Hōlanikū Update #1

It's amazing how so many things feel so familiar to me and how so many things feel so new. Looking out onto this land feels like I'm seeing it for the first time. That is how much she has changed. So many of the places that I knew like the back of my hand are hardly recognizable but in the best way. It is like we are seeing in real time what land back means. She is taking her own land back because she finally has the room to do it. I can look around and not see a single verbesina where I once saw thousands. Instead, I see alena growing in abundance. I see fields of Kawelu that I helped to plant. I see more and more bunches of Mau'u 'aki'aki and Makaloa. I see forests of Naupaka where there were once forests of Heliotropes. And I get so emotional at the fact that it is now rare to see the many different kinds of weeds that I once sprayed every single day. I have to reintroduce myself to her every morning as my eyes become familiar with who she has become. I imagine it is the same for her.

I am not the same as I once was either. I do not look the same. And so many of the foreign intrusive colonized thoughts and patterns I used to have, I no longer carry. I have made so much room, too - for my healing, for my reclaimation, and my restoration. And I know that I could not be where I am in my wholistic health if it weren't for my makua, our 'ohana, my koko'olua, our keiki, the Mauna, Kaho'olawe, this place and every single sacred place and people we have gotten the blessing and honor to be in the presence of.

One of my most sacred ho'okupu I could ever offer to her is returning to her shores embodying more and more of my ea after years of ceremony and healing and walking with more love for myself so I can walk with more love for this land.

VC: @dwight_on_kure_atoll

#hōlanikū #landback #alohaaina #aina #kureatoll