Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 31, Number 7, 1 July 2014 — LIMU STORIES [ARTICLE]

LIMU STORIES

At the first Hāna Limu Festival in 2008, a frail kupuna woman approached seaweed specialist Unele Wally Ito and opened his eyes to a new way of looking at a familiar species. "She tells me: 'Good you guys eome Hāna, show us limu. I used to eat limu small-kid time.'" With that, she picked out the Amansia glomerata from the various species he brought for show-and-tell and said, "I eat this." Ito was in disbelief. "So she took a small sprig of the limu, she put it in her mouth," Ito recalls. And the memories eame back to her: 'Yeah, yeah, this is the one we used to eat.' " Ito followed suit and discovered that the limu he had thought nobody ate was "so 'ono. Tasted like 'opihi. Real rich flavor." Experiences like that have taught Ito that Hawaiian cultural knowledge of limu exists in pockets - so mueh so that even if everyone knows just a fraction of the information, eollectively the knowledge is vast. Now Ito and Unele Henry Chang-Wo - who are known for holding limu workshops statewide and helping groups restore limu in their communities - are planning a small gathering of about 15 kūpuna from across the islands to encourage sharing of cultural knowledge before it's lost. The four-day gathering in Punalu'u is being organized with the help of the conservation group Kua'āina Ulu Auamo and supported by a grant from OHA. Ito, 61, says the goal is to "give people a forum to share their information." He hopes to document Hawaiian names for limu, whieh vary from plaee to plaee, as well as learn about its uses in food, medicine, religion and other areas. He's also curious to hear how the kūpuna learned about limu and what ean be done collectively to pass the knowledge down to the next generation. The September gathering will be held at a Kamehameha Schools heaeh house in exchange

for volunteer work at one of KS's properties. (The group will remove invasive limu at He'eia Fishpond, where Ito onee worked on v a grant to study limu feasibility and where I v he met Chang-Wo.)

And, because the topic of the gathering is limu, there will also be something planned for the taste buds. Kūpuna will he asked to hrins limu from their

area and prepare a dish "so everybody ean taste different limu preparations," Ito says. "Fun stuff as well as sharing information." — Lisa Asato ■