Kala’i Miller Aloha and welcome to another episode of Home is Here.

I’m Kalaʻi Miller.

At first glance, our shorelines here in Hawaiʻi are pristine.

But take a closer look and you will find that they are littered with microplastics.

Each year tens of thousands of pounds of debris wash up on our shores.

Meet the dedicated team from Sustainable Coastlines Hawaiʻi that is working to clean up our beaches and end plastic pollution.

Monica McLenigan Big picture, we want to run ourselves out of business, we no longer want to be hosting cleanups, we no longer want to be educating students on the on the plastic pollution crisis.

Kahi Pacarro Our first cleanup was in Makapuʻu beach in 2011, in the very beginning part of 2011.

And over 150 people showed up and the number one question was, well, when's the next one?

Sustainable Coastlines Hawaiʻi started in 2010.

Just a couple of us friends sitting around our living room table over a beer trying to figure out how we can make a difference in Hawaiʻi.

Monica McLenigan So they had a couple ideas.

None of them really stuck until Kahi Pacarro, one of our co-founders, went over to on a surf trip, and he met up with some people from Sustainable Coastlines in New Zealand, who's our sister organization.

They began discussing plastic pollution and what Sustainable Coastlines New Zealand is up to.

And one of the co-founders, Sam, he was talking to Kahi and saying, “oh, Hawaiʻi is riddled with plastic pollution” and Kahi is saying “oh no, I'm from Kailua.

Our beaches are pristine.” Kahi came back and came home and looked down at the sand.

And notice that it was just full of confetti.

And when he looked closer, he realized that it was microplastics.

And so he went back to his group of friends and said, Listen, we should start a beach cleanup.

Kahi Pacarro Sustainable Coastlines Hawaiʻi snowballed from that first little cleanup to a decade's long adventure of hosting some of the biggest beach cleanups in the world.

And now we're really focusing on education.

Rafael Bergstrom My name is Rafael Bergstrom.

I'm the Executive Director for Sustainable Coastlines, Hawaiʻi, and Sustainable Coastlines Hawaiʻi has a mission to inspire communities to care for coastlines.

And we accomplish that mission by having large scale beach cleanups, really robust education in the classrooms, and by working with event managers to reduce their waste at events.

Monica McLenigan So the mural in the background here kind of depicts our our messaging with our education program.

So we talked about the connection that we once had, and the Native Hawaiians once had, through the ahupuaʻa system, and how we're all innately connected to the environment and to each other.

Then we kind of got yanked into this disconnection, where we're disconnected from our food sources and even moreso disconnected from each other.

And now we're trying to move into a era of reconnection, looking into the ahupuaʻa mentality and bringing back ecosystems thinking.

Ecosystem thinking is a way to move out of this linear ideology that we're in right now.

So right now you, you go and buy a bag of chips, you eat the bag of chips, you throw the bag of chips away, the bag goes into the landfill, and then that's that.

Ecosystems thinking is moving more into a circular economy and a circular way of thinking.

So thinking of how we can repurpose the things that we use, rather than make more waste.

And how we can utilize food scraps and waste and make it into a resource and make it into a valuable resource.

So rather than it being this linear string of consumption and waste, we're moving it into a circle so that we're regenerating ecosystems.

Rafael Bergstrom We're expanding into a whole bunch of other things to try and connect in all the things that relate to climate change and plastic pollution in our world and teach the world about it.

Monica McLenigan We also have a massive education program where we are educating around 10,000 students every single year.

After COVID, we really launched into virtual presentations, and made these presentations accessible to students during the pandemic.

And also it allowe us to move our program to into a global level.

So we started doing a lot of ZOOM presentations in Japan, in the mainland USA.

We also do presentations in class.

we go do an education tour in association with our one of our large scale cleanups.

So when we go to Kauaʻi to do our large scale cleanup, we'll go into an education toward there for a couple of weeks, and visit as many schools and students as we can.

Aside from that, we have our educational beach cleanups.

And these are super fun way to get kids at the beach with their hands in the sand doing the work.

And you kind of see the shift of what students take away from that they start and they're really excited to clean the beach, and they're just excited to be outside and away from sitting in a classroom.

And then they leave with a light in their eyes thinking of solutions and how they can make a change.

And that's what our education program is really about.

It's about educating, but it's also about inspiring the next generation of youth leaders.

One of the most impactful things for me within this organization was actually our Earth Day cleanup that we had back in April.

Where we had a bunch of local partners and local organizations come in set up a booth so that we could kind of amplify their message and allow them to share their solutions, their volunteer opportunities with the general public and we kind of brought all of these people together through things like live music and having fun and games and all of this stuff.

And it was just a day of giving back and learning about your community.

Rafael Bergstrom So we’re here today for our Earth Day celebration and cleanup at Waimānalo Beach Park.

And it's an amazing time because we haven't been able to put this on for a couple of years due to the pandemic.

But really what Sustainable Coastlines is all about is bringing community together.

And we have a big fair today where we have community groups up to 25 community groups, we're sharing information about what they do to help our communities connect to the issues that are here, and that we can inspire positive change.

And truly, that's what our mission is actually about.

Cleaning up beaches is wonderful in the moment, it gets people together, there's a direct action people can take.

But ultimately, cleaning up is not the solution to anything that we're trying to promote.

We have to stop plastic pollution before it starts, we want to turn off the tap on plastic pollution.

And that's what this is all about.

We get people together to connect on that issue.

And then they leave with the tools from our cleanups to go home and make change in their individual lives.

Or try and work up through the community to how do we make big change systematically.

Monica McLenigan When people come to our events, we want them to leave feeling impacted by the event.

And even above all, we want them to leave, having had a lot of fun.

And that's what we really try to stick into our events is that it's about fun, the environmental issues can be a very, very heavy topic.

And so we try and bring some light to them through different games and activities, live music, free food, all of these different sorts of things in our, at our events.

And if we were talking on an individual level, what we want people to take away and what action we want them to take.

It's really up to them.

It's very individualized, how you can take action, what works for one person might not work for the other, but the biggest thing is that they try and they try to move forward try to make a difference.

Kalaʻi Miller For Kumu Hulu Mele Kahalepuna-Chun, traditional Hawaiian featherwork was her birthright.

Her tūtū, Mary Lou Kekuewa, literally wrote the book on it.

Na Lima Mili Hulu Noʻeau was started in 1991 by Mele’s mother and grandparents.

Today, Kumu Mele runs the workshop and keeps the family tradition alive by teaching the next generation of feather lei makers.

Mary Lou Kekuewa Yes my husband is a captain with the Hawaiian Tug and Barge so he some time on his hands.

So he ties his little bundles together that he’s using to make a cape.

And my daughter Paulette that’s at the Bishop Museum has classes.

And then her daughter, made her first lei when she was five years old.

We all live in the same house, and there’s feathers all over.

(Laughs) Mele Kahalepuna-Chun It was a lei pua hulu.

So it was flowers.

I tied around the stamen to form little flowers.

For a child of five years old to sit and make little feather flowers is quite an achievement.

I made a bunch of these little flowers.

And they were pretty good.

And then my tutu took those flowers and she assembled them together to make a lei.

And she wore it proudly.

Aloha, my name is Mele Kahalepuna-Chun, and I am the owner, teacher, manager of Na Lima Mili Hulu No'eau.

What we do here is we teach Hawaiian feather work.

So Na Lima Milia Hulu Noʻeau is a busines that was established back in 1991 by my tūtū, Aunty May Lou Kekuewa; my grandpa, Uncle Paul Kekuewa; and my mom, Paulette Kahelepuna.

And the name Na Lima Mili Hulu Noʻeau was given to my tūtū by Aunty Edith Kanakaʻole.

And it means the skilled hands touch the feathers.

My tūtū, as everyone know as Aunty Mary Lou, back in 1955 she met her Kumu Hulu, her feather teacher, Aunty Leilani Fernandez.

Aunty Leilani was the head of Aloha Week wardrobe at the time.

And back then, besides just the clothing, the wardrobe department also made all the feather lei that were worn by members of the royal court as well as the kāhili.

And little did she know that the featherwork would become her life's passion.

In the 70s with the Hawaiian Renaissance, and the growth of Hawaiian civic clubs, and other people who were a part of this growing entity with other Hawaiian art styles or as it was called Hawaiiana, back then.

Um, she started teaching all over the place I remember as a child every weekend packing up our station wagon, which always had a banana on the antenna so we could find it everywhere we went and going to every community park on the island, going to craft fairs, going to locations to teach or To sell or whatever it may be, that was part of my life.

Tūtū was able to teach at Bishop Museum on a regular basis.

Every Thursday, she was there in Dorm D. And that was where I believe featherwork that we knew today really started to grow.

Marques Marzan Feather work in Hawaiʻi was brought to buy our first Polynesian settlers.

It's a practice that's found all across the Pacific.

And in Hawaiʻi, we use birds from both upland forests as well as the sea.

The upland forest birds provided the brilliant colored feathers, the reds, the yellows, the greens, blacks, and then the seabirds provided, the more neutral colors, the grays, the whites, and the beiges.

So it's just in combination with one another that provided the basis for all different kinds of featherwork being made into to feather capes, feather helmets, feather lei.

In Hawaiian culture feathers are very special and sacred, and reserved primarily for the chiefly class.

If feathers were used in other forms, they were used in very specific locations.

For instance, in hula, there, there is a feather feather rattle called an ʻuliʻuli that mixes the uses of different kinds of bird feathers.

And in many instances, those are those are used in very specific songs and chants; oftentimes associated with chiefly heritages and stories.

But in general, the use of feathers for the work was a means to connect to the Divine, that supernatural world from which the Chiefs received their their mana or their their chiefly authority.

The oʻo is one of the birds that provided a lot of the feathers for a Hawaiian featherwork.

And they provide both the black and yellow feathers.

The oʻo were found on all the main Hawaiian islands.

Each island had their own species of oʻo.

And the oʻo from the Big Island provided the largest and most fluffiest yellow feathers to be used in in Hawaiian feather work in comparison to the oʻo from Kauaʻi, which only has small feathers on their feet, right above their feet.

And primarily all black.

So these are birds that had very small amount of feathers that were available for use in Hawaiian feather work.

Mele Kahalepuna-Chun I look back in history and how the work was done, then in comparison to how we do it now.

And thank you, Jesus, I was born in this modern time.

Because the work involved I mean, students come in here and when they're first learning all the steps that it takes to make this finished product.

They're like, Oh my God, how long does it take to do that?

And I remind them, what our kūpuna did, you know, first of all, you didn't have a store or a company you could call and order feathers, and have them just delivered to you.

You know, you had bird catchers.

Marques Marzan There was a particular practitioner in Hawaiian culture called the Kia Manu, the Kia Manu were skilled bird catchers, that would go up into the forest and gather feathers from various birds.

And they would know where to go depending on the type of bird that they were looking for.

They would use different techniques to to catch them.

So set up large snare nets, in the canopies, sometimes putting sap on different branches where they knew that birds frequented so that the birds would get stuck on these sappy branches.

Sometimes doing a similar thing, but on these long poles that have perch on it called a kia and then they would have a decoy bird that would be attached to that the top of the kia to attract other birds to land on the perch so that they could catch catch them.

So there are various techniques on gathering feathers from these different birds.

But again, the the process was a non-lethal practice where they would will only take the amount of feathers that they could and released a bird.

Mele Kahalepuna-Chun If you can imagine just plucking six to 10 feathers from a bird.

Now mind you, these birds were tiny.

And what it took to have enough of that, to make a lei, you know, today we have goose feathers, we have chicken feathers, we have pheasant.

What takes us today maybe 40 hours to complete back in the days of old Hawaiʻi could have taken years to complete.

So much simpler times now.

Being born into this family.

We were a Feather family.

Our lives revolved around feathers.

I mean, you could be in the middle of dinner and there's feathers, (laughs) you know, open up the washing machine and there's feathers, feathers everywhere.

And so we spent a lot of time working together.

Even in times where it was just my tūtū, my mom and I, you know, my tūtū was working on whatever she would be working on, and my mom's working on whatever.

And then I usually had specific tasks, you know, so those ribbons onto those onto that yarn, cut these feathers or, and, or weigh these feathers.

You know, I'm grateful for those times, because that's where I learned a lot of what I know that I'm now able to carry on and teach to my students and anyone who's interested in coming to learn.

Marques Marzan So after the death of King Kamehameha and the first missionaries coming to Hawaiʻi and the introduction of more Western contact, Hawaiian feather work started to wane.

Because there was no use for it in the same way that it was useful in the past.

So a lot of the feather practitioners that carried on that tradition weren't able to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.

Mele Kahalepuna-Chun Teaching this art form is my biggest joy.

We teach to school, hula halau...we’ve taught to women’s organizations, we’ve taught clubs, anyone, basically that’s interested.

We start from prepping the feathers and we follow through to the completed project.

Marques Marzan Hawaiian feather work to me is a practice that is thriving and well today.

We have many practitioners all across the islands and across the continent, across the world that are perpetuating and carrying this practice.

Mele Kahalepuna-Chun My tūtū is famous for saying, “not as long as I can help it.” And that's, that's it, that's the thing is a lot of people make comments that, oh, you know, this art is dying, not as long as we can help it not as long as I can help it, the many students that have come through here who have fallen in love with this art form.

It'll never die.

Kalaʻi Miller From playing home games on a field with no bleachers in Hoʻolehua, Molokaʻi to playing in front of 60,000 screaming fans in Manhattan, Kansas.

Vaai “Uso” Seumalo is the first ever Molokaʻi Farmer to receive a scholarship to play football at a school in one of the Top 5 conferences in the country.

He played 8 on 8 football in Maui County for only one year but he got the attention of scouts across the U.S. After two years at Garden City Community College in Kansas, Uso is suiting up this fall for the Kansas State Wildcats of the Big 12.

Vaai Seumalo My name is Vaai Seumalo.

I'm a junior heading into Kansas State University and uh, I play football.

I kept asking my parents to play football.

They never wanted me to play because they were scared I get hurt.

And it's kind of discouraging, because, you know, all my friends play.

And I was only, probably the biggest kid that never played.

I really wanted to try.

Mike Kahale Uso’s a a great story.

I mean, just a great kid, humble kid.

I'm actually a middle school teacher.

So I saw him in seventh and eighth grade at the middle school.

And he was big back then.

And I saw how light he was on his feet, how athletic he was, and I knew he'd be a great football player.

But for whatever reason, he didn't play football, those first few years in high school.

Naomi Seumalo When he asked to play football, from ninth grade, we said no.

10th grade.

He tried again, the coaches came, we said no, and so on and so forth.

And then his senior year, he asked, “Can I please play football this year?” And his father and I thought, well, what's it gonna hurt?

It's his last year.

Mike Kahale And then finally that fourth year as a senior, you know, through some encouragement, he got the okay came out and was an impact player right from the start, as we knew he would be, on both sides on offensive line and defensive line.

PA Announcer Direct snap to the running back again.

Taking it down the sideline.

Tackled by Seumalo.

Vaai Seumalo That's what, I really I really wanted to play football because when I was little we play and everybody would come out.

Go to the parks.

It was just it was a blast.

Played football all the time...Barefoot, running on the grass, tackling.

Nicole Helm Kahale My name is Nicole Helm Kahale.

I'm a teacher here at the Molokai Middle School.

Grew up here on Molokai, Molokai football.

My connection is I'm married to the coach.

When I was teaching some of the students had asked, why don't we have football on Molokai?

And uh it kind of piqued my curiosity.

I'm like, I really don't know why, because we hadn't had football for like over 50 years.

So I kind of went around and talked to some people.

One of the guys that I talked to was my father, Larry Helm, he was a former football player back in the late 50s and early 60s.

And he had said that there had been multiple attempts to try to get football here back on island and um, and they failed.

We didn't have the support of the high school initially, probably because there was some reluctancy.

People have tried to bring it back before and, you know, they're like, “Okay, you go prove it first.” And then that's kind of how we did it and got the community involved.

Mike Kahale And right about the same time, St. Anthony, who had stopped their eleven man program was thinking about restarting.

Seabury, who had never had a program at that time was thinking about starting something.

So we kind of just jumped in the mix and started a eight man league.

It was just the three of us that started that one year.

And the commitment was, was that it would be a three year plan.

The first two years we'd have to operate as a club, we weren't connected to the high school, we had to get facility use permits, use the field, had to get all our own equipment, all those different things.

And then we started those first two years and played a few games.

And then the third year the MIL sanctioned us.

Funny story is that we had no money at all to start.

So St. Anthony had a program before.

So they lent us a whole bunch of equipment, helmets, shoulder pads, even jerseys.

They were like gold and blue.

And so when we had our first game that year, we tried to dye their their gold jerseys green.

And it turned out to be this really bad, like, diarrhea green looking thing, but it was really bad.

But the kids were like, they were so excited.

It was it was so awesome.

Even though we had horrible looking helmets and uniforms.

They were just excited to play.

And once we saw that first game, we knew like, hey, we have something here that we have something to build on.

And just from that point, we got community support, sought donors some different people raised some money, did a lot of fundraising, and just kind of went from that point on.

Lee DeRouin Now we have home and away uniforms.

We have a scoreboard, goalpost, all this stuff wasn’t here.

It seems like each year we're we're adding more to the program to the facilities.

But also it’s a tribute to Mike and his coaching staff and his wife.

It's a tribute to them to getting the kids that come out for an eight man football team to have 40 to 50 kids, sometimes more than 50 when we start in July is a tribute to them and what the kids want to be part of here on Molokai.

Vaai Seumalo Being able to play football here was probably the best thing I've been allowed to do from my parents.

Just being able to play here, given the opportunity to play.

Mike Kahale That was our first year that we actually went out and played some 11 Man games, so we got to go to Honolulu and play Nānākuli and to Maui to play Kamehameha Maui.

So it was an opportune year for him to get additional exposure.

So that worked out really well.

So at the end of his senior year, he put together a highlight film with HUDL, HUDL highlight film, and then he got some, some looks, he went to a couple of camps, some showcases, I think he won like MVP of the defense for some senior game that he went to on Oʻahu.

And then had some couple of looks from some other JuCo’s.

Then I reached out to Doris Sullivan, and she's kind of a big name in Hawaiʻi in terms of football connections.

And she got the family in touch with Garden City someway, somehow, they offered him and he ended up in Kansas of all places.

Vaai Seumalo The Kansas State coach that recruited me there, Coach Mike Tuiasosopo, started looking at me while I was still here.

Throughout my whole junior college career, he just kept checking on me.

I really was glad I went the junior college route because it really helped develop me into a better player in my position.

And for like the town in general, it was it was kind of similar.

It wasn't.

It was bigger than here.

But it was still yet small.

So everybody was close.

Everybody was supportive.

That town love football.

Naomi Seumalo Watching him play this game you can see in his, in his eyes, you can see in the way he plays the passion that he has for it.

Vaai Seumalo I finally got to go up there and do a little workout with them to see how I was how I can move physically and stuff.

And they offered me once I was there right after that.

And I wouldn't say it was a sure decision because I had a couple other offers that I could have chose being UNLV, Jackson State, I had Akron and uh University of Incarnate Word.

I feel like Kansas State stood out to me the most culture, their team is built on, like a family bond.

So everything is teamwork and coaches there.

I feel like they'll be some of the best that have helped me develop into a player that wants to go to the NFL.

Mike Kahale It’s huge for our program.

It brings credibility to our programs, or our coaches, you know, to the things that we're trying to build here.

It lets the other high schoolers and all the kids in our community that lets them know that eight dreams can come true.

I mean, you can be a small town kid from a small island and go play big time football.

Vaai Seumalo Well I never thought I'd be where I'm at now.

It's kind of amazing, to be honest, from this to where I'm going to now.

Just growing up here.

It was just, it was small.

Everybody's close, you know?

I love it here.

There's a lot, a lot of support, so much.

To come home, being such a small island, everybody knows what's going on already.

Everywhere you go, everybody just saying Good job.

Congratulations on what you're doing, keep doing what you're doing.

And it's a lot of stuff like that that makes me want to represent where I'm from even more.

It's a honor blessing being able to represent here.

It's a lot that I have to do to make sure I can put my best foot forward to represent where I'm from and uh, I believe I can do that.

I hope I can and I hope I do.

But I believe I can an uh it’s for sure an honor.

Kalaʻi Miller Thank you for joining us.

For exclusive digital content and extras from tonight’s episode please visit PBS Hawaiʻi dot org.

For Home is Here, I’m Kalaʻi Miller, a hui hou.