Heiaus and Home Lands

"The very roots of the identity of the Hawaiian people are to be found in the term aloha ‘āina" (Andrade 2013: 9)

The importance of the ‘āina (the land) in Hawaiian culture cannot be understated. As any kupuna (elders) will tell you, the ‘āina is the provider of everything. The ‘āina, and all of the life forces of nature, is the source of food, spiritual well-being, and political power of the Hawaiian people (McGregor & MacKenzie 2014: 63). It is also where the 'ohana (family) work, live, and return as spirits generation after generation (Boggs 1977: 1). The land is a direct link to their ancestry and sense of identity.

"Aloha ʻĀina" translates to “Love and respect the land, its resources and the life forces of the land that were honored and worshipped by Hawaiian ancestors as deities” (McGregor & MacKenzie 2014: 51). The phrase was used by the Hui Aloha ʻĀina (Hawaiian Patriotic League) in 1893 to support the constitutional monarchy and oppose annexation. When the U.S. Navy used the island of Kahoʻolawe as a live-fire bombing and firing range for the aerial war over Vietnam in 1967, Native Hawaiians across the archipelago were once again rallied around the common cause of "Aloha ʻĀina" (ibid.).     

Hawaiians have a responsibility to "mālama ka 'aina" (take care of and nurture the land), so that it will give back all they need to sustain life for future generations in return. To love the land is to respect it, to return gifts (offerings) to it, to beautify it, and to use it properly, rather than greedily (Hall 2005: 405).

"The power of the chiefs to govern was derived from their ancestral connection and relationship to the land and to the godly life forces of nature." (McGregor & MacKenzie 2014: 65)

Hawaiian sovereignty has always been tied to the land. In order to understand how the landscape of the Big Island today relates to Native Hawaiian identities of the past and present, we'll first need to take a look how the current system of land use came to be.

Abbreviated from McGregor & MacKenzie 2014: 24-52

• Settlers from French Polynesia – either Tahiti or the Marquesas, no one knows for sure – make the 2000-mile transpacific voyage in canoes. They arrive on the Big Island first, and slowly colonize the rest of the archipelago over the centuries (Smithsonian 2007).

• A unique ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Native Hawaiian language) and Nā ʻIke a me Nā Hana Hawaiʻi (Native Hawaiian culture) emerges as distinct from that of the Polynesian homeland.
• A social system develops of cooperative work amongst large ‘ohana (extended families)

• Ruling chiefs in every district on each island assume stewardship over the land. They organize the makaʻāinana (common people) to create irrigation networks, roads and fishponds to support rapidly expanding populations.
• A.D. 1400: transpacific voyaging from Tahiti finally ends, leaving the native Hawaiian social system to develop without external influence over the next 200 years.

• Four aliʻi nui (high chiefs) rule four distinct chiefdoms (Hawaiʻi, Maui, Oʻahu, Kauaʻi), competing for control through inter-island alliances and marriages, religious rituals and military conquest.
• 1778: English explorer Captain James Cook lands on Kaua'i and becomes the first European to travel to the Hawaiian Islands (Smithsonian 2020).

• One high chief, Kamehameha I, conquers and unifies all of the islands under his central rule (except for Kauaʻi and Niʻihau, but he gained the allegiance of their Aliʻi Nui). Thus, the entire archipelago is united as the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi under King Kamehameha I.
• 1819: Official abandonment of state religious system. When Kamehameha I dies, his son Liholiho (Kamehameha II) abandons the kapu system, the strict ancient Hawaiian code of conduct that had always dictated lifestyle, gender roles, natural resource use, politics, and religion (Levin 1968: 412).
• 1820: First Christian missionaries arrive. Shortly thereafter, Western whalers and merchants arrive and introduce disease that devastates Native Hawaiian populations. Their commercial practices that commodify natural and cultural landscapes threaten the sacred ʻāina.

• 1839: King Kamehameha III proclaims the Declaration of Rights in 1839 in effort to maintain Kingdom of Hawaii’s independence, which turns into Hawai’i’s first Constitution in 1840.
• 1842: The Hawaiian Kingdom is recognized by U.S. as an independent nation and enters into treaties with nearly every major world power.
• Native Hawaiians in rural areas continue to preserve and practice essential elements of Hawaiian culture, including the stewardship of ancestral lands.
• American planters and foreign business interests, along with an entirely white 500-man militia called the Honolulu Rifles, force King Kalākaua to sign the Bayonet Constitution when he refuses to turn over control of Pu’uloa (Pearl Harbor) to the U.S. The new Constitution transfers executive power from the King to a cabinet selected by the foreign parties.

• 1893-1900: Non-native citizens and residents of the Hawaiian Kingdom, who controlled the sugar-based economy at the time, usurp native Hawaiian governance with the help of the U.S. government.
• Provisional government declares itself to be the Republic of Hawai’i, which does not represent the Native Hawaiian people.
• 1898: U.S. annexes Hawaii as a territory by resolution, despite overwhelming opposition from Native Hawaiians. To this day, no treaty for the annexation of Hawaiʻi has ever been ratified by the U.S. Senate or signed by a U.S. President.

The Newland Resolution that annexed Hawai'i in 1898 transferred the title to the public lands held by the Republic of Hawaii to the United States. The nearly 1.8 million acres of government and crown lands was estimated to have a value of at least $5.5 million (McGregor & MacKenzie 2014: 41).

This transfer of land titles brings us to the historical context that gave rise to the Hawaiian Home Lands system that exists today. At the turn of the twentieth century, the health and social conditions of the Native Hawaiians was alarming. As large ranches and plantations continued to displace and marginalize Native Hawaiian taro farmers and fishermen to isolated rural communities, it was widely believed that the kānaka maoli were facing extinction (ibid.: 44).

In response to the plight of the Native Hawaiians, U.S. Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act in 1921. The Act set aside over 200,000 acres of the "ceded land" for homesteading by Native Hawaiians of not less than one-half Hawaiian ancestry (ibid.: 49). The 199-year homestead leases are for residential, agricultural or pastoral purposes at an annual rental of $1 (ibid.: 9). The goal was to return native Hawaiians to the land while encouraging them to become self-sufficient farmers, ranchers, and homesteaders (DHHL 2002). The interactive ArcGIS map below highlights the location of the current home lands using the most recent data from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL 2015). Feel free to zoom in on the Big Island to check out the smaller tracts of home lands.

"The communities established under the Hawaiian Home Lands program became significant centers of Native Hawaiian cultural, social and economic life and contributed to the persistence of Native Hawaiians as a distinct people within the Hawaiian Islands" (ibid.: 46).

The concept of returning Native Hawaiians to the land, and thereby restoring their connection to their ancestry and culture, sounds great in theory. Although some families have benefitted from the system, Native Hawaiian self-governance organizations like "The Hawaiians" have exposed time and time again the negligence and mismanagement of the DHHL land base (ibid.: 500).

The political compromises made in the nineteenth century in favor of the profitable sugar industry left only the poorer-quality land for homesteading (DHHL Hawai'i Island Plan 2002). The lands across the islands were managed at the time by some of Hawaii’s "Big Five," the handful of companies founded by missionaries that dominated Hawaii's economy through control of the sugar industry and associated businesses (Lovell 2019). The final bill proposed to Congress made concessions to the sugar and ranching interests to gain political support, which included raising the blood quantum requirement to 50 percent (ibid.).

These decisions have lasting impacts on the quality of homestead lands today. On the Big Island, for example, the single largest tract of DHHL land (the large red patch towards the center of the Big Island in the ArcGIS map above) is mostly unusable in its current state. The land is overgrown with a weed called gorse and is only home to feral cattle that contribute to Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, a new fungal disease killing off native ʻŌhiʻa trees (ibid.).

One of the biggest issues, though, is how few Native Hawaiians are actually given the opportunity to live on the home lands. As of last year, more than 28,000 applicants are still on the waiting list (ibid.). Families wait decades for leases, and many die before they ever get off the list.

There is no question that Native Hawaiian populations were diminishing with disease, intermarriage, and land loss at the turn of the 20th century; Hawaiians had numbered about 300,000 when Cook arrived, but by 1853, the native population was down to 70,000 (Smithsonian 2007).

That being said, there are clear parallels with this story and that of the "disappearing" Native Americans on the mainland. While this narrative on the mainland served to justify incorporating Native Americans into the American story as relics of the past, here in Hawai'i some people believe it may have been a way of marginalizing Native Hawaiians to rural areas, or even preventing the many Japanese immigrants from homesteading government land (Lovell 2019). Perhaps the erasure of contemporary Hawaiian and Native American culture, intentional or not, along with the preservation of their pasts through archaeological sites (discussed below), makes them two sides of the same colonial coin.

Another indication that foreign stakeholders may have wanted to keep Native Hawaiian culture as a relic of the past after annexation is the National Park Service's investment in preserving historic sites along the west coast of the Big Island (and elsewhere across the archipelago).

The Big Island is far behind Oahu and Maui in terms of how many tourists it attracts each year (Hawai'i Tourism Authority 2018), but Kona Side (the west side) is the tourist hub of the island. The west coast has luxury resorts, blue waters for diving, and sandy beaches that are far more forgiving than the coast of sharp lava rock on Hilo Side. While the Department of Hawaiian Homelands struggles to provide Native Hawaiians with suitable homesteads, the National Park Service has had little trouble providing top-notch facilities for tourists at archaeological sites and National Parks.

Home Lands may be strongholds of modern Hawaiian identity, but heiaus are the remnants of the ancient Hawaiian identity that was lost when King Kamehameha II abolished the kapu religious and social system in 1819. Heiaus are the stone foundations – either walls, terraces, or mounds – that remain from wooden Hawaiian temples. Heiaus were constructed for many different reasons to honor the deities recognized by the indigenous Hawaiian religion, whether it was peace, war, good fishing, agricultural success, or sacrifices. These temples were a place of worship to connect the people, the deities, the land, and the sea. Many were built on the coastline, oftentimes touching the water, overlooking the vast Pacific Ocean (Cross 2017: 385).

All photos taken by author

It is important to acknowledge that heiaus are not purely a tourist gimmick; cultural festivals are held at these sites each year for Native Hawaiians and other Polynesian peoples to celebrate their centuries-old traditions (National Park Service 2014). They are an authentic part of Hawaiian ancestry, but the built cultural landscape displaying Native Hawaiian ethnicity has largely disappeared with the exception of these archaeological sites and ruins (Cross 2017: 386). In the past, the built cultural landscapes were replaced by sugar plantations and large ranches in the interest of American and European stakeholders (DHHL 2002). Today, it seems that the government organizations protecting the past of Hawaiian culture are more focused on tourism.

Living in Hilo for the past eight months has been a true gift, but also uncomfortable, at times. I feel guilty and ashamed as an American about the past that surrounds me on the Big Island. Knowing that no treaty (only a resolution) was ever signed in annexing the islands, or how land priorities are given to foreign business interests over native people, has made it hard to justify my presence here. I have learned things from local friends that shock me, like how Native Hawaiians must surrender their homesteads unless they keep the bloodline pure to meet the 50% Hawaiian blood quantum required by DHHL. I find the fact that the right for native people to live on their own land is determined by a stipulation created by American colonizers over a century ago to be quite disturbing.

I was fortunate enough to live and spend time with people that grew up here, allowing me to experience sides of the island that no tourist has access to. I visited many of the places that I call "strongholds of Hawaiian culture" in this story, and was very aware how out of place I felt each time. My understanding of how colonizers separated Hawaiian people from the ‘āina (among many other injustices) helped me understand why haole (white people) are not always welcomed by locals.

I have come to truly love this island through my experiences and research on its cultural, natural, and geologic histories. The importance of the ‘āina is what has stood out to me the most. I hope that readers of my assessment learn how land has been at the center of the unjust colonial history of the islands, and that proper memorialization of Hawaiian culture may not be through monuments or even preserving remnants of the past, but rather through protecting the ‘āina and ensuring that the kānaka maoli have access to it.

“Aloha 'Aina: Native Hawaiian Land Restitution.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 133, no. 6, 2020, pp. 2148-2171.

Andrade, Carlos. I Ulu I Ka Āina: Land. Edited by Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio, University of Hawaii Press, 2013.

Boggs, Stephen T. “Meaning of ‘Aina in Hawaiian Tradition.” University of Hawai’I at Manoa ScholarSpace online repository, June 1977. Accessed December 5, 2020, http://hdl.handle.net/10125/34232.

Cross, John A. “Native Hawaiian Landscapes.” Ethnic Landscapes of America, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2017, pp. 383–393.

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Hall, Lisa K. ""Hawaiian at Heart" and Other Fictions." Contemporary Pacific, vol. 17, no. 2, 2005, pp. 404-413,517.

“Hawaii - History and Heritage.” Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Nov. 2007, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/hawaii-history-and-heritage-4164590/. 

Kious, W. Jacquelyne, and Tilling, Robert I. “The long trail of the Hawaiian hotspot.” United States Geological Survey, 1999, https://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/Hawaiian.html.

Levin, Stephenie Seto. “THE OVERTHROW OF THE KAPU SYSTEM IN HAWAII.” Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 77, no. 4, 1968, pp. 402–430.

Lovell, Blaze. “The Problem With Hawaiian Homestead Land? Much Of It Can't Be Developed.” Honolulu Civil Beat, 12 June 2019, www.civilbeat.org/2019/06/the-problem-with-hawaiian-homestead-land-much-of-it-cant-be-developed/.

McGregor, Davianna Pōmaika‘i, and Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie. “Mo‘olelo Ea O Nā Hawai‘i History of Native Hawaiian Governance in Hawai‘i.” Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 2014.

Pu'ukoholā Heiau National Historic Site Hawaii. Pu'ukoholā Heiau, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2014.

“Waipio Valley Lookout.” Go Hawaii, 4 June 2019, www.gohawaii.com/islands/hawaii-big-island/regions/hamakua-coast/waipio-valley-lookout.