The flowers and foliage of the lei do not exist alone. They are part of a vast ʻupena – net or web – of life. The animals pollinate and fertilize the flowers, the flowers feed the birds. Nothing exists in isolation.
Saving Kauai’s Seabirds Trailer from CoriolisFilms.com on Vimeo.
Forested Watersheds and Cultural Resources
“In Hawaiian culture, natural and cultural resources are one and the same. Native Hawaiians share spiritual and familial relationships with the natural resources around them. Animate and inanimate objects possess spiritual power or mana. Every form of nature is a body-form of some god or lesser deity and one’s spirit might cycle through other living things after human death. Care for each aspect of nature, the kino lau of the elder forms of life, is a way of life. Anything which damages the native nature of the land, forests, ocean, and kino lau therein, damages the integrity of the whole.”
~Hawaiʻi Association of Watershed Partnerships