(Ka'iu) We have a saying here in Hawai'i, He kauā ke kanaka, he aliʻi ka ʻāina,
meaning that we as humans are actually in service to our land.
(Amy) It's not just a privilege, it's an obligation and a responsibility.
(Louisa) It was a reciprocal sort of relationship.
The understanding that you didn't have dominion over the environment.
That you were actually a part of it.
(Vincent) In our original teachings, we believed that we were created
in our homes to take care of those places, to be in those places, and to never leave those places.
(Nancy) Native nations are firmly based on their territory. This is
why their homelands are so important to native people.
(Melissa) Traditional Ecological Knowledge and TEK,
it is our lifeways. It's related to our deepest spiritual values. And it's a complex of knowledge,
beliefs, values, and practices that work specifically on developing a sustainable
and regenerative relationship with our home ecosystems. So TEK is always local knowledge.
(Nancy) A lot of the knowledge is encoded in the tribal languages.
(Ka'iu) Our challenge today is having been a community and a peoples who have struggled
in losing our language and in losing pieces of our identity, today we are challenged and
yet have the great opportunity, through our language, to reconnect with this information.
(Louis) These things went away for a short time. My grandma says they were put away,
that they didn't just go away, they didn't die, they were put away
and they were kept safe. And doing so allowed us to be kept safe, as well.
(Valentin) The missions, they wanted to destroy our language, destroy our culture,
destroy our spirituality, and destroy our environments. But our tribe stayed united.
As we talked about it amongst ourselves, we said we have an obligation to relearn it.
We're getting close to catastrophic times here with our environment.
People are starting to realize that when you have 15,000 years of successful application
for sustainable environments and such, that's an important voice that you should listen to.
(Amy) If we don't dramatically change our management practices
with respect to land use, with respect to,
habitat, water quality, all of these things, we're headed towards a path of extinction.
(Melissa) We can use Traditional Ecological Knowledge to regenerate
ecosystems by incorporating the best of ecosystem
science with TEK. We can really do what we call Two-Eyed Seeing. Seeing with the best
of the Indigenous lens, and seeing the best of the Western scientific lens to
restore habitats for our endangered plants and animals, and also to restore ecological processes.
(Ka'iu) Indigenous peoples have unique connections to the environments that surround them and deep
understanding as to how those life systems work. It's really important that as government
and environmental organizations address climate and other environmental issues that we're facing
today, that Indigenous knowledge is foundational in the conversations, therefore the solutions,
that perhaps can help course correct some of the challenges that we have right now.
(Frank) There's a Western framework, there's also a traditional framework. And when you can align
those and bring those together, then we help create the best available science together to
inform policy and to reform management for a better outcome in that forest ecosystem.
(Louisa) Thinking of, you know, many generations down the road,
that's sort of what guides restoration. That's what guides the science.
(Vincent) It's not too late to repair those things and we're not defeated.
And knowing that we can repair those things,
and knowing we can rebuild and fix what's been damaged...
You know, we're forward thinking people, but
we can only be forward thinking with our feet firmly planted in the past.
Knowing the value of those traditional ways,
and knowing that those traditional ways will be part of the future, as well.
This is our home forever and we're not going to leave
those places or ever, ever stop caring about those places. Those connections will never be lost.
(Valentin) Our land trust today is allowing us to heal from our historic trauma in a very
real and a very important way. It's giving us our identity. We know who we are. We know what we're
supposed to be doing. We know why we're doing what we're doing. We're taking care of Mother Earth.
(Amy) We are on the rise. We are regenerating. We are rejuvenating in
every way possible. We will fight to the death to protect this place.
(Georgiana) We have to look outside our bubble. We have to look outside who we are for allies and for help.
We just need to have those better conversations about all of our responsibility to this place. Right?
And not just the Indian peoples, because we inherently have that in our hearts.
It's in our blood. We know that, we wake up with that. But to share that we
all have a responsibility here, and that we ourselves can hold each other accountable.