Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Our ancestors traveled through salt and stars and so do contemporary Pacific Islander communities. Today in this podcast, we consider how to build good relations with the communities we come from in Oceania, the communities we live with here in the Salt Lake City area, and especially the indigenous communities whose lands we live on
Speaker 2 00:00:25 As specific islander people who live in Utah. We are nourished by the lands of the Ute, go shoot Shoshone and Paiute peoples. We are far from the ocean, but close to the saltwater of the Great Salt Lake. We are far from the night sky over our home islands, but can look up and see the same stars.
Speaker 1 00:00:45 Join us as we explore and build relations of salt and stars.
Speaker 3 00:00:59 Relations
Speaker 2 00:01:00 Of Salt and Stars is a new podcast produced by the Pacific Island Studies Program at the University of Utah and hosted by faculty members Dr. Angela L. Robinson, who've Chuckies and myself, Dr. Miley Arvin. And I'm Kamal, our native Hawaiian with the name Relations of Salt and sars. We invoke the ties historically forged between the Pacific Islands and Utah, as well as the ones still in formation.
Speaker 2 00:01:33 This is part two of our episode around gardens, what they teach us, the medicine they offer, and the connections they allow us to make between the lands we live on and our homelands. In part one of this episode, Angela shared her own stories of her mother's garden alongside some highlights of our recent event, planting Good Relations, which featured a panel discussion with a number of Native American and Pacific Islander leaders who steward community gardens here in the Salt Lake City area. As we said in part one, this land is you go shoot Paiute and Shoshone land. None of us of are of these peoples. We all have homelands elsewhere. As we talk and think about gardening this land, we want to come into better relation with these peoples. And this place, as you'll hear many of our panelists are doing this work by offering medicine grown in these gardens to the community and by creating space for indigenous youth and families to find healing or to just be.
Speaker 2 00:02:35 In this episode, we highlight and offer brief responses to some of our favorite insights Panelists shared the whole panel offered so much love and wisdom to everyone present that we had to separate this episode into two parts. So you're listening to the second part, which I, Miley am leading. And again, you can listen to the first part led by Angela by looking for it under our podcast name, relations of Salt and Stars, wherever you get your podcast. You can also watch a video of this panel or listen to the full audio of the panel on our YouTube page, the Pacifica Archive with the handle at the Pacifica Archive 26 50. Please check out the full bios and links to our panelists, organizations, and the show notes of this episode to learn more about their work and how you can support it. You'll hear from Dene Chanin, from Carrie, the Water Garden de ero and Michelle Brown with the three Sisters Garden at the Awei People's Orchard and Gardenia Sa from the Utah Pacific Islander Civic Engagement Coalitions, margarita Saini Mural and Garden, and Jake Fati, Manu with the Healthy Roots program. We start here with some of their insights about their favorite things about gardening.
Speaker 4 00:03:56 Oh, my favorite thing about gardening, you know, it's just doing it. I think there's so much ancestral knowledge and memory that comes through it. Um, I remember the first time I grew Blue Corn, which we used for mush. It's one of our very traditional foods. And opening up each ear of corn and just seeing the beauty of those colors and how they congregate together. And then also learning that corn is two spirit. Um, and just like the food, this beautiful thing in front of you, it's sacred, feeds you and nourishes you. It connects you to everything. It has this relationship with a lineage of all relatives that connect us to this beautiful thing that we pray to and eat, and that nourishes us. So,
Speaker 5 00:04:48 But my favorite thing about gardening is harvesting. I love eating <laugh>. So, so that's my ultimate favorite when I get to harvest something and eat it and make delicious herbs. So that's my favorite. I have this vivid memory. Um, I was raised most of my life in Anchor Alaska, and it is kind of a strange place for <laugh> a Navajo to be, but very cool. But my favorite thing about gardening is just the soil there from my memory of being a child is so rich and having a garden in my backyard and all the little worms that I would catch and then I would save and then I would go fishing halibut with. So it was like those small creatures that were nourishing the food that I was growing my backyard went on to go catch meat for me, like when I went deep sea fishing. So that's just a really vivid memory for me of like that connection just to the earth itself. Whereas it didn't matter if it was just like coming from the land, it went back into the water and then came back to me. So I, that's my favorite memory about gardening. It's just, it, it goes beyond just that. So
Speaker 6 00:05:58 I was asked to be here, um, on behalf of a family member. So we have a, a mural that sits at the awe garden. And so, um, one of my favorite things about that place is, uh, just being reminded of my sister-in-law who, uh, recently passed away from Covid. Um, and so, um, being here, my connection with gardening, I think about, um, my parents raising us to garden just in our backyard. Um, I'm, I'm still learning. I'm excited that I just grew some tomatoes. I'm sure that's nothing compared to <laugh> to what all of you guys are all doing, but, um, that was something exciting for me. Mm-hmm. So we talk about gardening and understanding what vegetable or herb, what it does. Um, I get excited to learn about that.
Speaker 7 00:06:54 What the Roots is a program that we've been running through the Pacific Islander Coalition for almost six years now. And it started with, uh, a pretty selfish, uh, self-serving, uh, motive, which was our foods are sometimes hard to get here, and when they do get here, they've survived weeks on a ship and sometimes they're not that great or they're coated in wax or they're, and they're expensive. And, um, and which is why our people would eat a lot of canned foods actually, and preserved foods and, and that's not great for nutrition in the end, and that's not what our ancestors ate. That's not our indigenous food ways. And so, um, a few, uh, of us really wanted to just try it here. We knew the growing season was short, as was mentioned. We knew the soil was different that the composition, so we kind of nerded out and we went out and said, who can help us?
Speaker 7 00:07:46 And we called into gardening shows. We got folks from Utah State Master Garden Program to help us. We went to our own elders in the community who know how to grow these things back home and, and started pretty small scale with about three families. Uh, and the next year that turned into 10 and the next year turned into 25. And the next year we had a commitment with or contract with, um, Wasatch Community Gardens, which was now giving us space cuz a lot of our folks live in the urban areas or apartments and don't have that space. And, uh, then we started taking it to people's backyards. And long story short, this summer, uh, this year we had 52 families, uh, that were engaged in this. And they're not only growing tomatoes and corn and, and the great, um, you know, things that are meant to grow here or that have been growing here in this climate.
Speaker 7 00:08:33 But we're growing taro, we're growing tapioca, we're growing turmeric, we're growing banana trees, we're growing hibiscus, we're growing lau tea, we're growing sweet potatoes, um, things that our people will eat because we don't eat kale and we don't eat celery. And, and, you know, some of these other things, <laugh> and not because they're not good, but because we're not familiar and they, we don't have recipes already with these things built in. Uh, and so I, I don't follow directions. Well, I didn't even answer the prompt question earlier, but to, to that, that's my favorite part of being with this. And I'm not a master gardener either. Um, but when I see people, uh, one of my favorite things is when I see people in West Valley right here, uh, where I live and where I serve on the city council. Uh, I love people rolling down my street, 42 50, uh, and sort of taking it slow and looking out their window like, are those banana trees <laugh>? Are those really, you know, eight foot tall sugar cane and, you know, growing in front of the house? And there are 52 other families this year that are doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 2 00:09:34 What folks shared regarding their favorite things about gardens, as you heard often invoked ideas about home, whether that meant one's ancestral homelands, where where we may have been displaced to or otherwise chosen to live now our family, our community, or in a much broader sense, earth itself
Speaker 4 00:09:56 Here. I've lived in Salt Lake City for a long time, um, most of my wife and, um, really trying to return back home in a lot of ways in myself here, in my home, my community, but also returning back to my ancestral lands where my grandmothers grew it,
Speaker 4 00:10:22 Um, plants that we see nowadays, like, especially maybe in these areas, like, oh, this plant's interesting. Um, it's not from here, but it's beautiful. We're a plant here. Um, and that's done some damage with, you know, the whole landscape as in the bigger picture, um, with like invasive species. But I had a, a relative, a sister from the Chenga Loso span, um, in California. And she was talking, there's a lot of invasive plants in California, um, that take over their traditional medicines. But when she was talking about it, she talked about it in a way of empathy. Like, these plants are also so very much displaced from their homelands mm-hmm. <affirmative> and like look at them thrive and survive. And when I think about what it means for displaced relatives, even, um, being, um, like a climate refugee, so many of us are climate refugees. Um, so many of our homelands have been destroyed uranium coals, um, water contamination, um, like that old Quin mine that was built into the San Juan, um, that ruined farming for years for our relatives. Um, and so I think bringing in the medicine that you need in your space is like reclaiming that and also like healing that part of you, that connection to home that you don't have access to. And that hurts. Like it hurts for everybody. And
Speaker 4 00:12:20 I think there's like a beautiful grace in that and like thanking the land, like you provide something for my traditional foods to grow. And like really thinking it, like thinking the land for doing that for you. Um, everybody needs it personally, but I think collectively it is more interesting when you feed off of one another and you do have those teachings and, and being moved and honored by like you honoring your, your relatives who you will miss that grief. The process of like planting something and having that grow. There's that, the healing capabilities for your spirit in your mind in that is far more effective in my opinion than like the therapy, this shitty healthcare system where we have, um, all these bigger structures that harm us. Like that's, it's so simple and I love that simplicity.
Speaker 5 00:13:26 I'll just give some of my personal thoughts, but gardens are the solution for permaculture. Um, I know that Oki started as an act of civil disobedience, um, to reclaim like land itself or like re-nourishment what it could be. Um, to me it has been transformative, at least for myself. I've become more interested in gardening and relating and also just as a person, again, just embracing the connections between my body, the plants I eat, the people I communicate with in my community as a whole. It's made me feel more like a earthling than just a human being. So, um, I'm just honestly just excited to see what happens. I know that this garden is relatively new, but I just imagine or envision it taking up the entire Jordan River right there. But, we'll,
Speaker 2 00:14:25 One word that kept coming up during the panel was medicine gardens produce medicine that we can share medicine here being something much more expansive than what it means in a western biomedical sense. The medicine discussed here works toward healing many different kinds of hurts.
Speaker 5 00:14:47 A tabling event a couple months back at a powwow in Toula and you know, Tom brought some sweet grass with him, put it on the table and we had like our brochures and flyers to educate the community about the issues that are still ongoing with murdered and missing indigenous relatives. And there was a mother who came up to, to look at the brochures and all the information, but the plants sitting there really like captured her attention, which was amazing that it was even there to begin with. And she, we started talking about the plant and she was like, is this for sale? And I was like, no, this is actually like, was grown in the Oak Wai Garden. It is a, it's medicine, you can take it. It's not for sale, it is for free for you to take. And she's like, are you serious?
Speaker 5 00:15:34 And I was like, yes. And she was telling me how she's going to use that in her bead work and how she's gonna create something more from that. Like, she was like, I'm not gonna burn this. I'm actually gonna integrate it into my jewelry and my bead. And so I thought that was really beautiful. Like I feel like nature itself is like a work of art, the way things start to emerge on their own and have their own like tendencies. And it's really incredible to see how, like us as indigenous people find so many uses for that. Like to be able to see like jewelry or artwork that depicts the plants that we pull from and that are lifeblood and our stories is really powerful, um, to see it displayed in different places. So, um, we've also had the ability to have a couple of different organizing events at the OII as well.
Speaker 5 00:16:22 Last year we did, um, sage pulling, sweet Grass braiding and just binding. That was really a powerful event as well. I think that was maybe close to when the margarita mural was finished and that was an incredible event to attend. So I feel incredibly grateful to that tie back to community and the ability to share outside of that and to invite people to know that that's available to them. Um, and just to share like as much knowledge as possible. It's been really impactful to me about the garden or, you know, what Tom has provided us, where we have an opportunity to do this is learn and practice like indigenous teachings, which I didn't have a space before and even if I had, you know, my own space at home, it's not the same. It's, it's bringing together as a community breeding sweet grass together and learning how about just these plants that we're growing is really beautiful.
Speaker 5 00:17:18 And just to share a fun story, um, we did an m i W event and planted the garden and we took some tea home with sweet grass and tobacco and just little seedlings. Um, I will say that I'm really glad my tobacco was still alive, but, but just on the way home someone noticed my jacket and I had taken some extra tea and some seedlings and her aunt had just died like two days beforehand. And it was just really wonderful that I got to just in that moment share the medicine from this garden with her that I had just had by chance. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it's just those kinds of moments where you realize that there's so many people who are connected, we're all connected in so many beautiful ways, but it's just there for us and this is an opportunity that I've had to reach out and connect with other people in a way that I haven't been able to do in any other kind of setting. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I love
Speaker 4 00:18:10 That receiving when someone gives you medicine, like it really, I can't explain the feeling like it's just, she's like, thank you. It's
Speaker 5 00:18:23 Like another type of deeper love.
Speaker 4 00:18:24 Yeah. But thank you for seeing me and I did need this and it's so special to me. And it goes beyond any kind of material. It's just, yeah, we need more of that. And I think those spaces allow you to like act that way. You know, in other spaces we code switch or change, do all these other things, but to practice being, say, sit with one another mm-hmm. <affirmative> and like really being aware of those things, like, you need this, I wanna give this to you. You know? Exactly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly.
Speaker 5 00:19:01 Well, I think it's been really amazing to kind of see like a wave of a lot of like indigenous peoples coming back to their ways. I think colonization has done so much damage and I've seen a lot of like this younger generation coming back through the curiosity of like the medicines, um, traditional medicines and how to use them and how to to grow them. And so I think like for instance, just me being able to show my five year old like how to smudge or how to use like the actual medicine, um, in the proper way has been really satisfying to me. But I think like I've met so many young indigenous people who have been kept from their traditional beliefs and traditional ways, whether that be through colonization directly or through religious, um, um, reasons and missing out on many traditions that they should be entitled to.
Speaker 5 00:20:04 But being dissuaded by religion itself, um, I've, I feel like a lot more, um, indigenous youth are sharing those types of stories. And I think the gardens have been ways to like reconnect with the ways of knowing, um, and a path back to tradition in ways as an adult you can freely do and express. Whereas a lot of, um, these youth or young adults had like, been suppressed from that, whether through like a parent or whether through like an adoptive system where they weren't able to really practice their traditional beliefs. I think that's been really powerful and that's been incredible to see. So I think like other indigenous gardeners showing the next generation the way forward has been really powerful and just new ways of doing things that it doesn't have to be a huge garden. It can be as simple as a single pot in your house and start with that and start with that medicine.
Speaker 5 00:21:04 Um, I think social media has been really incredible for indigenous peoples in terms of learning and how to learn from another, whether you're on the different side of the world has been really incredible. Um, I know even just with experience with Jen and her working with a collective called Canoe Journey in Seattle of like, Hey, what, what is this like tea? How am I supposed to, like, they sent it to us and I'm like, how am I supposed to make it into tea? Like how much water? Like how much this or that? Do you guys have seeds? I really like this so I'd like to make it myself. So those types of things. So just reconnecting with, um, our communities and learning about other indigenous communities that I wasn't so familiar with has been really incredible. Um, I'm really grateful for that and just to be the ability to share what I do know or, you know, even just oral, um, storytelling of things that I remember like off of my father's reservation, being able to like stop at the side of the road and pick up Indian tea, take it home, dry it for the amount of time that was right and then, you know, make myself and my sisters a cup of tea.
Speaker 5 00:22:18 Like that to me is just such a, an incredible memory. Like the smell itself, whenever I smell it now, I can see all those moments that have passed. So I really appreciate that. And I think like working with, um, other like elders and just those who already know the way they're not gonna be here forever. So I think gaining that knowledge has been really, uh, incredible and I'm just, uh, grateful for that and continue to share as much knowledge as I have with anyone that I may connect with, but also with my son. So I
Speaker 4 00:22:56 Really love that. Mm-hmm. Well I think it's turning into like, you know, this panel and this discussion about kinship and relationships. Um, anybody who has actually come willingly to that space has been so respectful. They understand, um, the things that we need and required to go on in a good way. Um, a lot of us are displaced from our families, you know, living in these urban environments from our homelands from the medicine that grows there. The soil here is very different to a lot of the traditional foods that would grow and nourish us, um, and also connect us back to our identities and who we are, um, especially for our children. Um, and I think we're just in that time when we really crave that medicine, um, it's been taken from us, but there are so many ways that we can just be the work for ourselves and to facilitate that.
Speaker 4 00:23:59 It hasn't been easy, um, because of personal things, you know, like everyone who's involved in the garden right now, like we're all going through so much just like I imagine everybody else. Um, but sticking with that medicine and however it grows into that, um, I think we're just being really flowy and forgiving and not pushing things. Um, and just really honoring where we're at and really understanding and being so grateful to the land for being patient with us. You know, we haven't really grown very much there. Um, there were a few things, but that was a big disappointment cuz we had like all these big ideas coming into it. Like, this is what we want now, this is what we need now. But we've been humbled because of all these outside forces and influences that kind of prevent us from being who we are and what we want to do.
Speaker 4 00:25:02 Um, we're just realizing that it's okay and it's taking some time. There are other things that we wanna be in relationship with besides the plants that teach us, the plants that teach us how to be in relationship with one another and everybody's needs and how they come together. So it's kind of like family. It's going back to these traditional teachings like in our way the Hogan is our universe. Um, we have different relatives that circle around that fireplace and there are no rooms in our Hogans. And so in that way I'm like, in my family, I'm able to see the pains, the struggle, the needs, the love, the care. I'm aware as a relative of what's going on with each individual. And I, I think about that structure with the garden too. And whoever comes in, like, what's going on in your life? Like, I want to support that. I want to, and the garden's here to help nourish you. What kind of medicine do you miss? Please? Like, I invite you to just like grow that there you have that sovereignty. I want it to be that space for it. And, um, I really hope it grows into it. I don't think it's a lot to ask for. Um, but yeah, we just really want a beautiful safe place to gather and have ceremony. We want sweat lodge there. We wanna be surrounded by our medicine, um, and just come in and be ourselves.
Speaker 2 00:26:44 The panel particularly shared some personal stories of how community gardens have helped with processing grief and other traumas.
Speaker 6 00:26:54 As I mentioned before, margarita, she was, uh, one of the founders for Yuba sec, which is the Utah Pacific Islander Civic. We can engage in coalition, which is a connected heavily with our, we're all connected with the health coalition and we don't grow, um, in all four seasons. We're very tropical. And so when you go to the garden, there's a raised, um, garden bed and you'll see some tropical flowers there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and thank you for, for healthy roots, um, bringing that. Um, and that space brings a lot of self care, just a place to reflect, to bring peace to process grief, um, just not only for our family members, but also the community. So when we talk about these spaces, that's what, what it has provided for us. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.
Speaker 7 00:27:49 Our old folks have been watching the Stars this past, uh, this week, Wednesday, just a couple days ago. Um, the mat, which is an important constellation that marks our harvest season, um, rose for the first time this year at Sunset, which means that next Thursday, which is the New Moon after the rising of mat is our new year. This is our harvest and our, our bountiful season. Um, it doesn't look like it here in Utah, but in Samoa and in Toga and other places in the Pacific, they're celebrating their first fruits festival next Thursday. And I'm really happy and grateful for our partners here that we'll be doing the same in this very building and out here, uh, watching the New Moon and the Stars rise next Thursday or next Wednesday, right. And, um, presenting those fruits. And so, uh, we present them to our families, to our chiefs, to our ancestors, including Rita, uh, who we, uh, she's an ancestor now.
Speaker 7 00:28:45 We'll be presenting to her. And, um, that's my, actually my favorite part about the gardening is that the plants teach us, the plants in our culture are, they have stories, they have genealogies, um, there are certain vegetables that are, are ancestors that we descend from. And it's cool to work with these kids at the Granite School District and, and teach them not just about the nitrogen cycle and all these cool, you know, biological photosynthesis, um, but also remind them like, well, we have an actual connection. Our genealogy links us to these plants and they nourish us, not just physically, but spiritually. And that's what we're trying to do on a small scale. We're,
Speaker 4 00:29:28 Um, we got a good amount of money. Um, and our goal with the grant, because we do a lot of, um, missing and murdered work or responding to that violence, um, we wanted to do, first of all, that work is really hard. Um, and this relates to gardening. Gardening, being in community with your relatives who see you, who already understand you, who recognize you as a person, as a spiritual being without, um, these titles, um, without like these credentials, um, they're just our relatives, especially our youth and our elders and their caretakers and how they take care of, you know, that in between stage of those life periods. Um, we struggle a lot in our communities because of colonization. You know, it's given us a lot of violence to deal with in our bodies. We are also perpetuators of violence in ourselves, um, onto our relatives.
Speaker 4 00:30:41 And we saw the Garden being a program for youth to connect with ancestral teachings as a violence prevention measure for sexual violence. And the big one, the umbrella one, um, which is missing and murdered violence and all those things, the displacement from land, um, research extraction, climate chaos, um, the domestic violence, the sexual assault, all these different things fit underneath missing and murdered violence. And so it's hard always responding to the crisis because it's ongoing, it's ongoing. Um, and so we really needed a place to just like be ourselves in that space. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, I needed that. I was in a place where I, you know, suffering from depression, suicidal ideations, feeling the pain, um, being re-traumatized by, um, you know, I lost my auntie, she was murdered. I have a relative here, Shannon Scott. Um, she's Kit Mat, so she's my father's clan or my great, uh, my grandfather's clan.
Speaker 4 00:32:02 So we're relatives and I found her through the garden. Um, and we met there and we made that connection and she's my family. Sh um, Shannon Scott was murdered and she had two babies. Um, and like having those babies there and recognizing them, like getting down on the ground and looking at them and just like holding them, uh, that's like the hard, I know how hard it is. I know the manifestations of like that trauma and how it goes into like your life. I saw it with my sister Samantha. She was three months old when she lost her mother, and that's in her body. Um, and it's manifested into all these like other health things, food, um, whether our re relatives are responsive to it, you know, sometimes we can be like, oh, this will heal you, this will heal you. Yoga will heal you just being in the community or, um, growing something's gonna heal you.
Speaker 4 00:33:06 Some people aren't at that place. Um, I'm not at that place a lot of the time. Like I don't have the energy to do that. Like, no, I need this things first. But the growing things and just being yourself, however you show up, however you're affected by colonization, however that you want to heal, um, that space should be for you. And making those connections is a huge safety net for our young ones especially. Um, I think it's really important to be aware of how they need to feel safe in a world that's getting really more chaotic and violent and confusing and encroaching in us in every single way. So establishing spaces that, one, it is like a distraction, but it's the best kind of distraction because it's returning back to our ways. Um, and we're adapting. We are indigenous people have adapted for time and memorial to our environments and to different relations. And I think in those ways, through prayer, we can really see together how to heal these things. Um, because we do embody so much knowledge and I think that needs to be recognized. We are the experts of our own realities and our hurts and our pains, and it should be us who, who guide that process. Um, so take a minute to digest everything.
Speaker 2 00:35:04 De ended her remarks with a beautiful invitation to the Carry the Water Garden. And the other speakers must have shared how to get involved with Awes, Awei, people's Orchard and Garden, as well as the Healthy Roots program.
Speaker 4 00:35:21 I like to see that anybody who wants to be a part of like the carrot of water, um, it's your garden that you do wherever you think that's gonna take care of you and your relatives. You're missing a medicine in your life and you wanna share the abundance of that. Like, please come grow that best space as yours to do it. Um, and just wanting it to be a safe space. You can go whenever you want to, like all ideas and all those things. And I think that's where we are at. Um, we did have a clear vision, but I think the capacity, personal things that came up, um, this past year, we've all gone through some crazy things, crazy hard, hard things. And so, um, how are we gonna show any in capacity like this, yours, the lens there. Um, and we love you all, um, and in being awareness of you and being in a relationship with you, like, uh, we're able to take care of each other our lives. So, and that's really important to me.
Speaker 5 00:36:39 I mean, social media is great so you guys can follow the ooi. They have a Facebook page and then also an Instagram as well, and PDOs regularly plugs, um, their links on there. It's, I think it's Saturday mornings typically, or Sundays, Sunday, Sundays, sorry, that, um, volunteers can go and can be a part of the garden depending on what is going on during that season. Um, but yeah, everyone is welcome. You can find us on Facebook oii, um, garden, um, and oh,
Speaker 4 00:37:14 I mean, it's like the OII Garden
Speaker 5 00:37:15 And People's Orchard people, and it's actually not too far from here. It's, it's fairly close.
Speaker 7 00:37:23 Our acronym for the Utah Pacific Islander Health Coalition is u p ihc.org, and that's the best place to reach us. Um, and also to learn about all the other great programming that we have outside of the Healthy Roots program. But we do, um, especially in the springtime, um, as we're distributing these seedlings that students have grown around the valley, uh, to upwards of 50 families. Right? We always appreciate volunteers on, on that plant distribution day. We don't have a great name for that, but, um, and yeah, if you have experience or you know, any tips for backyard gardening or small scale gardening, um, we're always, uh, looking for folks to help consult with as well.
Speaker 4 00:38:05 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Speaker 2 00:38:08 I want to end this episode by sharing my own gardening story, which was the first story I ever wrote for the podcast format back in July, 2020 as Angela and I were learning how to create podcasts. I hope you hear the residents I do. Between my story and the themes that our planting good relations panelists spoke about, including gardens as healing and feeding, as spaces of processing intergenerational trauma and other forms of colonial violence. My mom was born in Hawaii when it was the territory. She was six years old when Hawaii became a state in 1959. Many Americans might think of Hawaii as only a beautiful vacation destination. However, the Hawaiian Kingdom was an internationally recognized independent country before a cadre of white American and British settlers overthrew the Hawaiian government in 1893. The US Federal Government, though they did not initially sanction, the overthrow officially annex Hawaii in 1898 and Hawaii became an official US territory in 1900, which is the same status Puerto Rico has today. My mother's grandmothers were fluent in the Hawaiian language, but especially after Hawaii became a state, they only spoke in Hawaiian to each other. My mother's father asked them not to speak to his children in Hawaiian so that they would grow up speaking good English
Speaker 2 00:39:40 During the pandemic. Like many others, I have found solace in gardening. My daughter was six months old when the pandemic started, and the isolation and sleep deprivation of those early days with the newborn was compounded by the inability of any of our family to travel to see us and help you like the water. Now, it helped being able to take my daughter outside and sit her on a blanket in the shade while I weed the garden and checked for ripe tomatoes.
Speaker 8 00:40:10 <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:40:12 Another solace of the pandemic has been taking Hawaiian language classes online from the University of Hawaii at Manoah. I live in Utah, so there are no Hawaiian language classes I can go to here often. Now I weed my garden while listening to an assigned Hawaiian language recording. I think about how learning a language is a practice, a constant practice that must be attended to again and again, just like gardening and weeding. There is some peace for me in trusting the need to practice to show up again and again, even or especially when it is hard and there are no guaranteed results. Maybe a bird will eat these strawberries. Maybe the squash plant won't grow. Maybe I will forget this word. Maybe my pronunciation is horrible today. All I can do is keep practicing, keep tending the plants that are here. One of my Hawaiian language recordings is about an elder Hawaiian woman talking about her first time going to school. She remembers her first day of school when the teacher calls her during roll call, but she doesn't answer because she doesn't recognize her English name when she doesn't answer, the teacher slaps her. She's shocked and turns around to another student, a Japanese girl. She asked her in Japanese, what does this teacher want?
Speaker 2 00:41:41 The Japanese girl answers in Japanese and she too is slapped by the teacher. There are so many stories like this from Hawaiian, people who grew up in the territorial period. Hawaiian language was banned in all schools, essentially from the time of the overthrow and officially through the 1980s around the time that Hawaiian language immersion schools started.
Speaker 2 00:42:20 My current research looks at the institutions that were called training schools or industrial schools, but were effectively prisons for Native Hawaiian and other children of color in Hawaii. During the territorial period, children were sent to these institutions officially for committing crimes. The most frequent charges for boys were petty theft and truancy for girls sexual immorality, which could mean anything from they were seen associating with boys to they were pregnant out of wedlock before their rival of Western missionaries. Native Hawaiians did not adhere to a monogamous legalized forms of marriage. My ancestors value gender complementarity rather than patriarchal hierarchy. These training schools then worked effectively to forcibly assimilate native Hawaiians into white American cultural norms, including norms around gender and sexuality. Children were often kept at these institutions for years at a time until they became adults or the girls. For the girls when they married. Social scientists blame native Hawaiian's, families, backwardness and stupidity for not being able to raise their children. Right.
Speaker 2 00:43:41 At these training schools, which were located in rural spots distant from the perceived ills of urban Honolulu, the children were required to work in the gardens and dairies on the school grounds that provided most of the food for the institution. The boys additionally were hired out to nearby sugar and pineapple plantations effectively without pay. I wonder what they thought about this work of producing food either for themselves or for export, if it was ever a solace to them to carefully tend to a plant or if it just reminded them of how much they miss the care of their families.
Speaker 2 00:44:25 Today the site of the Girls School in Kailua remains a Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility, and perhaps fittingly, some of the ruins of the boys school at Wyle have been turned into an illicit skate park. The North Shoreland trust is also working to restore the low ecolo, the terraces where the terra was grown at the boys school kalo and its smashed fermented form. Poi was the traditional staple of the Hawaiian diet, so much so that our word forward to eat. I also means poi. My daughter and I were not able to visit Hawaii where my mom still lives this summer because of the ongoing pandemic, but has they work in her garden? I think about these intertwined practices of caring for plants, language, and children. My daughter is now two years old, almost three, and she does not have an English name already. Her daycare teachers want to call her something else. Sometimes I will always correct them. <unk> Her name is Lil Noy.
Speaker 2 00:45:42 Our theme song is Lift Me Up by Haum. Special thanks to our panelist, Dene Shandin, Lucia Saini, Michelle Brown de Ero, and Jake Ptc. Manu Jr thanks to our hosts of the Tracy Aviary, Jordan River Nature Center, CEO Tim Brown, co-directors Marissa Beckstrom and Daniel Hernandez and other Nature Center staff. Our thanks also to Kaylen Vaughn Paul for and Lo life Pope for organizing this event with us. Also, we thank our sponsors, the Mellon Foundation, the University of Utah's School for Cultural and Social Transformation, and the University of Utah's College of Humanities. This has been relations of salt and stars with hosts Miley Artman and Angela Robinson. Follow the University of Utah Pacific Island Studies Program on Instagram at U of u. Pi. Scholars mak for listening. Join us next time.
