Podcast Episode 264: Wild American Foodscapes – Hawai’i
In Episode 264 of the Wild Fish and Game Podcast, we launch a new series, Wild American Foodscapes, by asking a foundational question: How has food shaped this place, and how has this place shaped its food? Our first stop is Hawaiʻi. Not the postcard version of Waikīkī sunsets and resort luaus, but the deeper story beneath it. Long before sugar plantations, long before canned goods and cargo ships, Polynesian voyagers crossed thousands of miles of open ocean guided by stars, currents, and memory. They did not arrive empty-handed. They brought food. And in Hawaiʻi, as we explore in this episode, food became land. Land became family. And family became food again.
To understand that story, we spoke with three voices rooted in the islands: Native Hawaiian chef Kealoha Domingo, steward and cultural practitioner Lei Wan of Limahuli Garden & Preserve, and food writer and historian Audrey Wilson. Each offered a different lens, but all circled the same truth: Hawaiʻi’s food is not a trend or a tourist menu. It is genealogy, stewardship, and resilience woven together.
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A Bowl of Poi Is a Worldview
When we asked Chef Kealoha Domingo to describe Hawaiʻi through food, he didn’t hesitate.
“Hawaii is a bowl of poi.”
Poi, made simply from taro and water, appears humble. But as Domingo explained, simplicity is deceptive. In Hawaiian genealogy, taro (kalo) is considered an elder sibling to the Hawaiian people. “We as Native Hawaiians have a very close connection with the taro plant in our traditional beliefs and our genealogies. We consider ourselves to be related to the taro plant.”
If the crop is family, agriculture becomes stewardship. It shifts from extraction to responsibility. Growing taro is not just planting and harvesting. It requires understanding lunar cycles, water systems, soil science, and cultural resource management. “In order for me to get taro on a regular basis, I need to know about the lunar cycles… water science… environmental, cultural resource management,” Domingo explained. The taro farmer must understand an entire ecological web.
Food in Hawaiʻi was never separate from land management. It was ecological engineering long before the term existed.
Engineered Balance: The Ahupuaʻa System
Polynesian settlers arrived between 1000 and 1200 AD, bringing canoe crops such as taro, breadfruit, banana, sweet potato, and coconut. They introduced pigs and chickens, built terraced taro systems, and engineered fishponds known as loko iʻa. Land was divided into ahupuaʻa, stretching from mountain peak to reef, ensuring that every community had access to fresh water, upland forest, and marine resources.
This was not accidental abundance. It was a deliberate design. As we discuss in the episode, Hawaiʻi became one of the most integrated and self-sustaining island food systems on Earth.
At Limahuli Garden & Preserve, Lei Wan and her family continue stewarding ancestral lands. “My ancestors have been here stewarding and taking care of this valley for over 500 years,” she told us. They still cultivate taro varieties that arrived on voyaging canoes. “We take care of those original varieties. So we have about 76 of the 84 remaining varieties.”
This is not heritage farming as nostalgia. It is living genetic history.
Introduced Abundance and Ecological Consequence
When Europeans arrived, new species reshaped the islands. In 1793, Captain George Vancouver gifted cattle to King Kamehameha I. Without predators, cattle multiplied quickly. Later came goats, axis deer, and mouflon sheep. Landscapes evolved without grazing pressure were suddenly stripped and compacted.
I’ve hunted mouflon sheep on Lānaʻi. It’s a striking paradox: chasing a sheep species that evolved in Corsica on a volcanic slope overlooking the Pacific. Hunting in Hawaiʻi is not nostalgia. It is management. It is protein in a state that imports nearly everything else.
Feral pigs today are another layer of complexity. Larger and more destructive than the original Polynesian pigs, they damage fragile ecosystems. Yet pig hunting remains embedded in family gatherings, imu roasts, and food security. Removing hunting from the landscape would not be a simple conservation victory. It would reshape culture itself.
Humility in Practice
One of the most powerful themes in our conversation with Lei Wan was restraint.
She described how, when they were growing up, they never announced where they were going or what they were gathering. The phrase was holo holo, meaning to wander. “You never disclosed what you were doing,” she explained. “The kupuna, the elders would say, the fish have ears, or the forest can hear you.”
There is humility embedded in that language. Saying you are “fishing” assumes you will return with fish. Concealing the action respects uncertainty and acknowledges the ecosystem’s agency.
Today, social media geotagging and public boasting change that dynamic. Lei Wan shared her concern: “I worry because now kids boast and they show where they went to go hunt… and I worry for that.” When knowledge moves faster than restraint, pressure follows.
From Plantation to Dependency
The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 marked a turning point. Land control shifted. Sugar expanded. Traditional agriculture contracted. Rice replaced poi in many households. Imported flour replaced taro. Military supply chains normalized canned goods like Spam.
Food moved from diversified local systems to export economies and import dependency. As we discuss in the episode, when you lose control of land, you lose control of food. And when you lose control of food, you lose sovereignty.
Audrey Wilson shared a memory from her childhood of dock strikes, when ships did not arrive, and grocery shelves thinned. “I have two ulu trees in my backyard,” she told us. “With that thought process that if we ever didn’t have food, we could live off of the tree.”
Breadfruit, planted generations earlier, still produces. “What if there’s a dock strike anymore now? We have the fruits, we have the breadfruit.”
There is something quiet about that. No panic. No headlines. Just a tree doing what it was planted to do.
Multicultural Layers and Misunderstandings
Hawaiʻi’s food today reflects migration and layering. Poke, often misunderstood as a modern trend, began as a practicality. Audrey explained that smaller fish that could not be cut into sashimi were chopped into cubes. “It probably started off with using the end pieces,” she said. Waste became cuisine.
Chef Domingo emphasized an important distinction: Hawaiian food versus Hawaiʻi food. “I really hope that people will take a deeper look and learn about Hawaiian food versus Hawaii food… Hawaiian food, I believe, is something that would truly connect you to the land.”
Chicken long rice may be beloved, but it is not pre-contact Hawaiian cuisine. Understanding those layers matters.
Taste as Preservation
Throughout our conversations, one idea kept returning: practice keeps knowledge alive.
Lei Wan reflected on conservation work and cultural continuity. “Plants or these traditions are only as good as we make them… I get really offended because I still use it as that, and I’m not dead. We’re still alive.”
The strongest memory, she reminded us, is taste. “You become part of that legacy and that history of that plant by tasting it… keep it alive because it’s so important.”
Taste keeps knowledge alive. Practice keeps species alive.
Engineered Resilience
A thousand years ago, Polynesian navigators engineered a food system that fed everyone without imports. Today, Hawaiʻi imports nearly 90 percent of its food. Ships arrive daily. If they stop, the bowl empties.
And yet, terraces still flow. Limu still grows. Pigs are still hunted. Fish still run. Language is being revived. Chef collectives are reconnecting with indigenous knowledge. The knowledge is not gone. It is practiced, protected, and revived.
Hawaiʻi is engineered resilience. It is ancient systems and modern pressures overlapping in real time.
If you understand a bowl of poi, you understand these islands.
If the ships stopped tomorrow, who fills the bowl?
In Episode 264 of the Wild Fish and Game Podcast, we explore that question in depth with the voices of those living it every day. This is the beginning of the Wild American Foodscapes series, and Hawaiʻi sets the bar high. Listen now, rethink what you think you know about Hawaiian food, and ask yourself what fills the bowl in your home.