Ahupua'a: Native Hawaiians Taking Back Their Watersheds

foreign [Music] Village and I want to welcome you to our nation the stronghold of Independence in Hawaii this is the whole Watershed the whole system at least the water is part of it and then the people that live there to maintain that so could actually drink water off the mountain the water come down like you walk in on the side right and I could drink water from them yeah I cannot do that of course yeah for our ancient people if you couldn't drink from the stream that meant you had to walk really far to go get a drink of water if you're fishermen we're fishing in brown Water you weren't going to get good and healthy fish and you probably weren't going to eat for a while we call water in Hawaiian like we call people who are rich Viva water water so having a lot of water meant you were abundant so these people up here had a huge role to the whole Community to make sure that this precious resource was managed properly it was a very effective efficient system that was in harmony with Mother Earth and that's why when the people got separated all over the world that had relations with the land and that started to take Mother Earth into a whole mess we had so much you know coming off of our land we had so much food nobody had to worry about any of these things that's why we didn't have these social problems that we have today and I think bringing back the albuqua and especially bringing back that mindset of caring about others of sharing resources of equality that's something we want for our nation for our people but that's something we want for the world and that's something we want to teach others about [Music] welcome to Hawaii we're here visiting the nation of Hawaii a sovereign Aboriginal group looking at the restoration of the traditional ahupua a watershed scale agricultural system that goes from the top of the mountain down all the way into the ocean the most important thing to know about our nation is that our ancestors wants to live in a highly organized system based on communal antenna or ahupua so by restoring our independence it restores our not right but our responsibility to Mother Earth to the land system is important especially as Hawaiians from the mountains of the ocean my ancestors and my grandfather really set up our futures in a good way for us to have our responsibilities [Music] is a ancient ecological agricultural system that sustained the Hawaiian people for thousands of years it was a land division that stretches from Mountain to ocean that relied on fresh water running from the mountain going all the way out to the ocean undisturbed the main goal of this was that the fresh water was shared with all of the people that's all our system works you have to worry about other people because you worrying about other people ensures that the whole system protects you Waimanalo stream is only stream in Waimanalo everything else is Springs when that stream runs through our village and it leaves it goes through these agricultural Lots storm dreams from these streets pour into this River so you're getting all kind of stuff rubbish motor oil people cleaning their house the stream is now going past the golf course which use pesticides so that's getting added to the Stream and then it finally leaves through a military base Bellows Air Force Station at the end that is not how should be it is in a constant disarray with the amount of hikers tourists and just explosion of interaction with people we have generations of seeds in the ground that were dismantled from their normal environment to bring them back is going to be much more difficult we want to make sure that the restoration continues and that we can start to drink our water again from these places and that our kids can Thrive and have stories to pass on in these places that belong to the people that live here foreign systems and our people the community was to take care of Mother Earth and that got taken away at the White House yesterday President Clinton signed a formal letter of apology to the people of Hawaii we will never be Americans he was apologizing on behalf of the U.S government for the government's involvement a hundred years ago in removing the independent Hawaiian monarchy by force the governor and the state legislature have recognized the right of Hawaiians to form a Sovereign Nation it felt like we was going to get our lands back the next day serious that's how excited that's how much we believe in the law that is a real real uh Denial on the part of the government you know it's kind of like turning your Blind Eye I'll be kind of Helly in the Ohana Council represent one extreme it's a session from the United States demanding total Independence under the U.N Charter we are entitled to the land that we stand on the water in the land the ocean and the air we beat while it is highly unlikely Hawaiians will get all the land they want their demands once dismissed with radical and unrealistic are being taken seriously living in the Hawaiian people end up as a territory on the what is called a decolonization process under the United Nations article 73. the president of the United States at no time in history has there been a more important conference than this one in San Francisco and article 73 of the United Nations Charter of 1945 where to ensure we do respect to the culture of the people's concern their political economic social educational advancement just treatment and protection against abuses real sacred [ __ ] took place that time you know oh my God everybody [Music] [Applause] all right they figured out we'll just get them off the beach put them in this Forest they probably give up after a couple years and you know we'll never hear from them again you know you went from protesting getting all this attention and all that then coming up here now it's time to work it's not the protest anymore it's about you know building yeah [Music] foreign it was a tough goal you know building it up with no resources we had no help from the state no help from the federal government we had a lot of donations from people that that really believed in in the stuff that we were doing a lot of people were just intimidated with the amount of work that had to be done so they didn't want to you know live up here they thought we was crazy you flash forward to now this is probably one of the most sought after places to live as a Hawaiian it's like the Garden of Eden but this wasn't here when we first got here this took 28 years because of our unique position here in Waimanalo being on the Watershed we know that this can be a great example for not just Hawaiians but for everybody around the world of how we can restore something and that's what we want others to come and join us in doing [Music] welcome to Waimanalo hola Poco is this whole mountain range and they're made of porous lava rock when they interact with the clouds the moisture from that region soaks down into the Earth and it usually takes 25 plus years to get into our aquifers but that is the borders of our Waimanalo watershed [Music] whatever you're going to be doing is going to be so like micro defined by your ex you know what your oh we don't want to hit this Terrace here but oh this tree here where it's really here going to come down to like staking walking hand Transit and all that stuff yeah at the very top of the aqua is a realm called The Vow akua it's above the cloud lines specifically described as a space for arakua or our Gods you can't help but think that you're in heaven looking at the clouds existing at that very same altitude this space was normally restricted specifically for biodiversity to thrive in this area under the vauokua is a space called the valkele Kelly in Hawaiian means to be surrounded by water very very wet so when you imagine the difference between the vawakua above the clouds and going down just a little bit and being submerged within the clouds there's a totally different environment within that space [Music] under the Val Kelly there's another section of the ahupa called the Bao nahele which is the Ancient Forest or the reserved forest in the back this area usually was still remote but was left for the natural fauna the natural ability of the forest to fully just take control of the aqua and provide resources for down below this is where you would start to see your canoe vessels this is where you would start to see the Harvest of some bigger Timbers that were starting to feel the effects of all the different encroachment of like the altitude dealing with higher forces of wind getting a stronger Timber so that's what we're starting to harvest our eucalyptus and our invasive trees that have taken over that space so the Watershed the aqua system now has a new villain in its house so if we don't start to interact with the Val nahele and start to make sure that the native species start to thrive we're at a losing battle I'm going to show you some of the inspiration and some of the things that we're fighting with this restoration and why we jump in is because the invasive trees are starting to take over all these ancient walls and terracings that took hundreds of man hours if not thousands to make sure that this was going to be here for all time the good thing with these eucalyptus they make pretty good beans so structure wise will be able to utilize these invasive trees for good reasons also when we remove these invasive trees we're going to be replanting our original endemic trees that were once here before under the Val nahele is an area called the vowel it's an area where we tended the forest in comparison to letting the forests do its natural course so it's an era we interacted with a lot more [Music] a lot of these Stones probably are in the 500 600 pound range and above just for size comparison imagine how many people would take to move this Stone even if it's just 50 yards all that effort was done for a reason what's the biggest Stone you could lift I lost count at over 100 Terraces going up in this direction it's terraced for at least a quarter mile all the way up to the mountain face it's one of those rare scenarios where the altitude is a very special place for where we access water so the terracing extends all the way to the spring sources it's not so common to see terracing in the valley but not uncommon because of the resources that were used for our fishing vessels all the ocean activities Prime resources so it wasn't uncommon [Music] we're up here to show you some of the scientific Brilliance of our ancient people this stone is erected at a specific angle so our Solstice markers in the summer winter you'll start to see the sun rise on each end of the stone in front of it so this would be your winter solstice you wake up here you watch the sunrise the sun would come out of this quadrant from the sky summer solstice the exact opposite it would come up in this quadrant on the opposite side of the stone so if you were in ancient times and you were a farmer it was valuable to know when the wet season was going to come when's the best time to plant when's the best time to harvest when am I going to interact with all these other variables that's going to affect what I'm special at if a single seed for one of these invasive trees starts to fall into any one of these cracks we're no longer going to get the same picture and message that this was intended for us so it's a huge goal to make sure that the generations follow get that same message this type of work is giving energy into our practitioners again and letting them have a safe space has just permaculture and eating well there was a whole system that was taking place here and how people were really thriving in these environments and making it the best it possibly could in terms of its resources mahalo in the area called the Val kanaka that's an area under the integrated Forest under the tended forest in an area we inhabited cultivated made home for dwelling and farming and Recreation so the Val kanaka is a is a filter point where we're able to take the resources from the Upper Mountain transfer them into usable habitatable resources and then make sure that they're better off for its interaction with the ocean and with our sustainable use of tarot patches and fish ponds that ultimately interacts the Deep oceans better makes our fishing better and ultimately a better Island wanted to share with you our Wetland terracing so this is some of the examples of how we would bring in stream water to feed some of our crops and this plant in particular haloa or taro is our eldest brother and our creation story it's the provider for our Hawaiian people as long as we keep planting in a succession there'll always be food for us in our in our community okay Aloha welcome to kekaha we're in an area called the Kula Plains lower portion of the ahua right before the ocean so this is the integration between stream water and where we start to see some of the brackish water close to the ocean you see what they're doing over there so we just finished harvesting that that patch and they're cutting hooley which we'll we'll plant in this patch I'll plant that at the end of the day what remnants what I left in that patch just for planning material we're going to harvest probably five or six hundred pounds of food right in you know a couple of hours that would be enough to you know feed the whole Community for a couple days yeah so we're we're blessed and we just keep going still making more tarot patches in the area that that we've been given so I really feel what I'm doing is trying to give back to the island in the community to pay my debt of being allowed to live here our relationship with this plant goes back multiple thousands of years all the way into our creation stories if you start having that same person eat rice and substitute the starch and carbs we're starting to see heart problems diabetes all kinds of different issues with health so reverting back to hollow and Tarot it's super important to getting our communities back in touch with their health the whole plan is edible so we can keep the leaf which we're going to cook down we can keep this part which you can cook down and this part is is the corn the Kalo that they're going to cook and make toy with what we need is food sustainability for our community because over 95 percent of the food is imported here to Hawaii with the community efforts activated we want to see this replicated all over this mountain so that we have tarot on our table again our people are eating the right foods that we should be eating so that we're nice and strong and better neighbors to each other [Music] here we are at the bottom of the ahupada system on one of our fish pond walls this is where the brackish water of the fish pond meets the sea water or the ocean water and the mixture between the two is a very interesting space where our young fish all of our nutrients really start to interact with each other most of what we're eating doesn't come from the surrounding Waters it's kind of just really sad so trying to make use of the fish pond and restore this Ingenuity of our ancestors is extremely relevant you know and then there's all the other lessons that come along with it right it's like of course the end game is restore the fish pond grow the fish feed the people in Hawaii throughout the archipelago there were probably in excess of 400 fish ponds along the way we'll start with the Makaha which is kind of like the the lifeline of the fishpond this Pond is 88 acres in size so it's kind of big they had the ability to feed a population of about 7 000. fish ponds are traditional forms of aquaculture this is a locoi akuapa and it represents a more technologically advanced form of traditional aquaculture that utilizes not just the wall the kuapai is what defines the fish pond but then what you see behind me is a Makaha or a sluice gate it's what keeps our local healthy it's what keeps our fish happy it's what circulates water but it's also the mechanism by which we stock the pond and it's also the mechanism by which our kupuna harvested from the fish pond right now our tide is rising large fish are attracted to that this would be a harvesting tide and the pond always drains warm murky Waters those Waters hold nutrients they also hold an abundance of phytoplankton zooplankton and so those are like attracting Waters and that's uh that's why we call it a stocking tide or a recruiting tide small fish are attracted to the waters contained within the pond and so they're always able to fit through the gate while preventing the large fish from leaving at its time it was extremely innovative [Music] you cannot have a fish pond function without fresh water so if we use the presence of fish ponds as indicators of the abundance of fresh water then it tells the story of what the freshwater resource was like a hundred years ago all the work that we do in the mountains accumulate an outcome Downstream so huge responsibility to people to find ways of capturing sediment and the spaces in which we want to start producing more food like our fish ponds we want to make sure that all of our interactions Upstream ultimately benefit our community because our general issue is there's not enough water for our tarot Farmers so from a position of being so close to this resource so important to everyone in our community to make sure that it's properly managed what kept all our Taro Farmers up at night in the ancient days they worried about the hottie hoi in Hawaiian is the return they didn't worry about where the water was coming from because the guy above them they also use that water his main focus was to get you water [Music] in the middle of our awesome Waimanalo stream we have a situation of a golf course ultimately using the water in the wrong resource for our whole community if we own the golf course we're not going to do anything but let nature do its thing because what we don't want and what we don't need in Hawaii is another golf course we're good on golf courses the real goal is to make sure that everything goes from top to bottom clean that everyone has a right to that resource and It ultimately is better for the ecosystem the more people we have on board for that the better off will be and it is Our intention to begin restoring here where we can control in the nation of Hawaii restore our relationship with water you know begin having conversations with our neighbors let them know that we want to help restore the wall we want to help restore the streams we want the streams to be clean for not just us but for your children you live here this is not just a restoration for Hawaiian culture and all of that this is for your safety what a perfect demonstration we can see the whole system of hydrology Water Management agriculture forestry land restoration culture aquaculture all in this one microcosm of the ahupua'a it's like a microcosm for restoring all the watersheds of the world the important part for the Loey farmer is not the amount of water coming into their system with the amount and the quality of water that is put back into the system for the users below I think that's one of the most powerful things that we have to learn from the Hawaiian system here that sacred responsibility to Downstream users so the fact that they're actually restoring their Terraces and putting back those checks of water management and agricultural production it's super epic and it's super impactful in the whole watershed we're looking for Solutions whether it's permaculture whether it's our own indigenous knowledge and if our ancestors were here today they'd be right alongside us doing exactly what we're doing they wouldn't be moving around giant rocks with sticks and like a hundred guys we'd be doing it with machines we're not traditionalists we're modern kanaka we're modern Hawaiians but we're still going to perpetuate our culture we just need access to land so we can start to farm [Music] I definitely believe and can see the vision because I always think about it for the community to expand and all these eucalyptus trees would be native Hawaiian plants and more Farmland have markets that come all the way up here the land is where your heart is and this land is where my heart was and now I'm capable of understanding who I am in Waimanalo we have a lot of allies we're lucky that we're surrounded by a lot of native Hawaiian people that feel that there should be change and restoration towards what was a thriving Island so the more we get people to understand that we had a system that was thriving that should be our basis for how we should be moving forward we have answers for a lot of our problems here Hawaiian Independence is not the state or the federal government it's our own dependencies where we are on our lands is a perfect way to kind of showcase what nature and what man can do together again and being able to have others come and take part in this transformation not only benefits Hawaii but benefits the world in general because I think a lot of our people out there you know all these dreamers all these people with all these Solutions every day that solution doesn't get implemented they lose a little hope this here in Waimanalo at the nation of Hawaii is that chance to rebuild that hope to bring that hope back if our intent is strong enough Mother Earth is going to help us she gonna help us repair things gotta be for real there's a place that I come from on the east side of paradise where blue meets blue and the ocean it's Sky because where the mountains and the Sea they call out to me come on over and the peaceful sound of the Waves come rolling in woman alone no other place to be woman alone loved by all who come to see [Music] aloha [Music] thank you

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 139,592

Keywords: Permaculture, Hawaii, Ahupua'a, indigenous agriculture, traditional agriculture, aboriginal agriculture, kanaka maoli, waimanalo, Nation of Hawaii, Uncle Bumpy, Dennis Kanahele, Hawaiian sovereignty, Hawaii permaculture, Hawaii fishponds, Andrew Millison, Oregon State University, indigenous permaculture, taro farming, loi, Oahu, Kauai, Hawaii agriculture, hawaii agroforestry, tropical agroforestry, eucalyptus, traditional hawaiian farming

Id: q7q8friw1p8

Length: 28min 15sec (1695 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023