Evening for Environment

Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawaiʻi. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years.  

Norma is the author of two books, When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse

 (North Atlantic) and Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse (North Atlantic), ranked 13^th among independent bookstores and featured on UC Berkeley summer reading list.

In earlier years, Wong served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal  and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She led teams to negotiate agreements on the munitions cleanup of Kahoʻolawe Island, ceded land revenue for Native Hawaiians, and the return of lands and settlement of land issues for Hawaiian Home Lands. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years.  

In recent years, Wong has been called back into service to facilitate breaking the impasse and transforming policy and governance on issues of seeming contradiction.  In the conflict between native culture/science and western discovery science posing as a dispute over the construction of a telescope on Maunakea, Wong was a team member narrating and facilitating a path forward through mutual stewardship. She currently serves as a community advisor on issues such as the protection of the aquifer from fuel contamination at Red Hill and the long-term response to the Lahaina wildfires. 

Norma has spent many years in the applied space – the direct application of indigenous and Zen ways, values and practices to living and transformational change critical to our times. Norma is part of the Collective Acceleration community of practice and host of The Horizon Story podcast.