Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 9, 1 September 2006 — Man of action [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Man of action

'Anakala Eddie Ka'ahana taught by doing 'Anakūlū Eddie Ko'onono at ū ceremony on Kaho'olawe in 2004. - Photo: Monte Costa

By Catharine Ln Editor's note: Journalist Catharine Lo originally wrote a tribute to revered kupuna 'Anakala Eddie Ka'anana for the Honolulu Weekly newspaper, and offered an expanded version ofher article to Ka Wai Ola as a special feature. In March, just a few months before he passed away at age 80, Eddie Ka'anana addressed the crowd in Hawaiian at a protest against the University of Hawai'i's patenting of new kalo varieties. A few times he underscored his message in English. "Be careful of the changes," he warned. "We must learn to love, and we must learn to love one another." Today, his words linger with both caution and hope. 'Anakala (Unele) Eddie passed away on July 16, leaving behind a precious legacy that links Hawai'i's future to its past. Born in 1926 and raised in the fishing village of Miloli'i on the South Kona coast, 'Anakala Eddie grew up in the arms of mother oeean, mother earth and the Hawaiian mother tongue. His grandparents taught him the traditional practices — fishing,

raising kalo, speaking 'ōlelo Hawai'i — and he devoted mueh of his life to passing them on. A heavy-equipment operator by trade, Ka'anana raised his family for many years on O'ahu, Guam and Wake Island while working for the Federal Aviation Administration. It was mainly after he retired in the 1980s that a new generation of Hawaiians began to seek him out for his cultural knowledge. 'Anakala Eddie's approach to rebuilding a nation was through reconnecting with the land, and his footprints ean be found everywhere along the path to helping young Hawaiians learn from doing: at the Kānewai lo'i at the University of Hawai'i, Hōkūle'a, Ānuenue Hawaiian Immersion school, the 'Ōpelu Project, Ka'ala Farm. "Unele Eddie was the real thing; he lived the land," says Eric Enos of Ka'ala Farm, where Ka'anana helped establish a lo'i, one of many he helped revive. "[Unele Eddie] had a flow... he just did things naturally," says taro farmer Keoki Fukumitsu, who co-hosted a documentary in the '80s with Ka'anana called Ka Wai: Source of Life. "People stuck to him like a honeybee on

a honeycomb. He was always giving the sweetness, the sugar in life, so you could have an appetite for everything." Those who knew Unele Eddie were overwhelmed by his kind humility. "He never taught anyone to act out of prejudice," one friend recalls. "He was full of aloha for everyone, and he wanted that to live in all of us." Many of the people he taught share similar stories of his intimate connection with the world around him. "It seemed like Unele was able to see inside of us, and what he saw was our potential to connect to eaeh other and connect to the 'āina," says taro farmer Vince Dodge, who helped Unele Eddie build a hālau structure at Ka'ala. "He eame from that plaee all the time." Teacher and kalo cultivator Kaipo'i Kelling remembers Unele Eddie's first visit to a lo 'i in Pauoa Valley: "He talked to the water, talked to the land, talked to the rocks. And every plaee he would go he would introduce himself; he always stated what he intended to do, and he always asked permission. He always had that mentality, believing there's life in everything, even in stones, in

what the western world might eall an inanimate object. He was always: go easy, easy. Go consistent, and eventually the thing will get done." Kelling says Ka'anana had a unique ability to make the best out of whatever he had to work with. "You could give him the junk of the junk, and he could turn it into gold," he says. "Being true to the things that he showed us, it gives us hope. Even though we have these technologies and tools to make things easier, he was still old school. He still believed in the power of the human touch and the hand." On July 28, many hands worked together to ku'i (pound) 300 pounds of taro from every island in preparation for 'Anakala's memorial service. The work was a celebration of the way Ka'anana lived and taught. As he was known to say: "You get two kine hands in life, the hands that flip up and the hands that flip down. If your hands are up, that's because all you're doing is pointing and asking what's mine. If you put your hands down and you work, things are going to change. What kine hands you going to use?" S