How indigenous history shapes biodiversity, ecology, and stewardship

Hawai’i cannot withstand the utilitarian agricultural system that is common in the West. These truths are hard to witness and even harder to live under. We can make a credit system to make us feel better, but are we truly balancing our economies, and impact on the planet?

Aloha kakou,

O wao Benji ekolu Rodrigues kou inoa, o Hawaiʻi nei mai au, I am a son of Hawai’i, I am a father, a farmer, a steward of land, sea, and water. I am a caretaker of our native sciences, stories, traditions, sacred sites, and medicines of my family. I'm here to offer my manaʻo on the biodiversity credit system that is being proposed.

Hawaiʻi since before contact with the western world has been home to many of the most unique endemic species in the world. Over the last 180 years, it has become one of the most imperiled ecosystems on the planet, with many of our plant, and bird relations now considered rare, endangered, and or extinct. The songs of many of our ancestral manu (birds) are no longer heard in our precious remaining mesic forest.

Over the last 130 years the introduction of many imported invasive species, and with the tides of development on the rise, our ecology has taken a back seat to commercial progress, severely degrading our ecosystems, sacred sights, ancient burials, and subsistence food systems. Our cities are constantly growing and more places are being paved over and slated to be developed as man continues to sprawl across the landscape. Here in our homelands of the Hawaiian people, bulldozing, water pollution, bombing, fuel leaks, and water diversion continue to contribute to deforestation and loss and toxification of our precious ecology and aquifers.

Hawai’i has always been a gem in the Pacific with year-round agriculture potential in it’s volcanic soil. This drove nearly 1 million acres of Hawaiian land to be cleared and planted with sugar in the heights of the sugar boom, which was the next agricultural boom following the rubber industry which has had similar impacts on the Amazon forest and its people. In the process of feeding the worlds sugar supply from 1 million acres of our prized agricultural lands, the agribusiness in Hawaii relied heavily on chemical fertilizer and commercial pesticides as common practices, compounding soil degradation and compaction of earth. In the 19th century, much of the lands of Ka malu Ulu o lele in west Maui, were deforested and intentionally burned to make room for the new cash-crop of sugar, waterways were diverted to central Maui, and along with it the loss of our sacred intentionally planted Ulu grove of lele, which at its heights was multigenerational food forest, that fed countless generations of Hawaiians reaching back into the 15th and 16th century.

This legendary forest would perish into history books and newspaper articles of the 1860’s, and the moʻolelo(ancestral stories) of a time passed.

The land in west Maui was permanently changed and the ecology and ecosystems in the area forever altered; estimates of 8 to 10 million trees in the mid 18th century in west Maui were destined to become a dry grassland desert renamed Lahaina, which translates in our mother tongue as the merciless sun, no more precious native trees such as hame, in the place known as ukumehame, very little traditional food crops of Ulu remaining in lahaina, which is the tree that its original place name, ka malu Ulu o lele was named for, the original name to the capitol of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Truth be told in light of recent events, the tragic wildfires our communities have faced in Maui, have been in the making nearly 180 years.

It seems the Hawaiian was to meet the eventual fate of losing our subsistence food systems, same as the first peoples of turtle island, would lose their sacred buffalo in massive eradication of their primary food sources. This would push many of the Native peoples into food insecurity, as mass commodification of food resources spread throughout the Americas, diminishing food systems, alongside the struggles of the losing ability to speak our language in government, and schools, many would lose their connection to Place through boarding schools. The Hawaiian people began to become imperiled along with our ecosystems as our communities began to become marginalized, further exacerbated through the displacement from our traditional lands, it's become apparent the indigenous peoples of the planet were experiencing massive change to our consciousness, and ways of life with lasting impacts that are clearly visible in our communities today.

By 1906 the denationalization campaigns in Hawai’i were in full force, as the program for patriotic exercises, replaced our National holidays, cultural celebration, was replaced by that of American holidays, as the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America would be standard operating procedures for all schools in Hawai’i. This would further assimilate the Hawaiian people into a foreign language, and a foreign world view leaving behind intimate relationships with our homelands, as development would forever alter our lives. Much of Hawaiian history through the 19th century was silenced; this disconnection left many Hawaiians unable to speak our mother tongue, by systematically being indoctrinated into the department of education. We are now living in a generation of Hawaiians, the majority without the ability to read their history, much of which sits untranslated in our archives with more than 1 million articles yet to be reflected on in our present generations. The Hawaiian were prolific writers through the 1830’s to the 1890’s, leaving many Hawaiians unaware of their constitutional protections and land rights giving us undivided interests in our ancestral lands. A stream of constant division tactics hampered the self determination and organization of the Hawaiian, a complete take over of our National identity became fully realized through the boarding schools of the 19th century, their native being to be replaced with Americanization, and capitalist culture.

In 2023 through the advancement of technology and the interconnectivity of internet-of-things, we are now able to piece together the picture of our understanding of what has happened to the Hawaiian, as much of our history and language have been oppressed, Hawaiians haven’t been able to sift through old Hawaiian language newspapers to orientate ourselves with rightful history, now through the internet these histories can be laid out in front of us, for us to make sense of our historical and contemporary adversity the peoples and ecology of Hawaiʻi have faced, the culmination of these understandings, and now can witness the correlation of the current, health, housing, and language statistics of the Hawaiian, giving us a holistic view of why we have arrived at the present moment in the condition we have.

Hawaiians and many natives understand that knowing the past is crucial to understanding our now, it gives us the ability to help us chart a better way forward in the future. I ponder on what the critical race theory for Hawaiians, has yet to explore, in the way Hawaiians have been impacted on a psycho-spiritual level, that have undoubtedly caused many adverse impacts on the Hawaiian consciousness. In family systems this is better known today as generational trauma, and identity crisis.

Today in 2023 the Hawaiian kingdom still sits in an occupied state, our lands and our waters still being threatened by the progeny of our first occupiers. Over 130 years of assimilation, commodification of our land bases, and the import of over 385,000 workers from around the world throughout the Hawaiʻi plantation era, would create massive plantation townships, which would further exacerbate the socioeconomic, environmental, and housing issues of the Hawaiian. In 2023 the Hawaiian people equate less than 10% of the population of our traditional lands with over 30,000 people still waiting for access to lands under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. This system meant to govern the Hawaiian as wards of the state is broken, as 130 years ago the world didn’t treat people of color, be they Hawaiian, African, or Maori with very much dignity, as it became a crime to be who god created us to be, as the world hated on many of our people for the color of their skin, much of the writings of that era would be written with the conviction of human nature which has been shown to be perceptions of superiority over the colored man by those of lighter complexion.

These truths are hard to witness and even harder to live under; the Hawaiian among many people of color, would lead lives of hardship throughout the 18th century into the civil rights era. The Native American already facing 200 years of persecution, and violence, long before the Hawaiian. Clear words and thoughts of hate written in racist newspaper articles throughout the 18th century damning us as uncivilized barbaric people. Many of these claims can be found through a cursory search of newspapers at the turn of the 18th century in relation to Hawaiʻi and our monarchs.

These circumstances have caused much distress to the Hawaiian and our traditional homelands, and the Hawaiian is still seeking and making sense of the trauma inflicted upon our people, and ancestral lands, while working on regaining our National consciousness to work towards self determination. Treaties of friendship, reciprocity, and commerce lay in the library of Congress, still unrecognized by the United States of America, and with it the acknowledgments of the American President Grover Cleveland through the Blount Report of 1894, would confirm and conclude the unlawful nature of the occupation of Hawai’i by America in 1893. Yet the president would only serve one term, without any justice or due process being served to the Hawaiian people.

Hawaiʻi is and was a treaty recognized independent sovereign nation, of which having our own constitution, laws, and land tenureship, all still valid today, and recognized by the United Supreme Court. Hawaiians are now challenging fraudulent title to our ancestral lands and reclaiming our ancestral land tenureship known as Kuleana. American corporations such as Pioneer Mill, Maui Land and Pine, and Alexander & Baldwin took control over our National lands and became the gentries of the Pacific. Now the modern developers continue in their legacy of displacement of Hawaiians and exploiting our natural resources, to develop gentlemen's estates and homes in gated communities which Hawaiians could never afford. Maui leads the islands in medium home prices, as more and more Hawaiians and local people are leaving to be able to have a more affordable cost of living. As much of the world looks to Hawaiʻi as a place to leave the cities and by extension continue to gentrify our islands.

I Benjamin Ekolu Rodrigues am an aloha āina patriot, who deeply loves my country, people, and ways of life here in Hawai’i, and I convey this with my deepest respect: before there can be meaningful progress, and development of new systems, there are many things that need to be addressed before new laws, charters, and partnerships can be formed with the Hawaiian people. For 130 years the Hawaiian has been seeking reciprocity & justice for the non consensual abusive and toxic relationship we have been forced to be a part of by the United States Congress, and its agents.

The Hawaiian people are intimately connected to our lands, and continually advocated the immediate end of using our sacred lands as bombing ranges, failed fuel tank systems, and for building on our sacred sites.

Our precious ecology is very much still at risk, much of our native trees don’t have any legislative protections, while they are very much imperiled, and facing mass extinction due to over development, unchecked harvesting, invasive species, and diseases such as rapid ohia death, and the many threats inadvertently imported to our homelands through increasing population and expanding markets that don't consciously consider their impacts to our environment and ecology.

Hawai’i cannot withstand the utilitarian agricultural system that is common in the West. Our endangered and threatened ecosystems cannot handle the unchecked commodification of resources, which our history has shown us, has been a detriment to our ecology, culture, and traditional ways of life.

This biocredit system alongside carbon credits doesn’t guarantee the regulations and enforcement of these world powers, corporations, militararies, and the many industries across the globe to comply with practices that preserve land, water, sea, and forest, for the future generations of humanity. We can make a credit system to make us feel better, but are we truly balancing our economies, and impact on the planet? If this panel is truly seeking help and collaboration with indigenous peoples, I truly implore you all to consider the history, treaties, and thoughts within this letter. If we are to start new, and begin to shape better practices for the planet, we must first hoʻoponopono and make right for the things of the past that currently continue to impact us today as the Hawaiian people. We pray the world can move past short-term thinking, and the self-destructive way man has been trampling across the earth, limiting ourselves to profit margins, over the health and wellbeing of humanity.

Our thoughts, and prayers, are with all the nations of the earth, and the highest of respect and aloha to all the sacred colors of man, we pray for truth, reconciliation, and healing for humanity. May we build something lasting, and may peace reign on earth once again and may all the fighting cease. We all know that with all that the earth has to offer, there is enough to take care of us all, if we live in a conscious and loving way.

Me Ke Aloha Āina,

Benji Ekolu Rodrigues
Executive Director- Kumu Foundation

Written by Benji Ekolu Rodrigues. Benji is a Translational leader, Kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian), USA, Hawaii