On the island of Molokaʻi in Hawaii, we trace the spiritual power of mana, from a sacred grove to the Kalaupapa colony, where music, story, and Yo-Yo Ma’s performance honor the resilience and memory of those who came before.
On the island of Molokaʻi in Hawaii, we trace the spiritual power of mana, from a sacred grove to the Kalaupapa colony, where music, story, and Yo-Yo Ma’s performance honor the resilience and memory of those who came before.
Perched on a plateau on the southeast side of the island of Molokaʻi sits a grove of kukui trees. Mikiʻala Pescaia tells us that beneath the roots of these trees are the bones of Hawaiian spiritual leader Lanikaula. It holds his energy and power, his mana, a key concept in Hawaiian culture. On the north side of the same island, on a rugged peninsula called Kalaupapa, we explore the mana left behind by another history. It’s the site of a government-mandated colony for people who contracted Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy.
Historian Anwei Law tells us the story of Bernard Punikaiʻa, who came to Kalaupapa as a boy with a disease and created a life of music and community within the bounds of the colony. We reflect on how to memorialize the residents of Kalaupapa as the last remaining living residents listen to Yo-Yo play in one of the peninsula's many cemeteries.
Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma and Bernard Punikaʻia
Watch a video of Bernard performing “Where Birds Never Fly”
Listen to the Our Common Nature EP
Credits:
Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings
Hosted by Ana González
Produced by Alan Goffinski
Editing from Pearl Marvell
Sound design and episode music by Alan Goffinski
Mixed by Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado
Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays.
Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell
Episode photo by Austin Mann; Episode and show art by Tiffany Pai
Bernard Punikai‘a (SINGS)
Anwei Skinses Law: Bernard always had this quote: “Dignity is inherent in every human being. It's not something someone gives you, it is inherent in you.”
Bernard Punikai‘a (SINGS)
ANA GONZÁLEZ: For most of his life, Bernard Punikai‘a lived on the island of Molokai, in Hawaii. But it wasn't by choice. He was part of a community forced to live there.
Yo-Yo Ma: People sent in exile. Basically never to return. It's a very powerful place. It's a very powerful place, historically, humanly, politically, it's charged.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: That’s Yo-Yo Ma, and I’m Ana González. We’re going to get back to Bernard in the second half of this episode, but this charge is what today’s show is about. In Hawai'i they have a name for it:
Miki'ala Pescaia: That's mana right there.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo and I went to Moloka‘i to tap into this mana using music and we came away with two very different stories from two sides of this mysterious island, that make us question: what do we do with all the memories left in the land? That’s today on Our Common Nature. A musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: In the Hawaiian archipelago there's an island shaped like a blade, cutting the waters between O'ahu and Maui.
Miki'ala Pescaia: The name of our island can be pronounced two ways, Molokai or Moloka’i.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Molokai, no stops, means middle of the churning oceans.
Miki'ala Pescaia: But the word ka’i, ka’i with a little glottal stop in there, means to lead, to set the pace, to take charge. So in that sense, can also mean to produce leaders.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So, I'm gonna use Moloka'i for this episode. Because it makes sense. You'll see. Moloka'i is different than its neighbor islands, where tourists and millionaires have made and remade the landscapes. When you drive east from the airport into town on the one road that circles Moloka‘i, there's a sign someone made that says "Visit. Spend. Go home."
As you continue to drive down that two lane road past farms and mom and pop shops, sometimes the forest is so thick, you can’t see around the tight curves. Sometimes all you see is a cliff on one side and a drop off into churning foamy ocean on the other.
In the rainy season, the road easily turns to mud, and the best way to get around is in a lifted 'yota, aka a raised Toyota truck. At night, Moloka'i is so dark, the eyes of deer and wild pigs peak out from the woods. You can feel why this island is considered, among Hawaiian people, to contain an innate power that comes from the land itself. And in Hawai‘i, they call it mana. And it feeds everything
Miki'ala Pescaia: Every time you eat something, you take the mana of that plant in. You drink the water, you breathe the air, you're taking all that mana, that energy, and then you convert it into the acts and words that you put out.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: But you don't necessarily use all of it in your one life, especially if you've accumulated great amounts.
Miki'ala Pescaia: And then there's a bunch of it that just collects and stays with you. And that's the thing is like for us, mana, death cannot take away from us. It takes the body away, but the other things still exist.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki'ala Pescaia was one of the first people Yo-Yo and I met when we landed in Moloka'i. She works for the US Parks Service and grew up in Moloka‘i.
Miki'ala Pescaia: My first name Miki’ala means to be alert and punctual. My grandmother gave me that name because I guess I wasn't so alert and punctual when I was younger, so it's kind of a nickname that I've kept because I think it's something worthy of aspiring to.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki'ala loves Molokai for everything it is and everything it isn't.
Miki'ala Pescaia: We don't have any stop lights. We fish and farm. We're not very transient. Like a lot of families live in the same place or even in the same house that their parents grew up in or their grandparents built.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: A lot of Miki'ala's family comes from the the North Side of Molokai, in the Pelekunu valley, where the winds were so strong, people actually figured out a way to ride them?!
Miki'ala Pescaia: Yes! Pelekunu people, they live in this narrow valley. The walls extend out into the ocean. You cannot walk the coastline. You have this narrow view, you watch the birds every day flying, you're gonna notice that there are wind currents just as there are ocean currents. You'll notice the way birds glide and fly and if you have generations and generations and generations of observation, at some point somebody figures out, you know what, we can mimic that with a leaf. And that's what they would use to hand glide across the valley and even over the ocean,
ANA GONZÁLEZ: That is the coolest thing I've heard
Miki'ala Pescaia: Yeah.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Maybe ever
ANA GONZÁLEZ: All of the elements of nature on Moloka‘i were so strong that MIki‘ala was taught to name them.
Miki'ala Pescaia: Every rain has a name, every mountain, every hill. Every wind has a name. The ’ili’ilikihi that swirl the sand at the Black Sand Beach of Pikoone. Ku’i’alalipoa, it brings up the smell of the seaweed. “Ku’i” means to hit or strike. “’Ala” is fragrance. “Lipoa” is a type of seaweed. So the ku’i’alalipoa just knocks you out with that whiff.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki’ala and Moloka‘i are intertwined,. And she believes, like many Molokaians do, that when she dies, she needs to be buried in Moloka‘i so her mana, that energy, the charge left in her physical body, can return back home.
Miki'ala Pescaia: That which is extracted from this ‘āina should be returned to this ‘āina.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki’ala told me a story about someone who went to great lengths to bury his bones on Moloka‘i and keep them secret.
Miki'ala Pescaia: Lanikaula is so powerful that his energy should not be in anyone else's hands
ANA GONZÁLEZ: In the 1500s, Lanikaula was a trusted advisor to leaders and kings because he could foresee the future. He was killed by a rival. And his family knew that when they buried him, it had to be in secret. Or else people might dig up Lanikaula's bones and use them irresponsibly, selfishly. His children decided to bury their father's body on a plateau and leave the spot unmarked. On top of his remains, they planted trees, so that the mana from Lanikaula's bones would fuel these trees for eternity.
BEAT
Miki'ala Pescaia: And that's why the trees are sacred, because if their roots are touching his bones, then that energy is coming up through them, out into the leaves.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So, Miki‘ala brought us to this grove. The place where the mana of Moloka‘i’s most powerful leader remains buried. So we could better understand what she’s talking about.
Woman at the grove: So this area that you're looking at right here, yeah is considered the old grove.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The trees are delicate, thin trunks, and their leaves are shining and silvery. They’re called kukui trees, or candlenut. I'm careful not to step on too many saplings on the ground. But they're everywhere.
Miki'ala Pescaia: Lanikaula is very peaceful. The wind moves through the trees, unlike other trees. But it has this stillness when you enter it. It's sort of quiet and commands reverence. It's very welcoming to sit and yet, it almost like feels like you shouldn't sit, and that you should be very mindful of the space you occupy when you're there.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki‘ala led us in a ceremony I couldn’t record. Where we sat in a small circle on a woven mat and drank ‘awa as we explained how we use our gifts in the world. Around our cirlce, there were maybe 30 people who had come to watch the ceremony and experience Lankaula with us. And then, Yo-Yo took out his cello to play.
Yo-Yo Ma: And I hope this cello works. Come closer, you can form a circle around me. This is not a, not a stage.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: He took a seat under the delicate shade of the kukui trees.
Yo-Yo Ma: And what I've learned as a musician, because you know, I don't have a steady job, so I have to travel from place to place. And so I pick up things and one thing I pick up are songs that are meaningful to people. A song that may be about a bird, but kind of a sacred bird because for people that have experienced genocide, that becomes a symbol of life for them.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Sitting in the grove listening to Yo-Yo play this, I felt the reverberations of his cello. I felt it before, but this time it was different. It was mixed with the energy of the people around us watching Yo-Yo play. There are beekeepers and surfers, teenagers and grandparents, aunties and uncles, all forming a circle around us. Launikaula's trees form a circle around them. It's a relationship of mutual protection that can only come when a community knows the history of its people and its land and recognizes the energy that still exists from those who lived here before.
We had to come here first before we could go to the other side of Molokai. We had to understand what mana is, and that it can never be destroyed, even by death. Because, on the North side of Molokai, there's a peninsula where death is everywhere. We go there after the break.
BREAK
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. This is Our Common Nature. And we’re on the north side of Moloka‘i, Hawai‘i where there’s a remote peninsula with a dark history.
Miki'ala Pescaia: Growing up it was always like, oh, that's where they sent all the sick people. I never thought of it in a scary way or like an avoidance. It was more like all the sick people, that's where they took them, so that nobody else got sick.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Miki’ala is talking about the peninsula of Kalaupapa. It’s hard to access. Folks usually fly into a small airport then drive into town. But you can also take a mule over a mountain, hike for an hour, or, historically, get there by boat. Kalaupapa is a place of transition from an old Hawai'i, a pre Western, pre-US Hawai'i to a globalized, colonized Hawai'i. All because of a disease that, by the end of the 1800s, was ravaging the Hawaiian kingdom.
Bernard Punikai'a: And, uh, of course, in those days, uh, they referred to us as lepers. And that's really a terrible word to use to describe anyone.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is the voice of one of the more than 8,000 people sent to live in Kalaupapa because they contracted a disease. A disease that we used to call – leprosy. This is one of the few voices recorded at length and thanks to the park service, these VHS tapes have been digitized for us to listen to.
Bernard Punikai'a: Well, I guess, uh, I should start off with, uh, saying my name, which is, uh, Bernard Kawakaokalani Punikai’a. Um, and I've been here at Kalaupapa since, uh, 1942, So it's, it's a long time ago.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard Punikai'a was interviewed in the 1980s. In these 2 tapes, he’s sitting in a chair, in his living room, and on the steps of a building for staff members of Kalaupapa with palm trees in the background. At this point, he’s a middle-aged man looking back on his life. But in 1942, he was 11 years old.
Anwei Skinses Law: Okay, let's, let's go back a little bit to, to some of the things at the way beginning. Um, how old were you when you went into Kalihi?
Bernard Punikai'a: Um, six and a half.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: When Bernard was just 6 years old, a nurse noticed he had red spots on his neck and face. And was sent to a local clinic.
Bernard Punikai'a: And you stand on this little revolving stand and everybody poke you and do things to you just like a specimen. And finally they told my mother that, I had to be admitted to, uh, Kalihi Hospital. I didn't really understand even then, uh, that I would be taken away, forever almost.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hawaiians called the disease ma‘i ho‘oka‘awale. The separating disease. Because since 1865, anyone who showed symptoms of it were separated from their families by the Hawaiian board of health and sent away. Because the disease spread easily, there was no treatment or cure, and a diagnosis meant first, painful disfigurement, and eventually death.
The English-speakers called it leprosy. Today, because of all the stigma associated with that term, it's called Hansen's disease. It’s a bacterial infection. It attacks your skin, nerves, and respiratory tract. People lose feeling and use of their muscles until their bodies no longer function. And somehow, Bernard contracted Hansen's disease as a kid in Honolulu. And his mother was ordered to bring him to live in a nearby hospital to stop the spread.
Bernard Punikai'a: You know, the separation, it was very difficult for my mother and myself.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: There were other kids at the hospital already, different ages. And a bunch of nurses, teachers, and doctors.
Bernard Punikai'a: During the day it was easy, you know, to forget, you gotta go to school, you gotta go to the doctors and get tests and everything. Um, but at night, the reality sinks in and the, you know, the loneliness is, uh, really very strong and I used to cry a lot at night
ANA GONZÁLEZ: At least his mother and siblings visited, but when they hugged, they were reprimanded by the watchful staff. Bernard made friends, and sometimes he was able to watch movies. The disease, however, progressed. It affected his face, his mouth, his hands. He figured it would just get worse in this hospital until the day he died. But then …
Bernard Punikai'a: We were having our breakfast, we heard all these noises outside. Guns firing and, uh, And the radio came on he was saying, this is an air raid. Take cover. This is the real McCoy.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Dec 7, 1941. The day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And the hospital where Bernard was staying was just miles from the attacks. So he and the other kids ran outside and climbed up a tree to see what was going on.
Bernard Punikai'a: This plane came so low that you could see the pilot looking down like this and smiling as he was firing his gun.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: With WWII on the horizon, the decision was made to move the kids away from Honolulu. And one island over, on Moloka’i, there was a peninsula only accessible by boat, really, because of its sharp cliffs and dense mountain forests. And people with Hansen's disease had already been sent for the past 80 years.
Bernard Punikai'a: The chief said to us that we're sending you to Kalaupapa. The nurses had helped to make us very much afraid. The description that they would, you know, give to us, you know, scared the hell out of you. And they were talking about blood all over the walls and everything. You know, we were just kids and everyone of us said, “Please, please, please don't send us.”
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Already, Kalaupapa had a reputation among Hawaiians. It was known as the place where people with Hansen's disease went to die.
Miki'ala Pescaia: You have these tall cliffs that sort of, the island broke and sheared off and it created all these big boulders in the ocean. The water is rough and deep and it's always like moving.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Kalaupapa sits just to the west of where Miki'ala's families would hang glide over winds and sea, and it's a similar geography. You have these 2,000 foot sea cliffs that form a natural barrier around a valley by the sea. So, King Kamehameha V chose Kalaupapa as the site of Hawaii's official quarantine for people with Hansen's disease. Patients began arriving on ships in 1866.
Miki'ala Pescaia: It was really harsh in the early years.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Today, Kalaupapa is a national historical park, and part of Miki'ala's job is to help people understand the colony's history.
Miki'ala Pescaia: There were some people who felt like I died the day I left home.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Because, for Hawaiian people, especially at that time, the land is family. Removing someone from their homelands was a spiritual death. Not everybody sent to Kalaupapa was Hawaiian. You had people from Europe and Asia there as well. But the stigma against contracting this disease was so high, it crossed all cultures.
Some families disowned their sick relatives. Married couples often divorced. Mothers had to leave their children. And they all had to start a new life in a series of small wooden houses in the valley between cliffs where the wind whipped.
The colony wasn't prepared for the hundreds of patients they received. People didn't live very long once they arrived. But over time, the community became stronger. The doctors and nurses became more informed. The church leaders had more compassion, and people with the disease began advocating for themselves.
And by 1942, when 11-year old Bernard and the rest of the kids from Kalihi Hospital set sail for their new home, the scary stories of Kalaupapa were a thing of the past.
Bernard Punikai'a: As we were coming in, we looked, you know, towards shore, and we could see the people just lined up. You know, from the shop area, all the way down to the camp. It was just like hundreds of people.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: All the hundreds of residents of Kalaupapa came to greet this new shipment of kids. And they immediately welcomed them into their world. Instead of blood on the walls and scary sick people, Bernard found beaches, birds, monk seals, lava rocks. He found other kids to play with and aunties and uncles who invited him over for dinner in their homes.
Bernard Punikai'a: It was really great. This Kalaupapa patients, you know, when they came down, they came down with their, uh, fish and dried fish and pipi kaula and opihis, poi. And we just, uh, dig in, you know, as they say today, pig out, you know, on that good Hawaiian food.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Even better, there were parties.
Bernard Punikai'a: You know, they always, uh, an excuse for a celebration, and there were at least three patient orchestras that could rotate during the dancing hour. And everybody danced, they had the entire floor to the patients.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard started going to church. He became a Catholic. Even though the disease had affected his face and hands, Bernard felt comfortable enough to begin to sing and accompany himself on the autoharp. Compared to the hospital in Honolulu, living in Kalaupapa felt free. But there were still restrictions. Kalaupapa was run by the Hawaiian Board of Health. Patients could not leave and travel to other islands. They had jobs and chores and they still had Hansen’s disease.
Bernard Punikai'a: I was in the hospital for a long period of time. The doctor had looked down my throat and said that, uh, it was so bad that, sooner or later they would have to do a tracheotomy. That was a reality.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard’s condition got so bad doctors considered cutting a hole in his throat and placing in breathing and feeding tubes if the disease progressed. But at this point, there were treatments for Hansen's being used in other places, just not at Kalaupaa. And they were working.
Bernard Punikai'a: The success rate was so great, and yet, uh, our physicians here refused to even, consider it. Their rationale was that, uh, it was, uh, still experimental and, uh, there was no, uh, guarantees. And people were not asking for guarantee. Without a medication, the guarantee was you would die. That's it. Plain and simple.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So the patients of Kalaupapa came together, and demanded to get this new treatment or take the administration at Kalaupapa to court. The pressure worked. The drugs came.
Bernard Punikai'a: They were the miracle drugs. They, um, changed our lives. They really did.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard started to heal. More on that story, after the break.
BREAK 2
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. Bernard Punikai‘a had been at Kalaupapa for more than 20 years before the drugs to treat Hansen’s disease arrived. And that’s also around the time Anwei Skinses Law first went to north side of Moloka‘i.
Anwei Skinses Law: I started going to Kalaupapa when I was 16. I'm now getting Social Security. So, it's been a lifetime.
ANA GONZÁLEZ; It was the 1960s, and the patients at Kalaupapa were still legally forced to spend their lives on this peninsula with jagged cliffs and whipping winds. But the disease was no longer a death sentence.
Anwei Skinses Law: Kalaupapa was a very lively place in those days. And there was a gathering place called Mariano's Bar, which is where everybody, you could go meet people, and you'd be in there, and everyone would buy you beer, and you'd leave with a pile of six packs there. And Mariano, the owner, would save them for next time. I'm sure that is where I met Bernard and I can't even remember what year it was.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard was a people person. He was always out at the parties and functions of Kalaupapa, singing and playing music.
Anwei Skinses Law: There was one, the alphabet song where it was called “Kalaupapa” and it was like K A L A U P A P A. And it was like, he would say “Kalaupapa my hometown.”
ANA GONZÁLEZ: At first Bernard was skeptical of this white teenage girl. A lot of the residents were.
Anwei Skinses Law: But I kept coming back and the question always started being, are you spending the night here? Because if you spent a night, it showed you had more commitment than if you just flew in and out.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And eventually Anwei got a grant to start recording oral histories of the residents of Kalaupapa.
Anwei Skinses Law: I mean, you know, you naturally go and you talk about when someone was taken away from their family and the pain and the separation. But we also made a point of talking and recording people's talents, you know, if they were painters or musicians and things like that.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: She recorded people playing ukulele, reading poetry, and telling their life stories. And eventually, Anwei convinced Bernard to sit for 2 on-camera recordings. That’s what you’ve been listening to this whole time.
Bernard Punikai'a: So, do you have any other questions?
Anwei Skinses Law: Now I'll start. Okay, let's, let's go back a little bit to, to some of the things at the way beginning, um, how old were you?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And a lot of their conversations had to do with Bernard's work in local politics, and advocating for the residents of Kalaupapa.
Anwei Skinses Law: So Bernard was on the Citizens Committee that studied the laws and, you know, they were still fumigating mail. They were doing all these outdated things.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Kalaupapa, at this point, was a medical colony that was over 100 years old. There are no new residents because the drugs are preventing outbreaks of Hansen’s disease elsewhere. And yet, the laws keeping people in Kalaupapa have not changed since the 1860s.
Bernard Punikai'a: It was about 104 years we had of, uh, isolation. To realize that our laws were so archaic and so, from medieval times almost, even though there were no longer any valid medical reasons to maintain an isolation policy, and yet they still adhered to that.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So, Bernard worked with other residents and patients to repeal the law. In 1969, the government of Hawai‘i repealed the law. Bernard was 39 years old. For the first time since he was 6, he could travel wherever he wanted.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And one of the first places he went was his first home: Honolulu. And after more than 20 years away, during which time there was WWII and Hawai‘i became a US state. The world had changed.
Bernard Punikai'a (singing): Got up this morning and look around me/to see the beauty of my Hawai’i
Took a little walk into the town/pain and sorrow were the things I found
Walls of concrete reaching to the sky/ higher and higher
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard began living in Honolulu in a residential treatment facility for people with Hansen's disease. It was called Hale Mohalu. And there was this famous moment where the government tried to knock the building down and Bernard is photographed getting arrested and dragged out of the apartment with other protesters.
Bernard Punikai'a: We dared to challenge the state and say, No, we won't go, we will not go. And you know, Hale Mohalo is our home. You may not do with us as ou have been doing for the last hundred plus years.
BERNARD SINGS: Try to find my way to the sea/rocks of concrete were hiding it from me/Turned right around to see the mountain/Towers of concrete had done it again
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The song you’re hearing now is the only recording I could find of Bernard singing and playing autoharp. He’s playing with guitarist Peter Kealoha and another autoharpist, named ‘Imaikalani Kalahele. It’s a song he wrote reflecting on his own history and the history of Hawai'i.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: It’s called “Where Birds never Fly”
Yo-Yo Ma: Oh my gosh
ANA GONZÁLEZ: I played it for Yo-Yo.
SONG PLAYS: Where birds never fly….
ANA GONZÁLEZ: It's a mournful song, but I also see a lot of joy in just the fact that he’s playing it, he wrote it. He was supposed to be gone. He was supposed to be dead to his family at age 11.
Yo-Yo Ma: Yeah. He says, okay, look: What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell a story You can see it on video that I've had Hansen's disease I'm singing about this whole history and he's like a Bard: “I'm now gonna tell you the story of my life. This is what's happened over decades.” And you are left to live with it. Shastokovich wrote about the Stalin era in a way that is not about saying okay here millions of people died because I don't have capacity to understand what millions of people means.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Just like 8000 sent for having Hanson's disease. Like exiled.
Yo-Yo Ma: Yeah
ANA GONZÁLEZ: That's too much for you to comprehend.
Yo-Yo Ma: How many families? Look I mean let me give you the encyclopedia of all the names of the families. Okay, what am I gonna do about it? But hear a song like that, I can hear it over and over again and I could pass it on to you and you could live with it.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: So I asked Yo-Yo if he would learn this song, and play it with Bernard.
(Yo-Yo Ma performs with Bernard recording)
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard lived the remaining years of his life traveling the world to promote the dignity and rights of people with Hansen's disease. When he was back in Hawai’i, he split his time between Honolulu and Kalaupapa, where a lot of his old friends still lived in their seaside homes.
Anwei Skinses Law: I lived in West Virginia by that time and he would call me up and we would, you know, sometimes work on things and that's why one day he called me and he said, “I know you're gonna think this is weird, but will you give the eulogy at my funeral?” So I said, yep.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And then when, when did that day come that you had to go?
Anwei Skinses Law: Um, he died in 2009. February 25th, 2009.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard had 2 services, one in Honolulu, and one in Kalaupapa. His body was buried in Kalaupapa in a cemetery called Papaloa.
KEOKI: This is Papaloa.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: The sister was saying like 2000 people are buried on there.
KEOKI: Yes. This is the mass graves right here.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: In Kalaupapa today, there are more graves than there are people. Some are in mass graves, and others are individual markers that shine bright under the hot sun. Some are ornate, others are small and worn. Some are just crosses in sandy grass. And many have washed away entirely due to tidal waves and erosion.
Yo-Yo Ma: How's that? Is that safe? Is that okay? Okay.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Bernard is buried here. Along with hundreds of other people who called Kalaupapa home. Yo-Yo is here to play for all those who have died and for the very few who remain living here.
Yo-Yo Ma: I'm so grateful to be able to be here, and I thank you for allowing our presence, my presence, to be here, to honor and to pay respect for all the people that have been part of this community.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo settles into his chair and unscrews the endpin of his cello as he squints the sun out his eyes.
Yo-Yo Ma: And I want to thank especially Uncle Danny for being here. I was told Danny, you've been here since 1942, so that's about 80 years if my math is still working.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo is talking to a man in a wheelchair, flanked by nurses. He’s older, and I’m standing behind him, so I can’t see his face, but I know he’s a patient. He came with Bernard, actually, on that ship in 1942. And he's still here. Soon a rusty old pickup truck pulls up right next to him, and it’s another man, another patient. Out of the 8,000 people who were forced to come to Kalaupapa, these two men are the sole survivors.
Anwei Skinses Law: The history of Kalaupapa is not over. But now is a challenge. How do you do justice to everything?
ANA GONZÁLEZ: There are plans to create a memorial to the patients of Kalaupapa within Kalaupapa National Historical Park, where all of their names are engraved on a stone wall. But, Miki‘ala, our friend from the top of the show who took us to Lanikaula and works at Kalaupapa, says, not everybody agrees with that decision.
Miki'ala Pescaia: So for me it's rough because, because I work for the Park Service, we have to remain neutral. Professionally, I have to remain neutral. But as a descendant of a patient, uh, I get to say that personally, like, no, we don't want his name on that.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Hmm. This is the first time Miki’ala admitted to me after knowing her and speaking with her for hours, that she has a relative who was a patient at Kalaupapa. And she won’t say who, but I can tell that the admission comes with a lot of baggage. Andso she says there's a much simpler, much more discreet and personal way to memorialize the people who came to Kalaupapa.
Miki'ala Pescaia: If we know stories like they used to come to this beach and go fishing all the time, go and stand in the water there and have a moment and say your prayers.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: How do you, connect with your ancestor who was a patient?
Miki'ala Pescaia: We chant, we sing to them. We dance. I just talk to them all the time. I feel like they're always here. They like it here. And I think they like me being here cuz every time I try to leave, they find some reason to remove my other opportunities.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: They're gonna miss you. You can't leave them.
Miki'ala Pescaia: Yes. That's how I feel.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: In life, the thousands of people forced to come to Kalaupapa had so many of their freedoms taken from them and so much of their identity. But in death, their energy, their mana, what made them who they are, remains here, in the land.
Yo-Yo Ma: One of the things that I've been learning in Molokai is that energy is key to life, and one of the things I've learned from science is energy is never destroyed. So if this were true, it means that the energy of our ancestors, of all the people who've traveled to come here is not gone. So here's a way to call them through music.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Do you hear that bird??? If you've listened to any of this show, you know what I'm going to say: that's gotta be Bernard. And maybe some of the other 8,000 people who came to Kalaupapa are here too. And as I stand here listening to Yo-Yo, I hear the ocean. I hear the wind. I hear the people who gave their mana back to this land that are still here. And I’m connected to them.
Miki'ala Pescaia: When you’re here, that peace that you feel, that’s them. And that's how you keep people alive.
MUSIC UP AND FINISHES
Yo-Yo Ma: What a honor. Danny. Thank you. May I shake your head? May I shake your head? Thank you, sir. I hope it pleased you a little bit. It did. Okay, good. That's what the music is there for. So keep that. Okay? Alright, all, thank you very much.
MUSIC
ANA GONZÁLEZ: In the next episode of Our Common Nature, we stay in Hawai'i. And we go a little bit deeper into how music and chanting can connect us to the deepest parts of our existence.
Yo-Yo Ma: I just have a whale of a time.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: And it’s the finale, so it’s going to be a good one. I hope you'll listen.
CREDITS:
Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings
Hosted by Ana González
Produced by Alan Goffinski
Editing from Pearl Marvell
Sound design and original episode music by Alan Goffinski
Mixed by Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado
Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, Sophie Shackleton, and Jonathan Bays.
Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell.
Special thanks to: Kalaupapa National Historical Park, Miki’ala and Keoki Pescaia, Val Lawson of Ka ohana o kalaupapa, Uncle Bobby and Patti and Anwei Skinses Law. And also to Joan Lander of Nā Maka o ka ʻĀina for her recording of Where Birds Never Fly.
Here is the video of Bernard playing Where Birds Never Fly.
And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can listen to the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo, Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg, and an Icelandic choir now available on all streaming platforms
This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.
Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.