Category: English Assignments

You will be walking around Ka’ena Point from Mokule’ia to Keawa’ula in order to visit some wahi kūpuna (Hawaiian archaeological sites), some wahi pana (celebrated places) and to see the native vegetation and native birds that have re-established themselves there. If you are lucky, you will see several endangered Hawaiian Monk Seals resting on the beach at the Point. You will also have the opportunity to meet Pōhaku o Kaua’i, a grandfather of Pele and also a character in the mo’olelo we are reading: Hi’iakaikapoliopele. Pōhaku o Kaua’i exists within what we call a “cultural landscape.” In other words, he lives in a wahi (a place, area) that also contains other elements that hold cultural significance and that form a complex web of inter-relationships. These other cultural elements might include the specific native coastal plants that grow there, the sheer “toothed” cliffs on the ma uka side, native birds in their burrows, visiting monk seals, even patterns of wind, rain or ocean currents. From the dune above the pōhaku, other cultural structures are clearly visible: ‘Alauiki, Leinaka’uhane and the damaged ancient enclosure you stand in, right at the base of the former tower. The information below (from Sites of Oʻahu) will add to your appreciation of the rich cultural landscape at Kaʻena.

 

Ka’ena Point reached out to sea like a bird. Here we were walking along the beach and when I glanced at one side, there were some things that stuck upward like the sandpipers that run along the shore before a rolling surf. I asked, “Are those sandpipers?”
“No, those are not birds, but stones. The one on the inside is Pohaku O’ahu and the one outside, almost close to it is Pohaku o Kaua’i.”
Yes, this is the first time that I had ever seen Pohaku o Kaua’i and liked it very much because I have heard its legend from the old people but had never seen it before. — Kuokoa, Oct. 2, 1908

In a version told to me by Annie Keahipaka, Maui had many helpers tugging at the line. One disobeyed orders and looked back as Kaua’i was being dragged up to O’ahu. This caused the line to break and Kaua’i to slip back into the ocean, with only the fragment Pohaku o Kaua’i remaining, which to this day is proof of Maui’s mighty effort. This Pohaku o Kaua’i is also said to be Pele’s grandfather. — Kamakau, cited in McAllister

The leaping place of the spirits on O’ahu was said to be close to Cape Ka’ena on the right side toward Waialua near the newly cut road going down toward Keaoku’uku’u; Kaho’iho’ina Wakea (the-taking-home-to-Wakea) was a little below Kakahe’e, and Kila’ula and Keawa’ula were the diving places into the sea. In these places could be found helpful ’aumakua who would bring back the spirit and revive the body or guide it into the ’aumakua world. — Kamakau, Ka Po’e Kahiko, p. 48

Site 187. Alauiki Fishing shrine (ko’a), Alauiki near Ka’ena Point.
A group of stones near the edge of the water, no different from other stones in the vicinity. — McAllister

Na pali o nene le’a — a place behind Pohaku o Kaua’i
Ka ’ie’ie — the channel between O’ahu and Kaua’i
Kuaokala — the back of the sun, the place above Ka’ena Point
— Emerson, Pele and Hi’iaka

If now, from White Rock or Leihaka’uhane you face inland, you may see running up to the top of the ridge, a broad roadway overgrown with shrubsw and banked on each side by a high wall. That is the trail left by the body of the great fish Kumunuiakea, which a wizard caught right at the point and drew up to the temple at the top of the mountain. Formerly the trail showed also over the sandy plain from the point. It was marked by many sand tubes, but the sand has been removed for building purposes. — Honolulu Advertiser, Feb 12, 1933

From Sites of O’ahu, pages 92-94 (some passages have been paraphrased and shortened)

Please see Kepa Maly’s excellent piece on the Hawaiian cultural landscape

SHORT ASSIGNMENT (due at the end of the field trip)

Remember the event maps we create when we go outside on some days? This is like an event map, but without the sketch. Instead of sketching, make five groups of lists on a  sheet of paper. As we walk from the bus to Kaʻena Point, pause every so often and make a list of four details. No need to use complete sentences; just focus on recording interesting details, especially the small details we often miss. In other words, observe carefully. Make at least one of the five lists before you come to the vehicle barrier (about a mile down the road).

LAND JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT (due several days after the field trip)

Your assignment is to describe the cultural landscape  at Ka’ena, as completely and in as much detail as you can, including the damaged landscape you will see first, as we walk from the bus to the Point. You will need to make use of the DLNR brochure that identifies the plants growing there and names the birds that nest there. If we’re lucky, we’ll see some fledglings standing outside their burrows, waiting for parents to return with crops full of fish. Use some of the place names cited above and use the lists of notes you made on the hike. The challenge in writing a description such as this lies in organization. Pay a great deal of attention to the order in which you present the elements of the cultural landscape you see there, so that the elements in your land journal also form relationships among themselves, and so that your sentences and paragraphs flow logically from beginning to end. Include lots of small details.

ALTERNATE LJ ASSIGNMENT (only for those who cannot attend the field trip)

A cultural landscape includes the people connected with a wahi, of course. Your job is to write a short (400-600 words) research paper on one famous person and his son who are connected with Ka’ena. His name is Ka’opulupulu and he was the Kahuna Nui under Kahahana, the last ali’i of an independent O’ahu kingdom. Use Kamakau’s Ruling Chiefs as your source. Since this is a short paper, just one source is acceptable, but just for practice, write a formal bibliography citation at the end using the standard bibliography format for works cited. Pull in a very few short quotes, but most of your paper should be made up of summary and paraphrase. After each quote and paraphrase, include the source pages in parenthesis (Kamakau, p. xx). Also do this after every fact that is not commonly known. Your short paper should contain at least half a dozen of these page citations in parentheses.

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #7

Avoid
Overuse of modifiers (adjectives and adverbs), especially gushy general ones like beautiful, wonderful, very etc. that tell the reader what to think and feel.
Include
Nouns (specific details) that help create mental pictures. Show, don’t tell.

 

The Spanish wanted no communion with America, the place or its people. Residence, except residence construed as land ownership, was not of interest to them. America was not to be a home or what a home implied — the responsibilities and obligations of adult life. They had left that behind in Europe, had traded it away for lawlessness. If we say that the elements of true wealth come with the maintenance of a home, as I think is possible, then we have to say that the Spanish and their descendants were not to find true wealth in America until they discovered the America they had missed.

The true wealth that America offered, wealth that could turn exploitation into residency, greed into harmony, was to come from one thing — the cultivation and achievement of local knowledge.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 22-23

The Spanish experience was to amass wealth and go home. Those of us who have stayed, who delight in the litanies of this landscape and who can imagine no deeper pleasure than the fullness of our residency here, look with horror on the survival of that imperial framework in North America — the physical destruction of a local landscape to increase the wealth of people who don’t live there, or to supply materials to buyers in distant places who will never know the destruction that process leaves behind.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 41

 

Ask an older person to tell you about something that happened in your ’ili before you were born. When you write this story, do not make it one long quotation and do not write it in the question / answer format. Instead, summarize and paraphrase the person’s words, and use a few quotations to emphasize the most important sections. It would be a good idea to make a recording or at least take notes as you talk, to help jog your memory later. Finally, cite your source using the correct format for an interview citation.

 

ALTERNATE OPTION

Write about something that happened in your ’ili in ancient times, or about a legend connected with that place. If you can’t find anything, write about a nearby place. Consult Sites of O’ahu, Ruling Chiefs or a similar book. As with the interview option above, use a sensible mix of summary and paraphrase, with just a few carefully-chosen, short direct quotes. Consult at least one book and cite your source, using the correct format.

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #6

Avoid
Overuse of short sentences, or sentences all of approximately the same length.
Include
• Occasional use of punctuation marks like semi-colons (;) and colons (:) to help construct more complex sentences.
• Parallel structure to help construct more complex sentences.

Turn in Assignment

 

We would have to memorize and remember the land, walk from it, eat from its soils and from the animals that ate its plants. We would have to know its winds, inhale its airs, observe the sequence of its flowers in the spring and the range of its birds.To inquire after this knowledge is to make our proposals, to answer the antiphony. To be intimate with the land like this is to enclose it in the same moral universe we occupy, to include it in the meaning of the word community.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 33-34

We’re anxious now to know what the land has to say to us, how it responds to our use of it. And we are curious, too, about indigenous systems of natural philosophy, how our own Western proposals might be answered by some bit of this local wisdom, an insight into how to conduct our life here so that it might be richer. And so that what is left of what we have subjugated might determine its own life.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p.19-20

If we feel wisdom itself is lost, we need only enter a library. We will find there the records of hundreds of men and women who believed in a world larger than the one defined in each generation by human failing. We will find literature, which teaches us again and again how to imagine.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 53

Go to the library and learn about some of the native plants or insects or birds at your place, or ones thaty might have been there before contact. Write about what you learn. Use at least one source. Cite your source using the correct format.

ALTERNATE OPTION

Your place, its names, rains and winds all have a significance in Hawaiian culture. Find a book that gives you some information you didn’t know and write about what you learn. For the names of winds, look at The Wind Gourd of La‘amaumau. For place names, look at Sites of O‘ahu and Place Names of Hawai‘i. One greatly under-used resource is Native Planter, by Handy and Handy, which will tell you the names of the phases of the moon, and which are the nights of Kane, or of Ku. There is a map room in the Hawaiian Collection, with lots of old maps. Use at least one source. Cite your source using the correct format.

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #5

Avoid
Overuse of the verb to be (is, are, am, was, were). Overuse of the phrase there is or there are, etc., especially at the beginning of a sentence.

Include
A variety of interesting verbs and a variety of sentence beginnings.
Turn in Assignment

 

There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land, and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land … is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.

— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, p. 203

It has been my privilege to travel, to see a lot of country, and in those travels I have learned of several ways to become intimate with the land, ways I try to practice. I remember a Nunamiut man at Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Range in Alaska named Justus Mekiana. I was there working on a book and I asked him what he did when he went into a foreign landscape. He said, “I listen.”

And a man named Levine Williams, a Koyukon Athapaskan, who spoke sternly to a friend, after he had made an innocent remark about how intelligent people were, saying to him, “Every animal knows way more than you do.”

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 35

 

Look around your ’ili and identify some of the animals that live there: the birds, mongoose, feral cats or others. Pick one, two or three and describe them. Wild animals often develop patterns in where they go and what they do at specific times each day. Describe what you observe about their daily routines. Wild animals also have individual personalities. Describe what you observe of the traits of the animals.

 

ALTERNATE OPTION

Compare and contrast the most developed and the least developed areas of your querencia.

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #4

Avoid
The passive voice (Eric was hit by a ball.)
Include
Active voice (A ball hit Eric).

Turn in Assignment

 

The retreat of the wilderness under the barrage of motorized tourists is no local thing; Hudson Bay, Alaska, Mexico, South Africa are giving way, South America and Siberia are next.

— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, p. 166

What Columbus began, then, what Pizarro and Cortes and Coronado perpetuated, is not isolated in the past. We see a continuance in the present of this brutal, avaricious behavior, a profound abuse of the place during the course of centuries of demand for material wealth.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 10-11

One of our deepest frustrations as a culture, I think, must be that we have made so extreme an investment in mining the continent, created such as infrastructure of nearly endless jobs predicated on the removal and distribution of trees, water, minerals, fish, plants, and oil, that we cannot imagine stopping.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 44-45

 

This is the opposite of the last assignment, and perhaps easier. Find a place that looks heavily altered, damaged or polluted. Describe what you see, hear and smell. Remember that this is a descriptive assignment, not an editorial. Resist the urge to add comments and opinions. Stay in the neutral mode. Let your details (specific, interesting nouns) do the heavy lifting.

ALTERNATE OPTION

Go for a swim. Describe what you see, especially what you see underwater. How much of the original coastline is left? What fishes live there? Is there a healthy reef?

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #3

Avoid
Overuse of sentences joined with the conjunction and.
Include
Sentences joined with subordinate conjunctions like when, before, after, while, whenever, since, because, although, etc.

Turn in Assignment

 

No living man will see again the long-grass prairie, where a sea of prairie flowers lapped at the stirrups of the pioneer. We shall do well to find a forty here and there on which the prairie plants can be kept alive as species. There were a hundred such plants, many of exceptional beauty. Most of them are quite unknown to those who have inherited their domain.

— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, p. 189

It would take a lifetime to list, even in these few places, the trees and flowers, the butterflies and fish, the small mammals, the kinds of deer and cats, the migratory and resident birds, and to say the most rudimentary things about their relationships, how they know and reflect each other.

This, along with the people we ignored, was a wealth that didn’t register until much of it was gone, or until, like the people, it was a tattered, diluted remnant, sequestered on a reservation.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 28-29

The local environmentalist John Kelly once commented that there is not a single foot of original shoreline between Pu’uloa and Maunalua (Pearl Harbor and Hawai’i Kai). Yet, some small un-bulldozed spots do remain here and there, especially in the undeveloped areas above the city. Many of the hiking trails we all enjoy, for example, are actually ancient trails that have continued in use. And of course, areas that contain wahi küpuna (Hawaiian archaeological sites) have not been changed, unless the sites have been rebuilt.

In one sense, every place has been changed because non-native plants have colonized almost every square foot, especially on O’ahu. For this assignment, though, look past the non-native plants and focus on locating a spot that has never been bulldozed. If you are unsure, make your best guess. And if you can somehow find a few square meters of original ground that also contains original plants, great! Give yourself ten extra points.

[Here’s a hint: the ti plant was introduced by Polynesians and can live for centuries. It does not self-propogate, which means that someone must have planted it where you find it (unless it is growing downslope from other plants.) Find some ti in the forest and you have found some original ground with its original plants.]

This assignment is a treasure hunt. Find a place that looks unchanged since pre-contact times and describe what you see, hear and smell.

 

ALTERNATE OPTION

Go for a hike in the uplands above your ’ili, into the nahele and kuahiwi. Describe what you see. Try to pin down the point when you begin to see more native plants and fewer invasive ones.

 

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #2

Avoid
Fancy $2.00 words (domicile instead of house).
Include
Plain, clear nouns (house instead of domicile; car instead of automobile).

Turn in Assignment

In Spanish, “la querencia” refers to a place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn. It comes from the verb querer,” to desire,” but this verb also carries the sense of accepting a challenge, as in a game.

In Spain, “querencia” is most often used to describe the spot in a bullring where a wounded bull goes to gather himself, the place he returns to after his painful encounters with the picadors and the banderilleros. It is unfortunate that the word is compromised in this way, for the idea itself is quite beautiful — a place in which we know exactly who we are. The place from which we speak our deepest beliefs. “Querencia” conveys more than “hearth.” And it carries the sense of being challenged — in the case of a bullfight, by something lethal, which one may want no part of.

I would like to take this word “querencia” beyond its ordinary meaning and suggest that it applies to our challenge in the modern world, that our search for a “querencia” is both a response to threat and a desire to find our who we are. And the discovery of a “querencia,” I believe, hinges on the perfection of a sense of place.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p. 39-40

By now, you have chosen the place you will document during the semester. In Hawaiian, you might think of it as either an ahupua’a or an ’ili (a subdivision of an ahupua’a). Think about the implications and significance of the word Lopez uses: querencia.

You know what a map looks like. A good map packs as much information as possible into a small space, and yet appears clear and simple.

Your assignment is to write a description of your querencia that is like a map. Try to create a visual image in your reader’s mind by including as many details as possible. Include both natural and man-made details. Since you don’t have a drawing to reference you will need to be very, very clear. Move from ma uka to ma kai, or in some simple direction through your querencia. Refer back to details you have mentioned previously in order to help the reader make the spatial connections necessary to imagine how they are related.

You have a good mental picture of your querencia because you have probably been there many times. Your job is to give someone who has never been there the same mental image.

Remember that you are creating a map, not a personal journal or reaction or diary entry. Land journals require writing in the objective mode.

A FOCUS FOR LAND JOURNAL #1

Avoid
Overuse of short, common verbs (has, get, run, etc.) when a more accurate, more interesting verb will fit — but without making your writing seem fake.
Include
Accurate verbs (sauntered, trotted, or bounced instead of walked or ran).

View sample entries

WHY LAND JOURNALS?

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it.
He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it.
He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.

—N. Scott Momaday

When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language.
In these ways we begin, I think, to find a time, to sense how to fit a place.

— Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America

Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas. Perception, in short, cannot be purchased with either learned degrees or dollars; it grows at home as well as abroad, and he who has a little may use it to as good advantage as he who has much.

— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, p. 174

WHAT IS A LAND JOURNAL?

Pick an ‘ili (a small division of an ahupua’a), a place you enjoy visiting. If possible, it should stretch ma uka – ma kai, so that it includes kuahiwi and kai . If you are a boarder, pick a place at home and plan on also doing some assignments here on campus.

Write 300 words (about two handwritten or one typewritten page). Double-check for spelling, punctuation and grammar: make your journal simple, eloquent and correct. Land journals will be due approximately every two weeks. I will post due dates on the board.
Repeat the word “organization” to yourself as you write. Organized pieces of writing

• have a beginning, middle and end.
• use transition words to help the reader understand the overall plan and understand how your ideas in one paragraph relate to the next paragraph.
• repeat key words to help unify the piece.
• are not so utterly organized that they might as well be lists
• are a delicate balance between coherence (organization) and variety.

Stay in the objective mode — Writing in the objective mode means that your job is to communicate information, not opinions. Of course, the details you select will suggest your feelings and opinions. Think of your writing as a camera or mirror, just recording what is there in front of your nose. This kind of writing is like the writing you find in a news story or in a science textbook. Here are some guidelines:

• Without being too obsessive about it, avoid personal pronouns (I, we, you, us). Mention yourself if necessary, but never become the center of your piece. What you are describing is the center. In other words, get away from the “it’s all about me” mode of writing.
• Avoid opinions. They just refocus attention back on you rather than on the subject of your writing.
• Avoid “loaded” words that suggest or imply your feelings. This includes even innocent comments like “The sunset that day was beautiful.”

Include lots of details — Most good pieces of writing, whether they are objective or not, depend on details. Most people (your readers) prefer to be shown rather than told. They want to reach their own conclusions when they read something by another person. Your job is to use details to help them experience what you experienced, without actually having been there. Here are some guidelines:

• Showing details are specific. Don’t just say there was some grass. Say whether or not it had been cut recently. Say what kind of grass is was. Say if it had brown patches or not, or maybe a huge bare patch revealing sand underneath, with tendrils of green trying to reclaim lost ground. Are the edges straight and neat, or messy? If you mention ants, are they red or black ants? Are they following each other in a long trail?
• Showing details can imply feelings. Rather than telling your reader that the sunset was beautiful, say that the undersides of rippled clouds first reflected gentle orange then deep purple

ASSIGNMENTS

(DUE APPROXIMATELY EVERY TWO WEEKS)

Land Journal #1

Land Journal #2

Land Journal #3

Land Journal #4

Land Journal #5

Land Journal #6

Ka’ena Land Journal

Kawainui Land Journal

Makali’i Land Journal

I. Introduction / activity

• Intro class activity: monotype prints based on a poem by Haunani Trask
• Lecture/demo: map conventions, western and non-western; vertical and horizontal land divisions
• Class Activity: Wayfinding group activity with a compass
• Essay: Pua Kanahele in Wao Akua
• Video: Rabbit-Proof Fence

II. Ways of Knowing

• Lectures: I and Thou, Martin Buber, Aristotleʻs Great Chain of Being
• Essay: The Rediscovery of North America, Barry Lopez
• Essay: “The Wilderness,” Gary Snyder
• Poem: “What Happened Here Before,” Gary Snyder
• Class activity: modeling
• Video: Walkabout

III. Hi‘iakaikapoliopele (beginning)

Field trip: Visit to Pōhaku o Kaua’i at Ka’ena Point

IV. First Peoples

• Essay: “The Way to Rainy Mountain” (Intro essay), N. Scott Momady
• Autobiography: Black Elk Speaks, recorded by John Neihardt
• Video: Skins or Smoke Signals; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (PBS series)

V. Environmental issues / mini research unit

• Lecture: summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting
• Research notes: The Guardian; www.truthout.org/environment
• Video: Koyanaasquatsi

VI. Some Poetry

Light in the Crevice Never Seen, Haunani Trask
Website: http://www.sakakini.org/
Class Activity: group illustration/presentation of a poem

VII. Hi‘iakaikapoliopele (O’ahu section)

Field Trip: Makapu‘u to Kahana (various places connected to the Oʻahu section of the moʻolelo)

RECURRING CLASS ACTIVITIES NOT CONNECTED TO ANY ONE UNIT:
• Land Journals (bi-weekly)
• Sentence Combining
• Modeling
• Sentence Corrections