MALINA

I was born and raised on the lush green side of the Big Island of Hawaii and enjoyed a childhood largely spent in nature. My parents introduced me to eclectic spiritual and holistic health practices, which I openly embraced. I continue to have an open mind and an interest in learning and trying new things. I excelled throughout my school years and planned to become an environmental lawyer to fight corporate injustices. I moved to southern California for undergrad, where I studied law, mass communication and film production. During this time I fell in love with documentary film making and was fortunate to have many diverse experiences – from interviewing experts on wide ranging subjects to traveling to the jungles of southern Uganda to film with the indigenous Batwa. I was an activist at heart, and the camera and editing software were my tools for change. After graduating college I spent several years producing and shooting a feature film called The Coverup on the toxic chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products. I was fortunate to interview many people whom I respect (including Ralph Nader, Ken Cook, and Jennifer Sass) about America’s weak and outdated chemical policies that are putting countless lives and the environment at risk. During this time I received support from the Redford Center to co-produce a short film on the effects of sunscreen pollution on coral reefs, marine life, and human health. Reefs At Risk was seen by over a million people worldwide and helped get legislation passed in Hawaii to ban the sale of sunscreens with oxybenzone and octinoxate. A combination of factors led me to put my film career and activism on hold for awhile and focus instead on caring for an aging parent, developing meaningful relationships with others, and connecting more with my food source. I started gardening, joined a women’s circle, and replaced my camera equipment with a frisbee and paddle ball. When the opportunity presented itself to help co-envision this intentional community I decided it was the right place to put my energy at this time. Reflecting on my own values and the state of the world today makes me eager to live more sustainably with others and give back to the earth more than we take.

DIGA

Hello! I strive to direct my energy with humility, gratitude, and service to nurturing this planet’s vast web of life. My life choices reflect a consistent effort to de-construct tenacious, unhealthy inner and outer patterns of patriarchy, exploitation, individualism, and separation. Self-exploration, intentional community experience, and interdisciplinary studies convince me that community/clan/tribe living is an important missing link in how to most ecologically express our highly social nature. I love growing food and building soil, with practical knowledge in permaculture, Korean natural farming, aquaponics, rotational grazing, raw dairy, fermented foods, and slaughter/butchering.  I’ve also done construction, beekeeping, wood milling, solar system maintenance, grant writing, workshop facilitation, elementary education, and fencing. I spent 10 years living in a matri-centered kinship clan where my daughter was born and where I co-parented five other children, now all adults. There I learned responsible/vulnerable communication, conflict resolution, consensus decision-making, and continuum parenting. Making a baby was the most positively-influential choice in my life, and I welcome the opportunity to be near children again. I’ve been musical director of four grant-funded original children’s theater programs, continue to write/arrange songs, and for a decade ran a performing marimba ensemble. I would love to be a part of collaborative, activist musical theater in the future. I’m white, male, heterosexual, and benefit in numerous ways by being born into these categories in our society. I attempt to maintain awareness of my privilege and use what gifts and status I have for the education and liberation of all people and the healing of our planet. A warning: my plays-on-words are so frequent that those around me can feel punished. Tendencies towards saturating guilt, absent-mindedness, and unresponsive slumber are among my many faults, as is a sometimes inability to act decisively in pivotal moments. I’d rather work on my faults than resign myself to them, and strive to be always open to feedback and reflection. These days, I enjoy slow mornings reading and sipping tea with my partner Jasmine, forest restoration in the nearby reserve, and steadily gathering myself for this next chapter in community.  

Jasmine

I’m a Third Culture Kid: born in Holland of Brazilian and Dutch parents, raised in Hong Kong and Taiwan, eventually moving to the U.S. at age 16.  Since then, I’ve lived in New York, California, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and finally, Hawai’i.  As a result of this global nomadism, my sense of “home” originated in the only constant that existed–my family.  But by the time I was 32 I had lost my father to a heart attack and my mother to cancer.  “Family” was reduced to me and my older brother. At that time the deficiencies and limitations of the nuclear family as a social unit became glaring to me and the benefits of living like a tribe or clan in an intentional community emerged. From a young age I had a strong intuition that my culture didn’t fit into the larger harmony of the living world.  Being a very curious person, I asked “too many” questions; I was hungry for answers, reasons, and understanding. With wonderment, awe, and reverence for the natural world I learned that there are patterns that repeat themselves from the micro to the macro that create the web of life; that everything is imbued with spirit, is alive, and working together; and I too am part of that interplay and interconnection. Perhaps this is what draws me to the handmade, the human-scale, to rewilding, nature awareness, ancestral skills, to permaculture, and subsistence living. My liberal arts college experience helped inform my worldview, connecting ideas from prehistory to the present. I chose art, specifically Sculpture, to be my megaphone for activism, to critique, analyze, and theorize about the glaring issues of our culture that have driven us to our current planetary crisis. It wasn’t until after I received my MFA in Sculpture and Fiber Arts that I rejected the art world’s capitalistic nature and radically shifted my creative passions towards deep ecology and voluntary simplicity. The past 16 years have been spent exploring subsistence living, appropriate technology, nature-based health, the health of the planet, plant medicines, and local activism. Determined to found a multi-generational family of friends, I’m excited to bond with kids (having consciously chosen to have none of my own), grow my new family, and find my niche of meaningful activist work in Community.  Part of this work will combine my interests and creativity in making, crafting and growing the necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing—in functional and beautiful ways using appropriate technologies; the skills I learn will be shared with others freely.

rev. 5/2/2021