Pineapple Snow
Aloha nō, Ethnomads
Keili here!
Writing to you from (surprisingly) sunny and warm California. I came here for a snowboarding trip with my dad for our birthday celebration. We caught a few fun days of slushy snow that is rapidly dissapearing. We van life-d it up! Working between runs, exploring new hot springs - even our dog, Hilo, got to join!
With big storms hitting Oʻahu, it is crazy that I have been enjoying blue bird days out here in California.
Also been getting some great family time in and reflecting on life in general. There are so many ways to live, and it seems around every corner is another to judge or compare your life against. Gratitude being the antidote, and good friends and family to keep you confident, kind, and directed towards the goals that you know will fulfill you in the long run.
Waʻa projects are on hold until the next storm passes.
For now, Chris is home creating stools/mini waʻa/pewa/alaiʻa in his workshop (aka the garage) and making our new space cozy and inviting.
I hope you all had a great St.Patricks day. Dad and I enjoyed our corn beef and cabbage & Guinness surrounded by loud, drunk, green people. It felt right.
Dad was sharing with me that people in Ireland generally donʻt celebrate St Patricks Day the same way at all, really, which I found odd. For most of the Irish, St Patties is a quiet meal they share with family to celebrate the patron saint who brought Christianity to their island. Nothing really like our drunk and loud celebrations here. Wonder where that got lost in translation….commercialism.
Since I have you here I wanted to share some bills that need testimony tonight my loves! Ethnomads assemble!
Here is a breakdown of the bills: Credit to Sierra Club, Hawaii - Wayne you are awesome! I would sign up for their newsletter if you want to get more info and sample testimony you can copy/paste into the capitol.hawaii.gov website.
HB1601 HD1 would restore Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Council (HISC) funding back to the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), where HISC is housed. The DLNR has a long and proven track record of ensuring HISC funds are efficiently distributed to HISC programs and community partners working to protect Hawaiʻi from invasive species and their impacts. Last year, however, HISC funding for FY26-27 was placed in the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity (DAB), instead of the DLNR. Given DAB’s unfamiliarity with and lack of dedicated staff to administer HISC funds and programs, keeping HISC funding in DAB could result in significant disruptions in the distribution of critical biosecurity resources. Accordingly, this bill is essential to ensuring continuity for our most effective and critically needed biosecurity programs.
The Senate Agriculture and Environment and Water, Land, Culture and the Arts Committees will hear this bill on Friday at 1:03pm in conference room 224 (watch live here).
HB1931 HD2 would implement longstanding recommendations to boost our ability to fight back against invasive weeds and plants, and the threats they pose to our food security, water security, ecological and cultural integrity, climate resilience, and economy. It would provide for dedicated staff who can track and coordinate weed response efforts; mechanisms for the public to identify new invasive plants for the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity (DAB) to take action on; additional DAB authorities to prevent and address invasive plant infestations; and strengthened compliance and enforcement tools, including added penalties.
The Senate Agriculture and Environment Committee will hear this bill on Friday at 4:00 p.m. in conference room 224 (watch live here).
HB2581 HD2 would establish much-needed guardrails on the definition of an “emergency,” and ensure that the use of sweeping emergency powers by executive branch leaders are to actually protect our health and safety. This bill will prevent current and future Governors and mayors from arbitrarily calling long-standing and complex societal challenges, such as unaffordable housing or “illegal” activity, as “emergencies” in order to suspend our environmental, cultural protection, good governance, procurement, and labor laws indefinitely - as Governor Green attempted to do with his emergency proclamation on (un)affordable housing.
The Senate Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee will hear this bill on Friday at 3:15 p.m. in conference room 016 (watch live here).
HB1979 HD3 is a DANGEROUS bill that could effectively foreclose legal review of violations of our bedrock environmental review laws. It would require any judicial appeals asserting noncompliance with the Hawaiʻi Environmental Protection Act to be filed within a mere 30 days of an agency action or approval relating to affordable housing and clean energy projects. Cultural practitioners, environmentalists, and members of the public with limited resources are unlikely to be able to review decisions, consult with attorneys, and raise funds for legal fees and expert witnesses within such a limited time frame; for actions or approvals that are made by agency staff not subject to the Sunshine Law, members of the public may not even have the opportunity to know that a violation has occurred until well after a month has passed (particularly if no environmental review was conducted at all). As a result, uninformed decision making arising from faulty or nonexistent environmental review could lead to unknown or unintended, avoidable, and permanent impacts to public health and safety, sensitive or critical native species habitat, cultural sites, and constitutionally protected Native Hawaiian traditional and customary practices.
The Senate Agriculture and Environment, Water, Land, Culture and the Arts, and Energy and Intergovernmental Affairs Committees will hear this bill on Friday at 1 p.m. in conference room 224 (watch live here).
**It is as easy as writing I support this or oppose this. But, it helps to add personal flare, or at least your name and where you live. You CAN submit testimony even if you dont live here. It is imperative that tourists and visitors of Hawaiʻi raise their voices to help the local community/economy/ecology.
Mahalo nui loa for reading on, even when we are low on waʻa activities! You know we still have plenty little stories that we are dying to share with you :)
A hui hou,
Keili
Mahalo nui loa ke akua, and to all those that support our journey, read on, and join in! This post is dedicated to my mother, Illa McEvilly.