HULIAU - THE RETURN VOYAGE

A NATIVE HAWAIIAN WISDOM CIRCLE

FROM THE BOOK, NEARING COMPLETION:

GRANDMOTHERS WHISPER: Bringing Two Worlds Together ©

By Inette Miller

September, 1998 - Finding Cousins

‘Iokepa had been no less embraced by miracles in his weeks on Moloka‘i. His $20 bought him a room for one night. The next day, with a penny and an apple in his pocket, he hitchhiked to a county park. He’d been told he could sleep inside a picnic pavilion.

When he arrived, it was pouring rain. A sprawling extended family was packing up from their weekend reunion. ‘Iokepa kept out of the way, reading Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth under cover.

A large, middle aged, native Hawaiian woman moved across the grass in his direction. He told me: “She looked like she was floating on white light--like she wasn’t touching the ground.”

“Aloha,” he said to her. “I’m ‘Iokepa.

“’Iokepa…” she said, repeating the name in the unique way he pronounced it. “You’re an ‘Īmaikalani, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am, “he laughed.

“Well,” she said. “Your great great grandfather raised my great grandmother.”

Then Leilani burrowed her wise, kind eyes into ‘Iokepa. She registered her recognition.

“You have no money?” She asked, but it was more a matter of fact.

“No, I don’t,” he answered with a grin.

“And you have no place to stay?”

“I have no place to stay.”

“Well,” Leilani said. “Now you do. You’ll come home with us. We’ve been waiting for you.”

To outsiders, the people of Moloka‘i looked poor. But that wasn’t at all how they saw themselves. They knew they lived on one of the last pieces of authentic Hawai‘i. They spoke with, listened to, and lived as allies of the spirits of their ‘āina. They were impervious—fiercely resistant is closer—to the plans of others to make them rich. They knew better.