Malia Akutagawa
Name Malia Akutagawa
Age 50
Town/Moku Manaʻe, East Molokaʻi, from ʻUalapuʻe and Kamalō ahupuaʻa (currently live in Kamiloʻiki, Oʻahu for work)
Island Molokaʻi
Social Media Handle IG: @maliahaaheo
Nominated by Malia Nobrega-Olivera
Leadership Category Mālama ʻĀina - Environmental Sustainability
Share with us a little about yourself and what you do.
I was born and raised on Molokaʻi. At a young age I was influenced by my mākua and kūpuna, leaders in the early aloha ʻāina movement. Realizing that my community had little access to attorneys in critical battles with developers, I resolved to do my part to be a legal advocate for my island. I graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law in 1997 and served as a Native Hawaiian Rights and Environmental Law attorney with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation. Most of my experience is in Hawaiian access, gathering, burial, land use, and water rights issues.
I returned home and served as Director of the Molokaʻi Rural Development Project for 9 years. While there, I led training and education initiatives through the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College - Molokaʻi and partnered with a number of community organizations to strengthen the capacity of the workforce and diversify our local economy. I worked to support Hawaiian homestead farmers, livestock producers and processors, value-added food producers, local entrepreneurs, and healthcare workers.
I served a number of appointments to various state and county boards, councils, and commissions, such as the Molokaʻi Planning Commission (Chair), the Molokaʻi Island Burial Council (Chair), the state Environmental Council, and the Native Hawaiian Historic Preservation Council.
Currently, I am an Associate Professor at the Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge – Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies and the William S. Richardson School of Law – Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law. I am part of Hui ‘Āina Momona, a consortium of scholars throughout the university community charged with addressing compelling issues of Indigenous Hawaiian knowledge and practices.
I am a co-founder, former Board President, and now Vice-President of Sustʻāinable Molokaʻi, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that focuses on maintaining Molokaʻi’s cultural legacy of ʻāina momona (abundant land) while embracing modern pathways to a sustainable future. We have been instrumental in helping to organize COVID 19 response efforts on Molokaʻi through forming Hoʻokuʻikahi Aloha Molokaʻi, a network of community partners working to secure island produce and meat from farmers, hunters, and fishermen and distributing locally-sourced food to needy families through the food bank and other volunteer organizations. We feed a thousand families twice a month through food bank operations. Our food hub and mobile market consists of a network of farmers and producers that supply fresh produce, grass-fed beef, Molokaʻi shrimp, and value-added products to our residents and to EBT recipients who receive 50% discounted prices through our double-bucks program. We have been training new farmers and egg producers each year to strengthen our food hub and to advance food sovereignty for Molokaʻi.
I am currently working with my non-profit on the Molokaʻi Climate Change and Sea-Level Rise Adaptation and Resiliency Master Plan and have been helping with community workshops and drafting findings and recommendations. I am also leading a working group for community ownership of 55,000 acres of land on Molokaʻi from Molokaʻi Ranch landholdings, which is one-third of our island. The ʻāina has been degraded over decades of mismanagement by foreign ownership and it is our goal to reclaim the land; restore the native forests, streams, springs, fishponds; bring about sustʻāinable affordable housing; and support agriculture and green businesses.
I also initiated and coordinated meetings with my community to respond to the axis deer crisis brought about by unsustainable hunting practices that caused deer overpopulation and severe famine and drought conditions. As a community we had to address major deer die-offs that resulted and associated public health and safety concerns; ecological degradation from overgrazing; and threats and property damage from deer encroachment onto residences and farms. I convened working groups for long-term and immediate-response work; assisted with getting approvals for access onto private lands and homestead lands to allow for deer control activities; and helped in coordination of hunters. This work has underscored the need for community management and ownership of lands that have been long neglected, especially the arid and most impacted areas on the west end which mainly comprise Molokaʻi Ranch lands.
I am a board member of the Pesticide Action Network – North America (PANNA), one of five regional centers throughout the globe that challenges the “proliferation of pesticides, defend[s] basic rights to health and environmental quality, and work[s] to ensure the transition to a just and viable food system.” My focus is assisting the Hawaiʻi regional office of PANNA.
I am poʻo of the ʻAha Kiole o Molokaʻi, a local and Indigenous governance system that works with government agencies and lawmakers at the county, state, and federal levels for the protection and care of the natural environment, cultural sites, and resources.
I belong to an island-wide network of Kiaʻi Kanaloa, Native Hawaiian cultural and religious practitioners who interface with government agencies; assist in response work associated with distressed, stranded, and injured marine species; and care for their remains as ancestral beings and kinolau of Kanaloa. I extend this kuleana to Kanaloa through serving as the Molokaʻi representative on the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC) and as the Chair of the Huhuli Native Hawaiian Culture Sub-Committee to the SAC.
I also do a lot of advocacy work for Native Hawaiian fishing communities to support Fisheries Management Area designation and Community Based Subsistence Fishing Areas throughout Ka Pae ʻĀina.
I am chair of the Burial Sites Working Group established by the State legislature to investigate allegations of mismanagement of the Burial Sites Program under the State Historic Preservation Division and to provide a report to the legislature of our findings and recommendations, and to present a legislative package for reform.
I have been providing pro bono legal assistance to Protect Hakipuʻu ʻohana in the protection of iwi kūpuna. I mentor and supervise a number of students who provide ongoing pro bono legal assistance, social media outreach, and strategy for long-term ʻāina and wahi kūpuna stewardship. Some of these efforts are captured in the project I served as a community consultant for Native Hawaiian director Justyn AhChong in our recently released film, "Pili Ka Moʻo" that was showcased in this year's Hawaiʻi International Film Festival.
I belong to a cohort of attorneys from the Native Hawaiian Bar Association who are being trained in traditional hoʻoponopono by the esteemed kupuna and expert Aunty Lynette Paglinawan. I have dedicated much of my efforts to conflict resolution, utilizing principles of hoʻoponopono, and creating greater parity for Kānaka Maoli seeking to protect ʻāina and Native rights. To this end, I work with and train government agencies, legislators, environmental court judges, attorneys seeking professional development, state historic preservation staff, land use and conservation personnel, and enforcement officers.
Why is the work that you do important to you? The community?
My immediate and extended ʻohana, both maternally and paternally, instilled in me a strong sense of kuleana to community and to ʻāina. My maternal grandparents and great-grandparents were people of strong faith and love in God. They had many children and their homes were filled with laughter and love. Their love encompassed not only their children, but their children’s friends who came from broken homes. They housed and fed so many peopole who became my hānai aunties and uncles. The meaning of ʻohana took on a greater dimension for me and this imprint and example from my elders poured into how I see community -- an ʻohana made up of a larger collective. This understanding deepened through my childhood experiences on Molokaʻi and the influences of my paternal family. From my father and paternal grandmother I learned how to fish, gather limu, crab, and prepare many ʻāina foods. Every child on Molokaʻi has a similar rearing. As a small island community, we are naturally oriented to care about our neighbors and kūpuna. It is automatic for us to share the food we catch, gather, and hunt. We always have time to honi and talk story with each other during spontaneous encounters at the post office or at the grocery store. We on Molokaʻi are also fiercely protective of our ʻāina. We have always presented a strong, united front in defending our land from over-development. My father and paternal grandmother gave me a deep love for ʻāina and told me I must always give back to my community and island. This is the foundation for why I do what I do.
Share with us the qualities of leadership you admire and how you express those in your life.
I do not have living, biological children, having miscarried my child 20 years ago. Thus my legacy must be lived in my haumāna. For me great leaders make themselves obsolete by pouring their ʻike and wisdom into those they mentor. The greatest compliment one can give to a teacher or mentor is to become more masterful, more accomplished. Leaders, like parents, place their kamalei on their shoulders to see a vista much greater than is within their own sight. My role is to be the poʻohiwi by which my haumāna can envision and strive for a better world. My role is to be a stepping stone, to be eventually forgotten, in order that those that come after me may shine with such brilliance.
Who has inspired you to do the work that you are doing?
My father Myron Akutagawa. He was 23 years old when my mother died and had to face raising me, a 4 year old, and my brother, a 3 year old. When I consider how uncertain I felt in my 20s in terms of managing my own personal issues, I do not know my young father did it. He taught us a lot of survival skills as children, to be self-sufficient, and resilient. I think he wanted to make sure we would be okay given the very real lesson of knowing that life is fragile. In the first years after my mom's death, I was very despondent and shy. I was bullied in school and longed for death. I wanted to be with my mother and did not understand why I could not be with her. I almost flunked out of kindergarten and my teacher told my father that I was "a stupid Hawaiian that would not amount to anything in life" and that my father "should get used to that reality." My dad willed me to live and forced me to have purpose. He lectured me, "Either get busy living or get busy dying, you choose. But don't you ever feel sorry for yourself!" He proceeded to be a drill sergeant and began to teach me different skills like swimming, spelling, reading and sounding out my words, adding, subtracting, and multiplication through memorization rather than counting on my fingers. He molded my brain to be a good learner and to be tenacious. He did not allow me to say, "I cannot." He made me fearless, stubborn, and tenacious.
He cultivated in me the wonder I have with the world. He always took me and my brother to the mountains, to look at deer tracks and deer rubbings on the trees. He showed us how to walk on the land with intentionality and respect. He taught us how to look at ʻāina tenderly, like a beloved person.
What is one word that describes something you are excited about for the lāhui?
Hōʻale ka lepo pōpolo
What is one word that describes a pressing issue that is facing our lāhui?
Neocolonialism