Ululaumāhie: UH Hilo forest restoration project & garden rooted in ingenuity, creativity, collaboration
Project lead and kumu Lito Arkangel gives students opportunities for hands-on work in the garden while teaching them about culture using native plants found on the grounds, many of which have been planted over the years by students and volunteers.
By Samantha Dane/UH Hilo Stories.
The Ululaumāhie Native Forest Restoration Project is an ongoing project promoting culture and botany through hands-on experience at Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo learning lab began back in the fall of 2018, and it has since transformed into lush grounds that surround Haleʻōlelo, home to the college.
Carmelito “Lito” Arkangel, a UH Hilo lecturer in Hawaiian studies and music, was brought on as the project’s manager and coordinator by then-director of the college, Keiki Kawaiʻaeʻa, who now serves as the university’s interim vice chancellor for academic affairs. Arkangel was already experienced with a number of nonprofits and conservation stewardship programs around the island, making him the perfect fit, and he was asked to lead the charge in cultivating a community space and kīhāpai (garden for the people) for the college.
“Typical Hilo boy, jack of all trades, master of none,” he says, noting that it’s the trust from people like Kawaiʻaeʻa and Professor of Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies Larry Kimura that Ululaumāhie has come so far. “We introduce you to this place rather than try to impress you. Say, let the garden tell you the story so that you know what we know.”
The place becomes a sanctuary through the actions of those who use it
Arkangel starts this interview and tour of the garden with a short ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) lesson on the garden’s name, Ululaumāhie.
“Ulu is growth. The lau is the flora. And māhie is charming, it’s delightful. And it is. I try to meet that, you know, and it’s not easy. There’s different perspectives of it, but for me, māhie is going to be that kolohe (rascal) boy hiding from the grandma, from the aunty, because she’s going to kiss his face and they’re gonna be like, cute, or they smile, you know.”
Before the project was started, the area was filled with invasives and required extensive clearing and work before it was ready to even start planting. “These invasives were serving as a nuisance. It felt so constricting here,” Arkangel recalls. After clearing them out, he had the slope graded to smooth it out for water to drain more evenly and prevent erosion.
The carefully maintained garden is a far cry from the remaining invasive forest only a little way beyond the grounds. It’s what Arkangel calls the “mongoose effect.” He says it’s “like when people just don’t do their homework and you get bad results, I call it a mongoose effect. You just like make them happen, but you don’t like do the research, and then you get huge repercussions from it.” The reference is to mongoose brought to Hawaiʻi in 1883 to control rats in sugarcane fields, which they failed to do and then went on to multiply while severely impacting native birds, turtles, and insects.
The albizia that surround the grounds and much of campus (as well as the entire state) are a result of this lack of planning — fast growing trees planted to quickly reforest an area, only to cause more problems later. The weak branches of the albizia break off easily, and shallow roots mean trees fall in strong wind, making them a safety hazard for students. “We cannot go under there for the students’ safety, and get (little) fire ants, too,” Arkangel says.
His solution is to focus on the grounds that have already been cleared and create a welcoming environment for students. “We’re doing something about it for the sake of our youth and the future,” he says. They’ve planted dwarf hau trees to provide shade and installed benches in collaboration with the Hawaiʻi Community College carpentry program.
“If other students, other kumu (teachers) need materials or something, I try my best to provide it organically, naturally,” Arkangel says. “They come out, they dance hula. They come out, they do oli (chant). They come out, they practice blowing the pū (conch shell). They do all these things out here. And we create little groves here and there.” The place becomes a sanctuary, then, through the actions of those who use it.
“Unfortunately, we’re limited with resources,” says Arkangel. “What we’re not limited in is ingenuity, innovation, and creativity, which to me is the platform or the canvas for students, educators, everybody to collaborate.” A brief walk around Ululaumāhie shows this, from the well maintained grounds to the variety of native and Polynesian-introduced plants. Together, they provide food, lei and medicinal materials, shade, and a place to stay and rest.
It’s about “feeling that maluhia, the serenity, tell me that’s not one proper, comfortable learning environment. I can do this for the whole school,” Arkangel says. “This makes you feel like a part of something. This is one puʻuhonua, this is a refuge,” he says. “You can use any of these facilities, you can eat from here. All we ask is once in a while, you come give back. Pull weeds around the plant. You see some insects, you let me know.”
Years of hard work by a dedicated community
Ululaumāhie is the result of years of hard work on behalf of the dedicated students, community, and volunteers who have put their time and effort into making the garden a place worth using and enjoying.
Most of the students that have worked or volunteered at the garden are students in Hawaiian language classes here at the university. For the first five years of the garden program, volunteers were strictly Hawaiian speakers. It’s an important policy, modeled after the practice of Princess Keʻelikōlani, whom the college is named for, and her advocacy for Hawaiian culture and language. “The ability to sustain this knowledge can only be conducted through the language, the right language. And you share it because it’s free, it’s knowledge, it’s language,” says Arkangel.
Speaking in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi is especially important to Arkangel, as he learned the language at UH Hilo. “I became a better version of myself and developed way more clarity and more kamaʻāina filters in my goggles through ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi,” he says.
Arkangel gives students opportunities for hands-on work in the garden, but he also teaches them about the culture and uses of the many native plants found around the grounds, many of which have been planted over the years by students and volunteers. It’s “a more Hawaiian perspective, one of the many,” he says. “The classroom never ends. It goes way beyond the walls of the school. It expands throughout Hawaiʻi and the whole world.”
The growth continues
Arkangel has a few plans in store for Ululaumāhie, one of which is installing signs around the garden. Using QR codes, the signs will have information about each plant, and how they relate to different departments around campus or can be used for traditional medicine. The information will be sourced from old Hawaiian recorded interviews and archives, all included and translated by student workers.
Another future project Arkangel plans to work on is installing an aquaponics system at Ululaumāhie. Arkangel says, “it has to be self-sustainable. It has to be reused, repurposed stuff, because we want to incorporate ingenuity, efficiency, creativity, collaboration. We gotta be pono (moral, righteous) about it. And not just leaning on one department, on one college, on one person. It has to be kākou (everyone).” This echos the defining feature of the space that comes from the many hands and departments that have contributed, connecting the entire campus.
To Arkangel, part of his role at Ululaumāhie is to be kahu, or steward. Not only of the grounds and plants within, but to everyone who moves through it. To Arkangel, stewardship is again about tending to the serenity, the maluhia, of the garden that motivates others to want to expand their knowledge. “What is the benefit of this place for Hawaiʻi, for Hawaiians, for you, for me, and for the future?” he asks. “The ʻāina not going to take care of itself. You got to have one steward, and I think that’s my kuleana.”
“I just kind of put my focus on the land and the students,” he says. “And I let Keiki and Ka Haka ʻUla take care of me, and I just invite everybody here.” The learning, then, comes naturally, exemplified through the love, time, and care put into the ʻāina.
Story by Samantha Dane, a biology major at UH Hilo.
