Reimagining tourism futures in Hawaiʻi
Transcript from presentation by Dr. Kaiwipuni Lipe and Matthew Kamakani Lynch to the Pacific Asian Travel Association annual holiday gathering; December 4, 2020
Aloha mai kākou. My name is Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe. But most people call me Punihei. It is my honor and pleasure to be here today and mahalo to Dr. Lenna Shulga for inviting me to specifically talk about relationships between people and place. I’m really delighted to be joined by my colleague, Matthew Kamakani Lynch, from the UH system Sustainability Office. I’ll let him introduce himself.
Aloha folks, as Punihei said my name is Matthew Kamakani Lynch and I was born on Oʻahu at Kapiolani Hospital, and raised on Kaneohe Bay. I’ll share a little more about myself later in this presentation, so for now I will just introduce myself in my professional role as the Director of Sustainability Initiatives for the University of Hawaiʻi system, as well as serving as Chairperson of the Board for Kahumana Organic Farms, a social enterprise working at the nexus of transitional housing, mental health & regenerative farming to build healthy communities on O’ahu; and I am also grateful to be with you here today.
Mahalo, Matt. Matt and I have been working closely together to think about futures rooted in Hawai‘i by Hawai‘i and for Hawai‘i in ways that are socially-just, inclusive, and sustainable. Lucky for us, we have so much to learn from Indigenous Hawai‘i.
I’m going to be honest, I’m really excited about connecting with all of you today because it signifies a turning point for me. I grew up having a fairly negative relationship with and perception of the tourist industry. After all, many of the things I grew up valuing like ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, hula, and ‘āina have been largely misappropriated by the tourist industry for profit that has had little to no benefit to those things I care so much about. And that makes me sad because that makes the work we need to do for our children just a bit more difficult. At the same time, in the last several months and years, I’ve seen a shift within the tourism industry; there are more attempts to connect to ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, ‘ike Hawai‘i, and mālama ‘āina in some respectable ways. Moreover, as Matt and I and the rest of our team often remind ourselves and others:
Perhaps more than ever before, we are learning and witnessing — both through the pandemic and all of our climate challenges — the ways we need to learn to take care of one another and our island earth. In Hawaiʻi, we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and global warming; sea-level rise, catastrophic storms, rain bombs, and landslides to name a few. Thus, our natural environments — ancestors to the Native Hawaiian people — are calling out to all of us to abandon structures and practices built from separation and disconnection so that we can collectively work towards taking care of one another and our island home.
We believe that we must absolutely come together to work together so that our children and grandchildren have a Hawai‘i to continually call home. It is with that spirit of aloha and kuleana that I show up here today.
With that, I’d like to frame my thoughts around my work at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In 2017, I was hired as the inaugural Native Hawaiian Affairs Program Officer. The guiding questions for my work, based off of 30 years of reports and recommendations, are:
- How can UH Mānoa become more responsive to the needs and assets of Native Hawaiian communities?
- And how can UH Mānoa become more reflective of Indigenous Hawai‘i?
And I think those are two wonderful guiding questions that we can pose to all industries in Hawai‘i, and especially the tourism industry.
So I want to lean into those two questions again with all of you:
- How can the tourism industry become more responsive to the needs and assets of Native Hawaiian communities?
- And how can Hawai‘i’s tourism industry become more reflective of Indigenous Hawai‘i?
The use of concepts like kuleana and Mālama Hawai‘i in the tourism industry today gives me hope that there are pathways forward. Furthermore, you all, this industry, has amazing influence, power, and kuleana to put forth a way that is both sustainable and loving; to help maintain and increase aloha now and into future generations.
Because these are concepts that Hawai‘i’s tourism industry is using, I want to talk a bit about aloha. Aloha is one of my favorite words because when you think about the power of aloha and what it really teaches us, it is profound. It is going to help save our world. And you all have at your fingertips so many possibilities for engaging in aloha. So that excites me even more that we are together today.
Aloha, as I have been taught in various schools, comes from two words: Alo & Hā. The idea that we turn he alo a he alo, face to face; that we get to know someone/something/somewhere so well that we know how to take care of them and they know how to take care of us. And that Hā is our life breath, that essence that we give out and receive over and over in our lives that helps to maintain and/or increase the well-being of that entity we are in relationship with; whether that is your child, or your grandma, the beach in front of your house, or the mountains in your backyard. That we get to know them and they get to know us so well that we know how to interact and take care of one another.
One form of aloha, of engaging in that reciprocity, is mālama. I know that you folks are familiar with mālama because of the Mālama Hawai‘i initiative, so let’s lean into mālama together for a moment.
Mālama is how we take care of our elders; whether that be elder by age, experience, time, or kuleana in a place or context. Of course in the story of Hāloa that some of you might know, the taro is born first and then the younger human brother, Hāloa, is born. And that younger brother grows up to be a chief that teaches the people how to mālama ‘āina, to care for and tend to the land, waterways, and sky; in essence because that’s how he takes care of his elder sibling, the kalo.
I wasn’t born a farmer, but I did grow up with elders in my house, including my grandma. And in the last years of her life, I was one of her primary caregivers. So similar to that farmer’s experience, I used the practice of aloha, getting to know her so well while growing up, and then getting to know her again when she got alzheimer’s disease, to learn how to best maintain and maybe even increase her comfort level and some sense of wellbeing in those last years of her life.
Knowing her well allowed me to mālama her; to tend to her, in very specific ways, that were particular to her context and situation. We knew how to make her comfortable, we knew how to get her in the shower, we knew how to get her to eat something. But knowing these things took time, especially in those last years.
When my husband came to Hawai‘i from Oregon to marry me, he was a malihini, as we often use the word today to describe a visitor or someone new to an area. He was a malihini to Hawai‘i and in many ways he was a malihini to my family. We dated for 2-years long distance so he would come to visit on occasion. During his visits part of his kuleana while being in our home was to help take care of my grandma. Anyone who came to the house had that kuleana to some extent.
He could not possibly know — he merely did not have enough time to know — how to best take care of her. And yet, when he came to visit I would ask him to help me when necessary. And even just in his daily coming and going as a visitor in our home, there were certain things he needed to do in a certain way to keep my grandma comfortable.
He only knew how to care for my grandma even in the small ways he did at first, because we taught him; because he had a relationship with me and I had a strong relationship with her. My husband could not possibly love my grandma the way I did. But he cared enough for me and he knew that part of loving me was helping me to take care of her. And so he learned. And then when he moved here to Hawai‘i, his time spent with Grandma grew, therefore his ability to take care of her — to mālama her — also grew. And then when she passed, although he did not have the same relationship with her that I did, he too felt sadness and he could empathize with me.
So why do I share this story with all of you? Because from a Hawaiian perspective, the earth is also our grandma. And as you might know, for Native Hawaiians, Hawai‘i is our particular grandmother, and she has nourished us for generations. And while my Grandma Kathy was not my husband’s grandma, he came to my home with humility and a willingness to learn how to mālama and aloha her. And I love this story because my husband reminds me that people can learn, people can grow; he reminds me of our human potential to love even across various boundaries and borders.
When we are committed to concepts like Mālama Hawai‘i and kuleana and aloha, what can that really mean for the future of Hawai‘i and also for the future of tourism? What can that mean in terms of what Hawai‘i offers but also what Hawai‘i receives? Because let’s remember, aloha is about reciprocation. As my mom says, “Aloha is a two way street.” It is both what we give but also what we receive in that relationship.
Being called the aloha state should mean that as much love and care and well-being that we give out into the world, we should also be receiving in order to maintain that balance, that sustainability, that health and well-being that we need.
I invite us to think about what role the tourist and travel industry can play in helping anybody who comes to Hawai‘i as a visitor to see that even if this place is not their particular grandmother and this is not where their ancestral roots are connected to, that they can see Hawai‘i as an elder, as a grandmother of an entire group of people, and treat her and the community that is primarily responsible for her — as I was to my grandma — with the care and aloha that is required to keep Hawai‘i Hawai‘i.
Again, I want to celebrate these ideas of kuleana, and aloha, and mālama Hawai‘i that you folks are all using right now and I want to think and explore with all of you how this can shape our post-pandemic Hawai‘i.
I’m going to now turn it over to Matt to help us think through what “economy” can mean for us in the future and how Native Hawaiian concepts can guide us. Over to you, Matt.
Matt:
Thank you Punihei. Iʻd really like to mahalo you for being so vulnerable in the personal stories you just shared with us, and you’ve inspired me to share a little of my own personal stories with our colleagues here today.
I really resonated with the story you shared about how Bubba, your husband, came to learn how to mālama your Grandma through his love and aloha for you. My family has been in Hawaiʻi now for 5 generations, having arrived here from the Philippines to work as exploited labor in the plantation agriculture fields of post-contact Hawaiʻi.
On my Dad’s side, I am descended from “convicts” who were deported from our ancestral homelands — the islands of Ireland and Scotland — to live as indentured servants to the British Empire in the great southern lands known today as Australia, where I spent my teenage years growing up. So you see, I am descended from rabble-rousers and shenanigators (which probably explains a lot), and like many modern humans, I am also descended from long lines of peoples in displacement.
My professional background is actually in mortgage banking and real estate finance, I moved back to Hawaiʻi and in my early 20s worked for Bank of America, then eventually started my own Advisory firm in downtown Honolulu, as well as investing in real estate myself to build a net worth of over $1M before the age of 30 (and then losing everything in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008).
Since then, I have been fortunate to help communities around the world who are already feeling firsthand the impacts of climate disruption begin to adapt to the realities of climate change.
This path has led me to understand just how critically important alternative models of economic development are — because our current dominant global paradigm is one that is based on extractive, constantly expanding models of capitalism that are fueled by relentless consumer culture — which is all based upon a story that we are all entangled in… a story of of never-ending growth for the sake of growth.
So today I am going to invite you to lean in and explore a new story together, with me; a story that imagines a world where we reimagine our economic futures together, and begin by contemplating a couple key questions:
- What could a thriving, resilient and equitable economy look like in Hawaiʻi?
- What could living into our kuleana and power to mālama Hawaiʻi look like from an economic perspective?
I can imagine a day in the future where my sister “Mez” (who was only two years old when we moved to Melbourne, Australia) brings her two beautiful daughters to come visit me over their summer break (which happens to be each December), and they WhatsApp me excited to share about the visitor packet they have just received from Hawaiʻi in anticipation of their arrival.
Lily is excited about playing in the mud again at the kalo patch, where she will not only be cheered on for getting dirt all over her hands as she tends to the plants with other keiki who are visiting from all over the world, she will get to hear again the story of Hāloa and learn about the roles & responsibilities she has to the places she is in, as well as her own kuleana to her younger sister, Cora…
…and my little Cora-Bear, well she is excited because she is hoping to catch a glimpse of the Kamehameha butterfly, which she has read about in some of the books written and illustrated by Hawaiʻi writers & artists that her parents bought her during their last trip to visit me!
My Sister tells me about the mandatory in-flight video they watched on the airplane ride over, and how impressed she was that they talked about how the roots of the word “Economy” being from the Ancient Greek words oikos and nomos, meaning “Management of the Home”, which, the video told her, is how Indigenous Hawaiʻi thought of their kuleana to this place — Native Hawaiians were responsible to care for these islands, their Grandmother — and as my friend Kamuela Enos taught me, they measured their economic health by measuring how healthy their people and places were during the annual makahiki offerings & games.
“Caring For Our Island Home” by the way, is also how Hawaiʻi has chosen to rethink how we manage our economy.
We have moved beyond GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as the primary measure of well-being that guided our economic policymaking, and we now track & report on the health & well-being of our peoples and our places to guide our policy decisions.
We have conducted rigorous scientific analysis and deep listening with our communities to understand the limits of what our island’s socio-ecological systems are, so that we could collectively determine and implement an annual quota of visitors those systems could support. This quota has created a limited supply of visits to Hawaiʻi, which has had the effect of increasing global demand for visiting Hawaiʻi. This had the added benefit of allowing us to be more discerning about the type of visitor we attract to Hawaiʻi.
This simple approach is so remarkable that cities, municipalities, and even entire countries regularly come to visit and learn from Hawaiʻi, and return home with new knowledge that they can adapt and apply to taking better care of their own peoples and places.
So my Sister and her family feel very lucky to be traveling to Hawaiʻi, and recognize the privilege & responsibilities that come with being fortunate enough to be included in that annual quota of visitors.
Her co-workers were entranced by the stories she would share about “Aloha”, kuleana, and Mālama, and how that meant that yes she, was well-cared for every time she came here, but it also meant that she was expected to reciprocate by giving her own time to care in different ways for the human and non-human communities which live here. This way of being in relationship with a foreign land was such a compelling story to her friends!
Mez is excited to experience and learn more about how Hawaiʻi takes care of its people and places, and sees her time here not only as precious time to be with extended family, but also as an enriching experience for her young daughters and their father.
In fact, she tells me how much she appreciates being treated as so much more than just a visitor being coerced into spending their dollars, because she was asked before she came how her small family might be able to contribute to mālama-ing our islands.
They even had a family discussion and chose from a menu of options, deciding that during their weeklong stay they would spend a morning joining a community work day at Kakoʻo ‘Oiwi, and an afternoon volunteering to outplant native trees at Lyon Arboretum (the girls just love being out in nature and planting things, and the authenticity of these experiences create memories which will shape her family long after the trip is done).
Mez shows me her plane ticket, which shows how much CO2 emissions her travels resulted in, and even translates that into the number of trees which need to be planted to offset those emissions. She smiles though, because she is proud that the carbon offset fee she paid as a part of her airfare goes directly to Hawaiʻi-based conservation efforts that protect our watersheds, our forests, our oceans, our Hawaiian language, our culture, and help to provide livelihoods for Hawaiʻi residents. Nowhere else that she has traveled to had this type of a program established, which makes her feel extra-proud to be contributing.
When her family is whisked away to their hotel in Waikiki by the ultramodern, ultra-clean and ultra-quiet monorail from the airport, screens in their carriage display a dashboard of Waikiki that flashes statistics about things like “Fresh Water Capacity”, “Carbon Sequestered”, and “Biodiversity” — because Waikiki itself has been reimagined as the wetlands that it once was and has adopted ecological indicators in addition to its financial indicators so that we can monitor its well-being.
Ala Wai Golf Course has water features running throughout which are actually functional wetlands, filtering nutrients & sediments which have made their way from upstream, providing habitat, ecosystem services, and a beautifully picturesque environment which enchants all who play the course.
In fact, much of Waikiki is like this now, with wide open streets filled with people since rental cars are no longer the given mode of transport for visitors. A local rideshare app called Ride Hawaiʻi has replaced Uber & Lyft platforms because Ride Hawaiʻi allows drivers to make a living wage working just 40 hours /week.
But it is getting late now, and our Mom is calling us because our Hawaiʻi-grown dinner is almost ready. Tomorrow, we are going on an augmented reality walking tour of Waikiki to hear more stories about the fishponds and kalo patches that used to stretch from the shoreline to the back of the valleys, and we need to get the girls to bed so they are well-rested for our adventures ahead. <END STORY> *pause*
I read this story to my wife Lucie as I was preparing to speak with all of you today, and she stopped me halfway to ask if my sister was really so organized that she presented a menu of options to her young family to consider before they arrived… and of course I had to laugh and say “Of course not! She’s a Lynch. We thrive on improv. Also I am making this story up.” hahaha — but I thought it was really very interesting that Lucie thought this could actually be a true story.
And you know what — I think it could actually be a true story. So many of the seeds of this one possible future are present all around us today.
So I would like to thank you all for your willingness to think with us, about tourism futures rooted in Hawai‘i by Hawai‘i and for Hawai‘i — in ways that are socially-just, inclusive (not just sustainable) — in ways that we can all thrive and flourish.
Lucky for us, we have so much to learn from Indigenous Hawai‘i.
In closing, my question to you all: How might your business directly contribute to caring for our Grandmother (Hawaiʻi) and all of her children? (beyond $$)
And with that, I will turn things back over to you Punihei.
Transcript from presentation by Dr. Kaiwipuni Lipe and Matthew Kamakani Lynch to the Pacific Asian Travel Association annual holiday gathering; December 4, 2020
