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Thoughts on Kaiāulu, Community, and Place

 This semester, Kaiāulu has completely changed my perspective on community. Before taking this class, my understanding of community was based on my immediate surroundings: people around me like my classmates, colleagues, and friends. However, my perspective has completely changed since I started to read all the assigned texts. My eyes were opened to see community not only as people around me but also place and responsibility, especially when we talk about Hawaii and its finite land and resources. Some of the class discussions stayed with me throughout my learning process too. I realized that everyone has their own story to tell about Hawaii since their life experiences depend on where they grew up and their communities. I realized this while doing Paper 1, especially when I compared my own community with the communities of North Shore Kauaʻi communities discussed by Mehana Vaughan. I realized how important values like kuleana and mālama ʻāina are not only as concepts but also as pr...
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Week 1 writing

 Vaughan’s toolkit for her mo‘olelo is just a few tried-and-true techniques of storytelling that allow the story to stick with us from one generation to the next. She likes to populate her tale with fascinating figures whose decisions drive the action of the story forward, allowing us to connect to the story on some deep level. Of course, she also paints bold settings that ground the story in the culture of Hawaii and in nature itself, allowing us to see the setting of the tale. But she also provides challenges to the protagonist that turn up the heat on the action of the lesson. The themes of the mo‘olelo tend to revolve around respecting nature, serving others, being loyal to one's heritage, and persevering. While some of the themes come through strongly, such as seeing what happens to a character who acts with selfishness and then realizing that taking care of others is an important part of life, others come through more subtly, such as a character finding humility, and finding ...
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