Standing on Sacred Ground (2013) - full transcript

- We are born into a world

where we already have meaning.

We have meaning because we are

born with a particular kinship.

We're born with a name.

We're born with a spirit being

that will return to the land

when we die.

We know that.

I think the West hasn't

quite understood the need

to have a spirituality

that links to the land

upon which they live.

- Around the world,

indigenous people

fight for their

islands of sanctuary,

where restoration of the

environment and culture

go hand in hand.

- We can live on the

land like nobody does.

How come we live this long,

and the Australian government

is still running around

trying to kill us off?

In Northern Australia,

aboriginal clans

confront a mining boom

and fight to establish

Indigenous Protected Areas.

And native Hawaiians

restore an island regained

after 50 years of bombing.

- We had to challenge US

control over this land

with continued occupation

in the face of the military.

- If we can fight the

most powerful armed force

the world has ever

known and win,

the possibilities are endless

for other indigenous peoples

throughout the world.

- Australia's

Northern Territory is

marked by conflicts

over aboriginal lands,

a mine on the McArthur River,

the birthplace of the Land

Rights Movement on the Gove

Peninsula, and in Arnhem Land,

reclaimed country now under

indigenous management.

Unseen by Western

eyes, songlines

have guided aboriginal

cultures since the era

of creation, the Dream Time.

- The land tracts

around the Gove region

are based on what we called

songlines, or gudyega.

And that gudyega tells

the story like a map.

It's the singing of

the map of the country.

So when a person would

walk across country,

they would sing that country,

and they would name that tree,

and they would name that river,

and that would name that rock.

That way, there was a

sense of knowing, well,

this is where I am.

I'm not lost.

I can see that sacred

site over there.

- European humans have been

on the Australian continent

only for about 200 years.

There's absolutely clear

archaeological evidence

that Aboriginal people have

been here for 50,000 years.

It's the longest

continuous existing culture

we know about on planet.

And if you look around the

world where nature is still

in plenty, everywhere

in those lands,

there are traditional people.

- The natural ecosystem

still exists here,

and that's why it's healthy,

and the people are healthy.

Countries are healthy.

- The Arnhem Land

Plateau is part

of the biggest, oldest,

and most diverse

tropical savanna in the world.

In the last century, the

plateau was abandoned

by an essential species.

People left Arnhem Land, lured

by missions and white towns

and the promise of

protection from vigilantes.

After a half century of

exile, Gunwinggu people

have come back.

Wamud Namok was the visionary

artist who led his people back

to Arnhem Land, where he

lived as a child, sheltered

under rock snow covered

in his own paintings

and those thousands

of years old.

- It's a spiritual country when

we look at the whole landscape.

People may think,

it's an ordinary hill,

an ordinary rock.

It's an object that is

sacred to our understanding.

- His last wish start trying

to bring people back and work

in their own country.

It's been done from

thousands of years.

- In the hunter-gatherer

tradition,

aboriginal stewards of the land

find food everywhere and teach

younger generations how to care

for species like the sugar bag,

a bee that makes hives in trees.

- For 50,000 years, every

plant and animal species

that we see around

us today coexisted

with aboriginal people.

So for a start, they must have

been doing something right.

- Wamud Namok lived

long enough to see

his homeland officially

recognized as an Indigenous

Protected Area.

Land management

decisions are once again

made by clan elders who have

reintroduced traditional ways

of taking care of country.

Early-season

controlled burns thin

undergrowth without

damaging big trees

and prevent catastrophic

wildfires later in the season.

- The great accomplishment of

Aboriginal people was to learn

how to tame this fire-prone

continent by the intelligent

use of fire.

And when the British

came, what they found

were park-like expanses of

lightly wooded pastures,

and they thought that

they'd found Eden.

And they thought it was natural.

But it wasn't natural.

It was a human-made landscape.

And in 1770, Captain Cook

declared the East Coast

of Australia British possession.

And thereafter,

according to British law,

Aboriginal people were no

longer the owners of their land.

The Anglican chaplain

to the colony

declared that Aboriginal

people did not have souls.

And this view justified

the various attempts

to eliminate local populations.

- The English saw Australia as

Terra nullius, No Man's Land,

belonging to no one.

The newcomers were

blind to thousands

of sacred natural sites

revered by Aboriginal people

as the dwelling places of spirit

beings from an ancient past.

Aboriginal defenders

of their country

were massacred or imprisoned.

- European powers

declared ownership

over other people's lands

and enslaved peoples

around the world

or destroyed them.

Modern Australia is the

result of that history.

- Stolen generations

of children were

given to mission schools

or white families.

Until the mid-1960s,

Aboriginal people

were governed under

wildlife laws.

- They simply couldn't believe

that these primitives, as they

called us, had a religion,

and that the religion was

based on attachment to places

imbued with ancestral beings.

- The Western mind is linked to

this private property notion.

It's an absolutely

diabolical concept

to think that our

relationship to that land

is extinguished because

some Western law says.

That is madness, but our

country has done that.

- No mining on sacred sights!

- The Land Rights

movement in Australia

was triggered by

mining on sacred sites.

It began in the 1960s with

a petition demanding respect

for Aboriginal law

painted on tree bark.

Lawsuits and a

prolonged occupation

of the capital at

Canberra followed.

In 1976, Australia's

Northern Territory

made history by enacting

the world's first law

to protect indigenous

rights to sacred ground,

but conflicts persist.

The McArthur River is

an important wildlife

and conservation area, from

the dry country to the estuary.

In the last decade, the islands

at the mouth of the river

were returned to Aboriginal

clans once again.

The family of Steve

Johnston still

lives on Saltwater

Tucker, food from the sea.

But mining threatens

the marine habitat.

60 miles upstream, the

McArthur River Mine

extracts zinc from one of

the world's largest deposits

and sells most of it to

China for rust-proofing steel

and products from

cars and bridges

to office towers and warships.

For 20 years,

locals have worried

about the environmental

impacts of extracting

lead and zinc in the

floodplain of a tropical river.

- In 2001, there was a

big flood in the river.

We had a good wet that

year, and the tiling dams

at the mine site burst their

walls and came down the river.

There were thousands of dead

fish out in the bay here.

- What do you think's

killing the mangrove?

- Well, I think it must be

the poison from the mine.

- Two years after the big flood,

global mining giant Xstrata

acquired the

McArthur River Mine,

and a plan was announced to

convert underground tunnels

into an open pit, a

less expensive way

to unearth the minerals.

But the zinc deposit is directly

under the McArthur River.

Xstrata's solution-- move

the river, an ancient pathway

created by the rainbow serpent.

- In the dreaming,

the rainbow serpent

journeyed north,

conjuring big storms

and carving a broad and

winding river in the raw Earth.

Sing to the river.

Sing to country.

Country will hear.

But beware.

The one who enforces the

law is always watching.

The spirit of the

rainbow serpent

still lives in the water.

- It has been the river of

life, a source of water and food

and enjoyment for thousands

and thousands of years.

But it's also got an even more

significant role in Aboriginal

culture, and that is the sense

of spirituality and association

with the river through the

gudyega of the rainbow serpent

because it's the

rainbow serpent that

weaves its way

across the country

and creates the country.

It is powerful, and it needs to

be treated with much respect.

Malarndirri McCarthy represented

the McArthur River area

in the Northern

Territory parliament.

With other officials,

she came to Borroloola

to hear local concerns

about the mining plan.

- That is the tail

of the rainbow snake,

and they're going to

cut off that tail.

Why don't you dig up

at Aboriginal sites?

That's why we're

losing our culture.

- There are no sacred sites

affected by this mine,

and that's the report we've got,

and we have to listen to that.

- One of the first things

we did when we started off

for the proposal for the

open pit at McArthur River

was to identify all the

cultural sites around the area.

The Gundanji people

came up and went

through their sites

of significance,

and we've obtained the

Aboriginal area protection

certificates for the

works that we want to do.

And there's no sacred sites

affected, as far as they're

concerned.

- I think the mine can

be the economic generator

of the region.

We've never had anything

like that before.

Mining is one of

those industries

that can link in with a

rural tradition like ours.

At the moment, it's

television, grog, drugs,

that is capturing a

lot of our people.

The mine can give the Aboriginal

people here a normal life,

as is possible out here.

- For the first 15

years of operation,

the mine paid no royalties

and received millions

in government subsidies.

Most employees were flown in.

Recently, Xstrata has

hired some local workers

and has started contributing

to a community fund.

Contaminants released

by earlier floods

weren't documented by the

mine or the government,

but independent monitoring of

water quality is now required.

- I was born across

the river there.

So we have a stake in what

comes downstream from the mine,

and it's been stated that

the water is poisoned here.

And that's totally wrong.

- They say we can't

eat the mussels.

We can't eat the oysters.

So that's coming from doctors.

They reckon there's too

much heavy metals in them.

- Human health depends on the

health of the land and water.

But aboriginal culture also

depends on respect for the land

as the dwelling

place of the sacred.

And now, this line here is the

rainbow serpent coming down

the McArthur.

There is drilling

tracks right up

to the headwaters

of the McArthur,

all the way from Borroloola

to McArthur Mine itself.

- Aboriginal people who follow

the old traditions believe

that the most

important sites are

the places where the ancestral

beings remain in their place.

That's where they live, and

they live there forever.

There's always a set of rules

about how one approaches

rainbow serpent places.

So for instance,

one must go with

a senior traditional owner.

- Block your sacred

site, or you'll be sick.

- Senior traditional

owner Harry Lansen

was not one of Xstrata's

paid consultants.

- They new you were the

right person to see,

but they were

working around him,

working around him every time.

They had no right to

tell us what to do.

It's our country.

It's our land right in there.

- When Gundanji families tried

to visit their sacred sites

near the McArthur

River Mine, they

were blocked by

company personnel

and their aboriginal

consultants and threatened

with arrest for trespassing.

- We couldn't get

back in there today.

That really hurt.

They came in with two vehicles

to stop us and a chopper.

- Xstrata's request to move

the McArthur River was denied,

but mining company

bulldozers broke ground

on the river diversion anyway.

So aboriginal custodians

sued, and the court

ruled in their favor.

- It was a win for the

Aboriginal people in the Gove

region.

And on that day when the

judge made the announcement,

all work on the

expansion plan had

to stop because it was illegal.

- They were beaten in

the court, but then they

just turned around and

legislated the day after

and made new rules.

- Today, government has

decided to legislate

to ensure the continued

operation of the open cut

section of the

McArthur River Mine.

There's hundreds of jobs there,

and Cabinet made a decision

based on a lot of facts

that we had before us,

and this is the most

efficient way to move.

- What are you going to say

to the traditional owners

about the river?

When are you going to tell the

traditional owners, Claire?

- We're all together.

We must fight this thing.

This ground here, look.

It belongs to our country.

Over here, they will damage

our country the wrong way.

They're frightened to show us.

We will start as one, and

we will finish as one.

- With bulldozers at work

rechanneling the sacred river,

a delegation of elders

traveled 17 hours to Darwin

to protest government

collusion with industry.

- They crushed our sacred site.

They never listened to

aboriginal people, elders,

senior elders.

They've been stomped on.

So it's time for them to stand

up and say, hey, you're not

doing this to me anymore.

- Our people had taken a

government and a company

to court and had won and

felt vindicated by the win

and then felt

absolutely demoralized

when goalposts were

being moved again.

- We're up here to say

no to the people that

are trying to destroy our way of

life boy cutting up the river,

diverting it, digging the holes.

And they don't realize

what they are doing to us.

It's the river that keeps

us going, keep fighting.

- Mining is alive and

well in the territories.

- So is our commitment as a

territory to our environment.

- If you cut the

McArthur River, you

are cutting the rainbow serpent,

and there is a great sense

of fear that comes from that.

It is a relationship

with the river

that indigenous people want so

much for non-aboriginal people

to understand and respect

and that no amount of money

can take the place of something

that has been within the family

for thousands and

thousands of years.

- The McArthur River now

runs in a diversion channel.

Xstrata plans to expand

again, this time doubling

the size of the mine.

- We have to live in a

framework, constantly trying

to defend land and sacred place

that governments and developers

want to extinguish.

And so when we come to the

country, it's important for us

to wake it up and remind

that we haven't neglected it.

We haven't forgotten.

That we are still part

of that, and we need

the country to look after us.

- Called by the sound of

the didgeridoo, or yaducky,

clans unite at the Garma

festival, an annual celebration

at the site where the

ancient instrument was first

brought into being.

The festival inspires

cultural dialogue

and brings economic

benefits from ecotourism.

- This is the last frontier of

Aboriginal people still hanging

on to the culture and law and

languages and sacred sites.

We are people of the land.

We love our land.

We sit down, and we

don't play politics.

Our law is here to stay.

- Galarrwuy Yunupingu

has defended sacred sites

from mining for 50 years since

he helped his father write

the first bark petition.

His clan territory

on the Gove peninsula

is the birthplace of

the Land Rights movement

and is now an Indigenous

Protected Area.

Under the dance

ground lies bauxite,

coveted by the mining industry.

- When white man sees the

land, they also a dollar sign.

I will never give away

my land for dollars.

That's my practice, to be able

to pass it on to my little ones

so that the song

cycle must continue.

Whether it is in a dance,

whether it is in a song,

it's all related

back to the things

you find on and in the land.

- One of the great sorrows,

if you like, of modern life

is the extent to which

modern urban humans

are so dissociated

from the natural world.

So when I talk to aboriginal

people about their relationship

to an animal, they can

in the same sentence

talk about how

tasty it is to eat.

- It's really good

for your body.

- And the responsibilities

that they have to it.

And I think this

is where we have

to get if we want to

have a rich natural world

to leave to future generations.

- And I think if we can get the

Western people to understand

that they're born inside this

world not as astronauts that

have landed from some

other alien place,

then I think there'll be

a lot more harmony in how

we look after the globe.

- This was Mahatma

Gandhi's idea.

We belong to the land.

We are not the

owners of the land.

We are the friends of the land,

like friends of the Earth.

- In this recovery of our

humanity as indigenous peoples

where we rid ourselves of

the cloaks of Christianity

or the cloaks of

consumerism and remember

who we were supposed to be, it

is important to be reverent.

- When you have a sacred place,

it's not exactly like a church,

and it's not like

a national park.

It's a place that raises

the level of awareness

about the mystery and power

and possibility and joy

that is present in life.

You know who you are because you

are in contact with this place.

- So if there is something

that we have to relearn,

it's the idea of sharing

and being responsible.

And to learn, you

have to have teachers,

and who's your teacher?

The teacher is nature.

- The Hawaiians honored

the life forces of nature

and these various

energy forms as deities.

Christianity had severed

that relationship of our soul

to the land, which is really

the heart of our culture

here in Hawaii.

- Most of us grew

up loving the land.

We hunt, and we

fish, and we gather.

Different places where we know

that the ancestors are from--

we worship.

That is all part

of being Hawaiian.

Take care of land.

Land takes care of you.

- Guided by stars, early

Hawaiians sail double-hulled

canoes across the Pacific,

headed for the smallest

of eight Hawaiian Islands.

Kauna Loa Kaho Olawe, in the

center of the island chain,

was a place to teach navigation.

Off limits for 50 years

of weapons testing,

Kaho Olawe has once again

become a place of learning

and a refuge considered

sacred from its highest peaks

to the depths of

the ocean around it.

- I'm always asking

myself the question,

is Kaho Olawe really

a sacred place?

It's been always on my mind.

What is sacred?

How does sacred

fit into an island?

- For a lot of Hawaiians,

if you come here,

you get some direction.

But it also helps you to

navigate not only on the ocean,

but in your life.

- Kauna Loa is the

ancient men of the island.

It's one of the four

major Polynesian gods,

and it's the god of the ocean

and everything in the ocean.

This is his realm.

- Kaho Olawe gave us

the spiritual connection

to our ancestors and to

our spiritual beliefs,

and we were able to

call back our gods.

- When Christianity

came to Hawaii,

a new god was welcomed into

the pantheon worshipped

by Hawaiians, but missionaries

said the old gods must die,

and merchants replaced communal

sharing with a profit system.

Native Hawaiians who had

been rich in land and culture

became the poorest

people in the islands.

In 1893, three businessmen

overthrew the government

and imprisoned the queen with

the help of the US military.

Hawaiian lands were seized,

and the language was banned.

American Naval power found a

permanent home in the Pacific

and eventually set sights

on the island of Kaho Olawe.

- The character of the

island is still alive,

and yet this island

is being bombarded.

We all experienced the

loud noises and vibrations

of the bombs.

We could see the dust

coming up every so often

during a military exercise.

Wiped off, wipe out.

A disregard for nature.

- The day after Japan bombed

Pearl Harbor, the United States

declared war.

It also declared martial

law over all Hawaii.

- And the island of Kaho

Olawe was taken over

under military law.

It was a weapons test range.

Every major amphibious

battle in the Pacific

was first practiced

on Kaho Olawe.

- And all of this, what

the people of Hawaii

supported because we were

so fearful of Japan invading

Hawaii.

- This island is off limits,

so you can't go there.

People accepted that for

a long period of time.

It wasn't until that era of

the late '60s, early '70s

that people started questioning,

why can't I go there?

My ancestors used to go there.

How come I can't go there today?

- It was the era of the protests

against the war in Vietnam.

It was the era of

Wounded Knee, Alcatraz.

It was the era of

a lot of unrest.

- Hawaiians were not all happy

natives playing music, dancing

the hula, being Beach

Boys, and it was time

that we began to do

something to challenge

US control over Hawaii.

- The real spiritual

and inspirational leader

at the time was George Helm.

He had the vision of Kaho

Olawe becoming a place

to get back to our

roots as Hawaiians.

- The culture exists only

if the life of the land

is perpetuated in righteousness.

- George Helm and the

new activist group

Protect Kaho Olawe

Ohana, or family,

launched a grassroots

campaign to stop the bombing.

- This organization see that

Kaho Olawe is protected.

With that, we'll fight

the military, politicians,

different ways of thinking.

- It was taking on the

power structure, the largest

naval force in the

world, and the only thing

that we knew to end the

bombing was occupy the island.

- People showed up

from all the islands,

got on boats to occupy

it, to demand justice

for native Hawaiians.

- And Coast Guard was there

to intercept and confiscate

whatever boats were to land.

- So all the boats turned

around at that point,

except one boat made it through.

- Those who landed

were arrested,

except for Walter

Ritte and Emmett

Aluli, who managed to

go into the back lands

and begin to explore the island.

- As you walked

up to the summit,

you saw more and more

dumping of ordnance.

Whether they exploded or not,

they were all over the place.

I mean, it was

just an ugly scene,

but yet there was

beauty in the land.

Kaho Olawe was talking to us.

The voices-- we now called

the voice of Kauna Loa.

- And so Walter and

Emmett were there

on the island for two nights

before they were picked up

by the military and arrested.

- And we worried.

I mean, I worried.

For me personally,

it was a felony.

I would not be able

to practice medicine.

- Emmett Aluli and

George Helm fought back

by suing the US Navy for

violating environmental laws.

- This is the seed today

of a new revolution.

The kind of revolution

we're talking about

is one of consciousness,

awareness, facts, figures.

- I mean this is all

occurring intensely

and gets more intense

when George Helm and Kimo

Mitchell disappear.

- They went to Kaho Olawe,

and there was a big storm.

Gale-force winds

and huge swells.

- The story that

George and chemo

disappeared on a

broken surfboard trying

to leave Kaho Olawe.

- People didn't really

honestly believe

that they would have done that.

- But did they drown?

Did the sharks take them?

- There's other

thoughts that it was

in the interests of many

powers to do away with George,

and that they found

the opportune moment.

- Their bones, their bodies,

their clothes were never found.

We still don't know why,

but it's the feeling

from within that they were

assassinated because it

was the most powerful

movement that Hawaii has ever

seen in 100 years.

- I look at George and

Kimo and all of the Kahuna

who have given so

much for this island

and have passed on

as guides for us now.

They have laid the path down.

They have laid their life down.

A certain time, we

needed a fighter.

Now, we need healers.

- The Protect Kaho Olawe Ohana

was granted regular access

to the island in 1980, though it

took another decade of lawsuits

before a presidential order

and congressional action

ended the bombing.

Over three decades,

thousands of volunteers

have come ashore with the

native Hawaiian activists.

- We need to remind

everybody that we

have a kuliana, responsibility

to come back and heal

the island, and that's what

we do through restoration,

through planting, through making

sure that the sacred sites are

protected.

Just coming here

giving our blood,

sweat, and tears to the island.

- It's the least we can

do to basically continue

on the legacy of our family

and friends who back then

in the '70s risked so much

of their time and for some,

even their lives.

- There's thousands

of other Hawaiians

out there that we want

to remind them, hey,

we are a proud nation.

We are a proud people.

We're not the lazy ones.

We're not the ones that

should be the highest

rate in the prisons.

We're not the ones that

should be the highest

rate of teen pregnancy.

We're in all of those

bad categories now,

and we've got to

move out of that.

And part of that is, you have to

understand where we come from.

Who are our ancestors?

- We purposely bring groups

from different generations,

from different vocations to

live as a family, as an Ohana.

Life is coming.

This island was never dead.

It was abused.

There was misused.

- As people come to Kaho Olawe,

we watch them, check them out,

laugh with them, look at their

talents, and they surface.

- Ohana is an extended

family, not a nuclear family,

and it's multigenerational, made

up of grandparents, parents,

and children and inclusive

of those who've passed on

and those yet to come.

- Our commitment in the

Protect Kaho Olawe Ohana

is not so much to each

other as to the island.

We become an Ohana to each

other because we are all

connected to this island.

- We believe that we can call

up on the spirits to help us.

We can regain those ancestral

memories if we observe

and if we do the ceremonies

and if we sweat on the land

to repair it.

- They are the

people of the island.

They are the culture

practitioners.

They are the people

who are doing

these traditional

Hawaiian practices.

They are the ones who are

doing the spiritual worship.

They're the ones who are

creating this way of life

on Kaho Olawe.

- So what is UXO?

It's on unexploded ordnance.

Again, Kaho Olawe was

bombed for almost 50 years.

We'll find a lot of stuff on

our roads, trails, footpaths,

and riverbeds.

If you guys see metal

objects, shiny stuff,

if you don't know what

that is, don't touch it.

- 50-caliber casing.

We quite literally

find UXO every time we

come out to the island.

We just have to have that

one that's in the trail

to do you some harm.

The reason why there's so

many unexploded ordnance left

is because back in

the day, they were

figuring on a 30% dud ratio.

So for every 100 bombs that

you dropped, 30 of those

weren't going to go off.

- I don't think people think

about the remnants of war

and what it means after

you leave a war zone.

What do you leave behind?

- The navy's cleanup

lasted 10 years

and cost taxpayers $400 million.

It wasn't enough.

Live ordnance still

hides under the surface.

A quarter of the island

was not cleared at all.

- If you guys see

this, you've got

to tell Mommy or Daddy

or aunties or uncles.

- No visitors have been

injured, but the risk remains.

- There are still

bombs out there.

The cleanup was as

much as they could do

and as much as

Congress could afford.

- This crater was formed by

a massive explosion which

fractured the island's aquifer,

complicating the effort

to restore native plants.

- We have no water.

There's no running

water on the island,

so we have to be creative

in how to capture water

that comes from the heavens.

- The plants that live here

are really hardy, tough plants

because of the environment, just

like the people who come here.

We're going off of aloha aina

and the love for this place.

That's what we're running on.

That's our fuel.

But are you completing

that exchange

by doing something so the

land is able to love you back?

That's what you want, right?

- Ecological restoration

here requires extra caution

because of unexploded ordnance.

Respect for the land's spiritual

values is also essential.

Volunteers are recreating

a pilgrimage trail

to circle the island.

- The auna loa means

the long trail.

Our ancestors-- they would start

this path for us to follow,

and it's our turn now to

keep on going with this.

We paved this path, so for

our family, our children where

we get kids, they

can have something

that they can actually

look at and follow.

- Kaho Olawe has always

been a training ground.

For the generation

today, they're

learning now about

their cultural past,

about their ancestors,

and who they are.

But also, at the

same time, they're

learning about

technology, science,

but to keep their foot

grounded in the past.

- In the autumn, the sun moves

from the shining road of Kaune

into Kaho Olawe's depths.

At the equinox, when day and

night are perfectly balanced,

the two gods share the sun.

That is a time to

observe and chant,

to entice the wet

season to begin.

- So this shrine, Uncle Harry

said it was the kaune Kauna Loa

rocks.

So one represented

kaune and one Kauna Loa,

and he said it was used to

observe the rising of the sun.

The site has its

own protective mana

that it wasn't destroyed

during the military period.

- We had the

opportunity to come here

like no other island in Hawaii

and begin repairing the place

and during the ceremonies.

We'll learn together on how to

make sure that this survives

the test of erosion and time.

- Regaining the island

sparked a Hawaiian Renaissance

that also revived the language.

- One of the most

meaningful things

that we do when we're on island

is at the end of the day,

we come together and kuu kau

kuu kau, or we talk story.

- We need to hear the

meaning of sacredness,

why you come to Kaho Olawe.

- I'll take a step forward

and say the planet is sacred.

Every single piece

of land, whether it's

in Africa or Siberia or America,

whatever you want to say.

There it is, sacred.

But it's just at another level.

Kaho Olawe is at a

pretty high level.

Waikiki is pretty low.

- I feel challenged

to figure out

how to convince the

general public that we

need to commit resources

to keep Kaho Olawe sacred.

- Kaho Olawe is the first

land regained by Hawaiians

since the US overthrow in 1893.

The state of Hawaii

now holds the island

in trust for a future

sovereign entity.

By statute, Kaho Olawe is

protected from commercialism.

But without revenue

from commerce or taxes,

continued restoration

is in jeopardy,

as federal cleanup

funding runs out.

- There is a price tag

to the entire restoration

of Kaho Olawe.

How do we pay for that price

tag but at the same time

keeping the sanctity

of the island intact?

- The question

comes about, do we

need to open up commercialism?

For me, I say no.

In the beginning, the people

who said, no commercialism.

I think that was a

very good decision.

If you were coming here,

if it wasn't for money.

- This island belongs

to the people of Hawaii,

and it's a Hawaiian

cultural reserve.

And that doesn't mean that it's

reserved just for Hawaiians,

but it means it is the

place for the practice

of Hawaiian culture.

- And we want it not only just

protected as a natural area

reserve, but we want the

indigenous relationship

of the land protected.

Our uniqueness is that

the people of Hawaii

had made that commitment.

- This little seed is going

to make a big plant like this.

This place still needs

people to take care

of war aina, this sacred land.

It's not just restoration.

It's so much more than that.

It's restoring a place, and

it's restoring a people.

- Another way we try

to malama Kaho Olawe

is we have the rain ceremony

where we call the rains.

We're doing what our ancestors

did to remind the rain,

to remind the wind that you

have to come to Kaho Olawe.

Please come to Kaho Olawe and

bring those rains from mowe.

- Just the thought

aloha aina is simple.

Aloha aina.

Love the land.

Everybody who comes here

is on that same sense

of purpose and sacredness.

I see magic happen here.

- They take the

lessons of Kaho Olawe.

They take the lessons that

they learn from each other back

to their homes on different

islands, back to the continent,

back to different

parts of the world,

and they can remember

what Aloha aina is

and what that means to love

the place, to love their land,

to listen for the messages,

to share, to be kind,

to remember those very simple

truths and very simple values

that we as human beings, in our

guts, know we should be doing.

- Kaho Olawe is a catalyst.

- Kaho Olawe is going to be

the testing ground for us.

- We've got much going

for us as Hawaiians.

From almost losing

everything, we've

been able to reclaim some land.

We now have an island that can

teach to generations ongoing

without interference.

- For indigenous people,

the most important thing

is relationship.

We value relationship

way beyond anything else.

Relationship to be close,

to be next to the tree,

to be next to the water,

to be next to the Earth.

- Most of the time,

when you ask people,

what is the opposite of love?

They will say hate.

But the opposite of

love is indifference.

People are indifferent

to the Earth.

What we have in front

of us is an enterprise

to repair indifference

on a vast scale

and turn it into a

loving relationship.

- In this worldwide

effort, isolated cultures

show the way for all humanity to

meet our obligation to protect

the life of the land.

- We have to have a

reverence for the Earth.

God is not out of this world in

the sky controlling the world.

Nature is my god.

Earth is my goddess.

These holy, sacred

mountains and rivers--

they become my temples.

They become my prayer.

- Sacred places are like

spiritual recharge areas,

where we are always not

only careful, but prayerful.

No other creatures have

free will like we do.

We have the responsibility

to be righteous.

Bare feet in the

sand, we each arrive

as pilgrims on the

islands of our ancestors,

and we listen for the

voice of the land.

I hear the voice now.

The prayer is free.

It is lifted it has flown.