Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 33, Number 7, 1 July 2016 — ANTHONY, PANIEL K. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ANTHONY, PANIEL K.

>► Q1 RESPONSE The role of OHA is to inspire and empower our lāhui to work to be healthy. One of the best ways to do this is for OHA to heeome a physically, mentally and spiritually healthy organization. I have a unique perspective of Hawaiian health to bring to OHA. It started as a child

atthe Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center, in the office of my grandfather Dr. Fred Dodge. It extends from there out to the deep seas where I spent mueh of my youth with my father Vince Dodge who was an 'ōpelu fisherman, into some of the last lo'i kalo (taro patches) at my Papa Eddie Poe's kuleana farm in Wai'anae Valley, up into the back of the valley at Ka'ala Farms, where my father learned to pound kalo and make boards and stones from Anakala Eddie Kaanana, Walter Paolo and Eric Enos, across the ahupua'a to Makaha Elementary and Hoa'aina o Makaha with Unele Gigi, and all the while I was living next to Unele Joe and Aunty Margie Perreira, the most amazing pig farmers. In these places, I learned what a healthy lāhui ean look like. >► Q2 RESPONSE: My strategy for nation building is one pōhaku at a time. The front line to nahon building is the dinner table. Every family that strives to eat from the 'āina will with eaeh bite help to rebuild the nation from the mahi'ai up. Before he was chief he was a farmer, and he was recognized as a chief when he could organize farmers to work collectively to ensure food security and prosperity. Our nation was and will be built with lepo and pōhaku with hands, hearts, tears and sweat of the lāhui. >► Q3 RESPONSE: The answers to complex issues ultimately boil down to how we choose to live everyday and what we value. Our mana grows when ancestral values heeome our values. Indigenous cultures and people across the honua use technology and social media to share how their ancestral practices are the answers to complex issues. Onee we recognize solutions, we must strive to implement them. There has to be space for indigenous cultures to thrive in a way that does not intimidate cultures and practices that contribute to the problem, but instead inspires them to change. It's okay to adopt a solution from a culture different from ours. We are all of the earth, and the idea that geography, ethnicity or class ean somehow separate us from global challenges is only an illusion. He moku, he wa'a, he wa'a he moku, he honua, he moku i ke ao holooko'a The island is the eanoe, the eanoe is the island, the world is an island in the universe. ■