This is Bird Note.

Noah Gomes is an educator and researcher

with a lifelong love of birds and a passion for Hawaiian culture and language.

Our native birds have a lot of meaning and a lot of different ways.

A lot of them appear in our stories and our mele, our chants.

His research into native Hawaiian names for birds has helped shed light

on the long-standing connections between people and birds on the islands.

Noah helped reconnect the name Alevi to the bird otherwise known as the Hawaiian Creeper.

Names are power, right? You know something's name.

You have a degree of familiarity with it.

You have a relationship you're building with it.

Knowing the name for this bird is Alevi connects us.

We're suddenly it's relevant to all kinds of things in our past that we didn't know about.

It's particularly important for native peoples who have experience

loss of their language because there are so many things encoded in that.

By exploring the links between humans and wildlife,

Noah says we can find better ways to live alongside these birds,

many of which are at risk of extinction.

Everything is just really connected in a lot of different ways

within the indigenous world, within the science world.

There are things that we can learn from the indigenous way of thinking.

Not just living, but the way of thinking and the perspectives that are involved with that

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