*3.3. Manifesting Genealogical Relationships through Ritual*

*Ki'i Akea ¯* —As we have shown, identification of the genealogical relationships you have with your place is fundamental to recognizing, conceptualizing, and ultimately participating in the reciprocal relationship you have with your surroundings. This approach can be seen as a tool that is applicable and accessible globally. In this section, we discuss how these genealogies are physically manifested through the vehicle of ritual expression and the emotional transformation that occurs in this process. Ritual creates a space and establishes a context for understanding and honoring our relationships to the places we steward.

*Ki'i Honua*—Returning to the *mele* "'O Wakea Noho i ¯ a Papah ¯ anaumoku," the recitation of this ¯ chant, the application of our breath to these words and names, and the recreating of the images of Wakea, Papah ¯ anauamoku, and their island children with the ¯ *hei* (Figure 2) allows us to experience the deep, raw, and universal emotions that solidify the genealogical (familial, biogeochemical, evolutionary) connections we have with our surroundings. For us, this transformation can come through a body motion in *hula*, a *hei* figure, or speaking the name and replicating the actions of the volcano deity Pelehonuamea. In this recreation, we allow ourselves to be overtaken by gratitude, as manifested by the *mele* "Lei o Hilo"; by heightened awareness and respect for elemental forces in the *hula* "Kukulu ka Pahu"; or by the perpetuation of our species in the ¯ *hula ma'i* (procreation dances). Once we are touched by these images and emotions, they are a part of us, with each ritual serving as a pathway to making seen and available for learning these vital connections.

*Ki'i 'Iaka*—As a *halau ¯* , our learning gained practical expression when we were asked to participate in a *Ho'ola'a 'Aina ¯* ritual led by Kumu Kekuhi. This ritual took place in a healthy native forest ecosystem where low impact construction was to take place for establishing an ecological monitoring tower that is 1 of 20 sites (the Pacific Domain) that make up the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The goal of ritual was to communicate with the site—the soil, trees, birds, and sky—through *oli*, *hula*, and *hei* that construction was going to occur but that healing and regeneration would follow the disturbance. Through our offerings, we became the ritualized exchange for the sacrifices absorbed by the site for the production of scientific information. In the moment of the ritual, during our performance, divisions between performer and the forest people—the trees, the birds, the mist, the wind—dissolved away. For some of us, this moment was the first time ritual expression served as the becoming of the object of the ritual. The dissolving boundaries and resulting connections helped us to match our movements with those of the forest swaying in the wind. The mind was released from what was happening, and footstep instinctively followed footstep in the performing of our hula, motion after motion, until the ritual was complete. Similarly, sounds of chanting flowed as we lost ourselves and became the forest, syllable after syllable, line after line. This ritual allowed us to create and enter into a sacred relationship with this forest; to do this, we left behind mundane considerations and expressed our gratitude for a sacrifice that would provide long-term monitoring data on changes to the health of the forest. In many ways, this event marked an important step in the integration of biophysically defined Western science (concerned with measurable phenomena external to or independent of the measurer) with relationally defined Indigenous science (concerned with observable and sensed phenomena including role of observer in the observed or sensed network of relationships). It reframed impact as redeemable through exchange while clearly elevating the importance of making every effort to honor the sacrifice of a place to science.

**Figure 2.** Final image created during "'O Wakea Noho i ¯ a Papah ¯ anaumoku", illustrating the Hawaiian ¯ Islands birthed by Papahanaumoku. ¯

### *3.4. Applying Genealogical Relationships and Ritual in Conservation*

We have discussed the transformative nature of ritual expression and the elevating of relationship from ideas and concepts to the realm of physically manifested sacred reality. This transformative becoming is powerful because embracing one's genealogical connection to the world greatly enriches our work as sustainability, natural resources, and conservation professionals. We realize that our effectiveness is influenced by the sacredness with which we engage the places and processes that we steward. We see our ties to a place as akin to our ties with beloved family members, such as a grandparent. In this section, we discuss how we apply and integrate these genealogy and ritual practices in our lives and work as sustainability, resource, or conservation professionals.

*Ki'i Akea ¯* —As we have shown, the portal of ritual and its imagery goes beyond human-to-human connections and allows for environmental and elemental beings to become more accessible and relatable to our human experience. The ritual identifies and helps us develop the linkages we have with the other organisms present, the place itself, and the challenges our places face. When we feel connected to a conservation issue of a place, we are able to persist and push through obstacles we encounter because our commitment is not to a job, programmatic theme, or achieving annual statistics, but rather to a family member under threat. This concept of a personal and familial bond is a powerful counter-example to how we humans all too often treat places and processes: enter; take what is needed (be it timber, water, or data); and then when degraded, no longer useful, or no longer funded, abandon.

While there are many examples of agency-based approaches to stewarding place that are positively increasing the well-being of person and place, we suggest that our approach to sustainability, resource management, and conservation could enhance already effective practices. Where approaches are not effective, we suggest that our approach could transform ineffective practices if all practitioners were supported throughout their organization to acknowledge, honor, and engage with their places—the plant people, the animal people, the forest people and the water people, as they would with cherished family members. Through practicing these rituals, recognizing these genealogies, and engaging with places as living, thinking, feeling people, we prepare the internal space and cultivate the awareness for feeling accepted by that place—in short to prepare for being *hanai ¯* 'd (raised, reared, fed, nourished, sustained, adopted) by place [27]. Engaging in, practicing, and performing these rituals helps us to embody the idea that we are not separate from (as humans) or in control of (as managers) these places, but that we are enmeshed, or in the words of socioecological systems thinking, that we are part of feedback loops woven into the systems of which we are a part.

#### *Ki'i Honua—*

*'O Hualalai me Mauna Loa ku'u mau mauna ¯* Hualalai and Mauna Loa are my beloved mountains ¯

*'O ke kai malino ku'u kai ¯* The calm sea is my beloved ocean

*'O ka 'eka, ke kai 'opua, ke k ¯ ehau ku'u mau makani a me ku'u mau ua ¯*

The 'Eka (onshore), Kai 'Opua (distant horizon clouds), and K ¯ ehau (gentle off shore breeze ¯ and dew) are my beloved winds and my beloved rains

#### *Ola!*

Life!

In our Halau ' ¯ Ohi'a journey, at all of the different places we have engaged with throughout our ¯ islands and across oceans, we have introduced ourselves to lands and people through our biocultural genealogies and ritual. We present ourselves, not with our name, title, and agency position, but by calling out the name of the mountain of our home: Mauna Kea! Mauna Loa! Hualalai! K ¯ ¯ılauea! Kohala! By dancing in honor of the waterfalls that feed our ancestral food systems. By singing and chanting to the hill, the tree, the birds, and the people that we visit in these special places. In doing this, we are saying, "This is who I am, these are the lands and waters from which I was born, or which now feeds and nourishes me." We are saying, "My extended genealogy honors you."

*Ki'i 'Iaka*—Some of us take this process to our offices and field sites, teaching our workmates the ritual-based process of engaging new work sites, for example. Letting a place know a visitor's intentions is important to place and to self to create the highest quality work possible for the healing of a landscape or seascape. This sharing of intention through our voices via traditional or new *oli*, through spoken words in the language with which you are comfortable, or even silent thoughts of communication with the place allow us to become more strongly tied to the place, which becomes enhanced through planting, sweating, and working to steward an area. Throughout, we are also learning the patterns of the wind, the path of the animals, and timing of the rain. Over time, we share

details about the place with others. We share its genealogy, the mountain that birthed this place, the rains that feed this landscape, members of its ecological community, and past actions that have left these scars on its substrate. We become responsible for that place through this sharing of genealogies; before we realize it, we have become *hanai ¯* 'd by that place.

For those of us who work in environmental education or community engagement to promote biocultural conservation, these same processes can be applied to educational groups. Having the visitors to any site first ask permission to enter begins to open the door to other layers of learning and then understanding. We tell the stories of the place, and for the visitors, that begins to reveal more layers. We have them stop and see what the winds, clouds, and birds are doing—exposing more layers. We ask them to smell, taste, and feel the place—more layers still. Why is this important? Because when you come to know a place on these levels—physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, historically—the place becomes part of your genealogical story and you begin to treat the place differently. This may seem strange to those committed to objective purity, but most conservation educators know it is a personal connection between child and forest plant or animal, the awe of a volunteer in the power of planting a tree knowing that the tree will live 300+ years and support countless generations of forest birds, and the love of place that most often drives people to sacrifice so much for the protection of a place dear and near. It could be argued that connection to and reverence for place is a force like no other in the management of lands, waters and seas, and so for thriving stewardship [22,28].

Thus, ritual can be applied in biocultural conservation and resource management to initiate and develop a person's intimate relationship with a place in order to be better stewards. At another collective level, ritual can be a tool that conservation practitioners use to introduce a place to educational groups as if introducing a family member. Critically, the process of ritual can serve to transform human to human relationships in ways that differ from the ad hoc relationship building or formal team building that happens in most organizations serving lands and seas. We are humbled and inspired by singing to the mountains, forest, ocean, and rivers; by sharing our intentions and offering, giving, and honoring the reciprocal relationship with the places and processes that sustain us, and deepening those reciprocal, kincentric relationships between human and plant, plant and mountain, human and human [29]. These rituals act as accelerators or catalysts for relationship building—in our backyards, our stewardship lands, or when traveling as a group to distant lands.

On this last point, engaging, introducing ourselves to, and humbly thanking our Maori hosts in Aotearoa helped them to know that we were paying attention, that we respected them and their mountains and waters, and that we were humbled by their work. Importantly, we also were able to show that we, too love our places and the many and diverse members of our communities, and in this love of our places, we were able to quickly form intimate relationships with our hosts, their families, and their storied places. For some of us who are used to the professional exchanges and encounters (annual society meetings or agency workshops), this radically different approach with radically different outcomes was profound, intense, soul lifting and a powerful lesson of how ritual can manifest transformation.

We hope that we have shown that ritual creates the space for relating to our environments, to each other, and with visitors and hosts on an intimate level, and that ritual operates at various scales. Applying this learning to the work environment has helped us build these relationships in our work, allowing for conversations and actions that were not possible in Hawai'i just a few years ago.

#### **4.** *Pani***—Closing**

All of us authors have genealogical connections to lands, rivers, and oceans far from Hawai'i, while some of us are also tied by deep ancestry to places in Hawai'i. What we have learned is that regardless of our origins, we must steward our places as family. We must acknowledge that while we have other ancestral homes, ritual supports our continued understanding of who we are in THIS place. The use of *ki'i* helps us understand perspectives from multiple ways of learning*. Mo'oku'auhau ¯*

(genealogies) and *ko'ihonua* (cosmologies) biogeochemically and evolutionarily connect us to the water that we drink, the food we eat, and the *'aina ¯* we live on as nothing less than our most beloved family member. So, we leave you, the reader, with this. We encourage you to know your mountain, your water source, your socioecological district, and the stories of these places. How did your stream get its name? What have your people and the people who came before called your significant places? How can you better honor your relationship to these places? Can creating art, new stories, *mele*, and *hula* for them provide an avenue for this furthering of connections? Sing to them. *Hula* for them. Be with these places as you would be with a beloved grandparent. Honor these places by knowing their intricacies while working to enhance their well-being with the commitment and love that you might have for the raising of a child or caring for a loved one. By singing to your places, dancing to your mountains, telling stories to your children about your waters, you build community with your children, your places, with your families, neighbors, colleagues, and with yourself. We sing you our final offering:
