Collective Spirit Podcast
First Peoples Fund presents the Collective Spirit® podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge, and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture. The Collective Spirit® podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training & mentorship. Learn more at www.firstpeoplesfund.org
Collective Spirit Podcast
S2E19: Tom Pohaku Stone (Kanaka Maoli)
In our conversation with 2023 Community Spirit Award honoree Tom Pohaku Stone, we are embraced by the profound essence of Native Hawaiian culture. His voice carries the resilience of his people, the reverence for the land and the ocean that has nurtured them. As a guardian of tradition, Tom's story unfolds from the roots of his extended family upbringing, through the intricate crafts of woodworking and stone carving, and into his vital role in educating the young stewards of Hawaiian identity. The tapestry of his life is a testament to the enduring struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and the importance of maintaining a cultural legacy amidst the forces of colonization.
Tom Pohaku Stone is a beacon for Native Hawaiian craftsmanship and shares the lessons he imparts in Hawai'i, which are more than mere skills; they are threads in the fabric of identity under siege. In each crafted piece, whether shaped by hand from native wood or carved from ancestral stone, there is a story, a life, a connection to be made.
I don't just do my work and share it with people with a specific purpose of economic benefit or anything. It's to allow them the opportunity to feel what it's like to work on these projects to carve wood, to carve stone, to carve coal.
Speaker 2:The CollectivSpirit Podcast. The CollectivSpirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The CollectivSpirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of Indigenous art and culture.
Speaker 1:My name is Thomas Kelly Avunilie O'Kala, n'ana O'Kalil, stone with dirt. I go by ko'aku because my father and my grandfather's name. Since we Hannai the name or adopted the name stone, they preferred to be in Hawaiian, so ko'aku just means stone, but it has a deeper meaning in our language. I am from Hawaii. I'm a native Hawaiian, kahu'ulu, oahu, that's where I'm from. Kahu'ulu is an alpua or a district of the island of Oahu, so I live on the northeast side. I'm an ocean person. We come from the ocean. I was born from the ocean to the ocean. My area of traditional practices is everything to do with our survival as Native peoples in today's modern world. So I do wood, stone, bone and then l'al, which is plants, always maintaining plants that's significant to our survival and health. Hopefully pass it on to the next generation.
Speaker 1:I had a long road getting here in today's contemporary world or modern world. I was a professional server, professional wind server. I was with Ocean Rescue for a while, but before my father passed away I wanted to honor him. I wanted him to know that I had appreciated the knowledge that he had provided to me. My father and I weren't close except for a minute or two years, but he did show me how to make traditional wood surfboards, along with my uncles and my great uncles. He taught me the other sides of our cultural way of life.
Speaker 1:I was raised outside what we would call our core or immediate family. I was raised by my mom or my dad. I was raised by the entire family that wanted me. People say I was a very troubled year, but I give everything to my family for teaching me or at least believing in me. I didn't come to realize that until quite late in my life, when I was 42, I decided to leave my Ocean Rescue super body position and go back to college and even finish high school. I did the GED and as soon as I got my graduate certificate from high school I went to college and realized that the journey I was on was all about my family because I had chosen my area of studies in college. It was the stories of growing up with my grandfather. He spent a lot of time in my very youthful years telling me the stories of our people.
Speaker 1:I embraced that and that became our subject area of studies ready to my graduate program, and I realized that my entire family had provided the foundational knowledge that I needed to get through college and to establish new academic courses that were focused on traditional practices, because for us in Hawaii, language was already in place. We had fought long and hard to get a language mat. Various subject matters of our history were already in place in the universities, but what we lacked was the physical and spiritual component of our culture, and that was our traditional practices that developed us physically to be strong and to be able to live in an ocean environment and survive. So that was that's my journey, from 42 to 72. It's my age now. I saw it on the journey. It's been 30 years of returning, putting it back in place, and that's what I try to do with all the younger generations that I've had an opportunity to work with over the past 30 years is instilling that in them. It's not what I have to offer. It's what we as a people have to offer, because it isn't like the way Western society or American society or Bokeh sees it. It's that you have to know everything. We're all aware of the basis of environmental life, but at the same time we were practitioners of specific things, because not one person could hold it all. We shared our collective knowledge together.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a very harsh, very strong Ohana on all sides, but it taught me to be strong and survive and I realized over time that that's the way they grew up and their parents grew up and their parents before grew up their families, because we were going through changes, not only physically but mentally, psychologically, because the taking of our country. There's a lot of anger and we had to convert to colonialist way of life and they're harming us not to give up the struggle, to fight on. Let our warriors today but we're after warriors that think not just react and be angry but to focus on what the goal is. As the elders, like my cocoon, we have to be focused and not be emotional, because that's the reaction that colonists want, because it justifies the reason for them to subjugate and to maintain control over us. And that's the harsh way of life that I grew up in, not only with my family but on the streets, and I finally realized that to be able to be progressively moving forward as native peoples, we have to have control over ourselves first and we have to have consensus.
Speaker 1:When you fight a battle like this, it's fought on many different fronts, it's not just one front. We're fighting a major battle and so we have to fight it from within, from all sides, and it takes a nation, people unifying and understanding that the common goal is to gain our freedom. That's what my life was like and that's where I am today. I don't just do my work and share it with people with a specific purpose of economic benefit or anything. It's to allow them the opportunity to feel what it's like to work on these projects, to carve wood, to carve stone, to carve bone, to care for your environment that you need.
Speaker 1:That was all taught in a very harsh way to me. It took nearly half my life to come to the realization of that. We, me, us. We hope to shorten that for our children's children by showing them that, hey, our traditional way of life is not hard, it's fun. When everything else collapses around us, we'll be fine.
Speaker 1:We learned how to preserve our knowledge, to keep our knowledge alive, and we can survive. We can live off our land First. People's fun provided for me, for us. A lot of opportunities have grown from that. It helped our organizations' efforts educationally. It provided opportunity for us to acquire materials that we could give, because just getting a piece of wood is difficult in a way. I'm sure it is every place else, but it afforded us an opportunity to share with First Peoples on Vancouver Island. That's what we did this past summer. With some of that awards money, it went to sending them our traditional surfboards. It went off very nicely with the First Nations people there.
Speaker 1:We've had opportunities to give away a lot of our crafts that are made Opportunities to share that knowledge by having workshops and feeding people. Not only knowledge but actually feeding people. That's what we did with the farms, gave it all away. That's what we did. We gave it to other people that we don't need more than us in different forms, even cash wise, there are families that need the money more than we do.
Speaker 1:I'm a fortunate person. I'm a fortunate native. I work for what I get, but it's not work. It's what I love to do. It's what I was born to do. Money is not our focus. It's a necessity because of the Capitalistic Society we live in.
Speaker 1:Worldwide. We understand that there are so many other people everywhere, our people, that are struggling, that need more than we do. We're gearing up again. Whatever I made or is donated to us, we are trying to figure out how to do a celebration of life for our people by feeding them. That's what the award allowed us to do. I'm so appreciative of that and the opportunity to give as much as I can. We gave not only gave. We still are. We're giving surfboards to kids and skateboards whatever a child wants. If we can do it, we're going to do it for them and give it to them and help them understand how important it is to share the along. We have prided ourselves on being self-sufficient as an organization and we've never sought grants or anything First. People's fund award was the first time ever.
Speaker 1:If we ever need stuff, I just make it. That's what I taught in school. At the university, when I was teaching my one-studies 210 class, I would take the students down to Waikiki and spend a day at Kuihio Beach and I would have them work with me in Carbostome into Ulumica, a block of Kuihia, whatever it might be. Then all the tourists walking by taking pictures. They can't get that anywhere else. They start right here, at this moment, where you're at. You can go to ABC stores and buy it from Korea, thailand, wherever, china, but it's not the actual date.
Speaker 1:It's made in Hawaii, it's native made and it's made by hand, right here on the streets. That's what's valuable, so it's teaching our generations that value you, which is your cell, your native cell. That's my motto to all indigenous peoples, all native peoples, however you come from. If you don't make it, they can't get it, and if you make it and you have a production in mind, then you just sold out. But if you make it just enough to get by and take care of your village family, whatever it might be, that's what you're doing. You make it more valuable. You make us more valuable. My legacy is that we're still alive as native peoples. We're always going to be. We're not going to be accultured, assimilating, we're just not. We're going to survive. I hope our generations to come realize the fact that, no matter what they choose to do in their life, just don't forget who you really are.
Speaker 2:The Collective Spirit podcast is produced by First Peoples Fund, whose mission is to honor and support indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at FirstPeoplesFundorg.