Season 2023 Episode 8 | 15m | Video has closed captioning.
The island of O'ahu is covered with coconut palms, but for fear of liability the vast majority of these sacred trees have been stripped of coconuts. The grassroots movement "Niu Now" is on a mission to restore the "niu," or coconut, as a fundamental food crop in Hawai'i and spread the Indigenous wisdom of "aloha 'āina:" loving land and serving people.
Aired: 07/10/23
Expires: 07/09/25
(birds chirping) - The coconut tree or niu is a fundamental practice of food sovereignty, or food security.
I like to view it as (narrator speaking Hawaiian), the return to freedom with freedom.
(machete thunks) It means we've regained our footing in a natural system that allows us to eat once again more simply.
To share once again, without money.
It stimulates a sharing economy that allows us to empower ourselves.
So, Niu Now is a movement of beloveds to learn how we can recover this relationship with our beloved tree of life.
(reverent folk music) Today, the coconut in Hawaii is considered an ornamental tree, and a liability.
(engines humming) We have thousands of niu on O'ahu, but most coconut trees do not have coconuts in them, as the nuts are cut down before they mature enough to eat.
This has now become an issue, because of the food insecurity of our communities.
(birds chirping) (speaking Hawaiian) My name is Manulani Aluli Meyer.
And my ohana hails from Mokapu, Kailua, and I come from those places along with Hilo Paliku and Mokokeaue, Hawaii island.
- Yeah, it's a good coconut, we can eat it tonight.
We'll have the nut for the dinner, and the husk for planting tomorrow.
(person with coconut hums) Aloha.
My name is in Indrajit Kumara Samarasingha Gunasekara.
I am from Nardugula, Martara, southern Sri Lanka.
Coconut is a part of our Sinhala culture.
As long as we've been in that island, we ate coconut.
This is a food producing tree.
This is food.
(knife cracking) Turn around.
(coconut water sloshing) Working with Auntie Manu.
It is her and mine shared hope in Hawaii having coconut in the tree, and to start in this very nursery (hopeful chill music) to germinate that dream.
(birds chirping) (people laughing) - Indrajit was making, everyone thinks it's some ancient type, no, this is his ulu niu game plan, this is the plan for tomorrow.
Do you see where the ulu are, and the niu?
Can you tell?
Tomorrow is our ulu niu last and final planting day.
We've been planting, and preparing the soil for the last two years.
They've given us 11,000 square feet to produce a dryland forest.
What a miracle.
(machine buzzing) (playful guitar music) - [Indrajit] So, to get the ground ready, the first thing is we need to get the husk broken down as small as possible here.
Now we let them sit in a two days in the water.
So, this water here, this moisture is going to stay for several months, even in the hot sun.
Putting that on the ground, that will retain the moisture, and will be good for the plant.
- We are so grateful to have Indrajit, and his knowledge of the niu that's come from thousands and thousands of years of practice, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We are all neonates, you know?
But he's the head coconut head.
He's the head coconut.
- [Indrajit] I think it was a month ago we had the rain here.
You see?
(plant cracking) Moisture, water.
This husk, this is how it's surviving here.
- [Manulani] In Hawaii, the word for land is aina.
Aina means that which feeds, that which nourishes.
(spare reverent music) Kumu is the source.
Kumu is teacher.
Kumu is our word for tree.
And so, this kumu niu is the idea that all trees become our teachers.
- This is something elder told me.
Somebody that know about this area, a kupuna.
The stories tell that this was the royal coconut grove.
Hundreds of coconut, hundreds of niu.
Now it's down to three.
My opinion, I see this as a loss to this place.
What if this was the last tree of this variety been in this island?
- The idea of diversity within niu, within coconuts, is very important.
We have really enjoyed, you know, people's faces when they say, what?
There's more than one coconut variety?
Yes, there is.
(chill reverent music) It's like the difference with humanity.
We have to be different to survive, we have to be different to allow our talents, and excellence to be recognized.
And then the collaborations are stronger.
Same thing with the niu.
- Most coconut growing places has the record.
People know what varieties they have, categories of coconut.
We don't have it yet here.
This tree, this Manoa green tall, they chopped the tree down.
Looking at 4,000 trees, and collecting over a thousand coconut, I'm still looking for that pointed end knot.
I haven't found that variety yet.
(hopeful string music) Here, you know, I'm still hope, hope is still live in these trees.
As we will give a little bit better care, and get some seed to grow.
- How we lost the knowledge of niu is a very tender topic, but I can say this.
That the United States illegally took my nation in 1893, and we are healing from that.
I believe sovereignty goes to freedom when we are able to activate ourselves in that healing process with America, with our Polynesian cousins, with ourselves.
So, the niu became an ornamental tree (somber synth music) for tourists.
And the nuts were taken out because they caused danger.
And our tree of life became an ornamental liability.
(somber synth music) The maintaining of that is my problem to fix.
So, colonization is indeed rampantly choking us until you realize, just step away from the chokehold.
Plant, feed ourselves with our own forests, with our own trees of sustenance, and beauty, (warm hopeful music) and culture, and empowerment.
Feed ourselves, do it ourselves.
This is what Niu Now is about.
It's joyful, you know?
Recognizing that, yes, we did get cut away from our land, we did get severed from our government, and now 120 years later, we're able to see that history as part of our own facet of evolution.
And so, people like Indrajit from southern Sri Lanka can help us heal.
It doesn't matter who, it matters that we are healing collectively.
- Okay, we are going with our inventory here.
And if you see in the chart, this is a 1D, and the 1D over there.
Those two plant will be planted today.
- [Cameraman] You excited?
- Yes.
(laughing) I'm always excited!
But this, today, is especially, something about today!
(hopeful piano music) (Manulani speaking in Hawaiian) - [Manulani] Feel our gratitude.
- [Indrajit] One group can work on picking the weed out, and pulling them down, and the other team can break the husk.
- Anytime you expose people, and especially youth to aina work, to land work, you expose them to the possibilities of their own internal wakefulness.
And that is thrilling to me 'cause the kids love it.
And I'm like, wow, you guys like working hard, sweating, and you know, fatigue work, like, yeah, team.
I love that.
'Cause when the kids can see what they've done, then they can know that anything is possible.
And believe me, to turn this barren, dry, hot lands into a vibrant living forest, that'll change anybody.
That's our goal.
(hopeful piano music) - What it means for me to know this knowledge as a student, and as a future person to come and help the food system, as a future Hawaiian.
I see it as a form of liberation, as a form of sovereignty.
Indrajit showed me his connection with niu, with coconut.
I never grew up with niu the way he did, but I have the ability, I grew up with kalo, you know what I mean?
I took that framework that he has, and I was able to adapt it to kalo.
And I feel a great sense of understanding, and connection to it because it's my ancestors that used to farm this.
- The beauty of the coconut, right?
The coconut travels.
Travels still yet all over the world by itself.
When we realize that we're just traveling with the coconut, and regaining this knowledge, and experience from different people, different cultures, different languages, it puts you in a different perspective of like, what learning can be, and what a evolution, what a revolution can be for our people.
To me, in its core, it's about (speaking Hawaiian), and really taking care of our people.
♪ Eh - [Sunglasses Person] Say that.
♪ Eh - Don't be afraid to hold it.
♪ Eh ♪ Eh - [Auli'i] The next word is kuku, talking about kuku.
- [Group] Kuku.
- Eh.
- [Group] Eh.
- Kuku la.
- [Group] Kuku la.
- That's the sprout.
- [Manulani] Chanting, you know, conjuring life into our plants is a new thing and old thing at the same time.
And it's new for this group, but old for Hawaii.
(group chanting in Hawaiian) - [Manulani] There is the little kupu, there is the sprout.
And muo is the new sprout that's forming into leaves, muo.
And then laula is the, you can start to see the the leaves, and then the lala is the branches.
And then the kumu is the tree.
And then eh-ulu meaning please, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.
Ulu means to grow, it's like a spiritual connection to life.
So yeah, we're basically conjuring forth life with our own life.
(hopeful piano music) (group chanting in Hawaiian) (group chanting in Hawaiian) (group chanting in Hawaiian) (group applauding and laughing) - What can you do to join in a worldwide movement to understand the purpose of trees?
That's a lot.
(warm hopeful music) You can do a lot.
Understand what's around your neighborhood, value indigenous knowledge, allow for the history of a place to be known.
This is not about coconuts, this is about friendship, this is about continuity.
this is about joy.
This is about the essence of life.
And we happen to have the form in growing coconuts.
You know what I mean?
(laughs) - The tree, the seed that can float over 3,000 miles over a hundred days, and find the land, and grow.
(waves crashing) Such a tree with that potential inspired us in thousand years.
It's because that tree lived with us for that long.
We became a part of coconut tree.
And coconut tree became a part of us in the tropical world.
When we come to that realization, again, it's a awakening.
We call this a Niu Now movement.
Movements have no limitation.
(person singing folk music in Hawaiian) (person singing folk music in Hawaiian) (person singing folk music in Hawaiian) (warm string music) (warm string music) (warm string music) (warm string music)
