[HIKI NŌ Theme song plays] HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i’s New Wave of Storytellers.

[Guitar strums] Aloha and welcome to HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawaiʻi.

I'm Sky Hamane, and I'm a senior at Roosevelt High School on Oʻahu.

We're so glad you joined us for the latest show produced by Hawaiʻi's New Wave of Storytellers.

In this episode, we'll get up close and personal with animals like sharks and hogs.

We'll visit lush farms with deep family roots.

We'll see how youth in Waiʻanae are spearheading a community campaign to boost pride on the west side of Oʻahu.

We'll learn how to make coconut fiber rope, the traditional Hawaiian way, and we'll take a closer look at the masterful work of professional muralists who bring joy, healing and storytelling to their community.

The first story we'll watch was produced by students who are brand new to HIKI NŌ: West Hawaiʻi Explorations Academy on Hawaii Island.

They'll introduce us to an animal that lives and swims on their very own school campus grounds.

To me, sharks are the most graceful, intelligent and intuitive animals to inhabit the ocean.

They are aware of everything going on around them.

Their sensory system is magnificent.

On the Leeward side of West Hawaiʻi, a charter school houses a black tip reef shark named Nahoa.

Located in the Natural Energy Laboratory in Kailua-Kona, students at West Hawaiʻi Explorations Academy care for Nahoa in a tank that mimics his own natural environment on campus.

Nahoa, a 16-year-old shark, shares a 20,000 gallon salt water tank with native reef fish and serves as a research facility for students and staff.

The school prides itself in educating others about the shark's misunderstood nature.

When you look at a shark, for example, a sand tiger, they don't look friendly at all.

However, documented bites on humans by the sand tiger is minimal.

I think it takes a little more effort to understand the shark, and it's really easy to love a cute, happy dolphin.

The main idea of the shark project is to reshape the reputation of the animal.

The movie Jaws came out in 1977 and it changed the public's view of the animal, and ever since then, over fishing, finning for shark fin soup by catch and long lining and net fishing has occurred.

Senior Brody Hammer has been working with the Shark Tank since his freshman year, and now has transitioned into a mentor for other students interested in the sharks project.

Couple years I've been doing a lot of feed data, so different foods and the time it takes to eat them, and trying to figure out what he likes best, and stuff like that.

So we try to change up our research every year.

So we try to come up with a new idea, something new to focus on, possibly a new project or hypothesis for the shark tank.

We've done behavior.

We've done how sound, how magnets affect the shark, food affects the shark, stuff like that.

Nahoa's journey to West Hawaii Explorations Academy got off to a rough start.

Nahoa almost lost his life during the transportation from a local hotel to the charter school, but thanks to the quick thinking of director Eric Swenson, the shark made his forever home alive.

We had a tank set up on the back of a flatbed truck.

We moved Nahoa into the tank on our ride to WHEA on the Queen, we were pulled over by the police.

As the police were pulling us over, Nahoa went belly up.

Nahoa stopped breathing, so I was resuscitating Nahoa, giving shark CPR.

been the only shark to inhabit the tank.

Several years ago, Kainoa, another Black-tip Reef shark, passed away from a cyst in his liver.

While the death of the shark was sad, it also provided an opportunity for students to learn about the biology of sharks.

The shark tank has become a legacy project and a place of wonder at West Hawaiʻi Explorations Academy.

That is one of the best things, having the animals on our campus, is being able to introduce the animal to people who have never seen the animal before I've seen tears, obviously big smiles, excitement, laughter, a lot of 'wows'.

This is Oland Carlson from West Hawaiʻi Explorations Academy for HIKI NO on PBS Hawaiʻi.

Now let's travel to Waiāhole Valley on Oʻahu, where a family run farm's legacy runs deep.

Students from Waiāhole Elementary School bring us this profile story on Norman Sadoyama, the owner of Living Seed Farm.

I'm 76 and I don't know where the years went.

That was my grandpa, Papa Norman Sadoyama.

He is a farmer in Waiāhole Valley.

I helped my Papa Norman on the farm with my family.

I am proud to be from Waiāhole farming history.

My dad, when he was 19, came from Okinawa and started farming in Waiāhole Valley in 1948.

This land was very, very raw, and it needed a lot of clearing.

He started planting sweet potato.

My desire was far from farming, because I grew up on a farm, I realized that the hard work of producing sweet potatoes and bananas and papayas is very hard work for my family, so we decided to plant easier crops to maintain.

The challenges of farming in Waiāhole is, there's a lot of rain and now especially, there's a lot of different viruses, disease, different kind of pests, but the challenges of farming is what builds a person's character.

The crops are not the only challenge.

My Papa Norman has to fight to keep farming in Waiāhole Valley.

Every 15 years, there's a negotiation of the lease, rent, and at this time, development is always in the back of people's mind, government's mind.

It's been, it's been a battle.

My papa's faith is how our farm got its name, Living Seed Farm.

I became a Christian, a born again Christian, and I started to realize the principles that I could learn from the Bible.

And one of the principles is owing.

I think farming is such a educational means of you know, instilling good principles in my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, and maybe my great great grandchildren.

from Waiāhole Elementary School for HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawaiʻi.

Let's return to our archives for a moment to revisit this memorable story about a young farmer named Matthew Reyes Jr., who helps to run Reyes hog farm in Māʻili.

The story was produced by students at Waiʻanae High School on Oʻahu.

Feeding the pigs, you know, killing, cleaning, for customers.

When they come purchase, you got to cut their ears, their teeth, give them their injections.

Kind of like raising, raising your child itself.

Our pig is known as Reyes’ Hog Farm, and it's located on Pake Road.

We have two lots there, and we raise a lot of pigs.

Matthew Reyes leaves for work to Māʻili, Waiʻanae with his family every day.

You know, they gotta, they gotta eat and drink every day, the pigs, they can't feed themselves, you know, they're locked up in a cage.

I didn't really have time to do much in my life, but all that I can remember is work, you know, work and get up and work, go to school, work.

They give me a lot of chances to go out, you know, and stuff, but it's one reason why I kind of not wanted to go out, because I know my parents would need help too.

it is what it is, gotta do.

Despite the endless hours put in during the end of 2016 the farm faced heavy competition.

After a while, you know, business got slow, and we lost a lot of our customers because the demand wasn't as large as it was before.

According to the 2014 data collected from the state of Hawaii Department of Agriculture, Reyes Hog Farm competes with 70 other pig farms on Oʻahu – a fraction of the 200 found statewide.

and new farms are coming up.

So it's, it's easier to get pigs anywhere now.

It took a toll because it jeopardized our properties, you know.

I mean, we could have lost everything because we didn't have income coming in.

So we had to find ways, you know, to hustle.

For these hard times, Matthew and his family tried their best to regain people's interest.

we gained a lot of customers was we dropped our prices on the pigs, you know.

So, like a lot of customers will come because we're, we're a little cheaper than the other farms.

So it was better that we lost a little money than lose everything, you know.

We had to take money out of our savings accounts and kind of put my head together and be – I had to grow up really fast.

I had to stand like a father figure to my siblings.

Go on that side.

Help mom.

Go stand on this side.

As a role model, Matthew plans on furthering his education to pave the way for the future of the farm.

I am planning on going to college, maybe just for a few years, get maybe a business degree.

I just want to go and go a little bit deeper into business too, so I inform my better understanding.

And also I want to take over the business, because we had it for a long time.

So I want to, I want to keep it in the family and continue it.

It's not, ‘I have to do this.’ Um, I really want to do this because, like, this is my, this is my life, you know, my livelihood.

And it wouldn't make sense if I do anything else, because I already know almost everything about pig farming.

I'm just going to keep myself motivated and positive.

You know, even when times get hard, I'm just going to keep pushing myself to be successful.

Ufi from Waiʻanae High School for HIKI NŌ.

There was a community effort to paint Lahaina Intermediate School's campus with vibrant colors as part of Spectra Fest, a public art initiative held on Maui in 2025.

Lahaina Intermediate student Jahson Nagasako takes us there in this next story.

that celebrates all kinds of creativity.

came to Lahaina Intermediate School and gave it a whole new look.

They painted 17 murals and four benches.

I even got to interview Wooden Wave, a husband and wife duo who painted one of the murals here.

Spectra, like the word spectra, could mean, like, all these different colors.

I put all the colors on my hand.

I'm Roxy Ortiz.

I'm Matt Ortiz.

One of the reasons we like doing it in community spaces like this is that everyone gets to enjoy the art whatever they're doing, you know, driving by on their way to work or to school, you know, walking, on their way, you know, home.

It's just really nice to encounter people in their regular lives.

And that's what's fun, is, you know, people of all ages get to enjoy the art, and --   You don't always get to see an artist paint their, their painting from start to finish.

And then also, the idea for us is that each person who puts a little painting on this wall, they have ownership in that wall.

This is now their painting as well, and it'll be there as long as this wall will be here.

And so you'll always be able to drive up Lahainaluna road and go, 'Yeah, there's my little honu, there's my coral reef,' you know, and it's there for you.

The people of the community got to make different ocean animals and coral, making the painting something the whole community got to help with and every single person had a little spot on the wall that they could call their own.

Speaking for myself, because we work together as a husband and wife team, I'm really, really, really enjoying doing landscapes right now, because we're kind of known for these tree house illustrations that we do these paintings, which are fun, but there's something really relaxing about painting trees, mountains and coral, and I could see myself doing that.

That's what's actually cool about each mural that's being painted here is everyone is using the same material, but their ideas are completely different.

So you're getting all of these different scenes and characters on each wall.

And that's what's really fun, is everyone's new ideas kind of coming together to create something different.

on creative experience.

Nagasako, at Lahaina Intermediate for HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawaiʻi.

In this next story, Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy students on the Big Island spoke with volunteers from an art organization known as Mele Murals, and documented the process of painting a mural at Waimea Community Center.

we started planning, and ultimately we asked around the community, and Waimea Community Center said we could paint their walls.

So from there, it all got started.

with communities to create place-based murals from Hawaiʻi to South Africa.

This mural here at this community center is, I think, number 55 in the series of Mele Murals.

The coordinators, in conjunction with artists from HPA and around Waimea, hiked into the hills where they were told the stories of this area for inspiration.

We hiked up to Hokuʻula,   and we chose this place because it's somewhere that we go to school every day.

A lot of us live here.

very windy, very cold, and almost reminds me of Sound of Music running through the hills, type of thing.

To come up with the ideas for the murals, we teach the young people how to meditate, how to ground and connect to the heavens, to the earth, and ask for inspiration, ask the land what it wants there.

And that's how we come up with those ideas.

Trying to envision a white light and it goes through you, and like, spreads out all around you.

And you're supposed to ask, like, what you should paint after hearing the stories and like you either get it like accepted, or something doesn't feel right.

We got these images in our minds that really reminded us of the place that we were in.

we take them to a sketching phase, where they get to jot down all their ideas.

We tell a story through a mural by trying to get like, the main images of stuff, kind of like, if you have a story, like a book cover, you're trying to paint the cover.

So people, like, have like the main idea of what it means, and they're interested in want to learn more about it.

Then students from all across Waimea pitched in to paint the mural on the side of the local Community Center's wall.

there is a big face representing a goddess, and her name is Wao.

She's known for her really long hair covering her body.

She doesn't wear anything else because her hair is so long, and we kind of saw in the meditation flowing into the waters of Waimea, the streams.

really important to me in our meditations.

Rocks kept coming up in my mind, and I was like, This must mean something really significant.

The five pohaku are around the goddess Wao, and they represent the five winds and rains of Waimea.

She's the Moʻo wahine.

It's like a lizard shape shifter, and she's came up a lot in, like, my meditation stuff.

I just kept seeing like, these lizard eyes, like straight up out of the water.

And teaching the stories, after hearing them from like, on the mountain, and after internalizing them for a while, being able to teach them to the kids that have come to visit and help paint has really connected me to here, because it's so important to pass down the moʻolelos and the stories and everything that gets lost through generations.

When kids forget where they come from, they forget where they're going.

So we had to choose this place in order to keep the longevity of it, keep passing down knowledge generationally.

Just educate the next one and the next, and that's how you preserve culture.

And now a wall that was once simply green, serves as a place for the stories of Waimea to be told to anyone who comes.

This is Madison Hughes from Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy for HIKI NŌ.

or coconut rope, was an important tool in ancient Hawaiʻi, but it can be difficult to make.

Students at Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy on Hawaiʻi Island teach us how in this next tutorial.

When most people think of coconut, or niu, and why it's helpful, the first thing that comes to mind isn't usually the husk, but back in times of ancient Hawaiʻi, niu husk made some of the strongest cordage, or rope called ʻaha.

They used ʻaha to tie up hale, (houses,) waʻa, (canoes) and fishing nets.

Today, I will be showing you how to make your own ʻaha piece from start to finish.

Gather these materials.

Gather some dried out coconuts.

Maybe about this many, maybe some more.

There we go.

Personally, I like the dried out ones because they are easier to work with in process.

Break open the coconuts with the hammer and gather the fibers from the husk.

If you look at the fibers, there is something extra on them, that is pulu.

So take a kalaʻau, or stick, and pound the pulu off the fibers.

Don't pound the fibers too hard, because you want to keep them as long as possible.

Make sure to do this part outside, because this will get messy.

Take the pounded fibers and rinse off with a hose or in a bucket of water.

Repeat the process of pounding and washing until there isn't much but still a little bit of pulu left.

Leave them to dry in this side and flip it if needed.

Now that your fibers are ready, you're going to want to sit down, roll out your towel or uhi, maybe put on a movie or listen to music, and clean the fibers individually through your fingers and layer them on top of one another till they're in a bundle.

Take that bundle and lay it on your thigh.

Roll it away from your body, until they twist together into a dreadlock like this.

Place the middle of your dreadlock in front of your big toe, a friend's finger or a hook.

Twist the two pieces together into a twist-style braid.

Afterwards, you're going to keep layering rolling and twisting.

Layer, roll, twist.

Layer, roll, twist.

Once you reach the ʻaha length you want, you're going to tie a knot big enough to fit through the loop.

Loop and pull like this.

With the long flyaways, cut with scissors.

Once the extra bits are short, swipe a lighter around to burn the ends.

The ʻaha is very flammable, so make sure you don't leave it lingering over the flame, otherwise you're going to have to start all over again.

And there you have it.

You just created your very own ʻaha piece.

Mahalo for watching.

This is Zara Kurap from Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy for HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawaiʻi.

Not too far from Waimea is the Keaʻau Village Market, which has strong ties with local farmers.

Students from Keaʻau High School take us there in this next story, which first aired in 2011.

I'm Alika Ho from Keaʻau High School.

I'm here at the entrance of Keaʻau, a small town about nine miles from Hilo town on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi.

I'm here at Keaʻau Village Market, which was created to help farmers in the area to sell what they grow.

The market was built by Shipman Limited, a kamaʻaina company based in Keaʻau.

the sugar plantation closed down.

That provided the opportunity for diversified agriculture, small banana, papaya and other fruit growing farmers that came into the area.

In the 1980s, after the farmers were established, the need for a market was very evident.

So Shipman started planning and construction of the Keaʻau Village Market.

The market was completed in 2002; it's about 10 years old, and it's very successful.

It's a vibrant part of the community, But there's uh, before this marketplace, now, good.

You know, you can hang around, talk story, you know, no pressure.

When this first place started, it was like canopy.

It was in a hole over here.

So only about two, three vendors here, and that's how the market started.

And while the market represents the future of agriculture in Keaʻau, reminders of its plantation roots are prominently displayed at the front of the Village Market probably stands a sculpture of the Filipino immigrant sugar worker known as the Sakada.

The first Sakada arrived in 1906 in town of Laʻau, which now is called Keaʻau.

Today, the sugar crop has been replaced by locally grown produce.

We provide the best produce on the island.

They're all fresh.

It gives an opportunity for our vendors here to buy from the local farmers who raise their vegetables.

The Market offers a place to relax and talk story, baked goods, fresh produce and an island favorite, shaved ice, local cuisine and farm grown vegetables.

The popularity of Keaʻau Village Market is a sign that, while the plantation is gone, diversified agriculture still thrives in Keaʻau.

I'm Alika Ho from Keaʻau High School, reporting for HIKI NŌ Our final story of the show comes from students at Waiaʻnae High School on Oʻahu.

They document a youth led initiative called Paʻa Pono that aims to feed neighbors and bolster community pride on the west side of the island.

After a streak of violence on the west side of Oʻahu, ʻElepaio Social Services and Searider Productions came together to create Paʻa Pono 96792.

This community and youth-focused campaign held their second student-led food distribution event in June 2025, feeding the community with not only food, but aloha and pride.

It's very reassuring to know that other people are getting the things they need, and when people are getting things they need, it makes me feel that our community is stronger and is more important than ever.

Have a wonderful day.

Not only does this campaign empower the younger generations, it represents both the Waiʻanae and Nānākuli communities, creating a larger vision of unity on the West side.

I think for this, this particular event, it's just any opportunity for us to be able to give back.

Our youth are the next generation, and I'm super proud of our students for, you know, stepping forward and really wanting to take leadership and make our community better.

Although this is only the beginning, ʻElepaio Social Services hopes to continue making an impact through these events.

I feel proud.

I feel so proud.

It's personal work, and so to be able to have youth come out here and get to feel that feeling and understand that there's issues that are going to come across our coast, but we can also be part of the solution by banding together and uniting and doing stuff together as a community, uplift each other.

We're all community experts, and we all have certain superpowers that we can contribute, and that's what is needed.

Paʻa Pono aims to re-center community resilience and narrative.

Together, Waiʻanae and Nānākuli stand firm in uplifting the youth of the west side.

It really influenced my point of view for helping other people and to be a leader.

the produce!

from Waiʻanae High School reporting for HIKI NŌ on PBS Hawaiʻi.

That's it for our show.

Thank you for watching the work of Hawaiʻi's New Wave of Storytellers.

Don't forget to follow PBS Hawaiʻi on YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok.

You can find this HIKI NŌ episode and more at PBShawaii.org Tune in next week for more proof that Hawaiʻi's students HIKI NŌ — can do!