ʻAi Pōhaku – The Stone Eaters is a community-based economic endeavor on Oʻahu that continues to nurture and grow their ʻāina connection through the cultivation, gathering, and production of real food. They are on the path to creating a true livelihood for their community and island nation. With a strong foundation of the tradition of kuʻi kalo (hand-pounding kalo into paʻiʻai and poi), they have spent a good part of the last 10 years learning about kiawe as a food for their people. Even though kiawe has been in the islands for almost 200 years, this ancient food is brand new for almost all of Hawaiʻi's people.

The founder of ʻAi Pōhaku, Vince Kanaʻi Dodge, is a papa (grandfather), educator, cultural practitioner and longtime resident of Waiʻanae where kiawe trees are plentiful. One day in early 2006 on MAʻO Organic Farms, a couple from Arizona shared that "mesquite" – the cousin of kiawe – was a staple of all the Southwest native peoples. They said it was a sweet, nutritious and diabetic-friendly food. At that time, the Waiʻanae community was in the throes of a diabetic epidemic. Imagine: a sweet, nutritious diabetic-friendly food growing in their backyards...Vince was called. It seemed to be no accident that the concentration of kiawe and diabetes were in the same place.

Since then they traveled to Tucson, Arizona to take the Desert Harvesters' mesquite milling training in 2009, and in 2012 to Argentina to visit the Wichí people who continue to eat kiawe daily as they have been for a thousand years. Through their journey, they acquired a small mill designed to grind kiawe bean pods into flour.

They are the sole producers of kiawe bean pod flour in the Hawaiian islands.
They feel blessed to be joined in this endeavor by their elementary to high school youth, by some of our houseless people, by cultural practitioners, by aunties and uncles, by passionate cooks, chefs and bakers, by our friends here, on the continent, and in Argentina, by our families, and many, many lovers of our ʻāina.