wears the station’s logo as a head. For all of DeVincent’s careful curation, though, one of the shop’s most charming details was pure accident — and a resourcefulness he credits to his grandpa. When the shop opened, he realized he’d forgotten to order hang tags. Pressed for time, he reached for a stack of vintage Pogs, the ’90s playground craze inspired by a kids game that originated in Hawai‘i.

6 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

The improvised solution quickly became a signature touch, delighting those who recognize the nostalgic cardboard milk caps. Their doubling as hang tags also means DeVincent is always looking for more, and they’ve become increasingly difficult to find as they’re rediscovered by collectors. But for DeVincent — as with the band tees, the rare aloha shirts, and the Butch Helemano LPs — the hunt is part of the fun. “There’s always more out there,” he says.

your favorite stop in the neighborhood

Our food is designed to fuel every local lifestyle. Our classic favorites are inspired by home cooked meals, backyard BBQs & beachside picnics, because we know how Hawaii loves to eat.

kailua beach

WAIMANALO

306 S Kalaheo Ave, Kailua, HI 96734 (808) 262-4359

41-865 Kalanianaole Hwy Waimanalo, HI 96795 (808) 784-0303

KAILUA TOWN

KAPOLEI

750 Kailua Road, Kailua, HI 96734 (808) 262-3354

711 Kamokila Blvd #105, Kapolei, HI 96707 (808) 674-1700

kalapawaimarket.com

INSIDE UNKO’S CLOSET F r o m r a r e d e a d s t o c k s t o n o s t a l g i c f i n d s , M a k o a D e V i n c e n t ’s p e r s o n a l c o l l e c t i o n i s a trove of holy grails. Here, the keen-eyed collector opens his archive and shares the stories behind its most coveted pieces. Interview by Eunica Escalante

Ooklah the Moc Circa early 2000s

“Ever since I started collecting Hawai‘i band shirts, Ooklah the Moc was one I knew I needed. For years, I couldn’t find one. When I found this at Free Parking, my heart d r o p p e d . I b o u g h t i t i n s t a n t l y.”

6 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

_ VINTAGE

B u L a‘ i a m e r c h Circa ’90s

PHILES

“ T h i s i s p r o b a b l y m y m o s t a s k e d a b o u t s h i r t . U n f o r t u n a t e l y, I a l w a y s h a v e t o s a y t h a t i t ’s n o t f o r s a l e . I t ’s j u s t a c l a s s i c s h i r t . W h e n p e o p l e t h i n k o f B u L a‘ i a , t h i s i s t h e s h i r t t h a t c o m e s t o m i n d .”

PHILES

_ VINTAGE

The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band

“A l o t o f m y c o l l e c t i o n h o n e s t l y g o e s b a c k t o m y P a p a a n d w h a t h e e x p o s e d m e t o ,

1976

l i k e t h i s G a b b y s h i r t . G r o w i n g u p , G a b b y w a s h u g e . I t ’s s p e c i a l t o m e b e c a u s e o f h o w m u c h s l a c k - k e y [ k ī h ō‘a l u ] I l i s t e n e d t o a s a k i d .”

6 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Hot Hawaiian Nights

“I grew up watching Hot Hawaiian Nights with my Papa. I remember seeing Kapena

Circa late ’90s

and Kalapana. Pretty much, once you make it on Hot Hawaiian Nights, you’ve made it a s a H a w a i ‘ i b a n d .”

PHILES

_ VINTAGE

Ka l a p a n a a n d C e c i l i o & Ka p o n o’s j o i n t

“I’ve been looking for this shirt for 10 years, and I could never find it. Then, my friend

Aloha Stadium concert

found the shirt some years ago. I’ve been trying to buy it off of him since. He finally

1976

l e t m e h a v e i t j u s t t h i s y e a r.”

6 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Kapena Pure Energ y album tour

“ T h i s s h i r t h a s t h i s r a w, h a n d - d r a w n e n e r g y t o i t t h a t I l i k e d . A l o t o f v i n t a g e H a w a i i a n

1991

s h i r t s h a d f u n k y d e s i g n s l i k e t h i s t h a t w o u l d n ‘ t p a s s t h e s t a n d a r d s o f t o d a y. B u t I t h i n k t h e y a g e d r e a l l y w e l l .”

PHILES

_ VINTAGE

Three Island concert tour merch

“I love this one because this triple headline of C&K, Andy Bumatai, and Brother

1985

N o l a n d i s s o s t r a n g e t o m e . B u t i t ’s a l s o j u s t a s i c k g r a p h i c . I t ’s a c t u a l l y t h e o n l y B r o t h e r N o l a n d a n d A n d y B u m a t a i s h i r t i n m y c o l l e c t i o n .”

6 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Fashion. Dining. Culture.

I Ka Pō Me Ke Ao from day to night

F E AT U R E S

“Once

reached

moment

feeling

secure,

I M A G E COURTESY OF _ THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

the

question

was,

‘Did

you

see

what

happened

the

land?’”

—

Sara

Te k u l a

FLUX _ FEATURE

Life After Wattle TEXT BY

_ SERENE GUNNISON

IMAGES BY

_ CODY LANG

IN 2023, THE UPCOUNTRY WILDFIRE BURNED

THAN

KULA,

FUELED

GROWN

UNCHECKED

THE

RESIDENTS

200

WATTLE FOR

COMMUNITY FACE

ACRES

TREES

DECADES. REBUILDS,

QUESTION

LASTING CONSEQUENCES.

WITH

FEATURE

CAN

_ WATTLE

THEY

ROOT

OUT

THE

WATTLE BEFORE IT RETURNS IN FORCE?

oe Imhoff stands along the ridge at Pōhakuokalā Gulch, his white hair curling out from under a worn baseball cap as he surveys the bank’s scrubby edges. Across the gulch, young black wattle trees sprout up between pockets of barren soil and boulders clinging to the sheer cliff face. To our right is Haleakalā Highway, the two-lane road that winds along Upcountry Maui. Imhoff raises his gaze from the gulch to the roadside, pointing out a utility pole some 50 yards away, “ground zero,” he tells me, of one of the most destructive days in Hawaiʻi’s recent history. Three years ago, as a high-pressure system passed north of Hawaiʻi and a Category 4 hurricane skirted south, Maui’s usual easterlies intensified into 67-mile-per-hour winds. They careened down the steep West Maui Mountain slopes, where they splintered a wooden utility pole along Lahainaluna Road. The downed power line would set off a grassfire, the Lahaina fire, whipped by the winds into a blaze that scorched through historic Lahaina town and claimed at least 102 lives. In Kula, 25 miles east, firefighters were racing to extinguish another fire that sparked six hours earlier, when a eucalyptus tree along Haleakalā Highway fell onto the power lines, energizing them like “a bolt of lightning,” says Imhoff. It downed a utility pole nearby, sending a transformer crashing onto the tinder-dry brush below. Stoked by hurricane-force gusts, the fire spread quickly

7 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

to Pōhakuokalā Gulch, where a tangled forest of invasive black wattle trees had grown wild for decades. Their bark was coated in a resin that was as flammable as lighter fluid. When the wildfire came, it was like striking a match to tinder. The wattle fueled the fire as it ripped through the gulch, where it burned through the adjacent homes, businesses, and farmlands. By the time it was contained 51 days later, the Upcountry fire had destroyed 23 homes, affected about 80 landowners, and scorched 202 acres. Across Maui, the fires torched roughly 10 square miles, destroying over 2,200 homes and businesses in Lahaina. Additional blazes in Olinda and Pūlehu burned three structures and 4,350 acres of forests, farms, and ranchland. All told, the wildfires were Hawaiʻi’s worst on record. “But the fire didn’t start that day,” notes Imhoff. “It’s been burning for a hundred years with this invasive forest,” he explains, motioning to the wooded mountainside downslope of us. As program manager for the Skyline Conservation Initiative, a native reforestation program established by the commercial zipline tour company Skyline Hawai‘i, Imhoff knows this watershed better than most. Since 2008, he has been restoring a forest further up Haleakalā, reverting a gulch once rife with invasives such as eucalyptus. The process hasn’t been easy, particularly as centuries of development and deforestation had laid waste to the once-resilient environment. The problem, he says, extends to Kula’s residential areas, where loggers had begun clear-cutting in the early 1800s, first to harvest sandalwood and koa, then to clear pastures for cattle ranching. A century later, when foresters sought to revive Maui’s logging industry, native plants were eschewed for fast-growing invasives, a choice that would prove detrimental to the mountain’s ecology. Black wattle, introduced to Kula in the late 1930s, was meant to yield a new agricultural industry. Instead, the species escaped cultivation and spread swiftly, thriving in the island’s subtropical climate. Meanwhile, invasive axis deer

“The fire didn’t start that day. It’s been burning for a hundred years with this invasive forest.” _ joe imhoff, project manager of kula community watershed alliance

grazing on kikuyu grass had stripped the gulches and pastures bare, leaving wattle little competition as it grew across Kula. Wattle was particularly well-suited to Pōhakuokalā Gulch, which cuts through the center of Haleakalā’s western flank. Carved into the Kula mountainside by centuries of seasonal rains, the gulch’s pitched banks prove precipitous to navigate even today. Along these craggy slopes, wattle’s shallow, wide-reaching roots found purchase in even the thinnest of soils, growing over the decades into a forest that spread all along the gulch. Wattle’s drought-resistant adaptations, namely its aggressive depletion

FEATURE

_ WATTLE

of moisture from the soil, have helped it to outcompete native plants. They have altered parts of Kula, too, remaking the landscape to resemble its native Australia. A single wattle tree can drain over 25 gallons of water a day from the soil. Even in Kula’s higher elevations, where cloud cover and passing showers keep the mountainside cool and moist, wattle continues to consume water as if in a drought. Whereas Kula’s native systems once retained moisture in the soil — dense fern understories and deep-rooted trees absorbing rainwater into the earth like a sponge — today’s wattle stands strip the land dry. When the Upcountry fire erupted along Haleakalā Highway that August morning, the parched terrain provided the perfect landscape for a wildfire to grow unabated. In the fire’s aftermath, longtime Upcountry resident and community organizer Sara Tekula’s immediate priority was to provide mutual aid and connect fire-affected residents with disaster relief resources. But her worries soon shifted elsewhere. “Once we reached a moment of feeling secure,” recalls Tekula, “the next question was, ‘Did you see what happened to the land?’” Imhoff shared her alarm. Throughout his and Tekula’s 16-year marriage, the pair had bonded over an almost pathological concern for the land. They had met in 2005 at a community workday clearing out invasives on a Kula flower farm. And when they married two years later, they planted a koa tree in commemoration. As Imhoff managed the Skyline Conservation Initiative, Tekula was helping to establish the Merwin Conservancy, the 18-acre Haʻikū property that poet William Stanley Merwin had reforested into one of the largest palm tree collections in the world. Having spent years tending to the land, they knew it would take more than time for it to heal. Even after the initial blaze was controlled, wattle roots smoldered underground, causing flare-ups throughout the burn scar. Without its protective plant cover, the landscape was increasingly

vulnerable to erosion, and the coming much as we all wanted to,” says Tekula. winter would soon bring the Makahiki “We needed to prepare the land.” rains. Tekula worried that if the burn scar One such area was a 600-square-mewasn’t stabilized soon, the damage would ter plot of undeveloped land along only get worse. Pōhakuokalā Gulch, where a dense overThree weeks after the fire, Tekula and growth of wattle stands had taken root. Imhoff hosted an outing for fire-affected Satellite imagery in the days after showed residents at Skyline Hawai‘i. They hiked tracts of charred trees and soil scorched through upper Pōhakuokalā Gulch, where into a coppery red by the high heat. After the watershed that Imhoff had restored the fire, the landowners placed all 120 flourished with over 30 species of Native acres under conservation, to be managed Hawaiian plants and trees. “At the end of by their forest restoration nonprofit, the the hike, we ended up under a nice mature Nāhele Hou Foundation. Weeks later, canopy of koa, ‘ōhi‘a, and sandalwood,” when KCWA began surveying the burn says Tekula. As the group spent the day scar for areas in urgent need of soil stareplanting native saplings, an air of opti- bilization, the landowners granted them mism took hold. If Imhoff could do that almost immediate access. here, they thought, maybe they could do Inspired by Imhoff ’s restoration model the same in Kula. After the workday was at Skyline, KCWA used the area’s invasive done, they gathered quietly under the koa trees as a resource. They laid down logs trees. It was there, in the dappled sunlight, of eucalyptus as erosion control, holding that the group came to form the Kula the mountainside in place and slowing Community Watershed Alliance (KCWA), runoff, particularly during heavy rains. a collective of fire-affected residents Meanwhile, wattle sourced from a comdevoted to restoring their Kula home. munity green-waste program was proA board of directors and volun- cessed into woodchips for use as mulch, teer staff quickly emerged, comprising covering the burn areas up to four inches Geographic Information System special- thick. The protective layer would absorb ists, native plant enthusiasts, and one rainwater rather than allowing it to sheet former Haleakalā National Park natural off the hydrophobic soil, stabilizing the resource manager. Everyone had roots in earth against erosion and keeping invaKula: residents, landowners, and those sive weeds from taking root. who had spent their careers in the area. Imhoff saw the process as a subverCounty and state partnerships soon fol- sion of sorts, reusing wattle to reverse lowed, including with the Department of the destruction it had helped cause. Land and Natural Resources’s Division “With the mulch and the woodchips, we of Forestry and Wildlife, which helped can actually honor the existence of watKCWA secure nearly $800,000 in tle,” says Imhoff. “Thank you for your U.S. Forest Service funding and con- time, but now we’re gonna turn you into tinues to consult on invasive species the best possible conditions for [native] management, wildfire risks, and native plants to grow and thrive on their own.” plant propagation. Tekula echoes the sentiment. While Of the four fires that burned on August invasive species like wattle have con8, Kula suffered among the worst soil tributed to Kula’s environmental decline, burn severity rates. Months of wattle KCWA avoids demonizing them. Rather, roots smoldering underground had left Tekula sees wattle as further proof of the earth powdery, copper-colored, and lifeless. Tekula compared the damaged  PREVIOUS SPREAD, OVERRUN BY A FOREST OF FIRE-READY WATTLE TREES, soil to lunar dust. The fire’s intensity PŌHAKUOKALĀ GULCH TURNED INTO A vaporized waxy compounds in the wattle TINDERBOX THAT HELPED FUEL THE roots, turning the soil hydrophobic. “We 2023 UPCOUNTRY WILDFIRE. realized we can’t just start planting, as

7 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M



KCWA’S WIPE OUT WATTLE PROGRAM

IS PART OF A

BROADER EFFORT TO REDUCE KULA’S FIRE RISK. IN 2025, THEY CONNECTED WITH OVER 30 FIRE-AFFECTED RESIDENTS TO CLEAR YOUNG WATTLE ALONG THEIR PROPERTIES’ ADJOINING SLOPES.

FEATURE

_ WATTLE



PŪLEHUNUI SANCTUARY SERVES AS ONE OF KCWA’S OPERATIONAL HUBS. IN 2025, THEY INSTALLED TWO HOOP HOUSES AS AN ON-SITE NURSERY FOR NATIVE PLANTS DESTINED FOR REPLANTING ACROSS THE BURN SCAR.

“In our lifetimes, we can make this forest ancient again.” _ sara tekula, director of kula community watershed alliance

the disconnect between imported ideas of land-use and Hawai‘i’s native ecosystems. “[Wattle] is still a living thing. It’s just doing what it knows how to do,” says Tekula. “It feels weird to get mad at [the trees] when it wasn’t their fault. It’s our fault that they’re here. So, we need to take responsibility.” From there, KCWA fenced the 600-square-meter plot and began planting as a test site for native restoration. Third graders from Kula Elementary School were invited to scatter native koa, māmaki, and ‘ōhi‘a seeds in the shaded

8 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

soil. Over time, the plot has grown into a young native forest, what Tekula calls their teaching garden. By late 2024, KCWA had stabilized more than eight acres across the burn scar, with the Nāhele Hou Foundation land as their baseyard. By the following year, the restoration areas had grown to encompass 20 acres of the property, complete with an exclosure to keep axis deer from browsing on young native saplings. Today, the Pūlehunui Sanctuary, as KCWA’s restoration unit on the Nāhele Hou Foundation property is now called,

regularly hosts educational workdays on watershed recovery. In 2025, using a $481,000 grant awarded by the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, KCWA erected two 60-foot hoop houses on the property to serve as an on-site nursery for native plants. Inside, rows of palapalai, koa, and ‘oha wai sprout in nursery pots, waiting to be replanted. Elsewhere, KCWA is tackling the wattle problem at its root. The Upcountry fire had cleared some of the gulch’s existing stands. Yet, wattle as a fire-adapted

FEATURE

_ WATTLE

The cleared areas were replanted with plants endemic to Kula, sowing what are called kīpuka gardens, named after the pockets of native forest left untouched by young lava flows. species meant that seeds were germinated by the blaze. By December 2023, wattle was already sprouting across the gulch. Imhoff feared the new forest would grow back thicker than before. Beyond the wildfire risks, wattle’s resurgence would again impede native plants from reclaiming the landscape. That is because wattle thrives in disturbance. Once rooted, wattle releases biochemicals into the soil, a biological phenomenon called allelopathy that suppresses the growth of nearby plants, including native species. The process means that, so long as wattle grows, the mountain’s endemic forests will struggle to flourish. In May 2025, with another fire season underway, KCWA connected with 46 landowners and tenants across the burn scar to clear young wattle on the sheer, hard-to-reach slopes of Pōhakuokalā Gulch. The initiative, dubbed Wipe Out Wattle, enlisted a team of certified arborists and Skyline Conservation Initiative’s rope-trained conservation crews to rappel

8 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

down Pōhakuokalā Gulch and trim off the alongside plots of ʻaʻaliʻi and māmaki. trees growing across the cliff face before One day, their son spotted the saplings they matured and produced new seeds. and said, “Hey, Mom, we can watch these The hope is that in eradicating wattle grow from our living room!” As the burn scar heals and endemic along the banks, future wildfires would plants take root, Tekula sees the forest’s stop from spreading upslope. The cleared areas were replanted with return as not only bringing new life, but plants endemic to Kula, sowing what hope, too. “If I could sum up what we’re KCWA calls kīpuka gardens, named after doing at the community scale,” says the pockets of native forest left untouched Tekula, “that’s what it is.” Tekula intends to continue their by young lava flows. The effort engages fire-affected landowners to share in the work beyond the burn scar. Kula, she stewardship of Kula. Just as invasive says, represents not just the town, but species and the wildfires they fuel aren’t everything from the peaks of Haleakalā bounded by property lines, Tekula believes to the shoreline of Kīhei. The same wildfire-prone conditions that they have that restoration work shouldn’t either. “We partner with all 80 of the [fire-affected] been tackling here, namely invasive landowners to make sure it’s not going to plants and the degradation of waterbe ʻset it and forget it,’” she says. “There’ll sheds, persist throughout the entire moku. Still, if the years since the fires be long-term stewardship.” Tekula recalls one family who, after los- have taught Tekula anything, it is that ing their house in the fire, nurtured koa a century of harm can still be undone. seedlings while living in a rental. They “In our lifetimes,” she says, “we can make later replanted the sprouts in KCWA’s this forest ancient again.” teaching garden, across the gulch from their half-rebuilt home, where they grow

U 86

FLUX _ FEATURE

Uni at Ugat Uni at Ugat Uni at Ugat INTERVIEW BY

_ E U N I C A ESCALANTE

IMAGES BY

_ N A N I W ELCH KELI‘IHO‘OMALU

CREATIVES ACROSS THE FILIPINX DIASPORA DISCUSS THE SHIFTING BOUNDS OF CULTURE, EXPRESSION, TRADITION, AND IDENTITY.

_ KULTURA

FEATURE

The smallest administrative division in the Philippines, roughly equivalent to a neighborhood or village. Across the diaspora, it can serve as a social or cultural link to heritage.

or Filipinx across the diaspora, reengaging with one’s heritage is rarely ever straightforward. Even after disentangling ourselves from that centuries-old colonial mentality, the diasporic culture we encounter can often feel like a set of poor facsimiles. Parols and jeepneys, lumpia and karaoke: Filipinx identity flattened to tropes and easily commodifiable symbols. It is exactly against this flattening that Filipinx in diaspora have begun to search for other cultural expressions, ones that are rooted in the regional and personal, rather than the generic. Among such artists are Ron and Lydia Querian, who have drawn from their ties with Indigenous communities in the Philippines to create House of Gongs, a collective of diasporic artists redefining what Filipinx culture can look, sound, and feel like. In May 2026, House of Gongs hosted its biannual Uni at Ugat music camp in Hawaiʻi for the first time, bringing master cultural bearers from the Philippines to engage with Filipinx artists across the diaspora. Over three days on the North Shore of Oʻahu, the participants learned Indigenous chants and played traditional instruments. For many, it was their first time hearing and seeing pre-colonial expressions of Philippine culture. As the camp came to a close, Flux Hawaii invited six artists — Hera, a Hawaiʻi-based DJ and performer; Jehzan Exclusive, a Hawaiʻi-based rapper and emcee; Tangelene Bolton, a Los

Angeles-based film and television composer; Bernard Ellorin, an ethnomusicologist with San Diego Miramar College; and the Querians — for a roundtable discussion on what it means to be a Filipinx artist in diaspora today and the tenuous threads of culture, identity, and belonging that are bound along with it. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. FLUX HAWAII: Has there been a shift in how Filipinx in the diaspora define identity and culture? JEHZAN EXCLUSIVE: It’s very different being Filipino in Hawaiʻi. Our upbringing and connection to ʻāina is so different. I have a lot of friends who are in solidarity work all over the world, but a lot of them have this idea of representing being Filipino American, when that wasn’t what I identified with as a kid. I really thought I was like just a local kid. Hawaiʻi kids especially will always put Hawaiʻi first. Like, I don’t have a Filipino tattoo on me, I have a Hawaiʻi tattoo. So, that’s been interesting to me as a young person trying to pursue music. But we’ve definitely gotten more encouraged because of artists like Rubi Ibarra and Bambu and the growing representation of Filipinos around the world. HERA: I remember growing up [being] straight-up Ilocano, but my grandma was like we’re Hawaiian, we’re Chinese, we’re

Japanese, we’re Spanish — everything but Filipino. I think it’s another phenomenon socially here in Hawaiʻi — and you can recognize this worldwide, too — where anytime you’re in the majority, there’s no need for self-preservation. This side of Ewa, from Waipahu to Kapolei to Makakilo, used to be all sugarcane and ex-plantation and diaspora families, with first, second, third, fourth wave Filipinos. There was no need to be like, “We’re Filipino,” when everyone around them was Filipino. But it’s also coupled with the shame of being Filipino, wanting to blend in and assimilate. So, a lot of Filipinos out here be repping Hawaiʻi and being like “I’m Hawaiian.” But now, there’s this discourse of “Hey, if you’re not Hawaiian, don’t say you’re Hawaiian. Just say you’re from Hawaiʻi.” And I think a lot of Filipinos locally struggle with that because we were raised to be like “Yeah, we’re Hawaiian.” We get Hawaiian tattoos, we learn ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, do pule. The majority of us are in hula. But with social media and people from the barangays1 basically being influencers — I’m thinking of RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’m thinking of Bretman Rock, I’m thinking of a lot of YouTube content creators being Filipino — we’re seeing ourselves reflected and there’s this shift in reclamation. Tethered to that is the Hawaiian Renaissance from the ’70s through now. Hawaiians and Indigenous people on island finding their own roots allows

FEATURE

_ KULTURA

“There’s a coming back to the provinces. You’re going back to Ilocos. You’re going back to traditional tattooing. You’re bringing out kulintang or gangsa.” _ lydia querian, house of gongs co-founder

us [Filipinos] to also go through our shame and our desire to reconnect. I think Hawaiians have paved a way for us to rediscover ourselves and not take over what their identity is, so we can have our own. LYDIA QUERIAN: Ron and I are very fortunate. Ron was born and raised in California, I was born and raised in Manila. I lived in California for 10 years, and then [Ron and I] have been living in Hawaiʻi for six. And just understanding the diversity of narratives around being Filipino in the diaspora, right? Like, do we really call ourselves Fil-Am? Or do we want to call ourselves just Filipinos in Hawai‘i? Two major different things. Because the way we associate ourselves with where we are and the material culture around us shapes us. Because when you say you’re Fil-Am, what does that even mean at this point? Even a lot of Indigenous communities that we work with [in the Philippines], it’s not very common for them to associate as Filipino because that’s the monolithic view. We call ourselves Fil-Am to

9 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

keep up with the Western requirements of being categorized within a race. But what is developing in Hawaiʻi now is its own banwa2. It’s very different from how it’s going to be in California or the East Coast or wherever it is. But this whole renaissance is about this generation having that confidence of returning to what they were raised to be ashamed of, unlearning and unpeeling what they were pressured to believe. And then also putting on more layers of skin of what they really are. FLUX: What makes these new expressions of culture different from the symbols that have so far dominated Filipinos in the diaspora? I’m thinking jeepneys, ube as the national flavor, lechon — all of these, dare I say, stereotypical tropes about what being Filipino is? LQ: The Filipino culture being promoted in the West is an imperial Manila culture. It’s a culture that the Marcoses3 created to have a nationalist view of the country, so that we’re all one. And that’s a completely Western construct, making

An Indigenous concept from the Philippines that understands place as more than physical land, encompassing community, culture, and a shared sense of belonging.

During his dictatorship, from 1965 to 1986, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s Bagong Lipunan (New Society) program promoted a state-curated vision of Filipino culture, flattening the archipelago’s diverse regional, ethnic, and Indigenous identities.



AS AN ARTIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE HAWAI‘I PASIFIQUEER NIGHTLIFE COLLECTIVE, MĀHŪ MIX,

HERA’S

MULTIDISCI-

PLINARY PRACTICE EXPLORES MIGRATION, IDENTITY, AND DECOLONIZATION.

A tongue-in-cheek term to describe the perceived embrace of Filipino identity once it becomes culturally fashionable, named for the actress Tia Carrere.

_ KULTURA

FEATURE

everybody one and uniform. I grew up in Manila, and that whole imperial Manila culture bothers the shit out of me. It’s very whitewashed in its own sense. Like, jeepneys aren’t Filipino; that was brought [to the Philippines] by Americans. I got canceled so many times for hating on people who promote ube as the next new thing. Ube is not even completely Filipino. It’s grown everywhere in Southeast Asia. There’s not a thought of [the trend’s] agricultural effect in the Philippines. Now, they’re having to import ube from Vietnam. They don’t even have the purple ube variation anymore. They have to put food coloring on white ube, so that they can export it. That is so insane to me. But what’s unique about the renaissance now is that there’s a coming back to the provinces. You’re going back to Ilocos. You’re going back to traditional tattooing. You’re bringing out kulintang or gangsa and you’re mixing it with your own narrative of hip-hop, classical music, jazz, R&B, whatever that is. Then, there’s also the layer of gender identity. None of that is categorized anymore. Hera and Jehzan, they embrace the power of their fluidity.

But now, Filipinos are starting to go back to their roots, learn their language, and acknowledge their positionality as allies to the Indigenous cause. I think it was Hera who mentioned how people say they’re Hawaiian, Spanish, Chinese, before they say they’re Filipino. It reminded me of the Tia Carrere syndrome?4 Have you heard of that?

BERNARD ELLORIN: The Manila hegemony is real. And as a cultural worker, I have to deal with it all the time. When I’m doing work in Manila, until now, a lot of my relatives say, “Why are you researching that? Why are you going there to these remote places? Don’t you think it’s dangerous to go to Mindanao? Don’t go there. Don’t speak English. You’re going to get kidnapped.”

RON QUERIAN: People are invested in deepening the mainstream’s understanding of what Filipino is. To me, it speaks to the goal of House of Gongs’ Uni at Ugat music camp, which is to reconnect people to a specific lineage. The traumas that occurred for Filipinos to leave their country and come to the United States are various and interrelated and complicated. They were in a very wounded state when

LQ: Oh yeah, when being Filipino all of a sudden becomes cool— BE: We call that Tia Carrere syndrome because if you ever listen to Tia Carrere’s interviews, she’ll say every other ethnicity, even a whale’s vagina, before she says she’s Filipino. LQ: Now that Hollywood has hopped onto the cultural trend, she’s claiming [her Filipino culture]. You can take it for what it is, but it’s very maddening. FLUX: It sounds like there is this emerging idea of regionalism as a more authentic expression of diasporic identity, rather than the hegemonic culture that the Marcoses created?

FEATURE

_ KULTURA

America came to the Philippines. And those wounds had not been fully tended to by the time that Filipinos started to make their way to the U.S. And so, those wounds came with them. That healing had to be put on the back burner, so they could take root in America and get to a place where, a few generations in, we now have a foundation to stand on. Then there’s also the diasporic artists that preceded us, from the Bayanihan5 alumni who became immigrants to the artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, and poets that navigated their industries to open the door for us to come through. Because of them we now have a ground to stand on, take more risks, act as the storytellers to drive this conversation where we’re going beyond pansit, ube, and Jeepneys. There’s something lacking in this modern world. There’s something about our existence that is disharmonious with our environment, and it’s in our nature [as Filipinos] to harmonize with our environment. So, these new expressions from artists reaching back to pre-colonial roots, Indigenous roots — it comes from this need to heal wounds, integrate with our environment in ways that our immigrant parents and grandparents didn’t have the capacity to do because they were too busy surviving.

Maybe it’s because the shame is gone now. Maybe because it’s cool and trendy. But there’s a desire to dive deeper into their Filipino heritage. They’re acknowledging that there is a disconnect. With that acknowledgment is an opportunity to mend.

H: For me, it goes back to why I think the Filipino Hawaiʻi experience is more fragmented. Filipinos aren’t as prevalent in local culture because there was such a variety of regions and cultures that came with each wave of immigration. So, people don’t really identify with “I’m Filipino.” It’s more “I’m Ilocano” or “I’m Visayan.” There’s more pride in what region you’re from or what language your Lola spoke compared to just a generic Filipino identity. The cultural shift happening now is more programming across the islands. Artists feel like they can take up space and not have to apologize for however they show up in their Filipino identity, whether they’re mixed or an immigrant or even if they don’t speak the language.

9 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

BE: As a Filipino-American ethnomusicologist, the conversations I’ve been having with my colleagues is acknowledging that being Filipino is quite honestly more of a nationality than an ethnicity. And we’re seeing how acknowledging the regional diversity [of the Philippines] can disrupt that hegemonic narrative. FLUX: That reminds me of something that Hera mentioned earlier, this idea of the traditional now becoming more subversive. What does that mean and in what ways have you seen that play out? BE: With this current trend of Filipino American cultural workers and artists becoming more exposed to and conscious of Indigenous practitioners, I think their work is starting to subvert the Western hegemony in many ways. I’ve seen it especially in spaces where we as cultural workers thrive within our own communities. H: It’s hard to generalize and say everything is becoming subverted or alternative. But in pockets where there are spacious gaps within tradition, I think there’s always room for recontextualization. Some people might look at, say, Jehzan rapping in Tagalog or Ilocano, specifying historical events or adding in traditional instruments like DJ Wilhelmina as subversive. I love that electronic artist. I blast their stuff all the time when I DJ, and people are always like, “Wait, am I hearing kulintang? Am I hearing a sarunay in here? Am I hearing someone chanting in Ilocano in a house electronic format going 160 b.p.m. while at a queer strip club at 2 a.m.?” Some people might say that’s disrespectful or sacrilegious. But some of us are saying, “This is everything that I’ve always wanted.”

The diasporic culture we encounter can feel like poor facsimiles. Filipino identity flattened to tropes and easily commodifiable symbols. LQ: DJ Wilhelmina was actually in the music camp’s first cohort. Did you know that, Hera? We’re going to see him next week. He’s DJing a budots6 party in the Philippines. H: Really? Well, tell him that he’s hot because he’s doing the subversive thing. I just really fuck with the idea that what we as artists do is clash because not only can we work within the lower working and middle classes, but we can flirt with the upper class in gallery spaces and institutions. It’s creating this amalgamation, which could be seen as negative. I



TANGELENE BOLTON COMPOSES SCORES FOR FILMS, VIDEO GAMES, AND TV. RECENTLY, HER SCORE FOR THE SHORT FILM MILK & HONEY (2026) INCORPORATED KULINTANG TO HEIGHTEN THE FILIPINA PROTAGONIST’S EMOTIONAL ARC.

Founded in 1957, the Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company helped introduce folk dance and music to international audiences, becoming an early cultural touchstone for Filipinos abroad.

A dance-music genre that emerged from Davao City, Mindanao in the early 2000s. In 2024, DJ Johnrey’s budots remix of “Dr. Beat” went viral on TikTok, amid a broader embrace of regional expressions in Filipino culture.

A precolonial garment worn primarily by men. Today, the woven loincloth serves as a symbol of cultural reclamation, particularly among Indigenous communities.

don’t — I always love an opportunity to make something new. And like Tangelene, I’m mixed Filipino, too. On top of me being queer and bakla, people are always going to scrutinize my interpretation of culture no matter what. TANGELENE BOLTON: Yes, being mixed Filipina, there’s a part of me that feels like I’ll never be able to really please anyone. But as a composer and an artist, I make the best work when I feel like I’m being true to myself. And part of that is, I don’t know all the answers. When I start composing, I don’t know what the

finished product is going to sound like. So, the exploratory process is just me trying to find my way to the other side. In the end, as long as I can bring comfort to myself and know that I’m not going to be able to please everyone. I make music because I’m trying to figure out who I am and explore those layers of myself. H: That’s something I’ve done with Māhū Mix, too, where we’ve introduced this Pacific queer futurism. We’ve had people show up in a jockstrapped bahag7 in an interpretation of gay Filipino indigenous clothing. Some people might think

that’s horrendous. But we’re like that’s hot, that’s cool. Again, it’s really dependent on how people orient themselves. But I always think that the subversion of something allows that spacious gap of tradition to move further. And I think that’s what artists do, whether traditional or contemporary. They push it a little further and further. Ultimately, it goes back to the authenticity of keeping those spiritual gateways sacred, acknowledging where all this comes from. I’m not saying people should read a Wikipedia article and say, “OK, time to do some hilot.” I’m not advocating

FEATURE

_ KULTURA

“People are invested in deepening the mainstream’s understanding of what Filipino is.” _ ron querian, house of gongs co-founder



THE QUERIANS PLAY KULINTANG, A GONG-BASED INDIGENOUS MUSICAL FORM FROM THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES.

for people to be sacrilegious and just go for it. But I do think there’s a beauty when people can blend and create without fear. LQ: That’s part of why I wanted to create a space like House of Gongs. Being able to blend diverse artists in one room allows us to quote-unquote “criticize” or “question” without trying to put each other down. Because we always feel like we’re competing, right? Mine is more authentic than yours or that’s bastardizing someone else’s culture. How do we fight against that construct that we’ve all struggled with within our communities? How do we navigate it to where we’re instead questioning, “Did you pay your respects to the people that you sourced that from?” As opposed to, cancelling someone because, “Oh, he’s so subversive.” Because that turns it into an ordeal of who’s better than the other. It’s very common, in my experience, in the academia world. No offense, Bernard, but I’ve had a taste of it. Why do we have to feel like someone is better than the other? That’s exactly what the colonizers wanted

us to do. They made us like roosters that fight on sabong. The more we embody that competitiveness, the more we’re just feeding off of that colonizing energy. FLUX: Going back to things like ube and jeepneys, there’s also this sense of commodifying the Filipinx identity that adds to this feeling of inauthenticity. How do we move forward with this new shift in Filipinx identity and culture without falling into commodification? LQ: The reality is we’re in a Western society where the currency is money. So, for us cultural workers and artists and practitioners, it’s about finding and understanding that balance. We also need to eat because if we die, no one’s going to do it. It’s the same thing with the Indigenous master artists in the villages back home, right? They also need to eat. It might look like we’re exploiting them for buying their music or their textiles. But they have to put food on their families’ tables, so they can live. Because at the end of the day, they’re the caretakers of the land that we pull culture from. And if they don’t live, then we’re all just going to disappear. The number one Indigenous wisdom that I’ve learned over the many years of going back to the Indigenous communities is that balance. We struggle with that

in the diaspora, specifically in the U.S., we always put everything on steroids. We can’t just have a little bit of kulintang. No, we need to have 50 gongs. But what if we just simplify and find the balance around that. FLUX: How does this shift exist alongside the recent re-examination of the immigrant experience, with immigrants or children of immigrants revisiting their heritage and being proud of it? LQ: That colonial mentality, that’s going to take a very long time to address. My kids are probably going to be grandparents and there’s still going to be some of that colonial mentality within them. Because it’s very deep. Five hundred plus years of colonization is no joke. We can’t really get to a point in this time and age where we can even say we’re not colonized anymore. On a physical level, a lot of the Philippines is still controlled by foreign forces. Until Indigenous communities don’t have to struggle to keep their own land, I don’t think that colonization is going to go away. The beauty of it is that — alongside the work happening around it — it fuels inspiration, resistance, resilience. And those are the core ingredients in creating art and narratives that can build this whole renaissance.

FLUX _ PORTFOLIO

Koa Warriors ON A JULY MORNING, A SELECT GROUP OF HAWAIIAN MEN GATHER AT HALE KOA AT ‘IOLANI PALACE BEFORE LEADING THE KING KAMEHAMEHA DAY PARADE. A RARE GLIMPSE INSIDE SHOWS THE KĀNE PREPARING TO HONOR THEIR CULTURE IN ALL THEIR STRENGTH, SPIRIT, AND SHOWMANSHIP.

IMA GES BY

_ VINCENT BERCASIO

EXPLORE

“We

keep

our

heads

down

and

keep

working

115

IMAGE BY _ JOHN HOOK

best

can

because

this

what

k n o w.”

—

Paul

Uyehara

FLUX _EXPLORE

116

_ OKINAWA

Resisting Occupation, Treasuring Life AN INTERVIEW WITH AWARD-WINNING REPORTER JON MITCHELL ON HOW A LEGACY OF U.S. MILITARISM — AND THE ENDURING PEACE MOVEMENT IT HAS SPURRED — CONTINUES TO SHAPE THE ISLANDS.

TEXT AND IM AGES BY

Seen from above, Okinawa stretches between Taiwan and Japan like floating gems cast across the East China Sea. With at least 200 islands, the former Ryukyu Kingdom demonstrated its strategic importance as a center of cultural exchange and vibrant maritime trade long before it was annexed by Japan and renamed Okinawa in the 1870s. The history of Okinawa, from its carefully balanced ties with powerful neighbors to its long, fraught relationships with Japan and the United States, is the subject of Jon Mitchell’s most recent non-fiction book Why Are We in Okinawa? A History of Violence. Mitchell, an award-winning Welsh journalist, is known for his dogged reporting of social and environmental justice

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

movements. Mitchell, a longtime resident of Japan and special correspondent for the Okinawa Times, examines how the once independent Ryukyu Kingdom was absorbed by Japan in the late 19th century as Tokyo opened to the outside world, embarking on a period of rapid modernization, development, and militarization. When Japan began exerting growing influence and power in Korea, Taiwan, and China, Okinawa’s value to Japan increased. By World War II, thousands of Okinawans had emigrated to mainland Japan, Hawai‘i, South America, and elsewhere. Mitchell describes how as the war reached a final conflagration, Okinawa was treated as a buffer between Imperial Japan and allied forces, effectively a place to be sacrificed. According to Mitchell, the Japanese army was deployed to Okinawa not to protect Okinawans but to protect mainland Japan. He writes, “The civilian population was disposable.” Following the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, in which some 122,000 civilians were killed, died of disease, or coerced to commit suicide, violence and colonialism

_ JON LETMAN



OKINAWAN RESISTANCE TAKES MANY FORMS, FROM SIT-INS AND MARCHES TO POLITICAL SATIRE, ARCHITECTURE, AND ART.

continued under the U.S. military occupation through Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Today, more than half a century later, Okinawa still bears the overwhelming burden of hosting U.S. bases at a disproportionately high rate. Mitchell’s deeply researched, compelling, and lucid examination of Okinawa’s history reveals the determination of

the Okinawan people to preserve their culture, language, and values even as they continue to be used by Tokyo and Washington to project military power and regional control. Despite its relatively small size and economic challenges, Mitchell demonstrates the Okinawan people’s resilience and tireless commitment to peace.

117

EXPLORE

_ OKINAWA

FLUX HAWAII: Can you talk about the differences between U.S. military bases in Okinawa compared to those in Japan?

seized land. 1955 really was the starting point of this mass anti-base movement whereby Okinawans from all different social classes, young and old, rose up against the American military and used nonviolent tactics that continue today. They have sit-ins, marches, petitions. According to most opinion polls, most Okinawans support the Japan-American alliance, albeit reluctantly. They say it cannot be helped because of the current world situation. The majority of Okinawans understand that some military presence is necessary, but they ask, “Why should we be the ones to have the burden of

Jon Mitchell: There’s a big difference. In mainland Japan most of the American bases are on national land, located on former Japanese military bases — Atsugi, Yokosuka, Yokota. But in Okinawa, most of the bases are on private land. This is why, since World War Two, there has been a large anti-base movement. The mid-1950s was the period known by Okinawans as “bayonets and bulldozers,” where the American military forcibly

1 1 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

the bases in our prefecture?” Former Okinawan governor Takeshi Onaga said if Japan supports the alliance, then mainland residents should shoulder an equal proportion of the bases. Prior to reversion [of Okinawa from U.S. control to Japan in 1972], the Japanese government had promised the bases would be reduced to a proportion similar throughout all of Japan. Today, Okinawans are living with the consequences of that broken promise. How might Okinawa be impacted if there was a major reduction of U.S. military bases?

According to Okinawa prefectural government estimates, the fact that the bases are there today has a one trillion yen hit on the economy. The bases hobble economic development in Okinawa. Okinawa is the only prefecture in Japan without an extensive rail network. There used to be a rail network prior to World War Two, but it was destroyed in the fighting and then America did not redevelop it. They wanted to make Okinawa a car-based economy. It means that it takes a lot of time to travel from the north to the south of the island even though it’s very small.



TODAY, MILITARY BASES OCCUPY ABOUT 15 PERCENT OF MAINLAND OKINAWA, EVEN AS THE PREFECTURE MAKES UP LESS THAN 1 PERCENT OF JAPAN’S LANDMASS. THE DISPARITY HAS LONG FUELED A MASS ANTI-BASE MOVEMENT.

119

EXPLORE

_ OKINAWA

The bases take up some of the best land in Okinawa. If there were a largescale reduction of the bases, there would be a huge benefit to infrastructure and the tax base. In Okinawa, American service members don’t pay city tax, also their water, electricity, and gas is subsidized so Okinawa would benefit enormously if the bases were closed. There would be a major environmental improvement. The bases have contaminated the environment, including the drinking water for 450,000 people. Also, the noise [from military aircraft] is incredibly loud and damages students’ learning. The overall quality of life amongst Okinawans would be boosted enormously. You’ve got to remember that 15 percent of the land in mainland Okinawa has been taken up with bases, but the military contributes about 5 percent to the prefecture’s economy. A lot of people have a very outdated misconception that Okinawa would never be able to survive if the bases were not there. Actually, the presence of the military is a major impediment on the economy of Okinawa. I think roughly 45 percent of the GDP of Okinawa is dependent on

tourism and only 5 percent on the military. There’s a vast mismatch between the footprint of the military in Okinawa and how much they actually contribute to the economy.

1 2 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

There is an assumption that having U.S. military bases, whether in Okinawa or Hawai‘i or someplace else, is a form of protection. With the targeting of U.S military bases in the Persian Gulf region after the U.S. and Israel started a war with Iran, is there a lesson to be learned about hosting U.S. bases in Okinawa? The main reason for the American military to keep the bases in Japan is money. Japanese taxpayers subsidize the military presence in Japan by approximately 75 percent. It’s cheaper for the American military to keep the bases in Japan than to keep them in the U.S. Also, it’s to project American power — not to defend Japan, but to launch wars around the globe. America used its Okinawa bases for wars in Korea, Vietnam, then Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently Iran. The marines were dispatched from Okinawa to Iran; the American Air Force was sent



OPPOSITE PAGE, TERUYA YUKEN’S

YOU-I, YOU-I (2002). THE ARTIST EMBEDS MILITARY IMAGERY WITHIN THE BINGATA KIMONO’S TRADITIONAL MOTIFS, TURNING THE GARMENT INTO A SYMBOL OF DISSENT.

from Kadena [Air Base in Okinawa] to the conflict zone. If the issues related to militarism were resolved or significantly improved, can you imagine Okinawa playing a different role in East Asia from the one it plays now? Historically, Okinawa was this wonderful bridge of nations in the Ryukyu Kingdom days. Okinawa was this incredibly diverse trading hub. Okinawan seafarers traded throughout the region in Korea, Japan, China, down to Vietnam, Malacca, Malaysia. Thanks to the location of Okinawa, it has so much potential. There’s a massive market within two hours’ flying time of Okinawa. They could be a hub of trade and ideas where they could share their experiences of World War Two and their deep pacifist tradition

121

EXPLORE

_ OKINAWA



RESIDENTS LIVING NEAR KADENA AIR BASE SAY THEIR LIVES ARE ENDANGERED AND DISRUPTED BY ENDLESS AIRCRAFT NOISE, VIBRATION, AND THE SMELL OF JET FUEL.

to improve the region. Sadly, that’s not the case today because of tensions in the region. What do you find most inspiring about the Okinawan peace movement? As an outsider and journalist with Okinawa Times, I would say that the sustained level of civil disobedience is profoundly inspirational for people around the world. One of the prime conceptions of the Okinawan peace movement is people

1 2 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

gathering and marching. But Okinawan resistance takes so many different forms. First of all, comedy. In mainland Japan there’s not really much political satirical comedy, but in Okinawa, they satirize the military presence. Also, through art. They show how people can question the predominance of the military and Japanese discrimination against Okinawans. Also, through writing. Okinawan writers have won so many national book awards. I think there are a variety of approaches where it’s not only people marching and

gathering. Resistance pervades every tier of Okinawan society. I think that’s an inspiration for people around the world. The peace leaders in Okinawa deserve recognition alongside much more famous peace leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King. For too long, Okinawan pacifist groups have not been recognized on a global scale. Given its history, Okinawa may be one of the most ethnically diverse parts of

EXPLORE

_ OKINAWA

“It’s not only people marching and gathering. Resistance pervades every tier of Okinawan society. That’s an inspiration for people around the world.” _ jon mitchell, investigative journalist

Japan. How does this mix of people and cultures influence Japan? Okinawa undermines so many of the national myths that mainland Japanese conservatives hold so dear. Okinawa provides people with the opportunity to question, “What is Japan?” Okinawa challenges so many of these myths that are central to Japanese national self-identity. The myth that Japan is monolingual. In the Ryukyu area [including Okinawa and Kyushu], there are six indigenous languages that are endangered. The Japanese government refuses to acknowledge that they are languages but calls them dialects and doesn’t do anything to protect them. Okinawa also questions the myth of homogeneity — Japan as a monoracial country. Okinawans are an indigenous group. Okinawa provides us with so many opportunities to understand the diversity of Japan. There are multiple languages, multiple races. There are multiple ways of thinking. I would say that if you want to understand Japan, you have to understand Okinawa. Without a deep understanding of Okinawa, you can never understand Japan and the current problems that it’s facing.

1 2 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

If there is one thing about Okinawans and their culture that you think people should understand, what is it? Nuchi du takara. This famous Okinawan indigenous phrase that means life is truly the most important thing and it is a treasure. That phrase encapsulates Okinawans’ respect for life and people’s right to live in a peaceful way. Okinawans’ perception of peace does not only mean a lack of war. It means respect for human rights, respect for diversity, and an environment that is safe for people with disabilities, of any gender, any religion or any racial background. I think Okinawa can teach the world so much about the value of life, the value of respect for people. All of this is encapsulated in the phrase nuchi du takara — life is a treasure. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.



AT HENOKO, A BEACH DIVIDED BY A BARBED-WIRE FENCE AND USMC PACIFIC WARNING SIGNS, ALONGSIDE HANDWRITTEN MESSAGES OF RESISTANCE CALLING FOR PEACE AND AN END TO MILITARY OCCUPATION.

125

FLUX _ EXPLORE

126

_ KALIHI

True Grit TENACITY DEFINES KALIHI-PĀLAMA, THE HISTORIC O‘AHU DISTRICT WITH A BLUE-COLLAR REPUTATION THAT IS AS CELEBRATED AS IT IS UNBREAKABLE.

TEXT BY

_ SARAH BURCHARD

IMAGES BY

_ JOHN HOOK

No arguments here: Kalihi is a proud working-class neighborhood. Bridging the state’s international airport to downtown Honolulu, this blue-collar stronghold props up shipping docks, industrial manufacturing, and beloved mom-and-pop stores, many of which are generationally run and immigrant-founded. One of Kalihi’s special characteristics is its grit and resilience. Volunteering at Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, the 100-acre nature preserve in Kalihi Valley, I learned that a possible interpretation of Kalihilihiolaumiha, the ancient name for the Kalihi ahupuaʻa, recalls the community’s ability to endure heavy rains and extreme heat. “This ʻāina and the people who cared for it had tough skin,” a staff member said to me. To this day, you can feel the undercurrent of this toughness. As demonstrated here by a cohort of artists, restaurateurs, and beloved community members, Kalihi is where people work hard, businesses persist for decades, and its signature resolve is transformed into public artworks that wear its legacy on its sleeve.

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

EXPLORE

_ KALIHI

the rooted artists Hawaii Walls

to support it,” Wong said. “So I just The kids at Pālama Settlement helped started teaching there and then started paint too. “It gave them a voice and an ownership of their space,” Wong said. just painting murals there.” During the painting sessions, resWong, founder of World Wide Walls, a nonprofit organization and mural festival idents sometimes approached the that gathers local and international artists muralists to thank them. Some even to beautify public spaces, has placed more brought them food while they worked. than 70 murals in 10 locations around Artist Lucinda “La Morena” Hinojos, Kalihi. The volunteer-based Hawaii Walls a renowned Chicana and Indigenous project, which also canvassed Kakaʻako artist from Arizona, was approached in murals, however, began with a public while painting her mural at Kalihi Kai forewarning. The general sentiment that Elementary. The family lived in a public Wong received was that Kalihi is danger- housing unit across the street and could ous. “That if we paint murals there, our see her painting every day from their artists will get assaulted,” he said. He was window. Previously aware of her artalso told their group’s murals would be work, “They had no idea that she was in town,” Wong said, and would visit near vandalized. But Wong ignored the naysayers and daily to bring her gifts all week long as began going door to door to ask business she was painting. To this day, none of the murals in owners and principals at Kalihi schools if he and his friends could come to paint. Kalihi have been vandalized, according There wasn’t a single refusal. To prepare to Wong. At Farrington High School, the participating artists, Wong shared everyone from the teachers to the stuthe history of Kalihi with them, focus- dents expressed their gratitude for them. ing on immigrant plantation workers “One of the custodians would literally cry and the Micronesians and Marshallese every single time she talked to us,” Wong who arrived after the Compact of Free said. “Then she would make me cry, and we’d both just be crying the whole time.” Association agreements in 1986. Desmond Neil, whose lineage included sakadas, painted a mural of his Filipino family coming to Hawai‘i to work the sugar cane plantations. Local hajichi tattoo artist Erin Nagamine painted  DESMOND NEIL WORKS ON ROOTED, Pius “Mau” Piailug, the Micronesian A MURAL WHOSE SYMBOLS OF IMMIGRAmaster navigator who taught the origiTION AND LABOR REFLECT KALIHI’S nal Hōkūleʻa crew traditional wayfinding. HISTORY. IMAGE BY BRANDON SHIGETA.

The artist Jasper Wong wasn’t born in Kalihi, but you could say he was raised by it. His mom owned a grocery store on the corner of North King and Kalihi Streets called Kapalama Butcherman. On days when she couldn’t find a babysitter to watch him and his brother, she’d leave them at Liliha Public Library, where they’d spend all day reading comic books. By the time Wong was in elementary school, he was spending evenings and weekends at the family store, working the register, counting the store inventory, packaging groceries, or helping clean the shelves. In the back there was a room with a tiny TV where he and his brother took breaks. Kapalama Butcherman was his home away from home. After Costco opened a mile and a half away in 1988, Wong’s mom reenvisioned the meat market as Pelio Bakery. “We worked and lived that thing,” Wong said. Decades later, Wong returned to Kalihi in service again, this time to teach middle and high school students digital art at Pālama Settlement in 2022. The following year, he returned to add some color to Kalihi’s drab industrial landscape. Over the years, Pālama Settlement went from being the place where immigrants arrived before heading to work on the plantations to a community center for both kids and adults. “We really wanted

1 3 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

EXPLORE

_ KALIHI



HELENA’S HAWAIIAN FOOD, A KALIHI INSTITUTION POPULAR FOR HAWAIIAN STAPLES SUCH AS SQUID LŪ’AU, LAU LAU AND KALUA PIG. PREVIOUS SPREAD,

ULU PŪ KĀKOU, A MURAL BY WELCOME STRANGER AT PĀLAMA SETTLEMENT. IMAGE BY BRANDON SHIGETA.

Mike, was the initial owner in 1946. But it wasn’t until she took over that it officially became Helena’s Hawaiian Food Helen “Helena” Chock was born in Kalihi after she decided to cook the Hawaiian in 1918. The Chocks lived in a small staples she had learned from her Native house surrounded by farmland near the Hawaiian co-workers while working in corner of Houghtailing and North King a Navy laundry room at Pearl Harbor. Streets, behind where the Honolulu Ford Upon opening, she hired three women is located today. Before the car dealer- — a dishwasher and two cooks, one of ship moved in, this is where the build- whom was her sister — to help serve the ing that housed the original Helena’s venerable Hawaiian dishes the popular Hawaiian Food stood. According to restaurant has become synonymous with, Craig Katsuyoshi, the current owner such as squid lūʻau, lau lau and kalua pig, and Chock’s grandson, her brother, always with a side of poi.

the legacy restaurant Helena’s Hawaiian Food

1 3 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

EXPLORE

_ KALIHI



AFTER DECADES IN ITS ORIGINAL LOCATION, HELENA’S MOVED TO ITS CURRENT KALIHI HOME IN 2001, WHERE IT REMAINS A TOUCHSTONE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD’S FOOD SCENE.

In the 1980s, when Katsuyoshi was in high school, he began working at the restaurant bussing tables and washing dishes. After he graduated, his grandmother sent him to college, but Katsuyoshi wasn’t the best student and soon found his way back to the restaurant. “My first role was ‘just be quiet and do what I tell you,’” Katsuyoshi said. “You know, family style.” After Helena’s lease was up, the property owner, Kamehameha Schools, let the family stay for another decade on a month-to-month lease — the only

136

business left standing in the wooden Helena’s has never changed. The menu Chock Building. But then the day finally has always, and will always remain the came when Helena’s lease wasn’t renewed same, Katsuyoshi insists. “They want the and needed to find a new location, which same thing their parents and grandparit did, reopening at 1240 North School ents came for,” he said. “And now they Street, where diners line up for a table to take their kids here.” this day. After Chock died in 2007, Katsuyoshi the family factory took on ownership of the restaurant and Aloha Tofu runs it with the help of his wife, son, and daughter. In 2018, the landlord “I thought about leaving so many times,” gave him the unit next door, so he could said Aloha Tofu owner Paul Uyehara. knock the wall down and expand. Other His sentiment wasn’t one of regret, than its physical expansion in 2018, but a realistic reflection of the day-in,

_ KALIHI

EXPLORE



FRESH

TOFU

WHERE

THE

ALOHA

UYEHARA

TOFU,

FAMILY

HAS

MADE THE STAPLE IN KALIHI FOR MORE

THAN

SEVEN

DECADES.

IMAGE BY CHRIS ROHRER.

day-out persistence required to continue a 30-year legacy started in 1950 by his Okinawan grandparents Kamesaburo and Tsuruko. Working in a small shop on Dillingham Boulevard next to Honolulu Community College, Kamesaburo took over a friend’s tofu company, learning how to make the Asian staple in just two days. Aloha Tofu opened its doors with Kamesaburo pressing soybeans into curds in the back while Tsuruko cooked diner food for Dole Cannery workers out front. Kamesaburo knew the owners of Times Supermarket,

which opened its first store in 1949, and was the couple’s dedicated customer from day one, becoming the first grocery store on Oʻahu to sell locally-made tofu. Twelve years later, the Uyeharas moved production into a proper warehouse in Kaka‘ako. But in 1966, the building burned down leaving the Uyeharas scrambling for help. By the kind grace of a fellow Okinawan, who owned Aala Tofu, the Uyeharas found a temporary home at 513 Kaaahi Street in Kalihi. Every day, after the owner of Aala Tofu finished his production, the

Uyeharas came in to do theirs, sharing the same factory. “Old Hawaiian style,” Paul said. “Part of it was they were both Okinawan. They tried to help each other out.” In 1976, the Uyeharas purchased a 12,000-square-foot plot of land a quarter mile from Aala Tofu. The two-story, 20,000-square-foot tofu factory they built is where Aloha Tofu still stands today. The company logo of the turtle and the crane represents Kamesaburo, whose name means turtle, and Tsuruko, whose name means crane. The whole

139

EXPLORE

_ KALIHI

family worked there: Paul’s dad, uncles, and all the grandchildren. Paul helped in the factory every summer and winter break when he was off from school, getting a real taste of what it would be like to work there. Initially, Paul and his cousins thought, “I’m not going to do this. This sucks.” But in 1996, after graduating from the University of Puget Sound and spending six years living in Japan and Taiwan, Paul came to work for Aloha Tofu, joining his sister and three cousins. Paul was excited for the third generation to carry on the factory. “But, you know,” he said, “a lot of times in Asian families, a lot of things are unsaid.” Over time, family members grew unhappy, including Paul. Yet every time he thought about leaving, someone would quit and he’d stay, and eventually be running

the show. Paul now owns Aloha Tofu Okinawa Festival, the factory produces with his mom, Barbara Uyehara, and a special Okinawan Jimami Tofu, a deluncle, Roy Uyehara. “We kind of keep icacy handmade with peanuts. The cusour heads down and just keep working tard-like tofu is sold with a container of as best we can because this is what we housemade sweet soy dipping sauce. know,” he said. Over a lifetime working in Kalihi, Paul Today, the factory is tucked between has seen a lot change. “I look at Kalihi two apartment buildings, on a small road as kind of the light industrial heart of behind North King Street, what Paul Honolulu,” he said, referring to the many describes as “the shortcut to Costco.” “It’s manufacturers and longtime kamaʻāina not like a glamorous type of neighborhood,” companies located there, who he sees as Paul said. “It’s a very blue-collar type of “the cornerstones of the community.” area. But you kind of see here and there glimpses of them trying to modernize.” Customers can stop by Aloha Tofu seven days a week from 7 a.m. to purchase a variety of tofu products, including freshly fried agedofu, Okinawan yushi dofu and thick, creamy soy milk. Once a year, during the same month as the



OWNER PAUL UYEHARA CALLS KALIHI HONOLULU’S HEART,” TIME

“LIGHT

HOME

BUSINESSES

TO HE

INDUSTRIAL THE

COMMUNITY CORNERSTONES.

1 4 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

LONG-

CONSIDERS

Every Want

Every Need

Every Day konacommons.com @konacommons

AT&T - Bank of Hawaii - Bath & Body Works - Cookies Clothing Co. - Daiichi Ramen - Dairy Queen Genki Sushi - Hawaiian Island Creations - Island Naturals - Jeans Warehouse - Majestic Nails McDonald’s - Office Max - Panda Express - Petco - Ross - SKECHERS - Spectrum - Subway - Supercuts T-Mobile - Target - The Vitamin Shoppe - Ultimate Burger - Verizon

74-5444 Makala Blvd. Kailua-Kona, HI 96740 konacommons.com @konacommons

“I

felt

responsibility

now

tell

new

story

IMAGE BY _ JOSIAH PATTERSON

about

local

f o o d .”

—

Alana

Kysar

143

LIVING WELL

FLUX _ LIVING WELL

144

_ COOKBOOK

A Recipe for Returning ALANA KYSAR’S DEBUT COOKBOOK PUT HAWAI‘I’S LOCAL RECIPES ON THE MAP. NOW, AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE AWAY, HER LATEST BRINGS HER BACK HOME WITH A RENEWED KULEANA TO HAWAI‘I’S FUTURE.

Raised on her family’s single-acre plot in Kula, Maui, on the northwestern slopes of Haleakalā, food writer Alana Kysar’s childhood was bookended by afternoons in her Japanese American mother’s garden and evenings at the kitchen table, where her Californian father served salads made from their homegrown produce. It was a mundanity she had grown accustomed to, one she felt desperate to escape. “In high school,” Kysar says, “all I could think was, ‘When can I leave?’” Yet, as is so often the case, time has a way of changing things. After more than a decade in California, the 41-yearold cookbook author and photographer has found her way back to sharing that

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

TEXT BY

_ MIA ANZALONE

IMAGES BY

_ TASHA JAHRMARKT

same-acre plot with her parents, only now with a husband and their two longhaired dachshunds in tow. Returning home also meant reintroducing herself to the land, becoming the steward of what she once wanted to depart. Now, with “a sense of responsibility to the community at large,” Kysar says, wondering aloud, “What can I do to better Kula as a whole or the island as a whole?” It’s a concept that’s central to her sophomore effort, Aloha Veggies: VegForward Recipes Celebrating the Flavors of Hawai‘i, a cookbook of dishes that centers island produce and the Hawaiʻi farmers who grow it. Inside, a plethora of vegetables basks in comforting flavors and forms: oyster mushrooms transformed into a hearty meat jun, cabbage infused with the garlicky tang of adobo, and Japanese turnips and leafy greens marinated in a lūʻau stew. But the cookbook is more than just imaginative recipes. Behind each ingredient, knife cut, and technical instruction, Kysar lays her roots, sealing a promise to herself and to Hawaiʻi: She’s here to stay. Kysar initially left Maui in 2003 for the University of San Diego, where she



ALANA KYSAR TENDS TO HER HOME GARDEN IN KULA, WHERE SHE NOW GROWS MUCH OF THE PRODUCE THAT INSPIRES HER COOKING.

LIVING WELL

_ COOKBOOK



IN HER SOPHOMORE COOKBOOK, ALOHA

VEGGIES, KYSAR REIMAGINES BELOVED LOCAL DISHES INTO VEG-FORWARD RECIPES.

studied political science and Spanish with aspirations to become an attorney. “I quickly realized I didn’t have the temperament for that,” she says, chuckling. Instead, she found work in the creative industry, working as a photo production assistant for the high-end kitchenware retailer Williams Sonoma. In her free time, she developed a love for baking, often coming to work bearing daintily packaged pastries and cakes for her coworkers. The gesture recalled the days of her childhood, when her mother packed “home lunches of envy,” as

1 4 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

Kysar describes them: bentos filled with mochiko chicken or beef teriyaki skewers packed neatly alongside onigiri. A manager there took notice and encouraged her to imagine a career beyond her role as an assistant. In 2015, her now-husband, Moses Aipa, a creative director and graphic designer, gifted her with a study list of classic cookbooks and her own URL. She launched her blog Fix Feast Flair that same year on the cusp of the food blogging boom. Early on, the recipes she shared were straight out of Pinterest dreams: a matcha

black sesame babka; a lemon curd macadamia nut tart. She also composed the accompanying photos herself, artfully arranging cutlery around a speckled plate and snapping aesthetically vibrant dishes against a sleek marble countertop. “It was such a learning in the sense that you are the writer, you are the recipe developer, you are the food stylist, you are the photographer,” says Kysar. “You wear all the hats, and so I got to try out a bunch of skills.” Her resourceful, DIY spirit made a splash. That same year, Kysar was named Saveur Magazine’s Readers’ Choice for

LIVING WELL

_ COOKBOOK

Best New Voice. Still, she knew there was a difference between what she posted for her audience and what she cooked regularly for herself and her husband. “I really did find a lot of joy in building beautiful and more aspirational things,” Kysar says. “But that’s not the stuff you’re eating day to day.” On a whim, Kysar posted a recipe for her mother’s mochiko chicken, a childhood staple that embodied home after so many years away. The post received more hits than any of her other recipes at the time. To her avid followers, the recipe was something fresh; for her, it was

enlightenment. After that modest recipe and the surge of online traffic it created, Kysar says, she began to consider including local flavors on her blog more often, realizing, “People have an appetite for this.” By 2017, Kysar had moved to Los Angeles and turned Fix Feast Flair into a full-time career. More island recipes were folded into the site’s content calendar. She turned her nostalgia for family pāʻina into a refreshing somen salad recipe, her memories of Oʻahu’s North Shore into a twist on Kahuku garlic shrimp. The local recipes caught the attention of Nicole Toureut, the literary agent behind chef and internet

1 4 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

personality Alison Roman’s smash Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes. Within two weeks Toureut and Kysar’s proposal for a Hawai‘i-inspired cookbook was on editorial director Kelly Snowden’s desk at Ten Speed Press, who was quickly enamored with it. She delighted in Kysar’s homey approach to local cuisine, publishing her debut, Aloha Kitchen: Recipes from Hawai‘i, two years later. The first of its kind at a national level, the cookbook served as a scrapbook of Hawaiʻi recipes that honored the humble plate lunch and its medley of immigrant flavors. Notably, Kysar had the recipes printed on matte

paper stock, allowing cooks to annotate, scribble, and personalize each dish as they please. For Kysar, the cookbook, which was published in 2019, was a way to be part of people’s lives, particularly local families in Hawaiʻi. Making meals for one another is “a cornerstone for all of life,” Kysar says. “To be able to cook, and to be part of that very vital component to daily life, it’s not something I take for granted.” When Covid-19 put the world in lockdown a year later, families such as Sumida Farm owners Emi and Kyle Suzuki turned to Aloha Kitchen. The family spent their quarantine evenings

harvesting watercress from the family farm and incorporating the greens into Kysar’s somen salad recipe. “The beautiful thing about her recipes is they’re not necessarily quick, but we had time, especially back then,” says Emi. “And we had the ingredients, literally some of it outside our front door.” Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Kysar and her husband got a plot at a community garden, growing squash, beans, peas, herbs, and tomatoes. “We had a surplus of so many things that I started to think the flavors of Hawaiʻi would lend themselves pretty well to vegetables,” says



KYSAR DRAWS ON THE LOCAL DISHES

AND

FLAVORS

HER HAWAI’I UPBRINGING IN HER RECIPES.

149

_ COOKBOOK



WITH

HUSBAND

AND

LIVING WELL

TWO

DACHSCHUNDS IN TOW, KYSAR COMES FULL CIRCLE, NOW LIVING JUST A BREEZEWAY FROM HER CHILDHOOD HOME AND THE SAME ACRE OF LAND SHE ONCE DREAMED OF LEAVING.

Kysar. “Let’s try to make some taste local to that rural landscape, she remembered that — despite the cookbook’s concept how utilitarian cooking was growing up. — she and her husband are not vegetarstyle, you know?” And when the couple made the decision to move back home in “Living in a place like Maui where there ian. In fact, they enjoy meat; the reci2022 (Aipa, also from Hawai‘i, is a local are larger plots of land, and you have pes in Aloha Kitchen, after all, were boy from Kailua), that train of thought the ability to grow some of your food or meat-centric. And so, Aloha Veggies is share with your friends and neighbors, less a cookbook for a strictly vegetarian came along with her. Yet, just as Kysar had changed, so had you start to think about, like, ‘What can diet than a self-sustaining guide to livHawaiʻi. From 2018 to 2022, the state’s you grow? And what can you make with ing off the land, all while paying homage agricultural imports increased from what you grow?’” says Kysar. An answer to the recipes that locals know and love. approximately $200 million to $242 to Hawaiʻi’s food insecurity seemed as if “The idea of contributing a new lexicon million. In Kula, things felt different, too. it was right outside her front door. “I felt of vegetable deliciousness to the local The sugarcane fields of her childhood a responsibility to now tell a new story food culture in a significant way,” Kysar writes, “and providing valuable tools to were gone (the state’s final commercial about local food.” Aloha Veggies opens with an intro- our community is something that really burning took place in Puʻunēnē in 2016), but the land was still fertile. Returning duction by Kysar, wherein she confesses speaks to me.”

151

LIVING WELL

_ COOKBOOK



KYSAR HAS RETURNED TO KULA WITH A NEW SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, SAYING THAT “LIVING IN A PLACE LIKE MAUI, YOU START TO THINK ABOUT, ‘WHAT CAN YOU GROW? AND WHAT CAN YOU MAKE WITH WHAT YOU GROW?’”

Between recipes, Kysar devotes pages relying on local support to maintain its to uplifting Sumida Farm in ‘Aiea, Olson leased land. “Our future is determined Keolanui Farms in Hilo, Lapaʻau Farm very much by outside forces,” Emi says. in Olinda, and other farming operations “Luckily, we’re in a time where there progressing Hawaiʻi’s agricultural future. are people like Alana Kysar saying, ‘We The premise is that in profiling these support local, we need local farms.’ All farms alongside the veg-forward recipes, of these things need to be continuously home cooks could better appreciate the talked about, and it can’t just be a fad. It labor behind growing the ingredients, has to be ongoing.” making the idea of “supporting local” For Kysar, that sentiment couldn’t less abstract. That’s a rare initiative for a be truer. After so many years away, her mass market cookbook, according to the house is now just a breezeway away from Suzukis. As a small family farm, Sumida her childhood home. On a clear day, she Farm only sells wholesale within Hawaiʻi, can see Molokaʻi, Oʻahu, and Lānaʻi from

1 5 2 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

her balcony. Below, the literal fruits of her and her husband’s labor — Fuji apples, Tahitian limes, bananas — flourish in the same soil that nurtured her. What has changed, she realizes, is not the land but her relationship to it. This place she once couldn’t wait to escape is now the one she so desperately feels called to care for — if only to repay all of the times it nourished her.

Discover Local Favorites in Kailua From popular restaurants and unique boutiques to wellness, fitness and everyday services, discover the businesses that make Kailua Town a favorite place to shop, dine and explore. EAT & DRINK

Aloha Salads Ando Cafe Donut King GOEN Dining + Bar Lanikai Juice Local Boy Sushi Mala Market Maui Brewing Co. Mexico Lindo Morning Brew Coffee Nalu Health Bar Paia Fish Market The Sunrise Shack

WELLNESS

Alize‘e Salon Club Pilates Core Power Yoga Down to Earth Embode Method Gameday Men’s Health Hana Hard Fitness Kailua Beach Adventures Out to See Prime Martial Arts

AND MORE

SHOP

Aesthetic Hawaii Art Gallery Aloha Kira Bikinibird Book Ends Classic Waves Boutique Fighting Eel Island Snow Mahina Nick Kuchar Shop Oceans End SoHa Living Twin Islands Uloha

EXPLORE LOCAL FAVORITES. DISCOVER WHAT’S IN KAILUA TOWN.

K A I L UA T O W N H I . C O M

PARTNER CONTENT

154

FLUX _ LIVING WELL

_ OUTRIGGER KAUA‘I BEACH RESORT & SPA

Kaua‘i Calls: Discover Hawai‘i’s Garden Isle from a Newly Transformed Oceanfront Retreat EXPERIENCE DRAMATIC NATURAL BEAUTY, AUTHENTIC HAWAIIAN CULTURE AND MORE THAN $100 IN DAILY ADDED VALUE AT THE REIMAGINED OUTRIGGER KAUA‘I BEACH RESORT & SPA.

TEXT & IMAGES BY

_ OUTRIGGER KAUA‘I BEACH RESORT & SPA

For travelers seeking a Hawaiʻi escape that feels worlds away without leaving the U.S., Kauaʻi delivers. Known as the Garden Isle, Hawaiʻi’s oldest major island is a place of emerald mountains, cascading waterfalls, uncrowded beaches and some of the most spectacular scenery in the Pacific. Explore the soaring sea cliffs of the Nā Pali Coast, take in the sweeping vistas of Waimea Canyon, paddle the Wailua River or spend an afternoon discovering the shops, restaurants and local character of towns like Hanalei and Kōloa. Whether the goal is adventure or simply slowing down, Kauaʻi makes it easy to reconnect with nature — and with each other. Now, there’s even more reason to visit. Fresh from a complete transformation, OUTRIGGER Kauaʻi Beach Resort & Spa has emerged as a newly reimagined oceanfront retreat. Set on 25 acres along secluded Nukoliʻi Beach

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

and just 10 minutes from Līhuʻe Airport, the resort sits between Kauaʻi’s North and South Shores, creating an ideal home base for exploring the island. The transformation was designed to bring guests closer to Kauaʻi from the moment they arrive. Once inwardfacing public spaces now open toward the gardens, pool and Pacific, filling the resort with natural light, ocean breezes and views of the surrounding landscape. Throughout the property, original works by eight Kauaʻi artists tell stories of the island’s land, ocean, culture and community, creating a sense of place that extends far beyond traditional resort décor. That connection continues at Ocean House by Roy Yamaguchi, a new oceanfront dining destination from one of the pioneers of Hawaiʻi Regional Cuisine. Here, Chef Roy Yamaguchi celebrates the flavors and ingredients of the islands in a setting inspired by the relationship between land and sea.

Guests can deepen their connection to Kauaʻi through complimentary cultural and wellness experiences including sunrise ceremonies, Hawaiian music and hula, beachfront yoga and community beach cleanups. Families can make a splash in the resort’s expansive aquatic playground, complete with two pools, a cascading waterfall, 75-foot waterslide and whirlpool spa. For a limited time, guests who book direct receive more than $100 in daily added value, including a $50 daily food and beverage credit, waived resort charge and complimentary selfparking — making an island escape even easier. Recently recognized with a 2026 Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Award, OUTRIGGER Kauaʻi Beach Resort & Spa offers visitors a chance to experience Kauaʻi through its landscape, flavors, art and culture.

155

FLUX _ LIVING WELL

156

_ CONSERVATION

Seeding Sustainability FOR

SOME

SEED

BANKS

HAWAI‘I’S

ARE

THEIR

RARE LAST

NATIVE

PLANTS,

FIGHTING

CHANCE

AGAINST EXTINCTION.

TEXT BY

_ ANNABELLE LE JEUNE

IMAGES BY

_ JOSIAH PATTERSON

Some 1,400 native plant species call this archipelago home, evolving across millennia to adapt to the islands’ distinct ecology. But the same conditions that created Hawai‘i’s unique ecosystems also leave them vulnerable. Today, Hawaiʻi contains 44 percent of the country’s endangered and threatened flora. Because its native plants evolved in relative isolation, they have few natural defenses against outside threats. Invasive species, along with the impacts of climate change, habitat destruction, and human interference, have contributed to a rapid decline of native species throughout the archipelago, earning Hawaiʻi the nickname “the extinction capital of the world.” More than 100 native plants have already gone extinct. About 27 are presumed extinct in the wild, existing only in conservation centers and nurseries. For some plants, their last chance at survival rests in seed banks, where they are stored in climate-controlled repositories with the hope that they can one day be replanted in the wild. Located in Mānoa Valley, the Lyon Arboretum seed conservation laboratory is Hawaiʻi’s largest and leading seed bank. It houses over 31 million seeds representing approximately 580 native plant species, more than 300 of which are considered threatened or endangered. It operates under the Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, a 200-acre botanical garden founded in 1918 and managed by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In 1992, the arboretum launched the Hawaiʻi Rare Plant Program, which established the seed conservation laboratory and its adjoining micropropagation lab and rare plant greenhouse. Under the guidance of UH Mānoa and in partnership with government and nonprofit agencies, the seed lab provides long-term storage and research to preserve the genetic diversity of the plants in its care, a necessary marker of resilience

_ FLUXHAWAII.COM

157

LIVING WELL

_ CONSERVATION



AT THE LYON ARBORETUM SEED CONSERVATION LABORATORY, MORE THAN 31 MILLION SEEDS REPRESENTING SOME 580 NATIVE HAWAIIAN PLANT SPECIES ARE HELD IN RESERVE AGAINST EXTINCTION.

against invasive species encroaching on their habitats. The seeds are collected by state organizations and other partners and sent to the lab, where they are germinated and observed for viability. The germination process is crucial, particularly for rarer species, as their lower inventory leaves little room for experimentation. Fortunately, the future is promising for the majority of native plants housed in the lab. Nearly 72 percent are “orthodox” seeds able to withstand the extreme levels of drying and freezing necessary for

1 5 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

long-term storage, making them ideal for successful preservation. Some seeds, however, are too fragile for such conditions. “Intermediate” and “recalcitrant” seeds require more intricate refrigeration methods and can only be stored shortterm or, in some cases, not at all. The seed lab is in the early stages of developing a cryopreservation method to house the seeds long term, but for now, they are sent to the micropropagation lab for temporary storage. Carefully cultivated seedlings are then sent out to rare plant nurseries, and from there, they are replanted

at restoration sites throughout the state. Each year, thousands of plants are transported to the wild. Transitioning plants back to their natural habitats, though, presents its own challenges. Improperly prepared or inaccessible habitats, unnatural weather patterns, and inadequate manpower are all external factors that hinder seedlings from thriving once they leave the seed lab. Still, conservation efforts proceed in earnest from mauka to makai, where the seed lab is helping small yet mighty seedlings reclaim their wilds.

L I V I N G C U LT U R E | A C T I V E R E S E A R C H & N AT U R A L S C I E N C E | I M M E R S I V E P R O G R A M S

Discover the real Hawai‘i at Hawai‘i’s Museum

O P E N D A I LY F R O M 9 A M – 5 P M

1 5 2 5 B E R N I C E S T, H O N O LU LU , H I 9 6 8 1 7

8 0 8 . 8 47. 3 511

BISHOPMUSEUM.ORG

LIVING WELL

_ CONSERVATION

remain, as most were converted into sugar plantations and cattle ranches. Since their canopies provide a habitat Hawai‘i’s mixed mesic forests are home to a wide diversity of plant life, ranging for many native bird and insect species, from ferns and shrubs to tall, canopying their recovery is key to restoring native trees. Mixed mesic forests range from forests. Another species, ‘ōhiʻa lehua 2,000 feet to 4,000 feet in elevation (Metrosideros polymorpha), is a comand are neither wet nor dry, typically mon native plant whose specific epithet receiving a balanced amount of rainfall. name, polymorpha, means “many forms” Among the largest of these native trees — a reference to its wide-ranging colors is koa (Acacia koa), reaching up to 115 and sizes, appearing as 2-foot shrubs or feet in height. Their long trunks and nat- 50-foot trees. Traditional uses for ‘ōhiʻa urally occurring oils make them a favored are still in practice today: hardwood is hardwood for carving. Only a fraction of used for carving, its flowers and leaves for lei making, and its bark and fruit the islands’ once-sprawling koa forests mixed mesic forests

1 6 0 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

as medicine. Though ‘ōhiʻa dominates Hawai‘i’s native forests, a fungus known as Rapid ‘Ōhiʻa Death poses a threat to the population, killing some of the largest and oldest trees in a matter of days. coastal mesic forests Here, native plants mingle with sand, driftwood, and other coastal sediment swept inland by winds and salt spray. Skirting the slopes of the islands and stretching from sea level to over 1,000 feet, coastal mesic forests receive an even amount of rainfall and sunlight.



FOUND BETWEEN ROUGHLY 2,000 AND 4,000 FEET, MIXED MESIC FORESTS SHELTER SOME OF HAWAI‘I’S MOST IMPORTANT NATIVE TREES.

161

LIVING WELL

_ CONSERVATION



STRETCHING

FROM

SEA

LEVEL

MORE THAN 1,000 FEET ALONG THE ISLANDS’ SLOPES, COASTAL MESIC FORESTS

THRIVE IN A BALANCE OF

SUN AND RAIN.

Naupaka kahakai (Scaevola taccada) is an indigenous shrub found along the coastline, notable for its hardy leaves and white half-blossoms. It provides a nesting habitat for seabirds and the Hawaiian yellow-faced bee, its main pollinator. One moʻolelo (legend) tells of the star-crossed lovers Naupaka and Kaui: Jealous of their love, the fire goddess Pele banished one to the ocean and another to the mountains, creating two varieties: naupaka kahakai (seaside) and naupaka mauka (inland). Another coastal species is pōhinahina (Vitex

1 6 4 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

rotundifolia). The sprawling beach creeper has rounded, sage-like leaves and fragrant bell-shaped flowers that make it popular for lei making. It is also used in lāʻau lapaʻau, or traditional plant medicinal practices, to remedy ailments like skin irritations and back pain. wet forests Wet forests span the windward lowlands and montane heights of larger islands and, on smaller islands, thrive along the mountain tops. Lush with year-round

home of the original world famous garlic shrimp scampi

808-293-1839 | GIOVANNISSHRIMPTRUCK.COM

Explore Hawai‘i beyond the ordinary Solani opens the door to the Hawaiian Islands' best activities — kayaking, snorkeling, hiking and more, all in one place.

book your next adventure

LIVING WELL

_ CONSERVATION



AS COCONUT RHINOCEROS BEETLES THREATEN

HAWAI’I’S

PALM

POPU-

LATIONS, THE HAWAI‘I RARE PLANT PROGRAM IS SAFEGUARDING THE NATIVE PALMS IN CONSERVATION COLLECTIONS.

vegetation, they generally grow at elevations of 4,000 feet and beyond, with an annual rainfall of over 400 inches. Loulu, Hawaiʻi’s only endemic palm tree, favors these moist conditions. It earned the name loulu, Hawaiian for “umbrella,” for its large, fan-shaped fronds that provide shelter from the sun and rain. To this day, loulu is favored for thatching the roofs of hale, or traditional homes and structures, as well as for weaving hats and baskets. Increasing infestations of the coconut rhinoceros beetle

1 6 6 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

has endangered loulu’s in situ populations, a threat that the Hawaiʻi Rare Plant Program is working urgently to address. Hāhā (Cyanea angustifolia), the native plant in the bellflower family, is another wet forest species. Known for its clusters of hanging petals, its foliage was traditionally wrapped in tī leaves and cooked in an imu in times of food scarcity. Hāhā co-evolved with the long-billed native honeycreeper, one of its primary pollinators. Today many honeycreepers are extinct

or endangered, posing a concern for the hāhā’s future. At the seed lab, hāhā and other culturally significant native plants find refuge — and hope for survival.

OVERSIZE FREIGHT SPECIALISTS

Weekly Services LAX+HNL-PPG-GUM B747-400 NOSE-LOADER AND AD HOC CHARTERS. CONNECTING GATEWAYS ACROSS THE U.S. DAILY TO LAX-HNL & NEIGHBOR ISLANDS. WEEKLY TO PPG-GUM.

For more information, a free quote or to book online visit pacificaircargo.com or call 808.427.1235

POEM BY

FLUX _ A HUI HOU

_ DONAVAN KAMAKANI ALBANO

if time is a mother may we lay beside her & bury our spattered litanies in nightshade

may she take us back into her palms & feed us soft daylight & salty dreams & may our coral siblings line dance with us when we bare our bones for the renaming & may the only remaining dead thing be america & its insistence on shortlived lines that bear the more-than-capable of stilling our sored jaws too tight to mutter hesitation & may we finally release guilt of being non-responsive & stagnant & should we be so lucky to remain here may we no longer be called silent protestors broken clocks but instead moonlit nā pūkoʻa kū no ka moana

DONAVAN KAMAKANI ALBANO IS A KANAKA ‘ŌIWI POET FROM KĀNE‘OHE, O‘AHU WHO WAS RAISED IN KALIHILIHIOLAUMIHA. A FINALIST FOR THE 2026 JAMES WELCH PRIZE FOR INDIGENOUS POETS, THEIR WORK APPEARS IN POETRY NORTHWEST, PASEFIKA PRESENCE, CHAPTER HOUSE

1 6 8 _ F L U X H A W A I I . C O M

JOURNAL, AND KAMEHAMEHA PUBLISHING.

VISIT OUR STORES Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort 2335 Kalakaua Ave #L-102 Honolulu, HI 96815 Waikiki Beach Walk® 227 Lewers St Honolulu, HI 96815