Adam Dochin

Name Adam Dochin

Age 33

Town/Moku Waimea

Island Hawaiʻi Island

Leadership Category Mālama ʻĀina

Nominated by Kekailoa Perry

Share with us a little about yourself and what you do.

Aloha. I recently left a teaching position at Kapiʻolani Community College where I taught ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi for the last four years. During that time I was also working on a master's degree in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. I defended my thesis and graduated this past summer. I am currently working as an apprentice in the Hāpai Pū Appreticeship Program. This program trains apprentices within three sites: Paepae o Heʻeia, Kauluakalana, and Kākoʻo ʻŌiwi. We serve as additional limahana that are rotated between the three sites doing mālama ʻāina work alongside the limahana of those wahi. By the end of our 11-month apprenticeship, we should have gained the experience and skills that would allow us to join one of these organizations as a permanent limahana, or to become a limahana for a similar mālama ʻāina effort or organization. Therefore, I am currently developing and honing my ʻāina skills and enjoying being a student under a variety of kumu who are the limahana of the aforementioned sites. I am trying to develop myself into an individual who can be impactful in carrying out the vision of these organizations. In addition to being a Hāpai Pū apprentice, I am also currently part of a PhD cohort of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi educators within the College of Education at UH Mānoa. While I no longer work in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi education, I do feel that my kuleana to the effort of Hawaiian education is on-going and unfinished, and could possibly merge with the type of ʻāina work that I am currently involved in.

Why is the work that you do important to you? The community?

I see the work in which I am currently involved as an effort to increase our capacity to maintain the health of the natural resources that we depend on for our survival. It is also an effort to maximize our ability to make use of those resources without diminishing the health of those resources or their ability to provide for other species of flora and fauna and the ecosystems to which they belong. I believe that our ability to provide food for our lāhui in this way is key to our pursuit of political independence and our ability to survive as a people for many generations into the future. In addition, I believe that sites of sustainable food production will play a vital role in forging communities who care for those sites, for the resources that are an integral part of those sites, and for the ʻike that allowed our kūpuna, and that will allow us, to survive in a symbiotic relationship with the ʻāina that we live in.

Share with us the qualities of leadership you admire and how you express those in your life.

I admire the willingness and ability to ʻauamo kuleana. I believe that is much more important to our lāhui than a desire or willingness to lead. I believe that individuals who are able to recognize their kuleana, and who are willing to put in the time and effort to fulfill that kuleana, will naturally find themselves in roles of leadership within the types of work that they do. The individuals that I think of as having a great ability to ʻauamo kuleana, do the work that they do selflessly. They often put their work, their families, and their communities before their own interests. These people work to the limits of their abilities, sometimes at the expense of their own health and happiness. To say that they are hardworking is an understatement. Their work becomes their life, and their lives become a part of their work. The two become inseparable. I admire their humility, their vision, their belief, and their actions. It would be difficult for me to say that I am an expression of any of those qualities, but it is what I currently aim for in my life and work.

Who has inspired you to do the work that you are doing?

My ʻohana, all of the great kumu that I have had the privilege of learning from over the years, and the friends that have shared this path with me.

What is one word that describes something you are excited about for the lāhui?

Autonomy

What is one word that describes a pressing issue that is facing our lāhui?

Exodus