These were words I was happy to hear. I went out into the kalo field to work my heart into the ground. That was before life changed. The old stories of Hawai‘i were similar to that of my own country, except that in ancient Aotearoa we were not ruled. My wife’s people had reigning chiefs once. They had divine queens and kings. They had divisions of land, gifted territories, which flowed from mountaintop to ocean. The ordinary people could not be removed from these lands though the chiefs sometimes could.

Because these territories went from mountain to sea they included everything needed for life in the way of food, water, medicines, timber and stone. People built irrigation systems, and there were sacred waters for every kind of use. They had knowledge of winds, tides and weather, and they travelled on land or oceans taking direction from the stars.

All this was told to us by ‘A‘makualenalena as we fished or pounded kalo, preparing enough for the following weeks. He had his own memory of events, but added to that were the memories he had of all those who had gone on ahead of him. It was a familiar story in many ways, told in a manner familiar to me.

‘There came a wisp of smoke,’ he said one day. ‘It was barely noticeable to the sovereign people living on their lands. It was a thin line, as though it issued from a small opening. As it came closer, this line was seen to be made up of smoke-coloured insects which came down and began to chew at the edges of the land, soundlessly.

‘If you haven’t got everything you need in your own territory, you contact your neighbour and they tell you to come and get it. One day they will come to you for something and you will tell them where to find it.

‘This time there was no asking. The insects came and they chewed.

‘And after a time the thin line became a heavy cloud, blocking the sky from every horizon. An impenetrable crust formed over all the islands of Hawai‘i, suffocating the sovereign people, altering their lands and removing their waters.

‘But never mind about that, the land was given to the sovereign people by the deities, which is why the sovereign people will not be lost. They are from a seed that was put into the ground at the time of creation. There we were, along with all other seeds of plants and creatures who are our older brothers and sisters. There we were enduring. Here we are, enduring.

‘During the time when the world was at war, our water was diverted from our kalo gardens. It was taken many miles away from here for the sugar plantations. People had to give up their kalo gardens. Fish didn’t survive in the remaining streams and the shores were also affected.