Arriving in Hawai'i, I came with a set of expectations - expectations of their people, of their culture, and of their landscape.  Not knowingly, I had come with presumptions of my role as a Cornell student coming to Hawai'i to study marine biology, but also as an ecologist with beliefs and values shaped by a very formal approach to scientific knowledge and education.  When I first heard that we were taking a course in traditional ecological research, I egotistically assumed we were here to help indigenous communities by impressing our ecological knowledge upon them.  Little did I know that everything that I had learnt about love of place and communal resilience could be so beautifully embodied by the spirit and unwavering strength of the Hawaiian people.   I had always perceived my responsibility as an environmental scientist to somehow repair the existing state of nature by imposing my scientific understanding on the landscape and its inhabitants.  As I listened to the Hawaiian people speak of their interaction with nature, with the mauna, moana and ululaau, I realized how naive I was to believe that the exchange of ecological knowledge was a one-way process.  When an elder asked me what my intent of the day was, I said that mine was to simply be present and to listen to the sounds of nature with an open mind and heart.  Standing beneath the lama trees of the dry forest and the thick branches of the haha and ohe makai, I felt an assuring sense of aloha.  Aloha means hello and goodbye, but more importantly, love for nature and for the beauty and cultural resilience reflected in the stories of indigenous communities.

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The dry land forest is part of an ongoing restoration project, and its history with CORALS is a testament to the fruits of this long-established partnership and trust.  It is surreal to see parts of the forest that used to be solely dominated by fountain grass become what it is now.  Within a short time-span of two or three years, indigenous communities have truly devoted their efforts and spirit to fostering new growth, many of which are native endangered species, and restoring areas that had become dominated by invasive plants.  It is an uplifting reminder that when communities come together with the shared goal of learning from the forest and absorbing its wisdom like the sediment beneath our feet, we are more able to place our ego aside and embrace environmental learning as a two-way exchange of knowledge.

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When speaking to the elders, one of them shared with us a story that truly epitomized the value in listening to traditional knowledge and realizing that cultural symbolism can often reflect different facets of scientific theory and vice versa.  She told us that when scientists visited the island to study trends in sea level rise, her father's estimates were dismissed and doubted because they were deemed as being data based on myths and primitive stories.  Often times, it is easy for us to perceive science as being the ultimate truths and in turn, interpret cultural knowledge as being subordinate to that.  The story eloquently told to us by an elder reminded me of the power of personal identity, in this case the identity of the community, in shaping its understanding of the landscape and its relationship with the local inhabitants and surrounding biota.  The elder's father based his estimate on his observations and close interactions with moana and yet, the support that traditional knowledge can offer to the scientific community is often unaccounted for and left invalidated.

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The Hawaiians view nature as family and as an integral part of who they are.  The mountains, oceans and forests characterize traditional stories and shape their behavior and attitudes toward environmental management and humanity's relationship with nature.  Their efforts to restore biological diversity lost to deforestation and invasive species are motivated by a deep love and compassion for this place.  The elders speak of respect, resilience and gratitude as guiding their conservation ethic and outlook on the environment, and it is clearly a deep love for this place that has driven their commitment to restoration of life in the sub-tropical dry forest.  When the Hawaiians say mahalo, they speak of thanks, and it is this awareness of our active presence in the forest that makes us conscious of our footprints tracing the soil, our breathing entering the natural pulse of the forest.