Community

Envisioning Community Governance

Tuesday, June 16th, 2026

By Léo Azambuja

As a community group gears toward acquiring roughly one-third of Molokai, they reflect on community governance as a living, place-based practice grounded in ‘āina, envisioning decision-making and accountability rooted in trust, cultural grounding and collective responsibility. 

“What we are endeavoring is not anything new. For hundreds of years, for generations, our island has been struggling to take back the connection between kanaka and ʻāina, that reciprocal relationship that heals all of us, not just people on the land and what we do on the land, but the land itself, what’s in it, what’s on it, how we use it, and how we in turn support each other,” Molokai Heritage Trust CEO Zhantell Dudoit Lindo said at meeting to discuss community governance May 20.…

On the Wings of the Wind

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

By Pat Killilea, SS.CC. 

The engine roared and the small plane took off down the runway and, on the wings of the wind, took off into the Kalaupapa skies. All of us who could leave our posts had gathered at our friendly little airport to wave goodbye to Aunty Meli Watanuki whose body was on its way to Honolulu. 

On Sunday morning, I had brought her communion and given her the sacrament of the sick as I had done many times over the years. We spoke a few words then and I expected she would overcome this, her latest illness, but later on Sunday her soul flew to Heaven on the wings of angels.…

Brass Quintet Rocks St. Damien Church

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

By Léo Azambuja

Who goes to church on a Monday evening to listen in complete silence for an entire hour to five guys who are not even there to preach? To be fair, you could make some noise; you were allowed to clap. 

“We have the freedom to kind of play whatever we want, so a lot of the music that we’re going to play are arrangements for the Brass Quintet,” trumpet player Casey Tamahana said while comparing a quintet to a large ensemble led by a conductor, where “the notes on the page are dictated for you, the tempo is dictated for you and the style is pretty much dictated for you based on when it was written.”…

Keep’m Wild — Rescued Seal Pup Returns to Molokai

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

By Léo Azambuja

A newborn Hawaiian monk seal abandoned by its mother on Molokai last summer was promptly rescued and flown to a rehabilitation facility on the Big Island. The seal was returned to Molokai’s coast nine months later, and its success in the wild leans on its care while in captivity, but also on help from island residents from now on.

Conservation workers are asking the public to avoid human interaction with the seal — named RU99 and later renamed Namakaʻeleʻōlino — despite its natural curiosity, and especially after it recently crashed a party in a Kaunakakai neighborhood. 

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a monk seal show up for a Mother’s Day celebration in someone’s garage,” said Todd Yamashita, operations manager on Molokai for the nonprofit organization Hawaiʻi Marine Animal Response.…