Malama ‘aina: Native Hawaiian land care philosophy as a potential response to farmer stress and suicide

Explore (NY). 2026 Apr 24;22(4):103429. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2026.103429. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the connection between caring for the land and caring for ourselves, specifically as a response to, and within the context of, adverse mental health among Hawaiian farmers. After providing a brief, empirically informed overview of the farmer mental health crisis, we turn our attention to the native Hawaiians’ rich and sophisticated tradition of environmental philosophy, which is underpinned by the land-care ethic of mālama ‘āina. We show that the Hawaiian environmental ontology is relational, in that nature and people are intimately and metaphysically interconnected, and we argue that because of this metaphysical embeddedness of people within the land, in the Hawaiian worldview there is no clear distinction between land-care, community-care, and self-care. Moreover, we posit that traditional Hawaiian thought frames agricultural economics, ecology, and wellbeing as complementary concepts, rather than mutually exclusive modalities. We aim to illustrate that this holistic approach to land and community care means that Hawai’i is perhaps uniquely positioned to address the present farmer mental health crisis and, consequently, we conclude that the reintegration of native Hawaiian philosophy into contemporary Hawaiian society would be likely to precipitate improvements in the mental health outcomes of (native and non-native) Hawaiian agricultural workers, and Hawaiian society at-large.

PMID:42066589 | DOI:10.1016/j.explore.2026.103429