The Conversation: G.R.O.W. program; HIFF documentary premiere

0:00Aloha, this is Robbie Dengman. Welcome to the conversation. Hawaii talks. It's Wednesday, September 30th. A new food compost program rolls out across Oahu tomorrow. We talk trash with Honolulu's Director of Environmental Services about tips to make it work. Important restrictions that were designed to keep an invasive beetle off of Molokai have expired. We hear from a community organizer who fought to keep it in place about what might happen now. We also learn about a new documentary also filmed on Molokai that traces a local woman's journey to discover more about her ancestor who was sent to Kala Papa. And five local artists have been selected for the Hawaii Climate Action Artist Residency program. We speak with one of them.

1:20This is the conversation on Hawaii Public Radio. I'm Robbie Dengman sitting in for Catherine Cruz. Beginning tomorrow, October 1st, the city is asking all Oahu residents who put their trash in gray, blue, and green bins to shift their food scraps, banana peels, and plate lunches past their prime into that green bin. It means they can be processed into compost instead of burned at the city's incinerator. The city's Department of Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock explains what the city learned from a pilot program and how residents can help make the program work better. On October 1st, it's rolled out to the entire island. So this is a residential program though. So the people who have the three card, you know, automated service residential, it's the, it involves the green card. And we want to move things that have been going into the gray card, which is all the food and food scraps and anything organic like that can now go in the green card and become compost along with the green waste instead of going to each power or the landfill. That's where the gray card goes.

2:29And I know last time we talked about it, you have some good ways to help remind people what are the things that go into the green bin. It's our banana peels, it's bones. So tell us a little bit about if it grows. If it grows, it goes. That's right. If it grows, it goes. We also have include the food. So we, one way to think about it is things that are food, human food. So not dog food, not pet waste. That's not food, right. For humans. But anything that was food, right, except for there are some exceptions, liquids, right. If you think about our collection, trucks and stuff, you know, no liquids are allowed in, you know, in any refuse, right. Because it will just leak out of the ground. So no liquids, but semi solids are okay. So anyway, foods, graphs, basically think of it that way. We have a long list of things. We, it's fruits, vegetables, dairy products as long as they're semi solid, no spoiled milk, but cheese and yogurt is fine. Bread, baked goods, pasta, rice, grains, cereal, beans, nuts, seeds, all that stuff is okay. Meat, seafood, poultry, bones, bones are fine. Everything gets ground up and that's organic and it's going to get composted and turned into, you know, it's going to be, it goes into a process where there's biodegradation that happens and it turns that into compost.

3:50And that's all has nutrients and nitrogen and phosphorus that enhances the compost. Egg shells, nut shells, seafood shells, those are all okay shells. Leftovers, boiled food, table scraps, plate scrapings, coffee grounds, tea leaves, all that kind of stuff. You can also add baking soda if, you know, control, control odors if that's an issue. Tell me about what part of that old plate lunch goes in which bin? Yes, thank you. So it's it's in a styrofoam clamshell container, right? And maybe you've got some chopsticks inside there with it or or a disposable compostable fork. So what you need to do and now the rice is rock hard, right? That's what happens. So you're going to take all of the food parts of that and you're going to put it into your green card or a temporary storage thing that you have on your counter, which is more typical, right? Or a ziplock bag or something that you're going to store stuff in until you dump it in your green card. All the other stuff, the clamshell, the fork if it was in there or in the chopsticks and the paper container for the chopsticks, that all goes into your gray card.

4:56So that is going to be is combustible and it's going to go to each power and then we can't turn those things into compost. Those are called contamination and that is that is a problem for our process. So it's it's if you go and see the facility, it's easier to visualize, but everything's going to come into this facility and it's dumped on the floor of the green cards or dumped into first into a truck. And then the truck goes in the back lifts up and they dump it on the floor and then they're going to spread it out and then they've got to go through it and they have to pull out any bags because bags are not compostable. Even if they say compostable, we're not permitted to use them to put them in there now. And then the chopsticks, other things that are not food, we have to take out and this has to be done by hand. It as eventually gets ground up mixed with, you know, mixed together with green waste in the right proportions and then it's aerated and it sits there for 30 days and it gets turned a couple of times and eventually it makes into this wonderful compost material. If you could see it is just like this rich, dark, brown, earthy material that's great in your garden and you can get it there, you know, at at Hawaiian Earth recycling, that's our partner that has the compost facility up in Waiwa.

6:09So from the pilot program, you know, what we learned is what we really want to do is we want to get more people to participate only about half of customers put out the cart on any given week for their green card. You know, you're shaking head me too. I put mine out every week. I have some green waste. So I putting it out every week. But I notice, you know, you'll notice your neighbors and not every house, you know, has one out even the blue cars, right. So we have about a 51 what we found is 51%. So we did a pretty exhaustive survey during between, you know, since April and these six communities, which was Nileelani, Nanakuli, Wai Pahu, Huai Kai, Kailua and Klee. So we have inspectors. They work all year long, but they're going and looking in carts. We call that tipping. They lift the lids and they looked at 1,027 carts during this time period in those different neighborhoods. And what they found is a 15% participation rate. So that means the number of carts that they get really identified that there was some food waste in there. So 15% Robbie, that's not good. We need 100% even just a few things in there, remove stuff from the gray cart, right.

7:17Gray cart, right. We have a landfill challenge, right. We need to get whatever we can do. And this is just so makes this common sense. Right. Could you describe briefly the bag in the box that people can get? Yes. So we have that. Yes. Nice green. Hey, oh, essentially, as you can put on your kitchen counter holds about a gallon or a half or something. Maybe it's a decent size. We also will give out a kind of a heavy duty silicon bag. Let's block thing that you could presumably either leave there or put it in your freezer and hold it there until the night before your green cart collection. Because it is only every two weeks. My wife purchased something on Amazon for a couple dollars, which is a stainless steel container with a lid on it that has holes in it and a little odor control sort of device inside, you know, inside of it. So if you have quite a bit of green waste, then it's probably not going to be a problem to put a little bit of food waste in there and sort of layer it.

8:17And then there's going to be sort of absorption of voters and things. You need to make sure you keep your lid closed at all times. Flies will not get in there. They have to have access to be able to lay eggs and be able to make new flies. And so if that's closed, you really shouldn't have you shouldn't have flies. But if you, but if there are concerns and some folks, it's just that's not going to work for them. One option is to freeze material, you know, in your in your in your freezer and then just pull it out, you know, the night before my wife does do some of that and we have a little posted note that says green waste compost tomorrow. So we put that out to remind yourself we kind of do a combination. We freeze some stuff that when it's still a week and a half away, but when we get closer, we just, you know, we're kind of dumping stuff in the green card in the pilot program. The other data we collected was on contamination. And we had about a 13% contamination rate, which means in 13% of the of the cards that had some food waste.

9:19There was some contamination, meaning there was something else in there shouldn't be in there, your chopsticks or your clamshells or bags. Even the clamshells, you know, some of them that you go to it says compostable, you can tell it's recycled material. It's not styrofoam, right? We can't take those yet. Sunday, we hope to be able to take those, but right now we're not permitted by department of health to take those to take those materials. Because they can contain chemical contaminants, it's not all or nothing. You know, do something that's easy that you think is not going to cause odors, you know, lip banana peels. It doesn't really cause odors or maybe it's not a bad odor. It doesn't really rot. For many more tips on what to put in that green bin, check the city's website at hunglu.gov slash ENV slash grow. The city's environmental services director also encourages residents to take a look at the other resources available on the website. There are reminders of what can be recycled in the blue bin, including glass, plastic and aluminum containers and newspapers.

10:19There's info about how to recycle old keyboards and computer gear. And there are even webcams that residents can use to check how long the line is before taking that drive to drop off green waste or that broken chair at a convenience center. Support for the conversation comes from the HPR local talk show fund, which helps Hawaii public radios sustain and grow its locally produced talk shows, Mahalo to contributor anchor systems Hawaii. You are invited to play trivia with HPR generation listen on the first Tuesday of the month at Village Bottle Shop and Tasting Room in Kaka-Ako. Test your wits, enjoy some friendly competition and meet with fellow HPR fans.

11:19Generation Listen is an HPR initiative that connects young and young at heart listeners with the station and with each other. Learn more at hvipublicradio.org slash gen listen. Support for HPR comes from KTA Superstores serving the Hawaii Island community since 1916. Learn more about its support for the island community at KTA Superstores.com. Last year the state put into place strict but temporary import restrictions meant to keep the invasive coconut rhinoceros beetle out of Molokai.

12:20Those restrictions expired last week. Some Molokai residents flew to Oahu to ask the state agricultural department to renew the restrictions, although the department has pushed to relax the rules. HPR is marked out spoke with Kunaninnihipali who helped spearhead the original community petition that led to the rules. About a year ago we initiated an intern petition that was unprecedented whereby we were able to prohibit any kind of materials that we introduced to our island, the possibility of ACE or larvae or any kind of live CRB that we see going on on all of the neighbor islands. This rule was to protect Molokai from this influx that may be happening. We wanted to make sure that the Department of Ag Vios Security has all of the resources for the last 13 years and have really failed to do what they are supposed to do.

13:21We were trying to keep that rule in effect and they said that we couldn't get an extension because it would have to be altered in a way that what they offered was changing the words from prohibit to restrict and then saying that they are treating whatever comes in. Now there is nothing that can treat this CRB. You got a conference room full of people in this campus center just right now from all over the world and basically they all have the same problem. But our situation is that culturally, historically the tree of life has been all new and that is important because it has provided us medicine. Culturally you plant a new tree with a birth of a child and that new grows up and it provides for the family. So the perspective we are coming from is that and that devastation generationally is going to continue even worse if this CRB gets on our island because it is not just a new, it is all the other plants, native plants that is going to be devastated as well.

14:28As well as anything progress you have been down to the point that Carlos and Carlos is even another source of our originality and as far as wine is concerned this is where our whomulipu talks about that too. The interim ruling that we put forward want them to keep it in place. Once it lapses and then there is however many days where there is no rule in place do you think that there are businesses or people who are just waiting to start shipping? Definitely there is people who want to bring in container loads of mulch from different islands to landscape people who can afford that. What we have been doing is gathering from different farmers that have had new plant-in-in-ear places and we started our own who knew nursery and then we distributed that after six months to others in the community. The idea is to because there is no prevention is to start planting again if they take 25 of your 50 did you plant it you still have 25.

15:32That is a whole mentality right now until we can find something that can keep it in bay. Right now this can help us to keep it in bay if they just pay attention to us culturally. You mentioned the interim rule can help keep them at bay. Can you talk a little bit about over the last year has it been in your mind successful? Over the last year five or six months after ruling was adopted then the alleged did CRB were found on our island. They know that this one year it entered ruling and rather than meeting with us and seeing how can we make this live more permanent they have not what they have done is waited until the last minute and we have been petitioning them to writing and hourly and calling them. We have had a lot of good advice from other people from the CRB and others and it has been hard because there is interest that seems to be more important than ours and it has to do with color money.

16:39You are supporting which businesses are you supporting and also as far as the ruling you are implementing ruling but you are breaking laws. In Hawaii constitution amendment 12 protects our traditional cultural rights. So how can you say you even in your letterhead your model, my name is Kiai, my Aula which is basically you to protect us of everything that is plants and animals. Yet who you are protecting because if this is how you can protect us as the native people as the first people then who is going to protect us. We don't have them to support us by bringing in some dogs and maybe get sniffed at all. They can mean the dogs one day hire more people one day train more people one day put people on our island so that we can have that and help us rest assured that we won't have this. At least do that. I mean they must know that the devastation I've seen in all of the islands, Kauai, big island and now every island in Hawaii is getting devastated.

17:45And if we use this on Mola Frey, we use an bank, we use an economic sovereignty as well and we use another bank in the sense of something that could be monetized but also to replace other plants that may have been destroyed. We've been hearing from Kunani Niipali, one of the Mola Kha'i residents who wants new import rules to protect the island from the Kokonat Rhinoceros Beetle. This week a Board of Agriculture and Bio Security Committee recommended new interim rules. The full board can decide to establish the new rules. This is the conversation on statewide member supported Hawaii Public Radio coming up your backyard quiz.

18:48Who is it you should welcome? For today's backyard quiz, we pressed play on the world of podcasting. Today is International Podcast Day after all. While it has its roots in both terrestrial and internet radio, podcasting really took shape in the early 2000s with the introduction of specialized RSS feeds that allowed audio files to be automatically delivered to devices. Since then, thousands of podcasts have filled our ears. According to the industry database pod chaser, nearly 60% of Americans aged 12 and up listened to podcast monthly. And like radio and television, there's something for everyone.

19:50From interview shows, like Conan O'Brien needs a friend, to investigative series like serial, podcasts have become a major industry. But it's not just celebrities and major publications that can make podcasts, individual creators and lots of local radio stations and news outlets release their own podcasts as well. Including Hawaii Public Radio. For today's backyard quiz, we're asking, can you name the first narrative podcast ever released by Hawaii Public Radio? Hence, it came out in 2023. Call 808-941-3689 or 877-941-3689 if you know the answer. The first one to get it right gets a reusable tote bag from HPR. Support for the backyard quiz comes from Neh Rit Hawaii, which supports nonprofits providing

21:06affordable housing for families of agricultural workers and retirees, such as the Ngunia Village Development Corporation, Neh Rit Hawaii dot com. The Hawaii International Film Festival is just around the corner at the end of October. And one of the local films making its premiere at the festival is a short documentary called Pili Ho. Catherine Cuitpacto talked with former journalist Diane Ako from Oahu, who is the film's narrator and producer, as well as director and producer Martha Shade. This film is about the search for Diane's great-grandmother, Helen Maliu, who had mysteriously disappeared from her family years before. Diane's search eventually leads to Kalo Papa. Catherine starts us off.

22:06Let's start with a little bit about yourselves and how you kind of came together as a team on this. Diane, let's go ahead and start with you. This was a personal story that I had posted a blog about in 2016. And Martha and I have been really good friends since she was my producer at K-Channel in the late 90s or early 2000s. And she was living in Atlanta working for CNN and she keeps in touch with her Hawaii compatriots. And so she read my blog and she said, hey, this is really interesting. We should do a story about this. So the blog had said that I was assuming the baton from my cousin Paul Caruba out in California. He had started looking into our genealogy because he wanted to understand where our great-grandmother was. She was never spoken about. And so he had been slowly looking into this for years. And when he hit a dead end, he said, you know, you live in Hawaii. Do you think you could pick this up? So I said, sure, just blogging about it was not even a way to get information.

23:09It was what I was doing as sort of a fun hobby for me to blog. And she read it and she said, let's do a story. And that's how it started. Except it took 10 years to coordinate our schedules to be able to get to Colopapa because it was actually not easy. Then to be able to get a filming permit. There was a lot of red tape and we understand the red tape because it's an important place. It's a sacred place. And we wanted to do everything right. But yeah, it took a long time for us to actually make it happen. When did the filming actually take place? 2025 May. And it took about one year to get it together, like to write it, to edit it, to source music, to source custom chance, and to edit it all together. You know what's another really nice thing about this is that Martha's been one of my best friends for decades. Oh gosh, do you say decades? It makes it sound so old. Anyways, it's kind of old, I so yeah, definitely. But like we knew we worked together well because she was my producer.

24:11And when we partnered up to do this, it just totally worked. And I have to say, I think she did a fantastic job with the movie because I know it was my story and I lent some help being in some kind of producer way, but she pretty much drove it. She did all the heavy lifting. She's amazing. We're still friends. Can you believe that? Yeah, after all this, still friends. No, I'm just really, really grateful that Diane trusted me with this and that Diane let me come along because, you know, I would have never been able to go to Call of Popup. For you, Diane, and we talked about this as deeply personal. Talk about what your family knew or didn't know and how that kind of led you to follow this journey in her footsteps. We didn't know anything about our great grandmother, my cousins and I. And when we would both separately ask our parents, oh, so grandpa, a co or a great grandpa had this wife. What happened to her? Like why does the family tree end there? We really didn't know. So cousin Paul wanted to start looking into it.

25:13And he was a little bit surprised when immigration documents from her children started talking about, well, we're not really sure, but we heard she went to Call of Poppa. And he said, Diane, you have to keep digging and see what you could find. So after I post this blog, literally 14 minutes later, call of her not, call of poppa Valerie Monson wrote and said, oh my gosh, I can confirm for you what happened. I as the emissary of my family wanted to go over and see where she lived and what it was like for her. And Diane, what was that journey like for you personally going down there yourself and connecting these dots of what happened to your great grandmother? It was exciting and it was more emotional than I expected. By the time we had our plane tickets in hand and we're headed there, I had found even more pieces of information about my great grandmother. And I was really looking forward to seeing the buildings where she lived or the churches

26:15that she may have gone to because there was a lot we don't know. And I was also really happy that I could take my daughter over that she was old enough to make the flight. You have to be 16 or over because I felt like it was really important for her to understand this piece of our history because the children are the one that carry the story forth, right? Yeah. And Diane got robbed of that. I think of the fact and I think this is why it, like it, the story haunted me before we did it. Here's Diane, an inquisitive journalist. She goes to Kameha, Meha. And yet she doesn't really have those Hawaiian stories. She doesn't know much about her Hawaiian matriarch. So by being able to take Olivia over, like now she's able to start the story. I think that's pretty poignant. I think this was a good time for me to do the story as a mother because I really can relate to the fact of leaving your children behind and how that feel. Being a mom brings me a lot more empathy to the loss that she had. The idea of being torn from your children and being torn from your own.

27:15Like that is the heart of this movie. And somebody who, two generations on, still cares and still wonders about her ancestor and wants to make peace with that and wants to find her and find her story. That's what this is all about is in a sense giving her a voice again and a face. There was only one photo of her, one very grainy photo of her existence. That's it. That's all Diane had to go on. And that's all Paul, her cousin, who I also interviewed for this had to go on. One photo. But it made my family so happy when they realized what was happening. I think there was a silence drilled into my dad and his sister because really, right, Martha, when we were trying to interview my dad, he just had so little to say about it. So I think they were just taught to stop asking, but that didn't pass over to our generation. We asked and asked. I think there's so much stigma and shame in so many families back then talking about it and that probably lays into that sort of generational silence around what actually

28:17happened, right? And I think that's something that a lot of a honna have experienced. Yeah, I would agree. So Martha, what as a filmmaker do you hope that viewers will kind of take away from watching this? To me, it's just a very personal story about caring about your ancestors and your loved ones and wanting to know where you come from. It's the simplest story, right? Where do I come from? I was so touched personally by we were living busy lives, but on the side Diane was doing this search and I was just always so captivated by that story. So I think others will be too. I hope because it's a great story, sad story and a story that unfortunately happened many times in Hawaii, mostly to Native Hawaiians. You know, this was 90% Native Hawaiians that were at Kala Papa. Yeah, I hope also in addition to what Martha said, I actually hope this re-engages people's interest with what's happening with that topic because there's a couple of hot buttons happening right now.

29:18There's the long standing desire to get a memorial built that's been going on for years. And there's also this separate conversation about what does the government do with the land once the last patient who lives there passes away, which is now only two people. So I think these are really big and important conversations. I feel really privileged and lucky to have this connection to it. I mean, I have no power, but you know, because of the story, I'm watching it with interest and it's a part of my community. So I care. And so I hope other people think about this and care as well. This film will premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival coming up. How can people see the film at the festival and if they can't make it to the festival, how can they see the film after that? And what's coming after that? It sounds like some really exciting international showings coming up as well. So we're very excited to be premiering at the Hawaii International Film Festival. It was for Diane and for me, Hawaii International Film Festival was always where we wanted to

30:21premiere this movie. And so we're thrilled that we're going to be there. And people can see it. It'll be showing at Koholy Theater on October 31st in November 1st during HIF. And then it travels to the Big Island, Kehulu Theater in Weimea. And after that, it goes to Sydney where we will be in the Pacifica Film Festival. And then for the next year or so, we're hoping to take it on the road and take it to some other Film Festivals. And we will keep our website pilihofilm.com updated on the screening info page. That was Diane, Akko and Martha Shade speaking with HPR's Catherine Gludpactil about their new short documentary, Piliho. You can find screening information for the film on our website later today.

31:36For HPR comes from the Shidler College of Business at UH Manoa, offering the distance learning executive MBA with healthcare and travel industry tracks. Shidler.hawaii.edu slash executive. Aloha. I'm DJ Marmey. Post of Hawaii Public Radio's Hawaii Equal A.I. Join HPR on Friday, October 17th at 6 p.m. for an intimate evening celebrating 50 years of Aloha Aina and a legacy of the Protect Call of Lava, O'Hama. Featuring music and Moolano from the 50 years of Aloha Aina and aversary album. Get your tickets now at Hawaii Public Radio dot org. This event is sponsored by HMSA. Support for the conversation comes from the HPR local talk show fund, which helps Hawaii public radios sustain and grow its locally produced talk shows. Moolano to contributor P.Cat Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training.

32:50Aloha, this is Patrick Hart from UH Healow Department of Biology. We're bringing you a special series called Ahoi Manu Minute that explores our cultural connection to Hawaii's native birds. It's built around an ole led by Kekuhi Kali Ikanaka Ole O'Hai Lee Lani. Today you'll hear a portion of the ole that focuses on the Koloa Maui or Hawaiian duck. Lisa Mason with UH Healow Lohe Bioacoustics Lab will guide you through its meaning. Take a listen. The Koloa Maui is born.

33:56The Koloa Maui or Hawaiian duck is the only native resident duck found across the main Hawaiian islands. It is said that the warrior I Maka Koloa of Kauu was blind, but was aided in his battles by two Koloa Maui that would hover and call to him the location of his enemies in battle. This ole ties Koloa to the brown and teal colored Tobyfish from the sea and the hybridized Sir Tanger plants commonly known as Haewale from the Upland Forest. As you listen to the call of the Koloa Maui, we invite you to join us in imitating their cunning to offer a pulse of vitality for their success.

35:01Mahalo Ahui Manu for today's ole and thanks to Zeno Kanto for the recordings of Koloa Maui. For Hawaii Public Radio, I'm Lisa Mason. Not for a minute comes from Ken and Patti Cup check for the Friends of Oahu National Wildlife Refuges. James Campbell, Koloa Mountains and Pearl Harbor, more at Friends of OahuNWR.org. This is Pixie Clay from the newsroom, inviting you to a special live from the Atherton Storytellers event. Speaking up, politics, the First Amendment, and you, with Bill Dorman, HPR's Senior Vice President of News and Executive Editor. This free event is on Thursday, October 8th at 6 p.m. with doors opening at 5.30. Tickets and details at hprtickets.org sponsored by HMSA. Support for HPR comes from the State Office of Elections, reminding eligible residents

36:02to register, confirm or update mailing addresses for the November 3rd General Election. For at elections.hawaii.gov. Now it's time to reveal today's backyard quiz answer. We are looking at the world of podcasting in honor of International Podcast Day. Hawaii Public Radio has proudly produced diverse podcast over the years. Aside from the Conversations Podcast, HPR also offers music-focused shows like the New Conocopilla Vintage and Companion Podcasts to TV shows like Feathers and Fire, which recapped weekly episodes of Chief of War, and offered a deeper look at the real history portrayed on the show.

37:03But HPR has also waited into the waters of narrative podcast storytelling, made popular by shows like This American Life and Serial. For today's quiz, we ask you to name HPR's first ever narrative podcast. It came out in 2023 and followed host Russell Subiono as he looked at Hawaii's history of colonization and modern day tensions of land ownership. That series was, This is our Hawaii. That's today's quiz. And if you'd like to share, write to talk back at Hawaii Public Radio dot ORG. Five local artists have been selected for the Hawaii Climate Action Artist Residency Program. Janna Erejo is one of the talented few that made the cut from a pool of over 65 artists. She shows her version of climate change in the form of murals featuring endangered animals.

38:08And they're drawn using natural materials such as charcoal from local wildfires or dirt from nearby streams that can easily be washed away. Fitting. HPR's Kevin Allen sat down with Erejo, who starts with her experience being a part of this creative collective. And we know we just started and already it's been inspiring to see. There's been people sharing artistic ideas, assuring what drove them to become artists that are environmental artists, the work that they do. And sharing ideas at the same time, celebrating our own special styles and takes. So it's very expansive and at the same time we feel very supportive, whatever individual direction we take. And for me, a collaboration starts with, you know, I have like a site that I'll be working at and you know, start with what was the Moolello and the Native Hawaiian knowledge connected

39:11to that site. And then if there's an endangered species that I portraying or stream or beach, what does it take for that species to be protected, for that stream to be healthy. So that's where I learn from the scientists, the climate action practitioners, community leaders, the cultural advisors. And the art and imagery comes out of those talks in ways that I could never imagined on my own. And I think this is a perfect time to kind of jump into your art. And I find your medium really fascinating, especially as an artist. So something that you've definitely been picking up attraction for is use charcoal, which is kind of a medium that can easily be smudged out or washed away or even destroyed. It's kind of an ephemeral ingredient to your art, which I think focuses on an equally delicate subject. And as you just mentioned, it's endangered animals. I guess talk to me about the very poignant statement you're making here by using charcoal

40:14and this kind of ephemeral style of art. The first time I created a vanishing mural using charcoal was in 2020. And I was separated from loved ones in Australia when the megafires happened. The 2019, 2020 Australian wall fires. And then COVID happened soon after. And I remember thinking, you know, what I wanted to paint do something to express all the feelings I had. And I just felt like paint wasn't saying enough. And I remember being on the beach as a kid on Maui and drawing with Burnt Kiave. And just like shells kind of drawing with walls on the beach. And all of a sudden I had this vision of a wildfire charcoal, koala mural that I would draw outside. And when the rain came, it would wash away. It looked like tears were falling. And so the idea that these trees had burned and they bore witness to, you know, all this

41:19devastation, I felt like this pigment had a story to tell that could say more than what I could just say on my own. So the first murals I did were around my house, they were enduring COVID outside inside my house. And I would draw them in dangerous species and put them out in the snow. Or I would put them out in the rain. And then I started incorporating, I loved by a stream. And I would use the stream water in the charcoal. And which made me wonder who were the first people to cross that stream. And I started to learn the stories of the Native American Indians who were there, the revolutionary war soldiers who had crossed it. And that's when I started thinking, okay, each place has its own story. And the murals eventually grew to, I will gather the pigments from the place the story is being told. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of wildfires. And so that's been a pigment I've used to tell the story.

42:24But they could also be, I've used dirt from outside my Kameki studio. They're from the nearest beach, a piece of concrete that I picked up. So the idea is that each pigment, I think actually the earth pigments are the most important part of the mural because they tell all these stories of the past present and hopes for the future. Yeah, it's such a wonderful statement to use, supplies truly from the area that you are telling the story about. And I think it's especially important too because I think when we think a lot about climate conservation and endangered animals, it's a very place-specific issue. And I think what is, you know, we're known as the extinction capital of the world. And we can very often times kind of fuel that climate change, very viscerally here, you know, when there's less songbirds in our forests, the forests get quieter. When the reefs are destroyed and there's empty air oceans. I guess for your creative process and observations, what do you take from living, I guess, here

43:26in this very specific area and kind of transitioning that to your art? I was away for 30 years and I just moved back to Hawaii three years ago. And I think when I was away, I started to remember and realize, you know, I grew up in Manoa Stream trying to build canoes that I was sent with my cousins and hiking and swimming. And the ocean was such a part of our lives that almost didn't seem separate from ourselves. And I think being so connected to nature, you know, the health of our environment is directly connected to the health of our communities. And you know, climate change is not abstract. We're all living through it and yeah, it's just, we're connected to it. Absolutely. And I just kind of want to roll back on your art real quick. And I think it's very interesting to me as an artist that you're kind of creating something that is purposely going to be either destroyed or kind of degraded over time. And you know, when you think about art, a lot of artists write, they frame their art.

44:30They put these protective barriers around it to make it a very permanent thing. So what is it like kind of to work in such an opposite manner? And do you ever end up destroying or erasing something and think, oh, that was a really good one. I so I don't use a binder in my work. I've learned the crazy thing I've learned to draw with dirt and roots and this dirty stream water. And part of it's technical like, okay, you know, learning how to, you know, use these as pigments. But once I got past that, it felt like as I was drawing, usually an endangered or threatened species, I'm trying to hold on to it. Like I wish I could capture it, which I think a lot of artists do and hold on to it. And as I'm washing it away, I feel it's part cathartic, it's part expressing the loss and devastation of the potential of losing these species or, you know, if it's a community.

45:35But change happens, there's impermanence. I think we need to find new solutions and new ways of coming together. So I find that story or the action of the whole process is, it expresses what I'm feeling and what I'm hoping for. But there's always a ghost image that remains. And to me, it's just as powerful, if not more powerful, then fully drawn, complete image. Oh, and I think a lot can be taken from what you just said. But one thing that I wanted to just highlight was when you said you were working on it and you kind of wanted to hold on to it, right? And I feel like a lot of people feel very similarly, you know, about a lot of these animals that are very endangered. We really want to hold on to that idea them and have them around for as long as possible. And I think a lot of people can take a lot of different meanings, right, from your art, your vanishing murals. Like everyone can kind of get their own perspective out of it. But in your mind, what do you want people to walk away from your murals kind of taking

46:40in? When I first started creating them, they were purely for my sense of loss and despair. And when I started working with the conservation groups in these communities, the conversations always led to there's always hope every single time. And they were calm and they had a plan. And you know, this is what they're going to do. Sometimes they were just kind of hill marries, but there were ways for the community to come in and also take action. I think that's what I would love to bring awareness to that there's always hope. There's things we can do. Hawaii is so inspiring to me. We're so innovative. We're so creative. We've had to be. And I think we're an example for the rest of the world. And you're 100% right. You know, I think a lot of people, right, they see just the doom and the gloom. You talk to conservation folks and they're like, no, we got a little figure in this out. Trust me. Yeah. And it's only the way to go about it. Or else, I mean, everyone would just be feeling agonied to spare all the time, which is

47:43a much darker, darker world. I guess from your point of view and your perspective, kind of thinking about, you know, animal endangerment, I mean, what actions would you love for people to take into the future with them? What are some actions you would love to see? That it's all interconnected. And it is very site specific. You know, birds can be endangered on one island and not necessarily the other. But when it comes to water, forests, birds, plants, you know, warming mosquitoes, it's all interconnected. And I think in the age of social media, it's easy to come up with solutions for and against. But in Hawaii, knowing that it's all intertwined along with the Molello and the native Hawaiian knowledge, like, you know, there's that wisdom in knowing that if you disrupt one thing, else is going to be affected and to just to be aware of that. And I just wanted to bring up one last project that you had done. It was in the Pololo stream. I saw it on your Instagram speaking about social media.

48:46You had painted a mono or a shark in 2023 and it looked like over the course of a couple years ahead and slowly kind of washed away, you know, it was a natural seemingly degradation of rain and just daily life. I guess what was that experience like for you? What did you take from that? Just watching that process in its most natural state kind of happen. Well, this is kind of complicated. So I draw sharks in different places and I always imagine it's the same shark. Or if I draw well, even a Connecticut to Hawaii, it just pops up to tell a story of that important place and time and then it goes on to somewhere else. And that's what I tell little kids too. Because when they vanish, I didn't have the heart to tell them. It was gone. I said, no, it went on to share the story with someone else. I felt like that. It was a farmed state. Yeah. Yeah. So the shark popped up to tell the story about the stream. And so when it vanishes, it's part of warning of what we stand to lose.

49:49But at the same time, you know, the stream's move. Nature is resilient if we give it a chance. So there's all these different meanings that are in that ephemeral art making site specific and the washing away. But again, the image is there. And when I go see it, it's still there. And again, it's more powerful than when I first drew it and it's never gone. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today, Johnna. I really appreciated the talk. Thanks so much for having me. That was artist Johnna, Erejo and HPR's Kevin Allen talking about the impact art can have on climate change and environmental awareness. Take a look at her work on our website at awaypublicradio.org.

50:53That wraps our show for today. Tomorrow we hear from a former ambassador about the Chinese President's recent state visit to Washington, D.C. Let us know what you think. Give us feedback on our talk back line 808-792-8217 or email talkback at awaypublicradio.org. Find our archives shows online by searching for the conversation on Spotify, Apple or on our website. Mahalo for joining us. I'm Robbie Dingman, tune in tomorrow for more of the conversation.