Hawaiians survived 1,000 years in the middle of the Pacific. And then they arrived.

There's a place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that has more of everything there is on Earth.

Or there was, until Westerners arrived. This place is known as the Hawaiian Islands.        Just about any life-form on the planet could find its "sweet spot" within the Hawaiian Islands.

The Hawaiians' belief system was the key.
They saw the islands as having different realms.
The day Western civilization landed on Hawaii's shores.
And now the traditional Hawaiian self-reliance is gone.
This story should change our attitude.
In it may be the key to us stepping back from the environmental ledge.

Dr. Sam Ohu Gon III, speaking as Senior Scientist, and Cultural Advisor to The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, explains that there's something really important to learn about what happened when outsiders came in.

Click here to view Dr. Sam Ohu Gon III video

             Lessons from a thousand years of island sustainability

When Westerners arrived 300 years ago, there were hundreds of thousands of Hawaiians already having lived on these islands for millennia, on their own, in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

The Hawaiians lived lightly off the islands whose resources they depended on. They used only about 15% of its resources, and were still completely self-sufficient, with nothing required from the outside world.

Wao kanaka are the lowlands along the shores where people lived. It's where the Hawaiian people grew and caught the food they needed.

                                                        

Wao akua was the uplands above wao kanaka. It was an intensely sacred place (Kapu) where humans had no role in the native forests or the waters that flowed out of it. It's where their ancestor gods, aumakua, lived.

The Hawaiians believed aumakua could take the form of individual plants and animals, or kinolau. So all life in waoakua were not just plants and animals. It was literally Ohana (Family).

 “When your gods are also your family and the elements of nature are their physical presence, your relationship with nature is transformed." — Sam Ohu Gon III

Hawaiians considered themselves actual kin to nature, a much richer way of thinking than viewing yourself of just a consumer.

Hawaiians  believed in aloha, which is not a simple “hello" or “goodbye," as it often seems.

One of its many meanings is empathetic compassion, and it extends beyond the people you care about. It extends to the āina, or land that they lived in. Together, aloha āina is a deep appreciation of and love for the features of your land.

To take from the land without thinking of what you're doing to it would be, as Gon says, “a direct and conscious prostitution of not only a family member, but an elder. And what right-thinking person would do that?"

When Western civilization landed on Hawaii's shores a different ideal came along with them. 

Nature to them was a set of resources to be exploited by property owners and purchased by human consumers. The human footprint on Hawaii expanded to 85%, and many of the islands' natural resources were destroyed or used-up. 

This shows how things changed.

Modern Hawaiians are now so dependent on imports that if they stopped, it's estimated there'd be famine in just three weeks.

Our global climate challenges come from losing sight of our relationship to the ground we stand on, the air we breathe, and seas we sail.

By combining aloha āina with modern technology, there's a chance we can set things right.

"Aloha āina" is not just a saying, but instead a practical formula for how we survive on our own little island out in the middle of the ocean of space.

   

Mahalo to Sam 'Ohu Gon III for sharing your words of wisdom with us all. 

Lessons from a thousand years of island sustainability