Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 39, Number 10, 1 ʻOkakopa 2022 — Aloha mai kākou, [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Aloha mai kākou,

J 'OLELO A KA POUHANA V ^ MESSAGE FROM THE CEO *

A SEAS0N F0R CHANGE Ho'ohuli (v. To turn; to change.)

In our 'ohana, October is a month of birthdays. Its funny how many of us, in both my immediate and extended family, share October as our birthday month. I am one of them. Birthdays are a personal time of change and transition. After the celebrations are pau and the eake is all eaten, we file away the previous year of life in our mental memory book and look forward to things to eome - a year older and, hopefully, wiser. Here in Hawai'i, October marks the transition from kau wela (the hot season) to ho'oilo (the rainy season). On the continent, the autumn transition from summer to winter is visually punctuated in October by the "changing of the leaves" from countless shades of green to an explosion of yellows, oranges and reds. Nature's rhythms and cycles are all about halanee, with equal but opposite forces coexisting in perfect tension: light and darkness; summer and winter, fire and water. But lately, I've observed, our world is increasingly out of halanee. In nature we witness extremes brought on by climate change: melting glaciers and rising sea levels, devastating annual wildfires, increasingly violent storms, catastrophic droughts. But these extremes manifest in people too. I remember when folks could "agree to disagree" and remain ffiends or colleagues or family. It doesn't seem like that is a thing anymore. Now when people "disagree" they "disengage" and choose to spend their time in bubbles with likeminded people, rather than consider viewpoints that conflict with their own. Extreme thinking leads to extreme behavior. Reading the national news has heeome a trauma-inducing experience. Racism and fear-mongering, mass shootings, assaults on the civil rights of already marginalized groups, and the ravaging of our natural environment for corporate profit dominates the headlines. Three decades into the enlightened 21st century and humanity is still plagued by

extreme poverty and fully half of the world's weahh is controlled by less than 1% of the world's population. Here at home many Kānaka Maoli struggle with houselessness in our kulāiwi while millionaires from the continent buy up acres of our 'āina for their private retreats. These extreme imbalances affect us whether we are conscious of it or not. Tempers flare at the slightest provocation. Small offenses heeome magnified in our minds and eommon courtesy seems in short supply. On a recent flight I observed two men get into an argument competing for bag space in the overhead compartment. So how do we fix this? How do we move from extremes to a plaee of halanee? And how do we protect our 'ohana, mo'omeheu (culture) and aina in the process? Climate change and weahh disparity are not easily solved. But ean

we, as individual kanaka, whhin our own spheres of control our own 'ohana and community - change our thinking and in the process, change ourselves? In this time of transition from kau wela to ho'oilo, with the Makahiki season approaching, ean we ho'ohuli (turn, change)? Can we re-learn the art of "agreeing to disagree"

and engage in respectful discourse without disparaging others or pointing fingers? I hope so. ■

Sylvia M. Hussey, Ed.D. Chief Executive Officer