Dr. Patrick Kirch is a University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa anthropology professor specializing in historical anthropology, archaeology and the deep-time history of the peoples of the Pacific. In this interview, Melissa and Clay talk with him about how his growing up in Mānoa valley among kānaka maoli and Bishop Museum mentors influenced him early on, and how his field research has taken him from Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, to Tonga and Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Hawai’i. We come to understand the adaptability of people in ancient times through transported world views, plants, animals, and diverse agricultural practices–lifeways that continue today.

Co-hosts Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht reflect on the past two seasons of Land and People, the most poignant and most difficult moments in the podcast, as well as their shared work at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in helping to reduce wildfire risk across the Hawaiian landscape.

Billy Kinney is a storyteller, cultural practitioner, connector and land back advocate whose family traces its lineage, care and kuleana to Kauaʻi’s north shore. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s during Hanalei’s river’s “boating wars,” Billy unpacks the challenges and opportunities for local people to connect and reconnect with ʻāina amidst unrestrained tourism and development, thereby redirecting the future of sacred places like Hāʻena. As the Assistant Director of the Hui Makaʻāinana o Makana he carries forward then group’s mission to interpret, restore, care and protect of the natural and cultural resources within the Hāʻena State Park. He shares with how he traverses many worlds--both western and Hawaiian--and how his intimate traditional stewardship knowledge can sometimes complement or come into conflict with his academic background in urban regional planning.