Feeding the Communal Soul
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When you talk about the signs of a healthy communityβin all senses of the word βhealthβ from physical to emotionalβitβs easy to recognize the end-results. Folks are smiling. Families are out and about, enjoying the space where they live. Thereβs an evident vibe of community in the air that you can practically feel. But even before we experience that kind of optimal scenarioβwhat goes into creating that sense of wellbeing?Β
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βWhen people in a community begin to start feeding each other, I think thatβs a good sign of a healthy community,β says Kamuela Yim, a farmer,Β cultural practitioner, and co-leader of the Hawaiian Language Immersion office for Hawaiβi.Β βA strong community is one that can help each other out. Back in the day, when guys would go hunt, afterward, theyβd just show up at someone in the communityβs house and justβ¦give. Whether it was the old man down the street whoβs not doing so good or an auntie that needed help, youβd 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. Itβs how we show love to people and how we help.β
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Being that Kamuela is a Native Hawaiian farmerβand fatherβfrom Waipiβo, Oβahu, 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 knowsβas his ancestors taught for thousands of years before himβthat islands are fragile ecosystems. Thus, the growing, the harvesting, and the fishing, must be balanced.
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βEssentially, Hawaiβi is a canoe in the middle of the ocean that has very limited resources,β explains Kamuela. βYou 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.β
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But just as a community cannot survive without food and water, a communityβs culture cannot survive without language. And in Hawaiβi, Kamuela understands that community and cultureβand their respective well-beingsβgo hand in hand. AsΒ co-leader of the Hawaiian Language Immersion office for Hawaiβi, Kamuela believes that everyone living in Hawaiβi should have a grasp of the native language.
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βThe importance of Hawaiian language to the communities that inhabit Hawaiβi is that this language was built and finely tuned to speak of and understand this place, and thereβs no other language that gives you an understanding and insight to this place more than Hawaiian,β he says. βLanguage 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 donβt take care of that and keep it, a cultureβa peopleβwill disappear.β