Candace Fujikane: Mapping for abundance against cartographies of capital (ep311)
How is mapping for abundance an act of defiance against cartographies of capital and commodification? How might shifting away from a worldview of scarcity to one of abundance manifest greater societal, cultural, and systemic transformations?
In this episode, we welcome Candace Fujikane, co-editor of a special issue of Amerasia Journal, Whose Vision? Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawaiʻi (2000) and Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaiʻi (2008). She is a Japanese settler aloha ʻāina, standing for lands and waters in Hawaiʻi by mapping the moʻolelo of places and mobilizing the ancestral knowledges encoded in the moʻolelo to protect those places.
Candace's most recent book is Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future (2021), and you can find her on Twitter @fujikane1, Instagram @cfujikane, and Facebook @Candace.Fujikane.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Gian Slater
“Mapping abundance is a refusal to succumb to capital’s logic that we have passed an apocalyptic threshold of no return. Just as a harmful event has exponentially devastating effects, a restorative action catalyzes far-reaching and unexpected forms of revitalization.”
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Transcript
Note: Green Dreamer is a community-powered multimedia journal exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. The values, views, and opinions of our diverse guests do not necessarily reflect those of Green Dreamer. Please do your own additional research on the information, resources, and statistics shared. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamea Chayne: To help us contextualize your perspectives and story and inspirations, I'd love for you to first share a little about your upbringing and your background and what it was that first got you interested in examining the world and your reality in Hawaii through a decolonial lens.
Candace Fujikane: I grew up on Maui, upcountry on the slopes of Haleakalā , and I got my BA in English from the University of Hawaiʻi and then my Ph.D. from Berkeley. And it was when I was away that I realized how important Hawaiʻi is as a place that's envisioning different ways of living – more sustainable ways you could say – ways that are based in Kanaka Maoli knowledges. And I could only appreciate that when I was far away from home.
When I returned, I became involved in Hawaiian movements for land and sovereignty and I was a professor at the University of Hawaiʻi . I was working with Haunani-Kay Trask, who is an incredible Kanaka Maoli leader, a scholar, a poet. She brings together the best of all these different worlds. And I learned so much from her about her love for the lāhui . So the lāhui is the word you would use for the Native Hawaiian people or collective or nation. And when I think about nation, I think about it both in statist and non-statist forms. So Kānaka Maoli are seeking to regain political independence, but there are many ways that on a day-to-day basis,KānakaMaoli are meeting their everyday needs without federal or international recognition as an independent nation. So those are the things that kind of fuel my research.
And I started looking at maps as a way to imagine a more decolonial relationship with land. When we think about maps, they really are biographies of land. They teach us about the histories of lands and the people who’ve lived there, the knowledges that the people have gained.
Kānaka Maoli have gained this knowledge from intergenerational “kilo”, or the art of close observation. And so I looked at maps and the ways that these maps tell stories and the ways that people were using maps in their struggles to protect lands and waters. So that was very, very important to me – to be a participant in the struggles that I was writing about, and to actually understand that different way of living with land, in relation to land, a more relational and embodied form of scholarship and activism.
Kamea Chayne: We’ve previously on the show explored the struggles of black liberation and native sovereignty as ways to understand what planetary healing with a more holistic lens of seeing humans as interwoven into the web of life would involve. And related to this conversation, we had welcomed Aunty Pua onto the show, who talked about the growing movement to protect Mauna Kea in Hawaii. And I believe you're connected to that movement as well.
We haven't yet specifically addressed Asian settler colonialism, which is something that you have focused on, and that involves a complex and multifaceted history that looks different everywhere for the diverse Asian migrant and settler communities. But specifically for Hawaiʻi and Turtle Island, now known as the United States, what are the key points you'd like people to keep in mind to help inform the various ways that Asian Americans today may be supporting or maybe otherwise undermining the broader structure of the U.S. settler state?
Candace Fujikane: That's such a great question. So we first started using the term “Asian settler” in 2000, and it was really from Haunani-Kay Trask's work, where she pointed to the state legislature and she said, look at the state legislature and tell me what the ethnic breakdown of the legislature is. I actually did call all the offices in the legislature in 2000 and in 2005. Sixty-five percent of the legislature is Asian, and twenty-five percent is white, which corresponds to the general population of whites [in Hawaiʻi], which is about 20 percent. And Kanaka Maoli are 10 percent of the legislature, while the general population is actually 20 percent. So if we look at that sixty-five percent of the legislature being Asian, 40 percent of that is Japanese, and Japanese are only 20 percent of the general population. So we can see the Japanese are overrepresented by twice their number in the general population. And this is because the educational system in Hawaiʻi is dominated by Japanese teachers. If you look at the Department of Education statistics for teachers and administrators, they are largely Japanese. So, in Hawaiʻi, a lot of people come away with this representation of the Japanese as figures of authority, as figures of integrity and leadership. And that's contributed to the rise of the Japanese in the state legislature.
Many people are familiar with US Senator Daniel Inouye, who was a war hero. And for those reasons, the Japanese have gained a lot of political power in Hawaiʻi, often to the detriment of native Hawaiians.
And the case of the state legislature’s support for the construction of the TMT is a really important example that shows us that Asian settler colonialism is a very powerful force in Hawaiʻi. And we need to recognize that.
Of course, when our book came out, so many Asian settlers were angry because they said, “We're local. We're not settlers. Only white people are settlers.” And we really had to work hard to show different communities that people of color are settlers as well because we don't have that genealogical connection to the land that Indigenous people do, that Kānaka Maoli do in Hawaiʻi. We have ancestral lands elsewhere.
And for most of us, it's not a question of Japanese culture being stamped out because of bans on the instruction of the Japanese language. But these are things that Hawaiians have had to to survive because of the banning of the Hawaiian language from 1896 to 1986. All of those things. The dismissal of Hawaiian knowledges, the insistence that Kanaka Maoli are no longer indigenous because they are now Americans. Those are all American arguments that Kānaka Maoli reject, and they argue that they continue to be the native people of the land.
In the case of the TMT, Kānaka Maoli, as Pua explains, and I know Pua – she's been such an amazing role model for me. She explains that, of course, Mauna Kea is sacred to Kanaka Maoli. Stones are sacred, the land is sacred. The land is an embodiment of Papahānaumoku (she who is the foundation birthing Islands). She calls Mauna a Wākea her mama Mauna. The Mauna is her mama, her big mama. But the Mauna is actually, interestingly, both male and female. And so there's a lot of important Kanaka Maoli cultural lessons that we've learned from Mauna a Wakea.
So I followed that particular struggle from 2011 to the present and I've stood on the front lines. I've served as a legal observer, mainly because as an older Japanese woman, I remind police officers of their mothers and their aunties. So I try to use that to protect people who are being abused by the police.
There are terrible stories on Haleakalā when they were standing against the Daniel Inouye solar telescope – and again, there's an example of Asian settler colonialism, when the telescope is named after Daniel Inouye – there was one protector whose skull was fractured when a police officer kneeled on his head. And that kind of brutality was very much in our minds every time we've stood for Mauna Kea. So I've tried to take on a role that takes advantage of the fact that I am Japanese and I have this to offer, I have this privilege that I can use to protect the people who are protecting Mauna a Wakea.
So in the case of Mauna Kea, Legislators all came forward with a vision for Mauna Kea and of course they were not Kanaka Maoli. The mayor of Hawaiʻi Island, Mayor Harry Kim, he's Korean, came forth with his vision for Mauna. And at an OHA meeting, that's the Office for Hawaiian Affairs, I testified when Harry Kim was there and I said, Harry Kim, you look like my uncles. You look like my father. But we're settlers here. These are not our ancestral lands. We don't have that kuleana – that right or responsibility to enact a vision for Mauna Kea. And in other ways, as an Asian settler, I've worked really hard towards being an Asian settler ally and even more than that, an Asian settler aloha ʻāina . Professor Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua has a wonderful book called The Seeds We Planted. And in that book, she says, perhaps Asian settlers can enact an Asian settler aloha ʻāina , one that supports Hawaiian independence, that stands for the lands and waters, but never forgets that we come from a position of privilege. So I really embrace that idea of being a settler aloha ʻāina . Some people just want to call themselves allies. But to me, it's important to foreground “settler” to show that we are still in a system of settler colonialism and occupation in Hawaiʻi . And so I try to use that. Some people tell me, oh, Candace, you really have a Hawaiian value system. And I say, but I'm still a settler. And there's a value in me identifying that way to the state legislature, to politicians, to legislators.
there are many Asian settler allies in Hawaiʻi , there are many allies. And aloha ʻāina even take it a step further, because they really do support the return of independence to Kānaka Maoli. To me, the Asian settler allies are the ones who still identify as American. So they're allies, but they're not quite at that step of supporting Hawaiian independence.
It's a 20-year-old argument, to refer to Asians as settlers. The argument first came out in 2000. And now I see these younger scholars taking up this argument as if it's just an everyday thing to call yourself a settler. And I really appreciate that kind of shift in thinking that we've been able to bring about.
Kamea Chayne: As you speak about cartography and decision-making for the future of certain lands, it’s very different when we have ancestral ties to the bioregional landscape compared to when we don't have those relationships, no matter what identity we feel most aligned with. And in a recent conversation that I had with indigenous cartographer Steve DeRoy, he shared the different ways that mapping shapes our worldviews and informs power dynamics. I wonder if you could share your perspectives on why you think it's so important for us to reexamine the ways that these dominant tools are not as objective as they seem, but may reinforce certain extractive values and ideologies based on the lenses that they center for us to understand the world with.
Candace Fujikane: I love that question. So the Kumulipo in Hawaii traces the cosmogonic genealogy of Kānaka Maoli from the depths of Pō , the deep darkness out of which all things emerge and all things are born. It's the walewale – the slime, the primordial slime. And for that reason, Kānaka Maoli have familial relationships with all living things, including the stars, including the land. They say that the land is Papahānaumoku – she who is the foundation birthing islands. She is their grandmother. Her daughter Hoʻohokukalani had a child with Wākea . The first child was the first taro plant and the second child was the first aliʻi (chief) . That is the genealogical connection that Kānaka Maoli have with land. And if you ask them, if you push on this, it means that Kānaka are land, they are ʻāina .
And so in terms of this epistemological framing, the difference between settler colonial mapping and Indigenous mapping has to do with the severing of those connections and relationships. In a settler colonial system, in a capitalist system, we are alienated from land, we tend to see land as a commodity. And in the mapping that I see, the cartographies of capital that I see, what happens is that developers will enclose a piece of land and will fragment it even further until it's broken up into smaller and smaller pieces that they can argue are then no longer agriculturally feasible or no longer culturally sensitive. And I've seen cases where one piece of land will have a one hundred and fifty page cultural impact assessment, saying that the impact of development on this land would have a tremendously devastating effect for Kānaka Maoli and in an adjacent piece of land that there would only be a 10 page cultural impact assessment because the archeologists only look at whatever is within the red boundary lines and not at the ways in which multiple sites comprise a complex.
So that's also a problem with the way archeology maps the land. There's a new form of archaeology called distributional archeology that insists that we look at individual sites as part of a complex. And I think that's been a very, very important methodological change for indigenous peoples. By contrast, when you look at the ways that Kānaka Maoli map land, they map places in relationship to each other. So in this one place in Waiʻanae , where a developer was trying to argue that this one piece of land was not culturally sensitive, the concerned elders of Waiʻanae actually argued that the mountain is Hina. Hina is pounding her kapa on the mountain Puʻu Heleakalā but she's also Mauna. And her two children are the surrounding hills around her, Nānāikuʻulei (Nānākuli) and Lualualei. And her son, Māui Māui, is in the ocean and he's fishing up the islands from the seas of Ulehawa.
And in this way, the landforms are ʻohana or family to each other. And they're not just family in an important genealogical way, but also in the ecological lessons about the importance of continuity, the importance of preserving the continuity of stream flows from the mountains through to the seas because the stream flows are important to the the mixing of the salt and the fresh water, which creates the brackish water estuaries that are nurseries for baby fish. And so in these kinds of stories about land as ʻohana or land as family, you can see these ecological continuities and relationships=, what Kānaka Maoli call pilina , pilina is that connection. We learn to be pili to the ʻāina . And we also learn that pilina , that relationality.
And if I can, I want to tell this amazing story that illustrates the value of the integrity of land, and that is the migration of the great reptilian water deities from their home islands in the clouds to Oʻahu So Moʻoinanea is the great matriarch of the Mo’o deities , and they are 30-foot-long lizards that can take the form of very fierce men and women who are all water protectors. So the Mo’o women are often sunning themselves in pools of water, on rocks, and similar to mermaids or sirens, they seduce men and then eat their lovers. But they're also feared as water protectors.
And in this migration, they land on one end of Oahu and they travel in a procession across the land, two by two, until they reach this part that's past Puuloa or Pearl Harbor. It's actually an area called Kapūkakī . And when the first moʻo hit this area, the last moʻo are still at the landing point in Waialua. So you can imagine thousands of these lizards crossing the land. And as water protectors, they later disperse to every body of land in Hawaiʻi , to fish ponds, to springs, to pools, to waterfalls and streams. They even go underground because there are subterranean waterways.
And so Kānaka had this vision of land. Their understanding of the connectedness of land has to do with this continuous backbone of moʻo . And they even came up with a word for land called moʻoʻāina , meaning lands that are connected in a series within an ahupuaʻa , which is a larger land division. So the moʻoʻāina is a smaller land division that interlocks across ahupuaʻa , across larger land divisions, and that enables us to trace the movement of water.
And so this story of the migration of the moʻo is a story about water conservation, it's about the protection of water. Today we see large corporations diverting waters away from streams to feed the sugar plantations because sugar is an extremely thirsty plant. But later we saw it going to feed housing developments. Right now, the military banks water, there's water banking going on in Hawaii. They're trying to hold onto the water in case they decide to build new housing for military families.
And so what we learn from the story of the moʻo is that there are laws of the elements. The Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation, which is named for Edith Kanakaʻole, who was a famous Kumu Hula – they're now looking at the chance to understand the ecological lessons that teach us how to steward the different ecological zones. There are 22 wao or zones to be stewarded.
So anyway, I just love this story so much because it gives me a clearer picture in my head of the integrity of land that counters capital’s maps of fragmentation, disconnection, and alienation.
Kamea Chayne: On this note, I want to read a really potent quote from you. You said, “In this era of late liberal settler colonialism, cartography as a methodology is critical to rearticulating our radically contingent relationships with the living lands, seas, and skies. Capital fears abundance because it must manufacture the perception of scarcity to generate markets.” Especially this last part – how does having a mindset of scarcity shape our politics, societal structures, and economic systems differently compared to if we understood Earth through a lens of abundance?
Candace Fujikane: It is just amazing how abundant lands get condemned as being agriculturally unfeasible by state agencies that want to develop things like industrial parks.
And capital doesn't just map wastelands, it creates the illusion of abundant lands as wastelands that they then degrade to wastelands. And that, to me, is the most horrible thing – to take a living land and to make it appear as if it's a wasteland.
And this is true for Mauna a Wakea. Mauna a Wakea has been called a wasteland. If you look at territorial maps, they actually label the summit as a wasteland. And what it's what it's doing, because the state wants the land for other purposes. So it's using that illusion of scarcity in order to claim the mountain for astronomy. In fact, there was even a land appraiser who went up there and said, well, this is not beachfront property, so you can't command high lease rates for these lands. And yet, he was also arguing that it was the only place in the world such for astronomical development. And I remember Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the activists, testifying and saying, you cannot be speaking out of both sides of your mouth at once. You cannot say this land is worthless and then say it's the only place for astronomy.
hat concerns me the most: when abundant lands are condemned as wastelands. The most agriculturally productive land in Hawaii is now occupied by military bases. And I remember a planner asking me the question, do you know what was the most agriculturally abundant land on Oʻahu ? And I said, was it on the windward side where there's a lot of rain? He says, no, it's where you see Schofield Barracks right now. And that's also true for Lualualei, where the naval radio transmitter towers are located. The military took the most abundant lands and instead of planting food, they seeded unexploded ordinances.. And that, to me, illustrates both the dangers of the maps of capital versus Indigenous stories about Mauna Kea that point to the fact that the mauna is a container of water.
If you look at stories from these kilo observations, embedded in the oli is a recognition that the primary source of water for Mauna Wakea is fog drip and that the land is saturated with water. And if you look at other stories about Mauna a Wakea, there are stories about Kamiki gathering water from Lake Waiau, which is near the summit of the Mauna and some of the water splashing over the sides of his bowl to create all of the springs that extend out from Mauna Kea to other mountains miles and miles away.
And so this understanding of Mauna Kea is important because Mauna Kea sits on five aquifers and the astronomical facilities sit entirely on one particular aquifer. And that's why we're standing to protect the Mauna. The TMT proposes to put three 5,000-gallon tanks underground and people don't realize that 5,000 gallons is equivalent to 18 tons. ne would be for chemical wastewater from the washing of the lenses. Another tank would be for human waste water. And in this way you can see that there's the danger of toxic spills because these tanks would have to be emptied once a month by a truck that would travel down an unpaved dirt road that is often iced over in the wintertime. So a devastating spill is always a possibility.
That is the difference between this mapping of scarcity versus a mapping of abundance. And I think what's important is that some people feel like I'm being overly optimistic by talking about abundance. And I say no. Abundance is a refusal of scarcity. It's a refusal of that rhetoric of scarcity. It's a refusal of capital’s construction of scarcity. It is actually an insistence on life.
Kamea Chayne: Really beautifully said, and it does seem like a lot currently doesn't really make sense, and that is because of these socially-constructed settler systems that we've layered on top of existing complex and abundant ecological and cultural systems. So, for example, all the rich rainforests in the Amazon are currently being converted into monocultural, degraded industrial farms because that is what is more valuable to our current productive system. Because, again, we have these maps of capital that are rooted in social constructs rather than maps of abundance that are actually rooted in the reality of ecology. And I feel very much aligned with the idea that scarcity has largely been a human construct and the byproduct of our dominant cultures and systems of things like privatization, separation, a narrow definition of the self, extraction without reciprocity, and of course, exploitation.
Where we stand today with our climate crisis and sixth mass extinction, would you say that we've sort of manifested a reality of scarcity which then actually justifies our current societal and economic structures that were built off of that initially false, but now realized, presumption?
Candace Fujikane: Yes, I totally agree with that assertion. And that is exactly what's happening: these maps of capital create the illusion of scarcity, which these industrial products then manifest. It's the worst. You know, I hear indigenous people using the word “manifest” in a very positive and regenerative and reciprocal way. And then you see how it's being used and it's being enacted on the scale of capital.
I have to tell you one more example because it kills me. At one point, the developer said that a piece of land could not grow anything on it. And he indicated that it was classified as E lands, the least productive lands. And when I looked at the maps in the surrounding areas, I noticed that there were other maps that said, B-#i, I like B-36i lands. And what I realized was that he was showing us what land looks like when you don't water it. When you do water it, the land improves to B quality lands and the “i” stands for irrigation. When the land is irrigated it produces.
So it was just so emblematic to me of that kind of rhetoric of scarcity – that you would talk about land without watering it as dead land. And so I used that in my testimony and the commissioners were shocked. And I was really happy because I think the developer was so shaken up, that he put a picture of that map in his folder. And I knew it was something that bothered him – that they had done this terrible thing and hadn't even hidden their tracks well.
Kamea Chayne: I think it's really critical for us to understand how mapping for abundance is deeply tied to indigenous worldviews and knowledges of how to actually be regenerative members of the community.
As you say, “As the cartographies of capital exacerbate climate change events, we are beginning to see the demise of capitalist economies of scarcity, which are making way for indigenous economies of abundance.” Aligning with indigenous rights, worldviews, and sovereignty is inherently oppositional to the settler state and the extractive economy. And yet the dominant environmental movement seems to be disproportionately shaped by those most empowered by the current system through capital and proximity to the source of power.
So I wonder if you could speak to the differences you've witnessed between the mainstream environmental movement that is merely a product of the current system compared to the growing movement of people wanting to actually uproot colonial structures and worldviews altogether to give space to more imaginative and life-enhancing ways of being and organizing.
Candace Fujikane: So it’s true all over that you see Indigenous people on the very front lines of movements against climate change. And one example of the ways that they often come up against environmentalists would be at Kahuku, where there was a private corporation working in collaboration with the electric company to install wind power. And these giant turbines, they're problematic all over the world. I was reading these amazing articles about South America where the people were rising up against these wind turbines. The problem with the wind turbines in Kahuku is that they were placed thirteen hundred feet away from schools and residences. In other parts of the world, they have a five mile setback, or at the very least, a one mile setback requirement. But in Kahuku, it was thirteen hundred feet. And so you had on the one side the residents of Kahuku with children and elderly people, people who have epilepsy, whose seizures were triggered by the low frequency vibrations and sounds, as well as the flickering light, from the turbines. And you had them saying that this was also killing off the native bats. And on the other side, you had the environmentalists saying that this was what we needed to reach our energy goals for the state.
And it was just so revealing to me that any kind of fight against climate change would come at the expense of Indigenous peoples. So that if you want a wind farm, the state would say, let's put it in an Indigenous commmunity, no matter what the side effects will be.
And I think that's been so heartbreaking. And for those of us who are settlers, I think it's important that we stand with Indigenous peoples, Native peoples who are on the front lines of these movements against climate change. It's heartbreaking to me to see that only Kānaka Maoli are on these front lines in Hawaiʻi , because a lot of Asians benefit from the current state legislature and they don't understand what the cost is of these so-called energy efficient developments in the communities.
So when I was standing with the residents and learning about why they were opposed to the wind turbines, I heard a woman explain that she had been arrested three times. There's something terribly wrong with that. And I said to her, why don't you go to the side and I will take your place, I will hold space for you, and I will be arrested. It doesn't hurt me to be arrested. I'm older. I have a job. I have a home.
And it's easier for me to bear that kind of responsibility. And for someone being arrested for the fourth time, she would have faced tremendous penalties. So I feel like that is a space where those of us who are not Kanaka, those of us who are not indigenous, as settler allies, as settler aloha ʻāina , we can step in at that point to take on the arrests.
There were 212 total arrests at Kahuku over a period of a month, but I wonder how many actual people were arrested. I think the actual number was much smaller because Kanaka Maoli were getting arrested three or four times in standing up for their communities. So, we see this extractive economy again and again, even in cases where a green economy is actually enacting settler colonial practices. And I think that's just been really eye-opening for me. And I do see a sincere effort on the part of state energy commissions to try to include Kānaka Maoli communities in decision-making processes. But that's also a difficult thing. I think representation is important, but they have to work harder to get not just consultation, but consent.
Kamea Chayne: Absolutely. That various environmental solutions currently are coming at the cost of the well-being of indigenous communities is deeply troubling and shows that we're veering off track because of everything that we talked about today in regards to who really has the place-based knowledges needed to regenerate our various degraded ecosystems. And the fact that we know that indigenous peoples make up about 6.2% percent of our global population but steward over 80% of Earth's biodiversity – that in and of itself really speaks volumes.
And as we look ahead, many of the climate solutions, like we just mentioned, that we have right now are often influenced by monetary incentives. And that is, of course, a challenge to address. But with that aside, a lot of our most hyped solutions are shaped primarily by Western science and Western modes of inquiry. But, I know you've been leaning into a different way of knowing and understanding the world known as Kilo, which is rooted in Kanaka Maoli culture or native Hawaiian culture. So what have you learned from this practice that you feel comfortable sharing with us that might plant some seeds of inspiration in our minds?
Candace Fujikane: So I mentioned the Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation and they have a whole school of knowledge called Papakū Makawalu. And they are experts who have knowledge about Papahulilani, which are the heavens or the skies, the atmosphere, constellations and moon phases, and the effects of the moon phases on different practices. There's another school called Papahulihonua about the Earth and the natural biological processes of the Earth. And then there's Papanuihanaumoku. And that one is about the birthing processes.
Under these three houses of knowledge, there's so much amazing information about the natural ways to understand and to direct our energies. So, for example, Noelani Puniwai is a professor at the University of Hawaiʻi and she's a Kanaka Maoli scientist. And she explains that we have to learn the akua or the elements of the places where we live. So Kānaka Maoli have 400,000 akua . And that word akua has been popularly translated as God, but it really is the elemental forms and the natural processes in the world. So, for example, Kāne is known as the water that flows underground. He's the fresh water flows underground. And Kanaloa is the deep consciousness of the ocean. And in many of the moʻolelo or oli , these two akua walk the islands and they're creating springs as they go along and they collect water to make awa , which is a ceremonial drink.
The important thing to remember in terms of climate is that the cold waters of Kāne, the fresh waters emerge into Kanaloa, into the ocean, through underground springs and through streams and stream flows.That'sortant in regulating the temperature of waters around our islands. And when we think about hurricanes, we're in the middle of the Pacific and we are very grateful that we are not more often the target of hurricanes. But part of the reason for that is that the cold waters around the islands protect us from hurricanes. So when hurricanes come close to the islands, they tend to veer north or they veer south because of the relationship between Kāne and Kanaloa.
And these freshwater springs around the islands are famous. They are places called Punalu’u, which means diving for freshwater in the ocean– puna is to a freshwater spring and luʻu is to dive. So people would go with calabashes, gourds, and they would go and collect fresh water out in the ocean because they knew where these freshwater springs were.
So that relationship between these elemental forms, the ocean and the freshwater springs, we can see is crucial to protecting the islands. And so how do we continue that relationship, how do we help to support that relationship when so much water is being diverted by corporate and militarized projects? Well, one thing that one fishpond is doing is that they're clearing mangroves that have been clogging up the stream flow to the ocean and it feeds their fish pond. The fish pond needs oxygen. The fish pond needs cold waters for the fish to regulate their temperatures. And these two things are necessary for the survival of the fish in the fish pond. So they've taken to cutting and burning these mangroves. In other parts of the Pacific and in other parts of the world, mangroves are really important for flood mitigation, but we always have to consider the particularities of a location. And in Hawaii, in this particular case, the mangroves are suffocating the fresh flows of water. Okay, so they took out much of the mangroves. A stream is now feeding the fish ponds. They've been seeing the exponential scale of restorative effects.
So what I like to think to myself is just as a tiny act can have exponentially harmful consequences – like a two-degree increase in temperature can have exponentially harmful consequences in terms of sea level rise – by the same token, small restorative events have exponentially restorative effects.
And so by restoring these stream flows, they've actually brought back the native birds. They’ve brought back the native plants. The coral is now flourishing because of the regulation of the temperatures of the waters in the bay. So it's affecting the reef systems. And this, again, is having effects far beyond what we know. There's also the cultivation of phytoplankton in these fish ponds. And we know phytoplankton is vital to the production of oxygen. So I love to see these cascading restorative effects when you can tap or actually learn from Indigenous knowledgeways.
And when I talk about the 400,000 akua , there's one called Hinaluaʻikoʻa . Hina is the goddess of the moon, but she's also tied to the corals and luaʻi means to vomit or to expel that which is within. And koʻa is coral. So that is the name of the deity of coral spawning. It's just incredibly beautiful. And there are all of these examples, thinking about the names. Another one would be Kalauʻākolea . Lau is the frond of the ʻākōlea fern. So Kalauʻākolea is the process of fog drip, because the fog collects in the cloud forests on the ʻākolea fern.
And so they've been doing this amazing work. Laka is the deity of hula , but she's also the process of evapotranspiration. So there are these amazing, amazing knowledgeways which we need to learn from. And what happens a lot of times is that the state will say that culture practitioners are culturally biased, and so they won't even listen at all to the knowledge that they have. But it's incredible to see what happens when they're able to enact practices based on that knowledge.
Kamea Chayne: This is all deeply affirming and it's like you knew where the flow of this conversation was going, because I was going to close us off by reading this quote of yours that I think sums up everything that you just said really beautifully. You said, “Mapping abundance is a refusal to succumb to capital's logic that we have passed an apocalyptic threshold of no return. Just as a harmful event has exponentially devastating effects, a restorative action catalyzes far-reaching and unexpected forms of revitalization.” So I really appreciate you for the stories that you just shared. And as we're nearing the end of our conversation, what invitations to action would you like to leave us with?
Candace Fujikane: I would like everyone to think about ways that we can be allies, not just standing behind indigenous people or Blacks or people of color, but to look at the ways that we can enact that through our relationship, our renewed relationship with lands and waters in the places where we live. I think everyone should know where you get your water from. Where does your water come from? Where does your food come from is the logical question. But water, too, is going to be the next big fight. They say that first, it was the fight for gold, then oil, and now it's for water. So I guess that would be one thing. Just to keep the faith that in restoration, environmental law has two purposes. One is to protect what is left and the other is to repair what is damaged. And I feel like that should be our model.
Kamea Chayne: Beautiful. Thank you so much.
What is an uplifting social media account or a publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Candace Fujikane: So two books. First, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. I love that she's a scientist and a poet. And the other is Mehana Vaughan's Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides, which is really about what it means to go into a community and learn from them what a community-led subsistence management plan would look like to regulate fishing and other kinds of marine activities.
Kamea Chayne: What do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?
Candace Fujikane: I tell myself that quote about how small, localized movements for restoration have exponentially restorative effects for the planet.
Kamea Chayne: What makes you most hopeful for our planet and world at the moment?
Candace Fujikane: Kanaka Maoli scientists and other indigenous scientists who are able to bring together ancestral knowledges and decolonize STEM knowledges.
Kamea Chayne: Well, green dreamer. If you want to learn more and stay updated on Candace's work, as well as check out her new book, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, you can head to www.dukeupress.edu. That's where you can find her book. And you can also follow her on Twitter @Fujikane1, on Instagram @CFujikane, and on Facebook @CandaceFujikane. Candace, thank you so much for joining us today and for this deeply nourishing and enriching conversation. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Candace Fujikane: I believe we have to have hope. And I love your podcast and I feel like it does give all of us so much hope. And you just ask such great questions that really bring out people's work in such insightful ways. And I do feel nourished by that. Thank you so much.
