Here we go! Manulani Aluli Meyer is the fifth daughter of Emma All and Harry Meyer
who grew up in the sands of Mokapu and
Kailua Beach on the island of Oʻahu and
along the rainy shoreline of Hilo
Palikū. The Aluli Ohana is a large and
diverse group of scholar activists
dedicated to Hawaiian education,
restorative justice, land reclamation,
ohana health practices, cultural
revitalization, arts education, prison
reform, transformational economics, food
sovereignty and Hawaiian music. Manu works in the field of indigenous epistemology and its role in worldwide awakening.
Professor Aluli Meyer obtained her doctorate in Philosophy of Education
from Harvard in 1998.
She's a worldwide keynote speaker, writer,
and international evaluator of indigenous
PhDs. Her book Hoʻoulu: Our Time of Becoming -- Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings
is in its third printing. Her background
is in wilderness education, coaching and
experiential learning and she has been an
instructor for Outward Bound,
Hawaii Bound, a coach for Special
Olympics in three states, and an advocate for the Hawaiian charter school movement.
Dr. Aluli Meyer has been an Associate
Professor of Education at UH Hilo, spent
five years in New Zealand as the lead
designer and teacher for He Waka
Hiringa, an innovative accredited
Master's of Applied Indigenous Knowledge
at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, the largest
Maori University with 30,000 +
students. (Do you need to correct my
pronunciation?)  You're doing good, you're doing great.
Dr. Meyer is currently working at UH
Oahu as the Konohiki of Kūlana o Kapolei,
a movement developed by Hawaii Papa O Ke Au, the University of Hawaiʻi system 
 initiative to indigenize the
University. Manu is a wahine kalae pohaku
(stone carver) along with lei ano and lei
hala maker. She is dedicated to
indigenous food sovereignty and works to
bring the coconut back into daily use.
She's also a 30 year practitioner of
hoʻoponopono who appreciates and learns from the purpose and function of conflict.
I learned a lot from that!
Such an honor thank you for this invitation, Krista and Lise thank you so much. How can I be of service?
I am so honored and excited first of all that I'm speaking
to you from Goddard College which is
founded on the ideals of John Dewey,
progressive eduction, so finding in
your book a chapter on Hawaiian
epistemology and the aesthetics of John
Dewey, and I feel like a lot of alignment
between Goddard pedagogy and your own
thinking, but we don't have to go there
just yet. I just wanted to locate myself.
This is where I am right now, it feels
absolutely right. I wanted to start 
by telling you how this even came about
maybe Krista has told you the story, but
she brought, when we were in Topanga
together for the Deena Metzger writing
intensive, she brought in a copy of your
book, Hoʻoulu (I donʻt know how to say it),
Our Time of Becoming, and Deena brought
it in to us the day after she she was
given the book and said "I want to
read some of this out loud to you" and
she began reading to us from the
forward and then realized that she
wanted each of us to read from the forward. The book was passed from hand to hand and each
of us read a paragraph and I wish you
could have heard the sounds that we made
as these words were being read. It's so
unusual to hear philosophical
thought be so alive be so integrated
and have so much presence and have zero,  zero,
stuffiness. It doesn't feel academic at all it's just life. But it's also deep and
rigorous philosophy, so in the room we were just all in a state of "wow" this is new, Iʻve
heard anything like this. And my own thinking was that this has to find its way into Dark Matter, so
we decided on the basis of the forward
to this book to dedicate an issue of
Dark Matter to the question of "how do we
know?" and I'll base the passage that inspired
it, I'll read the whole paragraph because
this will give listeners an idea of what
I mean when I say there's zero
stuffiness, and you bring it to life.
"Epistemology, philosophy of knowledge, I
mean really what does that even mean?
I still laugh thinking about my cousin
Emmet Aluli mixing it up with the
word episiotomy, we had a good laugh over
that one, and so it began. What exactly is
knowledge? Is it a thing? An event? A
practice? A movement toward? What does it
mean to be intelligent? What is the
nature of knowledge and what is worth
passing on?" Well this felt so important
these questions felt so important that I
felt we needed to have a whole
issue and it's thanks to you in this
book that we now, it's fully formed,
it'll be live in a few weeks, dedicated to the question, "how do we know?" 
Beautiful. That's beautiful. Thank you.
I think one of the things that so
strikes me and reading you and also
seeing you in a couple of YouTube films
is that there's just no separation at
all between what you're talking about
and what you're thinking about and who
you are. Do you know what I knew when I
say that? Your bio all the things that youʻve done, which made it more true, that you have been all of these things.
Can you talk about this no separation? 
I think that's the most important aspect
of life right now is that sense of
Is-ness, there's no separation between.. you
know I love Shakespeare's idea, it took me
20 years to figure it out when he said
"by my actions teach my mind."  I thought he had the pronouns mixed up "by your actions teach my mind,"  But it's my actions teach my mind like you know oh my god we could
be in sync! Like whoa, that was a revelation for me
Especially if we've come through academia as I did.
Totally totally. Well it was important it
was important for me to experience
Harvard. I went there because Howard
Gardner was there he was the 
multiple intelligence guru and I am
bodily-kinesthetically intelligent.
He saved my life and so ... and the history
of colonization in Hawaii is very
profound and we are still here so we are
committed to helping America evolve and
part of it is recognizing first of all
that we're different and that difference
is not bad and one doesn't have to
tolerate difference you can actually be
inspired, educated, and instructed by
difference and I really get that about um
these times and that's why finding the
energy of life... Hoʻoulu, you know the word
Hoʻoulu means itʻs lowerscript meaning means to cause to grow but in a more vibrational simultaneous frequency we can
see it actually means to be
possessed by spirit. And in that
possession you do not know, you are not
meant to be cognitively prescriptive of
what you are supposed to be doing. Your job is to get out of the way and be of
service to what you're meant to be doing
collectively and that's what I ... you know
for Krista to bring the book there and
for you to read it and to get it how I wrote
it!  You know I haven't talked about that book... I wrote it 20 years ago!
I didnʻt know that, it doesn't feel like that at
all!
No one no one's talked to me about
that book. But it's every
aspect of my life and you know in Hawaii
you know as Hawaiian you do not talk
about things that you've done you do
what you're meant to do and you keep
doing it. So it's just lovely to pause
for a minute and catch my breath I'm so
glad that you know it because it stayed
with me and I I quote parts of it to
people all the time one part I didn't
say that is so important it's
that right away the land comes up and
the ocean comes up. "There are scores of
generations upon this beloved and
breathtaking landscape and we have views
on this matter because we thrived here
and from that thriving came the highest
expression of a people, art, and
philosophy and art, not separate 
John Dewey knows that! in our speech,
in our countenance in our health in our spirit in our leisure in our work in our art
imagine, look at where we live  I mean really see it. There's ike, which is to see, knowing and seeing are one
in the word ike" (I came to know a little
bit of Hawaiian through you) "look at how
we must have lived and where living is
great art there is always great
philosophy." I mean, who has ever put that
together in that way?  The land the ocean
is here somewhere, but it's what you saw as a people this
is what mattered having lived what you
lived on...
This is why I believe Hawai'i will be pivotal in saving the world
because we truly truly believe.
and am inspired by our natural world
and you know I grew up where blue ocean
you know the ancient color of
love in my heart is blue and so blue
blue blue you know when they showed me
the cover of the book Hoʻoulu I said to
Mele who did it
really how'd you come to this
cover and she goes "I don't know I
just thought of blue" and yeah it just
made me cry and cry. That's a rock and
that's that's the center of our ulupo. It's
such a beautiful picture that
my sister my sister Mele did the
artwork my twin sister Moana wrote one
of the forwards and Maile my other
sister published it. I know you talked
about this many times but can we talk bit about
the three forms of knowing? yes,
Ike started me off on that because ike
means... it's our word to see, to physically
see and that distinction is different
than looking looking is na na so Ike infers a
type of consciousness that's
separate from looking um the word is
very unique and also our word for ho'olohae
and hoʻolono.  Hoʻolohae is
to listen, Hoʻolono is hear and Lono
is our deity of peace, abundance,
harvest so when you activate Lono
you're actually activating kind of a
mutuality so that your helped so that
you're not you know just ... you're
being helped to to really hear what the
person saying so ike is our word for
knowledge also. So it's our word to see,
it's our word to know and it's also our
word to be given revelations from the
gods and you know I'm thinking myself
wow there it is and then and then all of
a sudden the clouds parted and I was
reading Ken Wilbur's work I have to tell
you in Sex, Ecology and
Spirituality and it got from him, I
believe he lost the plot when he got
into the form of you know unifying, trying to
put everything in one one theory but I got from 
him that the trilogy of physical mental
and spiritual was in most traditions and
then I saw it because then it was in
ours!  And then it was it's in manaʻo io, 
manaʻo lana and aloha..  mana
o io is knowing, io is inside lana lana is to float so it's um
it's knowledge, it's 
information and then aloha is
understanding! When you
understand something you go to aloha,
if you don't go to aloha you don't
understand it you're in a fear state.
so you know I just appreciate
then I saw it everywhere in the
Upanishads I saw it in Spinoza I
saw it in all the writings that there is
a physical external world Teilhard de
Chardin is my favorite he called
it yeah he was amazing
 there's a physical mental spiritual
world and and for lack of a of a
better term spirituality we're beginning
to use words on that um have you seen
my latest work on Holographic
Epistemology because did you did you
read some? because
I'd go around the world and talk about
Hawaiian epistemology and everyone would go oh
nice thank you but can I tell you about
my wedding in Waikiki and I'm
like "ah" you know there's a
separation there wasn't a seriousness to
it and then I'll go Indigenous Epistemology and people go "oh that's nice
but we're not indigenous" I'm like no but
this is so you! this is you ! and then so
now we're just we're just calling it
Holographic Epistemology.
I love the subtitle which is native common
sense
yep yep yep you know because
really it's supposed to go
"boo" you know and then : native common
sense. It's meant meant to
make you laugh it's meant to make you go
what on earth is she going to talk about
and it's native common sense! We've
got to do this type of talking in
academia. I don't consider myself a
academic at all but we have to talk like
that just to.  Well we need academics like you, I call myself a recovering academic,
I would say bring it on because why not
this stuff is so important and just
in the way you talked about it it's so
clear but you're so interdisciplinary I
teach in an interdisciplinary program and I don't
think I've met a thinker who's more
interdisciplinary than you are. You bring
so much together especially in this essay
holographic epistemology, I mean just in
your field of references just now I mean
Spinoza Buddha Ken Wilber it's all over
but it's this this web, its
interdependence that's what you're
always talking about they're all woven
in this web and it makes perfect sense
what do you talk about it. But I wanted
you to talk more about the aloha
you've hardly said anything except what
you did say just intrigued you said the
fear we have to go there or we're stuck
in fear.
Totally. I believe Aloha is the is the primal source of our collective emergence
Lee Irwin says the
same way I'm being coached by Lee Irwin's
work if you need to read one more
author it'll be Lee Irwin
and he says love is the primal source of
our collective emergence. Our kupuna says
that truth is the highest goal and aloha
is the greatest truth, you know what I mean?
And then we have proverbs!
Ulu a'e ke welina a ke aloha that
means loving is the practice of an awake
mind, you know what I mean like it's
everywhere, it's everywhere and you know
whether after, I'm not the smartest or
the sharpest crayon in the in the pack
but I know after I came back from
Harvard and asked my kupuna what does it
mean to be intelligent if you are
Hawaiian and they kept telling me over
and over that  if you no more love, you
no more aloha you you you you nothing you
sad, we are sad for you so all of a sudden I
went from feeling like you know kind of
slow and I just want my old life to
feeling eleu, to feeling akamai to feeling
intelligent because we get aloha! You
know, I know I get Aloha and so all of
a sudden I felt like wow you know because
... it's not valued
it's mock-erized and it's
called... its mock-erized,  so to
to actually stand up and value what
love means as a form of intelligence!
-- it's a rigorous practice --  totally!  when I
evaluate PhDs I have to start off by
saying this is not a critique
I do not critique another person's
thoughts. My job is to understand them
especially if they're Navajo they're
Cree they're Aboriginal Maori how you know
as a Hawaiian can you imagine someone
coming in my house and telling me "eh,
that should go over there" I'm like, oh, no do dat! so working to understand but
that's what Christ said you know Christ
said seek not to be understood rather to
understand and there it is that's the
rigor of what love means for our
intelligence I think honestly is I think
that's the K(new) consciousness
Einstein asked for
oh you know I was
just gonna say but you also make a
connection to the quantum sciences and I
have to say that's where I really got
excited and I will read you something
because this is where you really do it
I think you've just talked about the
Buddhists you talk about this
matrix the expressible content of
enlightenment and then you say the
"transpatial contemplative intuitive
loving mystic still and joyful dimension
is the on-switch of our lives."
That was written by you.
that's a sentence that I want to
memorize.
well I just went down
the categories you see the spiritual
category I just went down ... it's all
there
that's the popcorn that's gonna get us
out of the ..  and we're lost in
the forest of our ego and of our cognitive
accumulation of information as a highest
form of intelligence that is so not true!
and all of this falls under aloha. This is
the transpatial, it's quantum connectivity and
and it's the Aloha piece that feels the
most urgent in this particular moment.
yep it is. it is and so you know I  am
trying to approach it in an in a
different way so that people don't feel
like you know I'm just singing kumbaya
my lord kumbaya but it it's so rigorous
to actually believe and then to actually
actualize the idea that love is our
higher frequency and the expression of
that in our thinking and
our doing is actually a commitment to it
and when when that commitment you know
that's why intentionality is the is the
hallmark of consciousness Husserl
said. you know I mean that's one of my
favorites hey once you're intentional
simultaneity then starts to get
activated you know it's not like our
thinking creates our reality, our doing
in simultaneous commitment to
trusting creates your reality so
that's where simultaneity is that
synonym for pratticcasamupāda for the
Buddhist ideas of dependent co-arising
of mutual causality I love that stuff
our kupuna had the same ideas!  Aloha aku aloha mai, kokua mai kokua aku, aʻo aku aʻo mai.
When you are giving you are receiving at the same time you know it's
so I tell teenagers ah, it's not about
love and everybody goes, oh boo, and I go No!
It's about loving! You guys, you know you think ah, why Iʻm not loved, its because you're not
loving! Get on the kiri popo yeah! Get on it! Do it. 
You say somewhere, you
have an amazing definition of indigenous you say it's "that which endures."
Yep yep yep
People feel indigenous is a racial
distinction or a proximity.
Proximity is is is now dissolving with
 the Diaspora of everybody
so for me indigenous is more aligned
with continuity and that which has
endured and it's endured for a reason!
what's the reason?
Yeah
people get pissed off when I say that I
say "everybody is indigenous. Figure out
what that means to you and then let's
collaborate, and so the
collaboration is done through your
difference, not through what we have in
common. Difference is what we have in
common so when I can actually see what
is different with you then indigeneity
as a philosophical construct gets
activated because everybody knows what,
you know, what people are good at and
then I don't oversubscribe you, you know I don't micromanage
you because you're in charge of the lua
I mean you're in charge of the pit
you're in charge of the pig you're in
charge of the squid luau you're in
charge of something so it
makes sense in with people and when
people don't know each other all we got
to do is get to know each other so when
I put on big events people go what
do you... what's the goal for this event? I
go -- friendships! They just think I'm not
serious though I'm serious
it's friendships you know and you know
I'm over the objectives thing I
think objectives put a put a ceiling at
the infinite and there's no ceiling to
infinity you know.
Oh wow. I know one thing I wanted to ask
you this may be where we'll have to end
but you you talk about moving into
the internal...
Yep. Tt's an inward.. it's an inward dive now
the nation within. This time and why
it's urgent
this is in connection with what needs to
happen right now because we're having
this conversation in the context of a
now where's so much is being destroyed
and so yes and in that context I want to
hear .. some would say well we need to be
out there preventing all that ... Yeah and
the out there is the in there I mean
there's nothing there's nothing more
annoying and ineffective as, you know
good intention. The road to hell is paved
with it! and we get that in Hawaii
because it's really things of quality have
no fear of time (I love that button) and
so we must recognize the they
is we and the we is I and the I is you
and all that simultaneity you know cook
that.. that is so so liberating but there
is no they it really is no I mean
you know I mean people get pissed when I
say that so please do not misunderstand
me there is something happening outside
of me but actually  it's really
in an inside expression when I heal my
self when I when I understand my own
damaged child and forgive her and feed
her and send her on her way
then then I can actually collaborate in
a higher frequency with way more people
and so you know and and then be clear
with them and be clear with myself
because I'm clear with myself and so that's
why we
you know we we can do this work with
with more um even urgency is not the
issue it's our effectiveness in it
because everybody wants to help us here
in Hawaii and you got to know what we're
doing already and then join that,  don't
micromanage us with too much
science we are scientists we recognize
what needs to be done someone please help.
it's all inward work. Inward, outward
I have to read another passage... I said this
before but the way you just sort of
casually smash through one dualism
after another just, poof!
"As if inside and outside and mind and body were the same word ...we have that in
ideas like ike and naʻauao, we found that insight and
seeing is a false duality. They are one
separated only by training and fear...that
idea has changed me the most it allows
me to be educated by beauty, to have a
rapport with the qualities of rain to feel my
own intentions become tangible through
ritual."
No oneʻs ever said they understood that. Thank you.
 
t really just make me think so much.
think isn't the right word, but it made me...
Oh insight and seeing could be the same
thing but the power of seeing we have
yet to really fathom the power of seeing
yeah totally. Because we have yet to fathom the power of what we see, the external world, as you say the external is internal.
Yeah we are overtrained.  We actually think thereʻs acts of separation.
No one's ever read that sentence to me
and I you know and I wrote it all in one
sitting and then I thought, I don't think anyone's gonna get
this but I need to say it...
This is an indigenous mind at work I
mean I'm sorry I have to distinguish, I donʻt have that kind of mind
it took an indigenous mind to write
those words and maybe now I can become
more indigenous thanks to this but for
me this is indigenous epistemology, right there. Yep, thanks. To be
educated by beauty has just
changed my life and we sing so many
songs I mean you know about the love of
this place, I mean,
it's our songs are mythic in their
connection to the the touch of a wind at
a certain hour and how it how it brings
us back to the memories of our lives and
this, the aroma of our beloved flowers, oh
and the images of moon, we're
in the oli phase now to know the moon
phases is still very vital for us still still. 
So yeah you know where
most people say we need to save the land
the land is okay the land is just gonna
shake us off like you know it's it's
we're gonna .. we need our own
good counsel and we need to heal with
each other
the land is gonna be okay it's just
gonna we're gonna it's gonna take a deep
breath and exhale and we're going to
be gone.... unless we learn what needs to be learned and, as you say, see.
yeah it's a discipline isnʻt it.
And itʻs such a pleasure to find people who are wanting to have these kind of
conversations.
Oh, I can guarantee you there are many of us, many many who need to have this conversation.
I wish ... I wish do you have a cold? 
I think you must have a bit of a cold...
because Krista said you often will end an interview with a song but you may not feel up to
it I would love to sing. It's a it's
Friday afternoon and oh it's a
beautiful calm day here and what song
can I sing... ooh let's do
ulu a'e ke welina a ke aloha!
Loving is a practice of an
awake mind. We'll do it five times
together, yeah!  I'll do it once and then you
do it four more times with me
and what we're saying over and over and
over is "loving is the practice of an
awake mind"  and and loving is the
essence within the soul it's kind of the
same idea and I love doing this because
it helps me remember the true essence of
scholarship and where the moʻo lives is
where continuity finds shelter and so
loving is the choice and this is ingratitude Lisa
for on this time with you and your Dark
Matters and blessings for your work and
what you are up to and thank you
for making this happen
Thank you so much, Manu.
My pleasure. And five, 
we do it in five because five is the
number of healing. I just think that's
all were doing nowadays is healing.
ulu a'e ke welina a ke aloha
 
(speaking ʻōlelo Hawaii)
from the beginning of time to the end of
time from the outside  to the inside feel our
gratitude thank you for this time thank
you Lise, thank you.
