International Workshop On Coastal Biocultural Restoration Hosted In Hawaiʻi

Hawaiʻi organizers will host a virtual workshop taking place May 13-17 to develop project ideas and define priorities for innovation and application of biocultural restoration on coasts and waterways. The workshop will bring together Kanaka Maoli, cultural practitioners, Indigenous and traditional communities, scientists from diverse fields, nonprofits, businesses, government, and more.

Titled "Coastal Biocultural Restoration as a Nexus for Innovation," the workshop features four subtopics: resilience to flooding, tech-enabled coastal and waterway observation and data management, sustainable economic development, and higher education for Indigenous peoples in STEM and resource management.

"Biocultural restoration" is a term from systems ecology to describe efforts at rebuilding human relationships with coastal ecosystems based on the land and resource management practices of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. According to a ground-breaking 2018 collection of scientific articles authored mostly by Native Hawaiians in the journal Sustainability, biocultural restoration is an apt term to describe the rebuilding of Hawaiian fishponds and ʻauwai systems that began with the Hawaiian renaissance and continues today.

It is also a term used broadly by Indigenous Peoples and native scientists around the U.S. and globally to describe conservation and re-wilding work that takes its lead from Indigenous knowledge of place.

"I hope that this workshop allows practitioners and stakeholders to come together and consider how the ancestral technologies being rebuilt and revived can be better supported and expanded to more communities. Science is beginning to take Indigenous knowledge seriously and for good reason--because it is critical to our survival and problem-solving in the 21st century," said Kelsey Amos, Chief Operating Officer of Purple Maiʻa and a lead organizer of the workshop.

The workshop is part of the U.S. National Science Foundationʻs Convergence Accelerator program, which seeks to address national-scale societal challenges through convergence research, integration of innovation processes, and bringing together multiple disciplines, expertise, and cross-cutting partnerships.

Kamuela Enos, Director for the Office of Indigenous Innovation for the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation for UH System, notes that the workshop "has the potential to not only provide a platform for indigenous communities of practice to articulate how the restoration of their ancestral systems is vital for climate-adaptive strategies, but also address how these practices and the communities that hold them require direct investment and support so they are allowed to thrive and scale."

The organization hosting the workshop is Purple Maiʻa Foundation, and collaborating organizations include the Office of Indigenous Innovation, University of Hawaiʻi; Dr. Brian Glazer, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA), and the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development (HACBED).

The public and interested participants can learn more about the workshop and register at www.bcrworkshop.com.

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