Kuike Kamakea-Ohelo
Photographer: Ka’ohua Photgraphy
“If food is the fabric to our existence, then the farmers and fishermen are the needle. Society in general is the thimble. We need to become the driving force behind the needle, behind the fishermen and farmers, to provide food security, food relevancy, and ultimately food sovereignty.”
Can you give us a snapshot of what life was like before COVID and how have things changed since?
A year ago I was busy, busy, busy farming. I also got busy with a little bit of community activism. Life for me got super busy. So speaking about feeding the communities, I always believe in feeding through a more wholesome perspective. When I say that- I don't only mean the physical food, but the emotional, the psychological, the spiritual, and sometimes the economical food as well -- providing opportunities for people and giving them hope for their future.
In the months leading up to COVID, I was really busy in a spiritual and political battle with the local governments. Right before COVID I spent five months in an occupation at Hūnānaniho to protect iwi kupuna [human remains] and ʻāina. It's very much relevant to the food systems that we're talking about, because without ʻāina we cannot have food.
“How we take care of the elderly is how our mo’opuna, or grandchildren, will malama us.”
Can you take us to the present, now 8 weeks into lockdown?
Before I became a farmer, I was raised as a fisherman. I come from a fishing family. We also grew our own food. I grew up with a cow in the yard. The neighbor had sheep and geese. I grew up with chickens...
So COVID life for me is about going holoholo and putting food or fish on the table, not only for our family, but the community around us, as well as anyone in need. For instance, the other day, I received a call that a kupuna was in need of i’a -- not just any i’a, or fish, but a specific i’a. I was blessed enough to go holoholo and provide for the kupuna’s needs. So yes, we need to be considering feeding the community at scale, meaning the community as a whole, but we also need to be considerate about the personal relationships within our communities. How we take care of the elderly is how our mo’opuna, or grandchildren, will mālama [take care of] us.
That has been a recurring theme in our interviews: that resources are relationships as opposed to something extractive.
So everything's relative, it's just a matter of scale. So whether it's Uncle George Kahumoku’s one square foot garden or a whole ahupua’a, or valley, it's all relative. It's really reliant on the willingness of the people: How much they pay attention, how much they’re willing to see the job through, because anything's achievable.
We want to take it one small step at a time, especially being an island community and understanding that our resources are finite. There aren’t too many more mistakes we can make.
The land for farming is very minimal right now. The budget from the state to farm that land is even more minimal. I’ll share an example: In the 2018 USDA report, only 0.4% of the state's annual budget is allocated to the department of agriculture. Not even half a percent. Of that 0.4%, only 10% of that directly correlates to producing food. Now whoever's reading this, that's so much legislators care about you.
I want to add some perspective and context. Food is the very fabric of our existence. Of course, we cannot exist without clean water and clean air, but food is what man controls. If food is the fabric to our existence, then the farmers and fishermen are the needle. Society in general is the thimble. We need to become the driving force behind the needle, behind the fishermen and farmers, to provide food security, food relevancy, and ultimately food sovereignty.
If food is the fabric to our existence, then the farmers and fishermen are the needle. Society in general is the thimble. We need to become the driving force behind the needle, behind the fishermen and farmers, to provide food security, food relevancy, and ultimately food sovereignty.”
And what’s the kuleana of the thread? To stitch everything together, to hold things together, and make it practical. So in this context the thread is the pilina, or relationships. The pilina between you and the food, between you and the food producers, and between you and yourself. So we have to stop looking at food through the lens of a capitalistic mindset. We have to start reviving, relying on, and building relationships.
The thimble is also love, and that's what the community needs to explore. There needs to be more love, more kindness.
We need to be more kind, more humble, and more patient. Because when you throw the seed in the soil, you're not going to eat a salad tomorrow. It takes a generation to grow a tree to provide for the community. So we need the loving mindset.
We need to be patient and start to build one stone at a time. One call at a time, one wall at a time, one banana at a time.
”We need our community to be more active and involved in the food system”
We need our community to be more active and involved in the food system. My mom said, “We just have to provide them the means.” And I said, “Well, we've seen it happen before.” I shared the example of Ilima Ho-Lastimosa’s efforts to bring free aquaponics to the homestead communities. All the households had to do was show up, attend the class, and build their own. You could go home with an aquaponics kit that ranges from a couple hundred to a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of materials.
“Our people are too comfortable with the food system they live in already.”
But our people are too comfortable with the food system that they live in already. They're not experiencing food trauma as people did several generations back in the Great Depression. My kupuna two, three generations ago grew food and subsidized it with the food from the grocery store, because they never had that much money. Today's generation, we're not experiencing that. When the time comes and there are people that need food, I think change is going to happen. But as we sit right now, even through COVID, people are just too comfortable in the food system. I mean, they still prefer to go to the store. They still prefer to get a job, earn some money, and pay for their food. They're not taking responsibility for feeding themselves.
We need to be the driving force behind the needle, to support our industries. The food system in Hawai’i is heavily reliant on our fishermen. We have been for generations, and it's a part of our culture, but we need to put people on ‘aina. We need to put farmers on ‘aina. That's the bottom line. We need to build relationships and reconnect people to ‘aina.
"We need to put farmers on ‘aina. That's the bottom line. We need to build relationships and reconnect people to ‘aina.”
Ku’ike, can you tell us what big system vulnerabilities you've seen exposed during this period?
One of the issues that I've seen is with the distribution of food. We've had this conversation before: the barges didn't necessarily stop. The food imports didn’t necessarily stop. It may have slowed down, but it didn't stop. The food was not reaching (or slowly reaching) the people who needed it the most. And a lot of Hawai’i or O’ahu has witnessed this over the years, but I've seen some blue collar working families spend their entire life earning money to buy the food. When the whole family loses their jobs, and unemployment is dragging its feet, they run out of food.
I believe O’ahu had enough food. It just wasn't getting to the people who needed it the most. That is a big flaw, and it's not sustainable.
“I believe O’ahu had enough food. It just wasn't getting to the people who needed it the most. That is a big flaw, and it's not sustainable.”
That’s a small window into what may happen at the largest scale. I've seen numbers for the food distribution that the city and the county are involved with in central O’ahu. They're feeding upwards of 4,000 families. We're talking about an island community that has close to a million residents on O’ahu alone. That's not even a drop in the bucket. If they're having a hard time providing food for 4,000 families, I would hate to see what it would look like at 40,000 families or 400,000 families.
The fact that we cannot feed ourselves is very, very scary. The food system in Hawaii is heavily reliant on the tourism industry. If the tourism industry dies, so does that food system, in its current state.
The mass majority of the food being provided, grown or imported, is for the tourism industry and the military. Not much is for the residents of Hawaii, you can tell by what's left on the shelves.
What's left on the shelves?
Crap. The first things that disappeared were rice, flour, and yeast. So understanding that, our legislators, or the powers that be, should be taking notes. They must be taking notes about the first things that disappeared and in which communities. For weeks we couldn't find flour and yeast; we had to order our yeast off of Amazon, just so we could provide bread. Providing healthy, fresh starches for our communities was the first objective in our family.
So we knew that in order to sustain our family and those around us, we needed to provide a source of protein and a source of starch. We have ‘ulu, we have mai’a, we have kalo, but we had to wean our people onto the COVID-19 diet; we simplified our food. That way we don't have to spend a lot of energy or resources in producing the food.
What are the changes that are happening now? Are there things that you're seeing that you want to stay in place?
There are three things that I would like to see:
One, more options or access to simple food. And when I say simple food, I also mean clean, because anybody can produce food with chemicals. I'm a big advocate for clean food, especially in naturally grown foods.
Two, food that is culturally relevant. I don't like to eat green beans, especially if they’re in a can. I don’t mind eating mashed potatoes and turkey and gravy, but that's not the kind of diet that I prefer. I don’t believe that will sustain me.
Three, we need more programs within the community that'll build relationships between the next generations and their food. Because to me, the separation between the Hawaiian people and ‘aina is what has led to our demise as a people.
There’s a separation between our ‘aina, our kupuna, and ourselves. We have to reconnect. Every person, it doesn't matter what race, color or creed, we need to be connected to nature. We need to be connected to ‘aina. So keep building the tensile strength in that thread, making it strong..
Building strong relationships between food and its people. That's what needs to continue post-COVID.
“Building strong relationships between food and its people. I think that's what needs to continue post-COVID.”
How would you like to see this period described in the history books of the future?
Usually these kinds of events are described by the amount of people who passed away. That's what history tells us. If we want to change that in the future, then we should highlight the positivity, or the things that we want to see. We just speak that into existence: more food hubs, more small farms, more access to them. We need to talk about the things that we want to see come out of it and speak them into life.
I would love to see in the history books of the future if that becomes a reality. When our keiki look back, and their keiki look back, and they go, “Tutu, what's this COVID-19 stuff?” We could say, “Oh, that's that time when our island community finally got it together, banded up, and built the food system that you thrive off of today. That was your kupuna.” That's the legacy that we want to leave behind as good ancestors. That's what I would like to see recorded in the history books: how the communities came together, and how it is a hundred percent possible. We can do it ourselves. We don't have to wait for the government's hand.
What can the community do to support your efforts or strengthen this system we want to see?
I've said this for years now, and I got this from a mentor of mine, David Wong: We need to leave a legacy of clean food, clean air, and clean water. However that's delivered to the future determines our legacy. Whatever you're doing at home, whatever decisions you're making for yourself and your family -- whether it's macro or micro, just the day-to-day lifestyle things -- are you working towards a future of clean food, clean air, and clean water? Ask yourself.
“Are you working towards a future of clean food, clean air, and clean water? Ask yourself.”
If that's what you want to leave for your mo’opuna, for your great-grandchildren, then ask yourself: How do you contribute to that future? Whether it's through supporting small farmers, or showing up on Capitol Hill, or supporting local businesses... How are you contributing to a future of clean food, clean air, clean water? Everybody has a different kuleana. Everybody can help at different scales, macro or micro. As long as we're working towards that same goal, we will live on forever. That's the kind of legacy that I believe can come out of this epidemic. You just have to want it and put it into action.
Who’s inspiring you? Who do you see showing up for the community right now?
Well, first and foremost, mahalo ke akua. I do want to give a shout out to Auntie Tammy and Hale Kealoha for all they do for our communities, and the kupuna at Lunalilo Home. I want to shout out Kupu for providing food and nourishment for our communities. And Waimanalo Limu Hui for being on the ground over here in Waimanalo, connecting the dots, being the thimble, and bringing the food to the communities. I want to give a huge shout out to the farmers and fishermen out there who sustain us as an island community. To all of those who I didn't mention, mahalo to you as well. And for those of you who are tuning in, mahalo to you for your time, because only together we can get through this. Lauryn, mahalo for hosting!
