2003-07-28 TBLASMAN (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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KANAHELE:I teach at Hawaii Community College. M. ROY:As such, are you involved with this site in your teaching? KANAHELE:Oh, yeah. And in all my classes, no, not all of them, mostly the Hawaiian beliefs and practice class, which I actually talk about this practice, talk about the practice thatÓs here. So I bring my class down every year to go through the two areas. And their purpose is to go in there and re-map the place and see what has changed from the last map that was presented by my class, see if anything is overgrown, or the stonewalls are down, or people are actually living in the site. And so weÓve done that with both places and every year I go back in it and check; but itÓs been -. For my class members that go down, it has been an eye-opener for them. And u places like that that has been in the public eye for a long time, this place has not been in the public eye for a long time. And, so, theyÓre always pleasantly surprised by what they find there and they feel like they have given back something, you know, just by going in there and at that particular time taken some responsibility about trying to maintain something thatÓs there; but we do that every year. M. ROY:Would you say that the care and aloha for this place is also felt by members of beyond your classes that you work with? KANAHELE:Some of the members of the class continue to go back because they have some sense of what the place is about and what the place should look like. And, so, every once in awhile when I see them, they tell me that theyÓve gone back to look at the place and they saw that somebody was living in the place and, so, they give me reports like that. And, so, you know, in my small way IÓd like to expose more people to Keolonhihi and Keakealawahine because that, to me, is a spot that, it goes back to maybe one of the last times that we were, our culture was pure; and thatÓs what that represents to me. M. ROY:Do you prepare your students before they go with you? KANAHELE:We get a lot of preparation for it, yeah. And, you kno of my maps, we talk about the practice. First of all, we talk about some of David MaluÓs things, we talk about the kumulipo and the practices within the kumulipo, about the priestess lines that weÓre responsible for births and unions and keeping track of different kinds of birth, whether itÓd be people or things of the ocean, things of the mountain, those kind of things; and we talk about all of that. And then we come to this place and tell them that this is where it actually happened here in HawaiÒi and, then, so they can make a connection from the dim past to this place thatÓs going on in HawaiÒi, down to Kamehameha that continued that particular practice Òcause heÓs, and then to KamehamehaÓs children that were products of that particular practice, before inundation of other cultures to HawaiÒi. 10