"Filling in Puka": Interview with Ryan "Gonzo" Gonzalez
- "Filling in Puka"Interview with Ryan "Gonzo" Gonzalez
Ryan "Gonzo" Gonzalez is the head of Network Engagement for Kanaeokana, a network of over sixty land-, language-, and culture-based schools and other organizations. Gonzo's Network Engagement team included content creators, videographers, and photographers who were a core part of Nā Leo Kāko'o, the kia'i media team. Mahalo nui loa iā 'oe, e Gonzo, for sharing your kūpa'a and imagination.
June 16, 2020
Would you please just share some of your background and how you came into the work, and then also tell us what your role on the media team was and how you would describe your relationship with the Mauna before and after being on the team?
My role on the media team was kind of just filling in puka wherever there were puka in regards to the communications that needed to go out. 'Ilima [Long] was kind of our conduit to the leadership circle, and then I would say that there was myself, Kēhau [Abad], and 'Ilima that kind of helped kind of just overall. And then we had a whole bunch of other people who were plugging in and filling in puka as needed. It was very organic.
I don't know a lot. And I didn't come into all of this awesome cultural stuff until much later in my life, and so I think back to points in my life that made the lightbulb click in my head. Or if I don't understand something, I go ahead and seek out those who know, and through that process, it allows me to better articulate what it is I feel that will reach the particular audience that we're trying to hit. Often-times you're trying to hit, not the core so much, but those who are just adjacent to the core. That way we can start bringing more people into the core.
My relationship to the Mauna before and after, although I do have some ancestors that come from Honoka'a and the Waimea area, I am totally malihini to [End Page 638] Moku o Keawe. All I've known is my life on O'ahu, growing up in Mō'ili'ili, and now in He'eia.
I would say that I was kind of reborn in He'eia because that's where my relationships with 'āina became a little bit more concrete, and I could start to experience what everybody was saying for a long time. Because when you think about it, when you spend your whole life within a system that's telling you that things work a certain way and they're treating stuff like 'āina as like private property and things that you own, just a means to an end, something that you can just continue to take from and move onto the next thing, it's kind of a really huge ah-ha moment. For me, it was just jumping into the lo'i and seeing the kalo dance in the winds, seeing the lo'i breathe, feeling it breathe.
Oftentimes you're just in there with your thoughts, and your senses are heightened in so many different ways. There's the spiritual, there's the emotional, there's the physical, cultural connections that are being made that you don't usually make time for in the modern, daily lifestyle. When I think about my relationship to food prior to starting to try to grow my own, I was like okay, cellophane wrapper, go to the store, I need something, it's on-demand. I don't know how long it takes to "grow poi." Nine months, what? It's going to take me nine months to grow this thing and I gotta go every day and I gotta maintain that thing? And I gotta have this relationship with it, and then I harvest, and then what, I have to pound it and stuff? It's crazy.
And for me that was my journey in terms of trying to understand what people mean...
