Joshua Dean Iokua IkaikaLoa Mori
Josh and son Furious Keahonui Henio Mori, photographed by Kalalea Photography
“We're trying to work as quickly as we can to equip, inspire, and motivate enough young Westside and native Hawaiian kids to farm; to help pick up that call to farm when it does come.”
Josh Mori is the founder of Iwikua, an educational and cultural resource for sustainable food production, wellness, and community enhancement to benefit west Kauaʻi and future generations. Born on O’ahu to a family that traces their cultural roots to the mixture of Hawaiian, Asian, Welsh, German and American Indian heritage, he lived in Colorado, Oregon, Montana, and California, before returning home to Hawai’i with a Masters degree in Native American studies from Montana State University. Today, Josh is working with Waimea High School on the farm project, Na Mahi Ho’oko A’e.
We caught up with Josh on May 29, 2020, almost 3 months after Hawai’i saw its first recorded case of Covid-19, and only 5 days after the death of George Floyd, during the height of the Minneapolis protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
How are you?
I'm all right today. A little bit frustrated with how a lot of things are going in the world, but trying to organize the thoughts for this conversation in a way that doesn't go on too many tangents. How are you doing?
Similar. I've been watching a little, a lot, of the Minneapolis footage and that's been pretty emotional.
Yeah. It's a heavy, heavy time.
I am going to try to help keep us on track. But you know, there are no rules.
Could you start by giving us a snapshot of your organization, through the lens of what was happening “before”, you know, back when life was “normal?”
Our farm is operated by our nonprofit organization, Iwikua.
It’s not so much what we farm, but trying to farm the next generation of farmers to fill this huge land grab that’s going to happen as the chemical companies and plantations leave.
We’re going to have more land available and not enough skilled farmers, which opens the door for more big corporations like the United States military to fill these voids. So we're trying to work as quickly as we can to equip, inspire, and motivate enough young Westside and native Hawaiian kids to farm; to help pick up that call to farm when it does come.
We’ve moved our farm around a few times but have always remained on the west side of Kaua’i.
Pre- COVID, we'd sell only in our moku. Not to toot horns, but when we set up, it was to utilize the whole ahupua'a system as much as we could and stick to that. We do this to support farmers outside of our moku; if they no more farmer over there, then they should grow one.
We're so small. I got part-time help right at the beginning of this COVID thing. My mom has been awesome and my wife and my boys. I have two sons, but the oldest one is three. So he's got a job, but he is not quite there yet where he's helping a ton. So that's kind of the snapshot of the pre-COVID. Selling to local restaurants, one hotel, one boat company, the hospital. Our CSA was pretty small because we just can't grow enough.
That's been our problem- I can't grow enough produce, the opposite problem of some of my counterparts on the other side of the island. Pre-COVID, at Kuamo’o farm, everything was pre-sold when we seeded it. It's been a lot of greens and microgreens because it's kind of uneasy to build on a property we're not going to end up staying on. So we shifted the model to things that we could do quickly and efficiently. Luckily, our contracts in the community have bought into our mission and vision as much as they have our produce. They're really willing to take it when we have it and then go back to buying from the continent when we're out, knowing that eventually, we'll be able to produce for them all the time.
“Hawai’i should be leading the world in sustainability because we're the most isolated islands. It's a shame that we're not. Our kūpuna were the best farmers…Because of the colonization by the United States and then the plantation era, we've kind of skewed pretty hard. ”
Josh Mori by Kalalea Photography
Can you take us into COVID?
Yeah, I have to say this in all honesty: other than people getting sick, I think it's awesome for us. I also feel that the pandemic is obviously real and I feel it's not something to take lightly. I also feel that Hawai’i should be leading the world in sustainability because we're the most isolated islands.
It's a shame that we're not. Our kūpuna were the best farmers. Well, they didn't use the word farmers. They were the best gardeners the world has ever seen, and that's not my language that's stories. So we know the math is there for sustainability. Because of the colonization by the United States and then the plantation era, we've kind of skewed pretty hard.
Going into COVID, as the track coach at the high school and assistant paddling coach, I worked with a ton of kids and had already built a spring break internship for the kids. So when track season was canceled, we just kept rolling that program over. We had six kids on the farm and paid them as essential workers.
We started immediately pivoting into direct community sales, which is where we want to be. We’re designed to maximize our profitability via tourism while it’s here, which funds the CSA, which in turn funds our nonprofit program. It was an easy transition for me. I can't say it's that way for everybody, but for us. I’ve just been working nonstop. I just installed another 3000-gallon tank and it's cycling right now with the fish.
I know that the east side of Kaua’i has a totally different set of problems. For us over here, the problems have been, how can we start producing as much we really need to? We've known this- COVID is not the reason for the problem. I started cover cropping neglected lo’i with organic corn and watermelon, ‘cause we're not growing kalo in them right now. Shoots, let's see if we can regenerate them back into healthy traditional lo’i production, and let's see if we can use the ebb and flow system to grow, you name it, just to get enough food out there.
Every week that passes, people relax a bit more. But all along, there has been a sentiment whispered, amongst people who are growing food; they're tired, they’re working harder than ever, but there's a validation and an incredible feeling that this is the right place to be investing our resources and our time.
Absolutely. Farming is really hard in Hawai’i and unrestricted access to ʻāina, for non-transplants is really difficult. And I don't mean that with a sense of sarcasm. Racial inequality when it comes to farming is by design.
And so I never thought that I would be able to have “unrestricted access to ʻāina” because everything came with terms like ‘you're not going to be here on weekends or you can only come in at this gate certain times.’ We need unrestricted access. If we're going to be working with kids, we need to be living on the farm. We need this so we can do all of the things in the community that we like to do without you telling us, ‘No’. Because you don't have sovereignty if you are asking for permission.
“Racial inequality when it comes to farming is by design.”
A couple of years ago, my dad, he's an engineer, he looked at me and said, ‘I totally see what you’re doing’. I said, ‘what's that?’ He grew up as a farmer and he said, ‘you're banking that everything is going to fail. And that you're going to have food’. I said, ‘I'm not banking. I know we cannot sustain this, you know?’ We cannot sustain the consumption rates of ʻāina, of all of our resources, not just food, you know?
We just can't. We gotta get to work. So I wouldn't even say it's a whisper.
All the food growers that I know who are locally based, like you said, they’re working harder than ever but also knowing that this is what we're supposed to be doing and it feels good in that sense. Like shoots, we don't need anybody to really bring anything in. Maybe we're gonna be hungry for a little bit until we get more ʻāina opened up, but honestly, it's just what has to happen.
One thing that I've taken away from some of these interviews is the inclusion of kūpuna in resource protection. I'm a haole settler; Portuguese/Irish, raised in Massachusetts. The concept is so simple, but I recognize that it felt foreign to me.
There's a guy. His name is Dan Wildcat. He's a professor in Kansas at Haskell Indian Nations University. He coined “relatives not resources.” and his whole pitch was starting to see things as our relatives again and not our resources. So bringing kūpuna in as one of the resources ties in line with that, which is all a connectedness to the ahupua’a system. You're less likely to abuse, you're less likely to waste if you see these things, not as just a resource in the western understanding of resources, which is something that can be depleted, but as a relative. You're more likely to take care of it. And that actually ties directly into the whole story of kuleana and where that comes from in Hawaiʻi, which is so important in understanding kuleana. All of that is tied into that relatives and becoming a relative.
My family and I have been talking about how not all kūpuna are created equal. There’s this romanticizing that when they hit a certain age, the buggahs supa akamai, but at the same time, we know that there are kūpuna that have been selling out for a long time and selling misinformation to further their own advances. There's a responsibility that comes with being kupuna. You're going to age out, that just happens to all of us, time doesn't care, but are you really kupuna?
Kevin Gonsalves and Chris Ka’iakapu by Kalalea Photography
“We don't have enough farmers actually growing food. There's very little diversified ag. There's very little communication between farmers. And I think that one thing that I've personally become more exposed is the racial division and the systemic inequality of local people having access to farm.”
You were talking about the differences in needs on the east side vs. the west side. I'm curious, what are the big pukas that you've seen emerge in this time?
There's a lot of people growing food for an unsustainable system. Just on the west side of Kaua’i, we have 3000 acres of ag land being used to grow crops that are not for human consumption. So they say they’re growing food, but these ‘essential workers’ doing ag, are growing food for cows in Iowa or conducting trials for fields that will be planted in Nebraska.
We don't have enough farmers actually growing food. There's very little diversified ag. There's very little communication between farmers. And I think that one thing that I've personally become more exposed is the racial division and the systemic inequality of local people having access to farm.
I think local people are being displaced because people are coming over, with skills. Perhaps they are a permaculture farmer, from Vermont or from whatever. Why are you doing that over here? Why aren't we building up our own community instead of importing, you're still an import and we still only have so many resources. So you come over here as a hungry mouth, on ʻāina that is probably someone's kuleana land, that they've been disconnected from There's a whole backstory to every parcel. And for me, I see that big time.
Some farms, not on the west side, had too much produce. They couldn't get rid of all of it.
You have all these farmers, brought in by whomever the farm, the 90-acre parcels, and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. And these cats, you know, they are people of color. So I feel for them, but they don't have connectedness in this community. Then you have these very wealthy farms in these hippie communities that are growing food, and they also have no connectedness in this community. So when the farmer's market shuts down and they're not out there smiling and trying to peddle their stuff, they don't know anybody in the actual hungry community, which tends to be the brown community, the native Hawaiian community.
So they're calling me, to try and get us to offload their produce. And I'm saying, no, that's your problem. It shows that you aren't connected in your community, which means you shouldn't be farming there. You should be farming in Vermont, which is really harsh to say, but that's the truth.
We need to build up our young people-our young high school graduates, our middle school kids- to want to be farmers and show them that it is a good life. You're not lazy. You're not all these things that the plantation era has done, so well, to make you feel like you were.
“We need to build up our young people-our young high school graduates, our middle school kids- to want to be farmers and show them that it is a good life. You're not lazy. You're not all these things that the plantation era has done, so well, to make you feel like you were.”
Over here, one of the real issues is that we have two totally separate economies. We have two totally separate systems. You have a local system, which is totally identified with the plantation as the real mark of who they are. And I am a part of that, I guess. And then you have this community of settlers, that I consider transient.
Josh Mori by Kalalea Photography
And I use haole, not as a skin tone, but as a mindset that's escapist. ‘I'm going to come over here and I'm gonna live out my best life. I'm gonna surf every day.’ In America you can do that. Hawai’i is not a place where you can just come and do whatever you want. And it all circles back to what we're talking about as far as sustainability and resources per ahupua’a.
“Hawai’i is not a place where you can just come and do whatever you want.”
We have a ton of people crossing those boundaries without knowing those boundaries are even there. And we have a ton of people being really upset about it, but because they've been so pacified from the plantation era, they take it out in their big truck, blowing black smoke without ever having the conversation. We need to have this conversation, because now, without people coming in, you kind of see where all the chips are and you kind of see exactly who is on this island.
We’ve got to try and figure out a way but I'm probably the last person to be like, ‘Oh, we need to all come together,’ because I don't believe in that either. That always comes off the work of black and brown people. When settlers are ready to heal, it always comes when they're ready, not when we're ready. So I'm probably the last person who's going to advocate for let's sit down and let's make it pono.
Lines are being crossed and people are frustrated and I'm not smart enough to know how to fix all those things nor is that my job, but we've got work to do.
I live in Haʻikū, as a tenant on an ag parcel and I recognize I am a face of gentrification in this neighborhood. My next-door neighbors are the only local, multi-generational, traditional agricultural operation remaining in a multi-mile radius. I live next to a pig farm- that's how I got this rental - because no one wants to live next to noisy, smelly ag. On the opposite side of me there’s another haole lady that even after 15, 20 years still can't handle the sound of a rooster.
What are you even doing on ag land if you aren’t farming? Maui is 20 years ahead as far as the gentrification issues, and you guys are figuring out in your own way how to work with that. The Kaua’i thing, we haven't even started to talk about cultural appropriation, linguistic appropriation, and these new brands popping up.
Up in Kalāheo, these new settlers are totally privileged, living on ag parcels, planting their little trees. They’ve got no understanding of what they're doing and where it's going, but they're living out their best dream on a million-dollar property. Totally barring people who could be producing for the community, while appropriating some Hawaiian name on their fruit stand, some name they got off of Google.
“…they're living out their best dream on a million-dollar property. Totally barring people who could be producing for the community, while appropriating some Hawaiian name on their fruit stand, some name they got off of Google.”
It's really important, especially at this time, for allies to understand the roles of allies. My wife is Polish, a hundred percent. We've been having a lot of conversations about the mounting pressure of serving as an ally. It's really important to have conversations and community about what it is to be a good ally. Because everybody’s got feelings and people should be able to talk about those feelings. Whether they feel like it's their right to take up an ag plot and hate chickens, they still should be able to get that out there, but also they need to be receptive to hearing, ‘Shut up.’ Maybe in another place where you're from, maybe the native people have been run out of there for so long, that you didn't know that at one time that place was run differently. But here, we still remember what system actually makes this wheel spin and the understanding of how resources are shared.
There’s this secondary economy that has totally written out people of color. We have local stores that are pitched only to white audiences. I don't know any brown people who go there. We have whole spaces where local people, and I talk about local as being part of the plantation system, local people being completely written out of this new economy. Stores catering to people who just moved here, and what they think is cool. It's very frustrating. And I hope that through COVID, some positives can come from this reflection. The necessity to communicate within a community.
“I hope this conversation keeps up. I hope we really start to talk about inequality in Hawaiʻi and unrestricted access to ʻāina, and reconnecting kanaka with ʻāina in a way that works and makes sense.”
Let's talk about the positives. What do you see happening now that we want to keep in place as we move through this?
I guess I have to show my cards that in a former life, I was an instructor at Montana State University. I was a lecturer and an adjunct instructor and race is kind of my thing. So by whatever means, let's talk about it.
They do the “draw scientists” prompt and most kids in the western world will draw a white male with glasses and a beard. That's an actual thing. I bet if you did “draw a farmer”, they would draw a white dude with a flannel shirt and cowboy boots and a John Deere tractor. Right? So this whole racial discussion, what we're doing, we gotta talk about it. I hope this conversation keeps up. I hope we really start to talk about inequality in Hawaiʻi and unrestricted access to ʻāina, and reconnecting kanaka with ʻāina in a way that works and makes sense. And really, if you think I'm hard on the white community, I’m probably harder on the Hawaiian community.
Buster Kamolekueokaaona Mikolaj Mori, Marie Mori, Josh Mori and Furious Keahonui Henio Mori by Kalalea Photography
I tell my kids that I'm harder on brown kids than I am on our white kids because the world is going to be. I don't want to give them a free ride because I feel the pain, I want to make them sharper so that they are prepared because they are going to have to work harder.
I would actually like to see us stop tourism a lot more and really reel back. I think these are all really positive things that are happening as a consequence of a pandemic. I hope that we have people in positions of power that actually see that as a positive thing. Not just ‘We need to get the tourists back because of the economy!’ Let the tourism thing die. It's only 50 years old. Before that we used to export food, let’s get back on that.
“Today, I'm selling greens to my neighbors that I never thought would eat my greens, you know? And people are loving it. Nothing like a pandemic to shock the system a little bit.”
I think that we’re seeing a lot of people starting to eat a little healthier, we can be an unhealthy community on the westside. That obviously comes from the plantation era. It comes from poverty. It comes from how we identify. Today, I'm selling greens to my neighbors that I never thought would eat my greens, you know? And people are loving it. Nothing like a pandemic to shock the system a little bit. And I hope it shocks a little bit more. I hope we lose some of those Matson containers at sea, I hope that we can't get so much sugar over here.
I've seen a lot more people eating kalo and ulu. It's going directly to people who want it and the people who don't have a palate for it, maybe they are leaning towards having a palate for it. I think that's super important. Some of the nutritional things that have happened are really positive.
There are negative things, too. Domestic abuse, violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse have obviously been huge problems for a long time in Hawaiʻi, not just here, but in all places. I see a ton of that and suicide, mental health issues. I think these are things that we're not talking about as part of the negative effects of this pandemic. Every day, I tie all of these things to ʻāina connectedness and kuleana. If you understand kuleana, then you’ve got your hands in the dirt at some point, because that's just what it is. And my definition of kuleana is an inescapable obligation to mālama ʻāina, as it goes back to the story of Hāloa.
“If you understand kuleana, then you’ve got your hands in the dirt at some point, because that's just what it is.”
Kevin Gonsalves, Chris Ka’iakapu, Josh Mori, Furious Keahonui Henio Mori, Marie Mori, Buster Kamolekueokaaona Mikolaj Mori, and Lynn Mori photographed by Kalalea Photography
What can average people in the community do to be investing in our resilient food future?
One thing people can do is fund opportunities at existing places like Ma’o Farms. Get onboard- support Ma’o. They're 20 years strong. They've done phenomenal stuff in their community.
If you can’t find one in your community, then you're not looking hard enough because it's there. If they're willing, then they'll help you. If not, well, I guess you’re out of luck because it shows you're not a part of the community. When you are a part of a community, then these resources and these opportunities will become made to you.
How it all ties back to the whole racial division and inequality thing, is that now, when there are tough times, people want us to help them. They want us to distill this magical Hawaiian knowledge of how food grows in these islands. It’s not magic- it's work. It’s having access to water, access to ʻāina and not being stigmatized and not having only hotels coming and telling our kids that's where they can work when they get older or they have to leave [Hawai’i] to have a good job or that the kids at Seabury are the only ones that are gonna be successful.
“They want us to distill this magical Hawaiian knowledge of how food grows in these islands. It’s not magic- it's work.”
We need to take this thing on, and ag is just a portion of that. It’s not my job to educate these people on their supremacy. It's not, I will not do it. Even though we know that education is the key, it is also not our job to come to the table on their terms and say, okay, this is how we do this.
I'm not ma’a to all of this. I'm learning. It's not like I have all this knowledge. I gave up the university job, came home, and started farming. I'm learning every single day, but at the same time, I don't have the energy to bring a bunch of people along with me. They should be doing their internal work because farming and learning this stuff is just an outlet for whatever guilt they're feeling, for living on a million-dollar ag parcel.
If you don't know, you don't have a vision and you're not connected- maybe the next guy or gal will be nice enough to help you. But I’m not the one. That's the hardest one of all the questions you asked.
It’s not your job. I do feel like, as haole, it's my job to work in this space. Obviously, I'm still learning and I've made a lot of missteps, you know, virtue signaling and all the things. And gosh, right now with Minneapolis, all of a sudden, my social media is so toxic. I got into an argument with some girl I went to high school with and I’m like are we still dealing with white privilege deniers in 2020?
Before you called, I was already thinking about this morning. I don't know if I'm in the right mindset because what I'm trying to figure out right now is how do I become an ally to the white community to help them do the work that they need to do, which is to dismantle racism.
Brown people didn't create this racist system. It has been imposed upon us. We are the recipients of hate. We cannot take this on. It needs to be white people on the frontline of fighting against those police and protecting, making a barrier. It has to be white people. It cannot continue to be black and brown people. How do we really urge the white community? This goes beyond Minneapolis, this is what we're talking about in Hawaiʻi, because we're talking about systemic racism. You don't see any Monsanto inside of a white community. You see the highest usage of pesticides next to the biggest population of native Hawaiian speakers per capita, that’s Kekaha.
We need more of that awareness in the community and it does tie to ag. I think it's very pertinent to this conversation and it is timely because of what's happening throughout the United States. While I don't believe we're part of the United States, that sickness still trickles over here. We very much live and embody that racism every day, as a separation tactic.
When I think about ag, I believe that it's a mechanism to take on the larger systemic problems. And it’s the most necessary, ‘cause everybody's got to eat. If they get interested in the food they're eating and then that food helps open their mind to the greater injustice of how more of this food isn't being created or how it could be done better or differently.
“When I think about ag, I believe that it's a mechanism to take on the larger systemic problems. And it’s the most necessary, ‘cause everybody's got to eat.”
If you don't look around and see we have Hawaiians and people of color trying to farm and all these representatives, all these legislative sessions, aren’t getting anything done for us. You're not opening up in the land and helping us get it, you know? I can't speak for other farmers, but for me, it's tied into this larger narrative of inequality. I think it's a good mechanism to get people to think about it because we're feeding them.
Josh Mori and Kevin Gonsalves by Kalalea Photography
How do you see this time period, as being described in the history books of the future?
Who is writing said history book? Cause we know that history is usually not told by us. It was usually told by someone else who didn't live it. Right? Look at the Bible, it was written by cats who weren't even there, you know? I hope it's written through the eyes of people who were here, who were on the ground. I hope there are multiple volumes because you know, one book doesn't contain all the truth. If we haven't learned from 3000 years of that one book not being accurate for everybody. I hope it's written in multiple languages. I hope it's written, in the very first chapter, of the revitalization of agriculture in Hawaiʻi as the main economy. I really do hope that this is just a jump-off point. Just like how settler sustainable ag started with the great depression in North America.
“I'm thankful for those uncles and aunties who came way before so that we can be part of this movement to help try to revitalize our community.”
Who have you seen stepping up in the community during this time?
I don't leave my ahupua’a. So I would stick to typically pretty much on this side of the Island. Kaina Makua. He's from Aloha Aina Poi Company and Kumano I Ke Ala, the nonprofit I work really closely with doing kūpuna meals. He's out there giving away 150 meals every Friday to kūpuna. Some of our salads are in there, he's got ulu. He's been able to mobilize a lot of different people from different farms.
I'm thankful for those uncles and aunties who came way before so that we can be part of this movement to help try to revitalize our community. It's pretty grim. I'm not gonna lie.
Peleke Flores is another one over at Malama Huleia. I think he's someone who is with, you know, revitalizing the fishpond would have a different take. We have ‘Ohana Sundays. He brings his five kids and his ‘ohana, his sister, cause they grew up on this property that I'm on now. He was at Paepae o He’eia on O’ahu, now he's over here with the fishpond restoration project at Malama Huleia. He’s a mastermind brain and hard worker, and he is someone who is very intelligent about a lot of these aspects, sustainability, and agriculture. So he is someone that inspires me.
Josh Mori, by Kalalea Photography
Mahalo for your time Josh. It's been really nice to get to know you a little bit.