Kava is a plant that has been grown throughout the South Pacific for over 3,000 years. Just like coffee and tea, kava is prepared as a beverage and consumed socially with friends and family.
Starting out as a wild plant known as Piper Wichmanii, kava became Piper Methysticum after Melanesian and Polynesian peoples selectively bred the plant for particular effects. As a canoe plant, its status in island societies became ever-present and became integral to the foundations of these societies.
Spreading throughout the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Hawaii, kava has been celebrated for millenia by a variety of cultures in incredibly different ways. While some societies dry their kava, others consume it right after a fresh harvest. In some societies it’s only consumed in ritualistic settings, while most drink kava in cultural and recreational ways.
In the western world, kava has been consumed for at least two hundred years. Captain Cook’s associate George Forster was the first to document the plant in 1777. Since then, fascinations with what kava is (and isn’t) continue today. The International Kava Organization aims to educate western institutions that continue to confuse kava with extracts and other unrelated plants.
It’s easy to take kava for granted. After all, it’s been front and center in Pacific Islander life for 3,000 years. Particularly striking is how the kava plant relies on human intervention to continue to survive. As a sterile plant, kava cannot rely on spreading its seed via wind or animal. Rather, this unique plant has relied on humans cultivation for its propagation and distribution throughout the world. Without humans, there would be no kava.
Like the ancestral Oceanic forefathers, we now decide kava’s fate. In the past they may have been most concerned about drought, famine, or disease. Today, government regulations decided by institutions who know little about this plant are the modern day problems kava faces. Tightening international trade, misinformation, flawed scientific studies, and unscrupulous industry have given kava a bad look. We’re correcting this narrative.
Kava is safe, good for our families, and helpful in our day-to-day lives.
