A small group of kindred souls gathered in this beautiful botanical garden on a stunning summer day just past solstice. The green refreshment of the plants and trees, the fragrant orchid greenhouse, and the Hawaiian garden stood in stark contrast to the roaring cars just beyond the border fence and the unhoused population camped out in the nearby city streetscape. The 13.5-acre garden fronts a freeway on one side, developed on colonized land above Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) wahi pana (sacred sites) and cherished ʻāina (land). Nearby to the east is downtown Honolulu and the Chinatown Historic District, where thousands of Chinese immigrants left their mark during Hawaiʻi’s plantation era, which also welcomed peoples from Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, and more.

Hawaiʻi’s many-layered history can be felt and seen from this curated garden oasis, including the agony of Chinatown’s Great Fire of 1900 — a government-set conflagration initiated to control the spread of the bubonic plague, first brought to Oʻahu’s shores via rats aboard cargo ships landing at Honolulu’s port. The stories of Hawaiʻi’s complex and painful past — domination by a world power, extraction born of sugar plantations and later pineapple, and the attempted erasure of the host indigenous culture — are inextricably linked to this land. The garden itself carries that layering: it traces back to 1853, when Queen Kalama leased a portion of her land to Dr. William Hillebrand, a German physician and botanist who built his home here and planted many of the towering trees still standing on the Upper Terrace today.

Our host shared a brief history of these events and others which unfolded close to this site throughout Hawaiʻi’s history, leaving energetic and physical impressions. Our group gathered to listen to these stories, felt into them through our own bodies, hearts, and spirits, honoring the wounding that took place, then alchemizing the pain through our act of witnessing and love.