Wai‘anae Ecological Characterization

Cultural Learning Provides Hope and an Antidote to Poverty

The Cultural Learning Center at Ka‘ala Farm is a holistic project to help restore the vitality of Hawaiian culture and reconnect modern Hawaiians to it. Ka‘ala Farm got its start in the 1970s, when a group of young people from the Wai‘anae Rap Center stumbled upon ancient stone terraces of abandoned kalo lo‘i while hiking in upper Wai‘anae Valley. Reclaiming the lo‘i became the first step in what has become a vital program-reaching 3,000 to 4,000 people a year, most of them students-aimed at preserving Hawaiian traditions, reviving Hawaiian values, and sharing pride in Hawaiian culture (Lang 2002). One of the central values taught at Ka‘ala is "aloha ‘āina," to love and care for the land (Dawson 2000).

Ka‘ala Farm today is a place to learn about Hawaiian culture and the ahupua‘a through planting kalo, making poi, making kapa [tapa], and listening to kupuna [ancestors]. Among the people served by the Cultural Learning Center are drug-addicted patients from the Ho‘omau Ke Ola treatment program, a community program formed to combat Wai‘anae's drug program. The drug problem is rooted in the struggling economy of the Wai‘anae moku, where the percentage of people living below the poverty level is more than twice that of O‘ahu.

Learning Hawaiian history, crafts, philosophy, and spirituality are the central feature of Ho‘omau Ke Ola's treatment approach. This approach works because it shows the patients that they are a part of something larger than themselves: part of the land, and of Hawai‘i's rich community culture. As Ka‘ala Farm's director Eric Enos said, "Drugs are what you turn to when there's a vacuum to fill. When you're full of purpose, when life has a meaning, then you're filling yourself up with something else, something positive. And when you're filled with positive things then the junk doesn't have as much room to enter," (Miller 2004).

References Cited

Dawson, T. 2000. "In Battered Waianae, Community Organizes to Save Environment, Health." Environment Hawaii 10(9). http://www.environment-hawaii.org/300cov.htm

Lang, L. 2002. "Kalo Culture: Tapping into the Roots of Hawaii's Life-Giving Ancestral Plant." Hana Hou! The Magazine of Hawaiian Airlines 5(1).

Miller, J. 2004. Hoomau Ke Ola: To Perpetuate Life as it was Meant to Be. In Worlds of Difference: Local Culture in a Global Age, A Radio Documentary of Homelands Productions. Homelands Productions. http://www.homelands.org/worlds/hawaii.html

Back to top