Stories From Our 'Ohana: Meet Kamuela Yim

Feeding the Communal Soul

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When you talk about the signs of a healthy communityβ€”in all senses of the word β€œhealth” from physical to emotionalβ€”it’s easy to recognize the end-results. Folks are smiling. Families are out and about, enjoying the space where they live. There’s an evident vibe of community in the air that you can practically feel. But even before we experience that kind of optimal scenarioβ€”what goes into creating that sense of wellbeing?Β 

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β€œWhen people in a community begin to start feeding each other, I think that’s a good sign of a healthy community,” says Kamuela Yim, a farmer,Β cultural practitioner, and co-leader of the Hawaiian Language Immersion office for Hawai’i.Β β€œA strong community is one that can help each other out. Back in the day, when guys would go hunt, afterward, they’d just show up at someone in the community’s house and just…give. Whether it was the old man down the street who’s not doing so good or an auntie that needed help, you’d bring themΒ kaloΒ or some fish. So, maybe, the sign of a good community is when people are helping to feed each other, sharing what they have, pooling resources. The sharing shows this. And even in my own family, our currency is food. It’s how we show love to people and how we help.”

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Being that Kamuela is a Native Hawaiian farmerβ€”and fatherβ€”from Waipiβ€˜o, Oβ€˜ahu, providing love and sustenance in the form of actual food makes sense. Kamuela knows how to grow it and he knows how to catch it. But he also knowsβ€”as his ancestors taught for thousands of years before himβ€”that islands are fragile ecosystems. Thus, the growing, the harvesting, and the fishing, must be balanced.

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β€œEssentially, Hawaiβ€˜i is a canoe in the middle of the ocean that has very limited resources,” explains Kamuela. β€œYou can either run it until the wheels fall off and a new ship comes or you can be in sync with the place and know how to grow kalo or fish sustainably so that you can do the same next week.”

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But just as a community cannot survive without food and water, a community’s culture cannot survive without language. And in Hawaiβ€˜i, Kamuela understands that community and cultureβ€”and their respective well-beingsβ€”go hand in hand. AsΒ co-leader of the Hawaiian Language Immersion office for Hawai’i, Kamuela believes that everyone living in Hawaiβ€˜i should have a grasp of the native language.

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β€œThe importance of Hawaiian language to the communities that inhabit Hawaiβ€˜i is that this language was built and finely tuned to speak of and understand this place, and there’s no other language that gives you an understanding and insight to this place more than Hawaiian,” he says. β€œLanguage is the key that opens the lock to anything, really. Your songs, your dance, your stories, all of that revolves around a healthy language. So, if you don’t take care of that and keep it, a cultureβ€”a peopleβ€”will disappear.”

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