With a voice loud enough to fill an entire Heber J. Grant Building chapel without a microphone, Dr. Kiana Frank, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told BYU–Hawaii students about how she ate mud as a child.
“When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me the mo’olelo [story] of the edible mud,” Frank began her presentation. “She said the mud was so ono [delicious] but that the only way I could harvest the mud was to be absolutely quiet.”
So little Kiana began quietly eating a lot of mud, Frank said. She said that was when she began asking questions about the environment.
As a child she said she wondered, “Why did the green mud taste like limu and why did the red mud taste like when you bite the inside of your mouth? And why did the black mud… well, have you guys ever smelled black mud? Yeah, it didn’t taste good.”
Derek Whetten, IT Operations and Finance Analyst of the Office of Information Technology, is the one who invited Dr. Frank to BYUH. He said he met her in 2019 at the Mauna Kea protests where she gave presentations connecting ancient Hawaiian ways and modern science. Whetten said Frank can combine Hawaiian culture and science well because of her deep understanding of both. “She’s erased the conflict,” he said.
Protests began at Mauna Kea, one of the most sacred dormant volcanoes of Hawaiian religion, in 2014 because of the choice to place a 30-meter telescope there, according to Hawaii's National Public Radio reports. In her quest to solve this conflict, Frank has been reading old Hawaiian newspapers and journals, said Whetten. She is searching for how the kupuna [elders and ancestors] managed the land and translating their methods into modern science. Whetten observed she is relearning lost information to create a healthier Hawaiian ecosystem.
When she first learned about microbes in high school, Frank said her world exploded into focus. “I became a microbiologist because microbes are just the coolest,” she said. “Microbes shape ecosystems, ridge to reef. Our kupuna innately understood that and put that knowledge into practice.”
Frank’s work is all about combining the mo’olelo, or ancient mythology of Hawaii, with the modern science of microbiology. She explained that science was her mechanism to malama ‘aina, or care for the land, which is why her work focuses on the sustainability of Hawaiian ecosystems.
Frank said she thinks about microbes as the kinolau, or physiological representation, of Haumea, the Hawaiian birth mother. She said Haumea birthed the islands and represents origins. She is reborn in every new generation through the maternal lineage, said Frank.
“As a molecular biologist I think, ‘What is something that is reborn in every generation but only comes from the mother?’” Frank said to the crowd. “Mitochondria,” she answered herself and the whole audience droned in unison, “the powerhouse of the cell.”
Frank explained in reproduction the only thing that passes on is the mitochondria from the mother. Haumea is being reborn every generation as mitochondria, she said.
For those who aren’t scientifically minded, Frank gave a more universally understandable explanation of the development of mitochondria. “Imagine if you had Jason Momoa from Baywatch, and he’s cruising around with his skinny little legs and then one day he transforms into the Game-of-Thrones, Khal-Drogo-version of Jason Momoa. Everybody is super jealous of him but everybody also wants to give him a hug – I know I do,” Frank said. “We hug Jason Momoa so hard that we basically suck him into ourselves. Through endosymbiosis we get the origin of the eukaryotic cell, that’s the development of the mitochondria,” she explained.
Frank said she believes although kupuna could not see microbes, they knew of their presence from their observations. People can do a lot of things to observe microbes, explained Frank. “I’m always smelling things because microbes fart a lot,” she said. “Our kupuna tasted the waters and described the taste of water extensively. Now we just have different tools to taste the water with greater precision. My tongue is probably not as precise as our kupunas because of all that artificial sugar,” Frank joked.
Frank said it is obvious to her the kupuna understood microbes because of their actions and interactions with the land. They had a deep understanding that everything is connected, said Frank. She said an example of this was when the kupuna would canoe into the ocean and dive down to the bottom. They would collect cold, bubbling water coming out of the ocean floor and use the water to support their life on land. “The kupuna understood these places so well they knew they could paddle into the ocean to harvest fresh water,” Frank explained.
After her forum, Dr. Frank was invited to BYUH’s Hawaiian studies garden behind campus. Students majoring in Hawaiian studies welcomed her with a hookipa, a welcoming song or chant, to kick off their lunch together.
To watch Dr. Frank’s entire presentation, click Here.