Land and People

EP 48 Pacific island botanist Steve Perlman talks about putting your life on the line for the love of nature

Melissa and Clay pivot this season to the oldest island in the Hawaiian archipelago--Kaua`i. They revisit one of their earliest LAND & PEOPLE interviews with retired botanist Steve Perlman, of the Kaua`i Plant Extinction Prevention Program (PEPP). Steve talks about his love of Pacific island peoples in remote places, his start with the National Tropical Botanical Garden, the thrill of discovering new plants, and climbing the highest sea cliffs in the world to save the last of a species.

EP 47 Willy Kostka on preserving and protecting the land and sea of Pohnpei and across Micronesia

William (Willy) Kostka is a long-time conservationist and islander who was born and raised on the island of Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia. In 1998, he helped found and became the first Board Chairman and Executive Director of the Conservation Society of Pohnpei, and then transitioned to lead the Micronesia Conservation Trust for 17 years. He has helped to bridge, fund and formulate island ecosystem stewardship and marine protected commitments from islands and countries across the nearly 7 million km2 of Pacific Ocean. Willy speaks to us about growing up in Pohnpei, as well as the traditional land tenure and agroforestry systems. He speaks to his new role in helping to promote sustainable development projects in energy and water resource care as the Director of Micronesia Regional Office of the Pacific Community.

EP 46 Palauan stewardship educator Ann Singeo on connecting generations of islanders across space and time

Ann Singeo is a founding member and Executive Director of Ebiil Society, a non-profit organization that promotes environmental education and conservation in Palau. She holds a Masters Degree in Communications for Social Change from University of Texas in El Paso which enabled her to learn from and work with subsistence communities across Micronesia. For two decades, she has helped to facilitate stewardship learning by young people in Palau in both science and traditional knowledge.  Students and researchers are involved in everything from giant clam and sea cucumber restoration, dugong and turtle monitoring, fish weir restoration, marine debris removal, to working with women fishers in sustainable harvesting and traditional medicinal healers in learning Palauan customary land and marine practices.

EP 45 Poet Craig Santos Perez on reclaiming and suturing Micronesian language, place and storytelling

Craig Santos Perez is a poet, essayist, university professor, and American publisher born in Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Guam (Guåhan) Island, formally considered a U.S. territory. His literary distinctions are many. In 2023 he won the National Book Award for poetry,  2015 American Book Award and the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry. He immigrated to California when he was fifteen, thus sparking his life-long exploration into what it means to be of a tropical and culturally rich place, and then separated from his CHomorro  homeland. His poetry and scholarship settles into the question of identity, navigating place and also challenges many of the contemporary notions of geography and American poetry traditions. Find out more about FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [ÅMOT] here, and watch his acceptance speech and his reading of the extraordinary poem "ginen ars pasifika" here.

EP 44 Part II Jermy Uowolo of Fais, Micronesia on how preserving the past is they key to thriving into the future

Part II of a two-part conversation with Jermy Uowolo, who was born and raised on the island of Fais in the State of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Jermy's background is as a Micronesian cultural practitioner, anthropologist, historian and Hawaiian ecosystem restoration specialist for the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project. He shares with us the value of gathering and recording knowledge from Micronesian elders and culture keepers, as well as the challenges and opportunties of his own immigration story--from Yap to Guam and eventually Hawai`i Island. 

EP 43 Part I Jermy Uowolo of Fais, Micronesia on the history, struggle and heritage of the Western Pacific atols and islands

Part I of a two-part conversation with Jermy Uowolo, who was born and raised on the island of Fais in the State of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). He received his bachelors degree from University of Hawai`i at Hilo and served as a conservationist for the Watershed Alliance in Hawai`i, the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project and is the President of the Micronesians United – Big Island (MU-BI) organization in Hawai`i. His knowledge spans the remote atols of his home state, to Guam, Palau, the Mariana Islands and beyond. He shares with us the prehistory and the recent immigration, military and colonial struggles in places like the Marshall Islands, and the challenge of preserving cultural practices and knowledge.

EP 42 Legendary waterman and Lahaina leader Archie Kalepa on steering the canoe towards the right path

Archie Kalepa Is a retired ocean safety officer who served the County of Maui for 32 years. Archie is not only a world renowned ocean safety expert and dedicated advocate for Hawaiian culture with decades of experience in rescue operations, cultural preservation and team leadership. He is a pivotal leader in West Maui, as one of the first responders on-scene after the Lahaina fires organizing the ocean delivery of needed food, water and essentials to people stranded and desperate for help. While his big wave surfing and ocean rescue accolades are many, he tells us about how helping and connecting people to the land, ocean and each other--especially in times of crisis--are among his most difficult and rewarding experiences.

EP 41 Artist Abigail Romanchak on uncovering the unseen Hawaiian environment through the visual language of printmaking

Abigail Romanchak was born and raised on Maui and is a native Hawaiian printmaker who conveys the Hawaiian environment–the sounds, bird songs, human footprints across Haleakalā–through the medium of printmaking. She has both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Art with a specialty in printmaking from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and her work has been shown and collected by museums and institutions throughout the world. She takes her inspiration from uncovering the hidden, sometimes minute patterns in nature and art–from nearly invisible watermarks made by Hawaiian kapa beaters on wauke (or mulberry) to the rings made by trees that mark cycles of drought. Through her bold use of abstract lines and geometric shapes, her work is an intentional departure from commercial representations of the Hawaiian landscape, specifically in the following work: her Kahea series (or the visualization of Hawaiian bird calls), the silence of Haleakalā as represented by sound waves in the Ke Ano series, the Pilina series of prints made with ash from the Kula 2023 fires on Maui, and her Tracked series of human conservation activity.

EP 40 Special Edition HI Conservation Conference: Water and land advocates Kapua`ala Sproat and Kekai Keahi on water as life

In this live recording for the 2024 Hawai‘i Conservation Conference, co-hosts Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht interview keynote speakers Kapuaʻala Sproat, professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Kekai Keahi, Maui Komohana community leader in the opening session “What Water Rights in West Maui Can Teach Us About Fire & Conservation."  In an emotional interview for 1,400 attendees, they revisit the 2023 Maui fire catastrophes one year later, recounting historical land care battles dating back more than a century, as well as their own personal struggles, triumphs and lessons. They demonstrate how the fight for land, people and water is a responsibility we all share to make possible a thriving future for all of Hawai‘i's people. For more information about this plenary panel, click here: https://www.hawaiiconservation.org/conference/2024-keynote-name-2/

EP 39 'Ōlelo Hawai`i translator, artist and conservationist Hina Kneubuhl on unlocking the past as the key to the future

Born and raised on Maui, Hina Puamohala Kneubuhl is an artist, co-founder of Kealapiko clothing, rare plant botanist, Hawaiian translator and scholar. Her knowledge base spans both conservation and the humanities, as her lineage of healers and musicians includes her great-grandmother Nana Veary and her grandmother, renowned Hawai`i singer Emma Veary. We traverse many worlds--from her work in Hawaiian language translation, her work in rare plant conservation to her recent activism against the proposed military telescopes atop Haleakalā, Maui. She connects economic and environmental sustainability for all of Hawai`i's people to the importance of indigenous sovereignty both in Hawai`i and abroad.