There is a Hawaiian chant, Kumulipo. In this chant we express the understanding that all beings are created from the duality of dark and light. It is a declaration that we all live within and were created by and will continue to exist from the union of Akea, the sky father and Papa, the earth mother. And from that union, all of us, from those of us that traverse the land to those who glide along the sky, descended from the first coral polyp that emerged from the dark depths of the ocean.

This is the Hawaiian understanding of how we all exist, intrinsically linked to those who came millennia before us. And, western science is acknowledging this origin, too.

In 2015, one of the oldest living beings, a type of black coral that dates back over 4,000 years, was discovered in Papa- hanaumokuakea, one of the largest Marine Protected Monuments in the United States. This literal polyp, older than almost any living being on earth today, reaffirms our foundationational understanding of connectivity rooted in indigenous Hawaiian science.

Protecting Papahanaumokuakea and all of our oceans is more vital than ever.

As scientists learn more about human carbon emissions and how they increase the effects of climate change, we are all beginning to understand how inescapably linked we are to Papahanaumokuakea and to the ocean as a whole. And this connection is creating an ocean that is warmer, more acidic, less productive, increasingly starved of oxygen, and less habitable for fish and marine wildlife.

The ocean takes nearly 30% of emissions created by humans. In addition to filtering carbon dioxide, the ocean actually provides more than half of the oxygen we breathe. It could be said that our first breath of oxygen comes from terrestrial sources and our second breath of oxygen comes from the phytoplankton in the ocean. However, we are depending on a resource that we are simultaneously destroying.

We must begin to reframe legislation and conservation efforts such that they not only react to problems, but that they come from a collaboration with Indigenous leaders who, in turn, come from an intrinsic collaboration with the earth and its oceans.

Indigenous Hawaiian people have always been stewards of the ocean, and we have known that protection of marine ecosystems was important even before climate change was apparent. Now — more than ever — maintaining these marine areas is vital to all of us. This is why I call not only for lawmakers to enact legislation that actively protects cultural heritage and biodiversity of areas like Papahanaumokuakea, but also to do so in such a way that expressly involves indigenous leaders in that lawmaking.

When Papahanaumokuakea was expanded in 2016, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was given co-management authority. This integration of Native Hawaiian voices enabled and empowered our people and our culture to make decisions informed by generations of knowledge that are a vital part of the fight against climate change.

We have all come from the depths of a dark ocean that both protects and nourishes us, and we also must return to that ocean to not only understand the effect we have on it, but feel and see that effect first-hand. And indigenous Hawaiian leaders have seen and felt that change long before the western scientific world came to terms with it. Which is why we must — we must — work together.

The ocean we have now, is the only one we will ever have, and Indigenous leaders throughout the world have knowledge, science, and understanding that is not only valuable but is vital to the survival of the Earth.

Solomon Kaho’ohalahala, a native son of Lanai, is an eighth-generation descendant of a long line of Native Hawaiians that has included elders, navigators, fishers, hunters, farmers and paniolo.