Community turns out for UH Maui College’s Molokaʻi Farm Niu & Kalo Festival

UH Maui College’s Molokaʻi Farm hosted a Niu & Kalo Festival earlier this month, drawing about 200 community members, cultural practitioners, students, educators and partner organizations for a day centered on coconut and taro.

“It was a day dedicated to celebrating the history, cultural significance, use, protection, and perpetuation of two of our most important ancestral plants,” Farm Manager Olelo Schonely Spencer said.

The multigenerational festival included hands-on workshops, demonstrations, knowledge-sharing sessions, food and music. “There was something for everyone,” Spencer said, “from keiki to kūpuna.”

Sustainable Molokaʻi, one of the event’s partner organizations, led a Niu & Kalo Cooking Contest in which 17 home cooks prepared dishes featuring kalo, niu or both. Organizers said the contest was intended to encourage recipe sharing and demonstrate creative, healthy ways to work ancestral foods into everyday meals.

Hawaiʻi chef Sam Choy, known for his poke, served as a contest judge and demonstrated a kalo poke recipe for attendees.

Spencer said the festival underscored the shared responsibility to care for and protect niu and kalo, including efforts to guard coconut trees against the coconut rhinoceros beetle, and to pass that knowledge on to future generations.

“The festival was a reminder of the shared kuleana to mālama and protect these resources,” Spencer said, “and to continue passing this knowledge on to future generations.”