Having a bottle of water in your backpack isn’t unusual, unless you are artist Kapulani Landgraf. Inside her bottle there was a photograph printed with words, submerged in her own version of salt water — or, to be precise, "Salt Wada," the title that she, Kaili Chun and April Drexel agreed on to showcase the work of Native Hawaiian artists who also teach art. Enticing as her bottles are, Landgraf doesn’t know their life span. She says, "The art is the process."

The "Salt Wada" show opened as 3,000 people from 20 countries arrived for the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education, or WiPCE, taking place on the Kapiolani Community College campus.

Nine artists have expressed deep concerns, using their own understanding of the elements of salt and water. Drexel suggests, "perhaps it would help if people knew the ancestral memory of place and space. The most important message of this show, before more social erasures happen, is memory and the knowledge of protocol. We hope it engages everybody in the discussion."

Chun was in New Orleans working with a grant. She says her thoughts ran to migration and transmigration, how people come over the water and affect a place. In her work, akule, opelu, moi and a visiting non-native fish or two seem graphically pleasing. On closer inspection the fish seem confused, she says, "all mixed up not in what we cast for ourselves, but rather what others cast for us."

Kauka de Silva’s wheel-thrown bowls are black from a kukui nut oil-based glaze, filled with cinders and red salt and the message that "we would almost rather eat rocks than give up our civil rights."

"Anahulu," by Abigail Romanchak, covers a wall in individual collograph prints of rising, full and diminishing phases of the moon, covered with throw net.

"Hawaiians were masters of knowing lunar cycles and resource management, using that understanding to create a harmonious relationship with their environment," she said.

Maile Andrade hand etched "LAHUI" into her cast glass shapes, then placed them in a sea of red and white salt islands, atolls and beaches from Hawaii to Tahiti and beyond.

Weighing in from his walks along the East River in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mai­ka’i Tubbs watches the man-made, cardboard landscapes that grow at night and are collected by morning.

In response he created a cardboard ti leaf wrapping a pumice. "I remember tourists in Hawaii touching stones, wrapped in ti leaves, placed along the road. My ti is cardboard and my stone is pumice," said Tubbs.

Also opening in time to educate the temporary city of educators, the Lama Library showcases the "3Rs" exhibit. In it, Drexel challenged 27 faculty, staff and students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa to think about what they respect, what their responsibilities are and how they would rewrite the script of history.

Twenty-seven answers fill the walls and the display cases at the Lama Library. Pen, pencil, ink, lau hala, acrylic paint, photographs, Nii­hau shells and yarn are the materials.

The curators agree: The hearts of the artists are the tools.