What does it mean to love the land? For acclaimed Kanaka Maoli poet and activist Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, this love is held in aloha ‘āina, a Hawaiian concept that teaches if we are connected to one another, it is only because we are connected to the land which nourishes us both. Laying bare the remaking of Hawai‘i from a place where people and land have lived in kinship for thousands of years to a place colonized with projections of pleasure and profit, Jamaica summons the true spirit of aloha. At the forefront of the fight to prevent a thirty-meter telescope from being constructed at the summit of Mauna Kea—the most sacred mountain in Hawai‘i—she speaks verses that command love and responsibility for any land that has fed and held us.
