I called Kale Gumapac, Alaka‘i of the Kanaka Council, on his cell phone the other day.

Some who don’t know the people on the Kanaka Council are afraid of them. Some think Kanaka Council members are radical and unpredictable.

I think they are uncompromising, principled people. I’m very comfortable around them.

When I called, the conversation went like this: “Eh Kale, Dawn Chang just called me to ask if you guys going make the meeting with her at the County Building in Kona?” I told him that Dawn had asked me to come to the meeting, which was about the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Management Plan draft, in order to give her moral support. But I had forgotten about the meeting.

Kale replied that he had four guys in the car and was on his way to Kona. Then he said, “I should have thought to call you so we could all ride down to Kona together.”

The previous meeting between the Kanaka Council and Dawn Chang, at the Queen Lili’uokalani Children’s Center, had been heated and very contentious. It was tough. Dawn told me that it was the toughest meeting she had had to date. So she was a little concerned about this one.

Later, though, she told me that this meeting with the Kanaka Council turned out to be the most constructive meeting she had ever had. She was astounded.

I wasn’t surprised.

The Kanaka Council and I have been on opposite side of issues before. I didn’t know what they were going to say to Dawn, nor did they know what I was going to talk about. But it didn’t matter.

Kale’s offering me a ride to Kona with them meant I had a ride back to Hilo, too, no matter what happened at the meeting. In other words, we had agreed to disagree and still be friends afterwards.

On the way back to Hilo, the conversation could have gone something like this: “Eh, try pass the boiled peanuts.” And we would have been friends talking stories the rest of the way.

This is how it should be. We all need to respect each other. Sooner or later, oil prices will rise again and we will have to depend on each other. We need to have a tight-knit community. We need more friends, rather than less. We also need to be close to our families.