Why start a blog? When there is an overwhelming amount of internet chatter about everything from the important to the trivial, why start a blog? Or more to the point, why start a blog when ocean levels are rising, people are dying violently (through natural disasters, or man made horror), natural resources are being depleted, pollution and trash are overwhelming our ecosystems, and homelands are disappearing forever? Why sit down and write? Why write when we can go out and do something? Why start a blog?

Because there is power in being part of stories, in sharing stories, in telling them, in listening to them, in putting them out into the world. So we’re starting a weekly blog. Not because our stories are the best, nor because we know the most, rather this is how we show our love, how we reach out to others in the struggle.

The work we all do can really grind you down, and we all need stories that bring us hope or remind us of the fire inside us or ask us to carry a communal burden. There are eleven of us here, writing this blog, who believe in the power of stories and shared struggle. We do what we can in the streets or at the capitol or on the land or in the sea, but after, we talk story, we support each other with our words and our thoughts, we let each other know that we are there. We can’t always stand with you on the land you are fighting for, but we hope our voices do carry. We are starting today with two perspectives on why it’s so important to put our collective voices on the wind, to seed the world with our stories. A inā paʻē mai ka leo, e ō mai. We always welcome your voice to the story as well! Feel free to contact us at hehiale@gmail.com.

*The blog is named Ke Kaʻupu Hehi ʻAle, “the wave-treading kaʻupu.” The kaʻupu is the black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes), which is often a metaphor for a voyager/canoe because of its long offshore feeding range, and we thought that would be a good image for the connections we’re trying to make. The kaʻupu is a graceful flier and has a wingspan of 6-7 feet, which allows it to glide and soar above our islands, but it is also very vulnerable to the problems below it, like longline fishing, oil spills, and ingesting plastic.

Photo by dfaulder (Black-footed Albatross), via Wikimedia Commons