Urban ʻĀina: An Indigenous, Biocultural Pathway to Transforming Urban Spaces

Abstract

What does contemporary Indigenous stewardship look like in urban spaces? We answer this question by exploring Urban ʻĀina, a practice-based Native Hawaiian paradigm that shapes how we engage urban landscapes as Indigenous spaces, revitalizes the expression of Indigenous knowledge, and relies on Indigenous sensibilities to address and respond to modern issues such as food security, ecological degradation, and the climate change crisis. We find that places shaped by Urban ʻĀina practices serve as cultural kīpuka—biocultural refugia where kincentric, reciprocal relationships are honored through the engagement of ancestral knowledge. In Hawaiʻi, efforts to maintain these kincentric relationships continue to be challenged by political, socioeconomic, environmental, psychological, and spiritual disruptions that have their origin in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Our research methodology and the paper’s resulting structure rely on ceremony and the Pewa Framework, which were selected to transport you through our restoration process. This exploration and the sharing of innovative case studies from urban Oʻahu bring breath and the healing power of Indigenous knowledge and ancestral practices to urban spaces, with the aim of transforming contemporary conceptions of urban stewardship. Through our process, we demonstrate how revitalized ancestral practices foster ecological sustainability, restorative justice, biocultural continuity, food sovereignty, regenerative forestry, and community wellbeing in urban spaces.

1. Introduction

Dear reader (“Dear Reader” is an English translation of a common beginning of articles in historic Hawaiian-language newspapers; it was used to express the author’s appreciation of their readers), we extend a warm welcome and hope you find yourself in good company. We authors are a diverse group of educators, farmers, foresters, ecologists, artists, philosophers, researchers, conservationists, and activists. Some of us are Indigenous to Hawaiʻi, others Indigenous to other places, and others no longer Indigenous to place [1]. Yet we share an aloha ʻāina (love of the land [2], see glossary in Supplementary Materials for translations) that is rooted in shared ancestral teachings and is driving a change in how urban sustainability is conceived and practiced, shifting conversations and practices from conventional agency-driven programs focused on biophysical outcomes to Indigenous-led and community-based biocultural approaches focused on biophysical but also wellbeing outcomes through the reconnecting of people and urban place. This approach weaves ancestral knowledge, conventional agro-ecology, and urban resilience concepts while directly addressing contemporary and historical injustices. The Pewa (literally, fishtail-shaped patch of wood used to mend cracks in wooden objects such as bowls and canoes) provides the metaphor for contextualizing the modern cultural practice we call “Urban ʻĀina” (literally “that which feeds” in an urban setting). We use ceremony to guide our sharing of the diverse and layered meanings of Urban ʻĀina and Urban Kīpuka. Ceremony is an effective and intimate process for us to engage you, the reader, in multiple ways of knowing. Ceremony also allows us to set intentions and foster an exchange that extends beyond the intellectual transfer of biophysical information [3,4] to also understand the emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of our work. We offer five Oʻahu case studies to demonstrate how this framework and set of practices can be operationalized in an urban setting. We close this ceremony with an invitation to visualize the application of this approach to your Urban ʻĀina. (Note on Hawaiian Language: at first mention, Hawaiian words are translated in the text. See Supplementary Materials for a Glossary of Hawaiian Words).

1.1. Kapu on Ideas

Kapu can be translated as “taboo” in English but, as with many important terms in the Hawaiian language, kapu has a diversity of context-dependent meanings. We use kapu here to express the things we hold sacred, the resources or elements we literally cannot live without. In this paper, we focus on ʻāina as those sacred urban places that feed us. In setting our intentions in the writing of this paper, we place a kapu on all the knowledge being transmitted to you, the reader, with the hope that this paper be used in service of restoring agency to Indigenous communities with intergenerational responsibilities to their wahi pana (sacred places). This kapu requires that the use of this knowledge aligns with what the reader holds sacred; where possible, we ask that this knowledge be used with the consent of or ideally in close collaboration with Indigenous communities.

1.2. Wehe—Opening Ceremony

Kau Ka Haliʻa
Kau ka haliʻa e	I remembered
I ka manawa e hia moe	During the time of sleep
I kou hōʻala ʻana ʻoe	And upon waking you
ʻO ʻoe ʻo Hālaulani	That you were Hālaulani *
ʻO Hoakalei	Hoakalei **
Me he manu lā e kani nei	Like the birds singing
I ke kuahiwi i ke kualono	In the mountain, in the forest
I kuʻu maha lehua	Upon my lovely flower of the ʻōhiʻa tree
I kuʻu moho kiʻekiʻe lā i luna i uka	My champion high up in the uplands
Hoʻi au me ʻoe e Laka	I return to you Laka ***
I ka nahelehele	To the forest
I hoa ka ana no ia kuahiwi kualono	To be a companion in this mountain song
E hoʻi mai ai	Come to me

* Hālaulani—a star; a chief’s house. Lit. Long house; gathering house of the heavens.

** Hoakalei—to quiver, quake, as jelly; a sea creature. Lit. Friend of the lei, or crescent lei.

*** Laka—goddess of forest growth and hula; to attract, to be docile, to tame; element of forest water, transpiration, the water that travels through plants in the forest and whose movement in plants inspired the first hula practices.

1.3. Orientation

Welcome! You have entered our ceremony through a Hawaiian oli kāhea, a specific type of chant used to ask permission to enter a space (oli: chant; kāhea: to call). This type of chant permits hoʻokupu (offerings, presented here in the form of case studies) to be presented and mana (divine power) to be released. These in turn help us (authors and readers) to manifest our collective intentions. The origins of Kau Ka Haliʻa can be traced to the epic and ancient rivalry between Pele, the volcano deity, and Hi‘iakaikapoliopele (Hiʻiaka), Pele’s youngest sister. In the saga, this oli was sung by Hiʻiaka, goddess of forest healing and hula, to share her profound aloha (love, affection) for forests with Laka. Both deities share an aloha for hula, an art form deeply connected to forests. The interplay between Laka, who represents mature forests, and Hiʻiaka, who represents new forests, captures both literal and metaphorical elements of primary succession, including aspirations to grow forests and more broadly to create abundance where we live, work, learn, and play. Through this ceremony, we relay our ideas, practices, and the aloha that is the foundation of our work. Our protocol is the action of writing a paper that fosters reflection and reverence. The “spaces” that we share with you are those of our ancestors and elders, leaders whose work and teachings form the foundation for Urban ʻĀina. As a participant in this ceremony, and as is typical after offering an oli kāhea, we invite you now to pause and reflect on your intentions in reading this paper, including how you might engage this paper righteously in support of your personal and professional growth.

In response to the review process, we explain here why we departed from a more conventional journal article structure (i.e., introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion), and instead relied on the elements and structure of ceremony and the Pewa Framework to guide our writing process. These elements and structure allow one to engage in the intellectual but also intensely complex emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of urban sustainability while providing a foundation for Indigenous inquiry into ʻāina-based approaches to achieving urban sustainability. This form of writing allows us to more effectively describe Urban ʻĀina and how our restoration processes are grounded in kinship with the land. It is also a more effective approach for exploring and also demonstrating the healing power of Indigenous knowledge and ancestral practices when applied to urban spaces. In describing our methodology, the Pewa Framework and its components of equity, reciprocity, and transparency, our ceremony-based approach also allows us to honor the ancestors that share through us sacred knowledge. We bring the teachings of ancestors and reciprocity to the paper by sharing five Urban ʻĀina case studies from Oʻahu, the most urbanized and densely populated Island of the Hawaiian archipelago. We bring transparency by engaging themes from the case studies that affirm our intentions to transform contemporary conceptions of urban stewardship and revitalize ancestral practices that foster ecological sustainability, restorative justice, biocultural continuity, food sovereignty, regenerative forestry, and community wellbeing. We conclude with guidance on how to apply this knowledge in your practice and spaces. We return to ceremony to close this paper and honor the genealogy of ideas and knowledge that have been shared (Figure 1).

1.4. Introducing Urban ʻĀina

To engage the concept and practice of Urban ʻĀina, we must first delve into what we mean by urban and ʻāina as independent terms. The meaning of “Urban” is complex, varied, and dynamic. In the most general sense, we understand urban as distinct from suburban, town, farm, or colonially imposed terms such as wilderness. For some, urban is a word that represents community, civic culture, or a way of life [5]. The many ways that the concept of urban life has been experienced, imagined, and described around the world and over time are fluid and site-specific; however, attachment to community and place is a commonality [5]. The U.S. Census Bureau [6] uses population size and housing unit density measures to define urban more conventionally, and to distinguish urban from rural. Political boundaries and economic functions are other ways urban areas have been delineated. However, more contemporary understandings attempt to position urban as something that is not separate from rural but rather exists as part of an interconnected system [7,8]. For example, today, many farms, typically features of rural areas, are located within urbanized areas, calling into question established understandings of what is urban and what is rural [9] and, more broadly, Western experiences of urbanization as a developmental norm [10].

Across Hawaiʻi, notions of urban also have evolved, especially as scholarship has begun to examine the role of U.S. colonization in shaping urban spaces, including the historical links among imperialism, occupation, and urbanization. In ancient times, Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi and around the world created built environments that were structurally and functionally very different from contemporary built environments [11]. In the decades prior to the 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy, Native Hawaiian leadership adopted and innovated upon many aspects of 19th-century urbanized life [12]. However, following the Overthrow, urban spaces became increasingly defined by military occupation and efforts to erase Hawaiian cultural practices, geographies, and communities. More broadly, “urban” has come to connote congestion, ecological degradation, poorly planned development, and the excesses of tourism. These various perspectives reach their peak in Honolulu, where urban land use zones reflect American systems of zoning developed in the continental United States and imposed on Hawaiʻi in the 20th century. (Honolulu, the capital city of Hawaiʻi and one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Pacific, is located on the island of Oʻahu, where 36% of its area (600 square miles) is zoned urban [13]. Honolulu is home to most (69%) of the state’s 1.4 million residents, almost all of whom live in urban areas. Pre-pandemic, Honolulu also received over 10 million visitors annually. Honolulu, as with the rest of Hawaiʻi, contends with competing issues of development, food production, biodiversity conservation, and climate change adaptation/mitigation.) “Urbanizing”, then, is an expression of what “Kyle Kajihiro calls a ‘geography of desire’ whereby the sovereign nation of Hawaiʻi was subject to the ‘imagined geographies and imperialist aspirations of the United States—altering the topography of the landscape in order to be more conducive to military needs and in doing so, further empowering the American businessmen invested in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom’” [14]. We suggest that a new framing of the term “urban” is needed to create a new discourse about equitable stewardship of urban spaces—ʻāina that is often hidden underneath or behind.

ʻĀina is a foundational Hawaiian concept that includes “land” [15]; encompasses terrestrial, aquatic, marine, and celestial systems [16]; and always includes people. ʻĀina is our literal ancestor and oldest teacher who nourishes and connects us physically, psychologically, and spiritually [17]. Hawaiian psychologist William Rezentes describes the physical, psychological, spiritual, and ancestral dimensions of ʻāina. Physical ʻāina is usually defined as “land” or ancestral homelands. When we eat food from our ancestral lands and waters, we become those things, and in becoming, we gain a sense of belonging to the ʻāina and our ancestors. We cultivate and consume psychological ʻāina, which feeds our emotional thoughts and feelings. When we connect our identity to our ancestral history, it can enhance self-esteem and empowerment. Spiritual ʻāina describes the everyday relationship with the spiritual world, including akua (god, goddess), kūpuna (ancestors), and ʻohana (family). By removing the illusion of separation among land, water, people, gods, and nature [18], we are better able to recognize and embrace the holistic interdependencies we have with our environment and history. “Humans are kin to all that is the universe; all life forms are interconnected, from the heights of the mountain to the depths of the sea. The responsibilities inherent in all life are also woven into webs of reciprocity” [16] (p. 8).

The concept of Urban ʻĀina, then, insists that urban areas were originally and continue to be a source of sacred relationships among humans, land, water, sky, and ancestors. By this definition, Urban ʻĀina challenges the notion that urbanity and Indigeneity are incompatible. By naming and cherishing urban spaces as ʻāina, we engage with a place not as an object or resource but as a family member. Dietrix Jon Ulukoa Duhaylonsod describes Urban ʻĀina practices as “a reclamation of space for physical, cultural, and spiritual wellbeing at the individual and community levels” (personal communication, 10 February 2023). Conventional urban management agencies rarely consider these perspectives.

Mai kapae i ke aʻo a ka makua, aia he ola malaila.—Do not set aside the teachings of one’s parents, for there is life there

[19] (p. 224, #2064)

A foundational element of Hawaiʻi lifeways is introducing oneself by sharing one’s moʻokūʻauhau (genealogy including people and ʻāina). By situating ourselves within our lineage and practices, we honor our elders, those people and places who set our foundation with their teachings to establish and sustain Urban ʻĀina. The roots of this practice can be traced to coauthor Kamuela Enos’s ʻohana (family). In the early 1980s, it became increasingly apparent that rapid tourism-driven development was alienating Hawaiians from their cultural practices and expropriating their land. Kamuela’s father, Eric Enos, a beloved kupuna (elder/ancestor), responded to these changes by co-leading an ʻāina-focused cultural resurgence involving Hawaiian practitioners from across Hawaiʻi. For the Enos ʻohana, this meant restoring the ʻāina of Waiʻanae, starting with revealing and restoring ancient stone terraces and re-engineering infrastructure used to manage water, all of which were hidden under years of accumulated trash. Uncle Eric called upon his kūpuna to connect him to their knowledge of these ancient terraces so that he could bring back the water that had been redirected to sugarcane plantations, and begin again to cultivate kalo (taro, Colocasia esculenta), one of Hawaiʻi’s most sacred crops.

This restorative framework for sustainable, community-based economic development was integrated into planning classes at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa by cultural practitioner Aunty Puanani Burgess and Bob Agres, the Director of the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development. As a student, Kamuela participated in this institutionalization and repositioning of ʻāina-based practices as an effective and equitable contemporary approach to community co-designed development. Applying Urban ʻĀina methodologies alongside conventional planning methodologies, the researchers began to identify and articulate the numerous economic, ecological, and wellbeing services that practitioners were providing to their communities, each demonstration challenging the assumptions and approaches of political and economic power holders. Through their relationships with Kaʻōnohi, and their collective knowledge in partnership with Anthony Deluze (coauthor), Kamuela and his students began referring to their work as Urban ʻĀina.

1.5. Significance

Indigenous Peoples are recognized for their historic role and current leadership in conceptualizing sustainability [20], climate change adaptation [21], and forest restoration and conservation [22,23], including in Hawaiʻi [24,25,26,27]. Urban spaces are Indigenous spaces as they typically occur on the ancestral lands of an Indigenous People—multi-generational communities who often have unbroken ties through residency and/or stewardship relationships to these places. Indigenous People’s unique interests in and rights to places within urban environments have driven Indigenous leadership and innovation in urban sustainability [28], urban climate change adaptation [29], and urban forestry, but these contributions are often overlooked by non-Indigenous researchers, decision makers, and civil society groups [30].

The perpetuation of colonial approaches to the management of urban spaces sends the message that Indigeneity has no meaningful place in urban stewardship, in urban areas more broadly, and, in the broadest sense, in modernity. Colonial approaches, values, and epistemologies differ strongly from those of Indigenous People, and these divisions are at the heart of land disputes—as with the struggle to protect Mauna Kea against pollution and development [31], and with the LANDBACK movement and advocacy for Indigenous lands to be returned to Indigenous control [32]. When land is viewed as sacred, the cultural practitioner has a genealogical responsibility to advocate for and restore that land [33]. This worldview contrasts with colonial views of land as inanimate property variably filled with resources of commercial value [34]. While state and federal agencies and private corporations have begun to consult with Indigenous Peoples on natural resources questions (e.g., discussions on climate change by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or the protection of Traditional Knowledge by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization), these agencies rarely develop policies and protocols that engage Indigenous People in urban spaces. In Hawaiʻi, notable Indigenous scholars [35], local scholars [14,36], and collaborations between Indigenous and local scholars [37,38] are challenging the colonial cartographies and planning processes that have sought to erase Hawaiʻi’s rich cultural geography and her Indigenous people. This paper brings this important work to urban spaces.

Here, we assert that Indigenous people, their practices, and the biocultural places they steward are vital demonstrations of urban sustainability and socio-ecological resilience in urban areas. This assertion is founded on Indigenous epistemology, an enduring ʻāina-based way of knowing ourselves and the world around us [39]. A synonym for Indigenous is “that which has endured” [39], and Maori scholar Shane Edwards [40] introduced the term “k(n)ew” to describe the continuity of ancient knowledge into modern times. For there is a wealth of Indigenous knowledge that our ancestors knew; however, in our modern world, many of these ancient teachings seem new. Extending this k(n)ew Hawaiian epistemological tenant to Urban ʻĀina, we embrace a second tenant: spirituality is the basis of knowledge [18]. Spirituality here refers to “that which gives life to the material body, the enigma that is our collective conscious, subconscious, and unconscious beings” [41] (p. 57).

The Kumulipo, an ancient Hawaiian chant, is a spiritual genealogy that links us to ʻāina via a poetic description of the birth of the universe. In this genealogy, kalo is our elder brother that gives us life both spiritually and physically. By reconnecting this familial relationship with the land as our spiritual foundation, ancestral practices can return to the modern context. This ancestral reconnection is facilitated through practices that utilize “Hawaiian epistemology (ways of knowing), as this carries different cultural perspectives that align with our ancestors’ philosophies and lifestyles. Hawaiian epistemology is a long-term idea that is both ancient and modern, central and marginalized. It shifts, it is metamorphosed, it is changed by time and influence. It is constant. Here are just some of the ways to experience this ocean of knowing” [18] (p. 126):

• Existence is an expression of spirituality, and all human knowledge is rooted in spirituality.
• Relationship to the land is inherently simultaneously physical and spiritual.
• Comprehension via the physical senses. This includes psychological/spiritual awareness which is conditioned by intuition.
• Knowledge is a privilege and a gift transmitted through trusting relationships defined by accountability and reciprocity. Knowledge is gifted to those who will make the most positive use of it for their family and community.
• Knowledge should be transmitted with the prioritization of purpose and function. If knowledge cannot be properly utilized, then it cannot be properly transmitted to future generations.
• Mind, body, and spirit are not separate entities, but function together. Lynette Paglinawan defined “a kind of intellectual triangulation for comprehension—through information, experience, and feelings” (p. 144).

When the Hawaiian community is represented in research, it is crucial to uplift and prioritize our community’s Indigenous epistemology and research methods. This is because mainstream or Westernized approaches have historically perpetuated the cycle of trauma and colonization by defaulting to affirmations of Western culture as the “center of legitimate knowledge… reaffirming ‘Whiteness’ as the unchallenged norm” [42] (p. 522). When past researchers have not represented community perspectives accurately and expertly, it has resulted in group harm through stigmatization and misrepresentation [43]. Throughout this paper, we will present and assert Hawaiian ways of knowing as it is our norm, and our goal is to communicate most accurately and share our community’s knowledge with you, the reader.

2. Methodology—Pewa Framework and Process

By integrating the Pewa Framework, Urban ʻĀina practices represent a multifaceted methodological approach that “engages with other intellectual and epistemological traditions, and proposes new models for facilitating ‘epistemological equity’” [42] (p. 388). The promise of Urban ʻĀina then is “to expand the discussion of knowledge with an ancient sensibility linked to land, water, people, and language” [39] (pp. 152–153). We embodied these elements in developing our collaborative writing process, including connecting with and stewarding the ʻāina of Kaʻōnohi, one of the case study sites shared below..

In Hawaiʻi, a pewa is a fishtail-shaped patch used to mend cracks in wooden objects (Figure 2), and in so doing to enhance the beauty of an object—it does not serve to hide a fracture. If Urban ʻĀina is our suite of Native Hawaiian sustainability practices, then the Pewa Framework is a foundation from which these practices derive meaning. An innovation of coauthor Kamuela Enos, the Pewa Framework is historically grounded and is applied here through our offerings (case studies) to honor Indigenous and local ways of seeing place. The pewa serves to activate the healing of persons and ʻāina regardless of geography, making beautiful and whole what has been damaged by colonization and marginalization.

Monthly coauthor meetings allowed us to build fellowship while conceptualizing and elaborating ideas. We included an internal review of our paper by kumu (literally “source”; here, teachers and community leaders) who have close relationships with the ʻEwa geographies featured in this paper. Based on established relationships of trust and respect, coauthor Kamuela invited two revered kumu to review the paper: Dietrix Jon Ulukoa Duhaylonsod (hereafter Kumu Ulukoa), kumu hula of Honokai Hale and an archeologist and ethnographer, and Mikiʻala M. Lidstone (hereafter Kumu Mikiʻala), a kumu hula, educator, and executive director of Ulu Aʻe Learning Center. Both were chosen because of their active relationships with their ʻāina and their strong advocacy for social justice on behalf of the Native Hawaiian community. Our process also included sharing intentions with the ʻāina of Kaʻōnohi—our oldest community member, teacher, and lead author. Coauthor Danielle Espiritu presented our work to the ʻāina of Kaʻōnohi because she has a deep relationship with this place. This included reading the paper in Kaʻōnohi while practicing kilo (the process of reflecting, observing), receiving any hōʻailona (omens; signs from beyond) that presented themselves. These steps increased rigor, transparency, and accountability in our collective knowledge-sharing process.

A central thread woven throughout this paper, especially through the case studies that follow, is that of Urban ʻĀina as Cultural Kīpuka. Kīpuka can refer to patches of older forest remaining after a lava flow event (kipuka = singular, kīpuka = plural). Kīpuka act as reservoirs of biodiversity and drive forest succession on new surrounding lava surfaces [44]. Building on that concept, Daviana McGregor [45] described “cultural kīpuka” as isolated rural Hawaiian communities that are the source for the continual regeneration of Hawaiian culture in the 20th century. Here we offer the metaphor of the Urban ʻĀina as serving a similar cultural kīpuka function in built urban spaces. As an area becomes urbanized and hardened, not by lava but by concrete, the remaining pockets of undeveloped land and associated waters may offer the only regular access people have to ʻāina. While increasingly limited in area, connections to these places provide communities with a sense of identity, food security, inspiration, and cohesion.

Each of the case studies demonstrates how a community can activate the Pewa Framework within an urban-centered biocultural process to actualize this Framework’s core principles of equity and inclusivity while honoring Indigeneity and a range of place-based practices and perspectives in urban planning, landscaping, design, and community forestry. These principles are:

• Equity: Identify the nature of the fracture, acknowledge the history of dispossession, and affirm the value of what was lost. Equity is represented through land conservation and cultural preservation that honors Hawaiian ancestral knowledge. A desire for equity can be seen as a response to the urban displacement of Native Hawaiian plants and people.
• Reciprocity: Build interventions that address the reason for the fracture and hold each side equally strong. Reciprocity is represented in the rebuilding of the personal relationships between people and land. Community-building relationships become manifest as more people invest in healing the land, themselves, their families, and their communities.
• Transparency: Be clear and honest in intent. Operate openly. Pewa are emphasized, not hidden, to show that the mended vessel is now strong and can support abundance. Transparency is represented in the story telling and knowledge transmission each community is graciously sharing through their case study. This is a gift to the readers that will hopefully serve as a bridge to understanding ʻāina-based work and support the efforts of other communities carrying out similar work.

We opened our paper with an oli—itself an expression of the Pewa Framework—because oli enables us to communicate with ʻāina and people. Oli, then, becomes the pewa that reconnects and makes whole. We use these principles to structure our paper’s background (equity), case studies (reciprocity) (Figure 3), and discussion (transparency) sections, and to holistically engage Urban ʻĀina practices and the powerful metaphor of the Urban Kīpuka.

3. Equity: Urban Green Spaces in Hawaiʻi

3.1. Context and History of Urban Stewardship in Hawaiʻi

“Almost two hundred and fifty years of brutal assault, including catastrophic population loss from introduced diseases, racist policies, political overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and deliberate and continuing dispossession of land” [37] has led to (i) diminished Indigenous agency and decision making; (ii) a shift in regional land use with a focus on extraction and use in global supply chains versus localized and reciprocal relationships; and (iii) the supplanting of local food, forest, and knowledge producers and their traditions. The roots of this assault formed in the mid-1800s when U.S. interests used long-term leases and privatization to secure access to land [46] in order to facilitate the expansion of commercial agriculture, development, and tourism. Privatization reached its zenith “with the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by U.S. interests in 1893” whereby “1,800,000 acres of Kingdom lands were illegally transferred to the Provisional Government, then to the U.S. Federal Government, and ultimately to the State of Hawai‘i“ [47]. In Hawai‘i, these “ceded” lands were used to establish military bases, National Parks, State Forest Reserves, State and County Parks, State and Federal Department of Transportation right of ways, the campuses of the University of Hawaiʻi System, and countless urban green spaces (see 1993 U.S. Apology Bill). As a result of this commercially motivated and racially justified land theft, the theft of associated resources (e.g., fresh water), and the theft of nearshore and pelagic fisheries, many Native Hawaiians lost rights to ʻāina that their families had been stewarding for generations [46]. This loss came with long-term physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and cultural impacts [48,49,50]. Coauthor Kamuela Enos’s summary is instructive: Native Hawaiians were traditionally experts in understanding local ecology because it was the basis for their economy, sustainability, and wellbeing. The culture relied upon and supported the family unit as an employer, teacher, and spiritual center. The disconnection from ʻāina then resulted in poverty and the degradation of people and ecosystems, and so the restoration of ancestral habitats and food systems, such as those demonstrated by Urban ʻĀina case studies shared here, can be seen as biocultural interventions that lead to healing.

The Hawaiian cultural Renaissance of the 1970s embraced aloha ʻāina (love of place) and mālama ʻāina (care for place), especially in efforts to restore loko iʻa (fishponds), loʻi kalo (wetland cultivation of taro), and other culturally driven agroecosystems featuring Native Hawaiian crops. Today, multiple Urban ʻĀina efforts focus on the restoration of ancestral resource stewardship practices, many of which support native plant and animal species while producing food, freshwater, and perpetuating cultural practices. Community-based, Indigenous-led, biocultural restoration continues to gain momentum across the archipelago [24,46], including in urban Oʻahu, but it is not yet widely incorporated into formal urban sustainability or urban forestry programs. These perspectives have only recently become embraced by the agencies that run these programs [28], which presents both challenges and opportunities for the expansion of Urban ʻĀina. For example, the State of Hawaiʻi’s Urban and Community Forestry Program, established in the early 1990s, has in the past five years integrated biocultural approaches, environmental and restorative justice, and Native Hawaiian-led stewardship as program priorities. Similarly, the City and County of Honolulu (a colonial designation that includes the entirety of the island of Oʻahu) operates the Community Forestry Program, which has begun to invest in place-based, community-driven projects.

3.2. Urban and Municipal Forestry on Oʻahu Today

The Division of Urban Forestry within the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Parks and Recreation manages street trees, park trees, botanical gardens, community gardens, and, since 2019, a community forestry program. The Division’s vision is to “preserve the natural environment; protect wildlife habitat, create educational, social, and recreational opportunities; and increase the quality of life of Honolulu residents by preserving and increasing its tree canopy.” The majority of municipal trees are introduced (non-native species), a trend for urban areas in other colonized places [51,52,53], with the selection of species based on the ability of the tree to provide shade, beauty, and erosion mitigation, while not causing maintenance issues. Opportunities to achieve food security or enhance Hawaiian cultural practices have been limited, but niu, the coconut, provides a counter-example. Inventories of Honolulu’s municipal park and street trees [54] reveal that the coconut (a Polynesian-introduced canoe plant) represents about 23% of the total tree stems. For reasons of public safety, their food value is drastically reduced because their fruits—a food, medicine, textile, and more (see case study below: Niu Now: Honoring our Coconut Heritage)—are removed very early in their maturation and discarded as green waste. Contemporary introductions (non-native species brought to Hawaiʻi after European contact, including one species that has become invasive) represent 62% of municipal trees inventoried. Native trees represent less than 10% of inventoried stems.

4. Reciprocity: Case Studies

Our Urban ʻĀina case studies explore the potential of bioculturally grounded and place-based strategies to support community development, socio-ecological resilience, and restorative justice in urban geographies, which represent an urban gradient from mixed-use with high population density, to commercial/industrial, to suburban. The knowledge shared comes from those who “practice culture, experience culture, [and] live culture…” [18] (p. 129), and spans countless generations in a “sequence of immortality” [18]. This sharing requires trust in the immortality of the sequence. Our ancestors believed that knowledge was not a right but rather a privilege and a gift that must be utilized for our health and the health of our families, our communities, and the ʻāina.

ʻO ka hā o ka ʻāina ke ola o ka poʻe—the breath of the land is the life of the people.

4.1. Urban Kīpuka of Kānewai, Mānoa, Oʻahu

By: Kialoa Mossman

In spaces where heavy urbanization occurs over a piece of land, it is easy for one to see it as a great loss of vegetation, never to be returned to its natural state. This perspective, however, only holds true when humans separate themselves from nature and urbanization is seen as the last step of the developmental process. As a part of nature, we can see that urbanization, when executed right, can be a natural process like many other natural events that entice and encourage new and abundant growth. Urbanization is defined as the process of making an area more urban, and urban areas are defined as the places we live, work, and play; neither of these definitions suggests that urbanization is the end of environmental kinship. I argue that people’s idea of urbanization does not limit our capacity to live and grow in abundance but rather allows for humans to understand the fundamental value of environmental kinship through the application of Urban Kīpuka.

Kīpuka are remnant forests left after a lava flow event. These kīpuka act as a seed bank, and after large lava flow events, they are responsible for reforesting the area. Urban Kīpuka serve a similar function in our built environments or urban spaces. As an area becomes impacted by urbanization, the pockets of forest and ʻāina (the land that feeds us) left in these environments become the only connection people have to their environment. These connections are important to provide communities with a sense of identity, a sense of food security, and a sense of comradery among neighbors, friends, and family. As communities interact with Urban Kīpuka, they carry with them the seeds of that kipuka to spread to their own homes. These seeds can take the form of actual seeds, or they could take the form of cultural seeds to grow education and a sense of identity. Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai is a prime example of remnant land surrounded by urbanization. It is the focus of this case study.

Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai is a wetland taro farm located between the dorms and the Hawaiian Studies buildings at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UH-Mānoa) (Figure 4). The name Kānewai comes from the story of the water deities and twin brothers, Kāne and Kanaloa, who were traveling across the island chain from Hawaiʻi to Kauaʻi. In this story, they stopped at Kahala to play, swim, and surf in the ocean when Kanaloa became thirsty for ʻawa (ceremonial beverage made from the roots of kava, Piper methysticum roots and water). He asked Kāne to find freshwater for them both; however, Kāne could not find any water in Kahala, so they moved on to Kalehuawehe, another beach along the southern coast near the Kewalo basin. There they continued to play and surf and once again, Kanaloa got thirsty for ʻawa and wished to rinse off, but again, Kāne could find no fresh water near Kalehuawehe, so they continued. As they moved their way mauka (up slope) to the valley of Mānoa, Kanaloa again pleaded with his brother to find fresh water for both of them, so Kāne listened to his surroundings and heard a network of fresh water flowing underneath them. He then took his ʻōʻō (digging stick) and plunged it into the earth and a freshwater spring revealed itself. This spring became a stream and Kanaloa was finally able to rinse the sand and salt water from himself and drink his ʻawa. The sand washed down the river and stopped where the lower campus of UH-Mānoa is located now. This story is more than just a myth—this story truly talks about the movement of freshwater. The waters and the spring would forever be known as Kānewai.

Taro farms used to occupy large portions of land in the surrounding area, feeding hundreds of thousands of Hawaiian citizens. Eventually, this area, part of the illegally ceded land estate, was provided to the UH Mānoa in order to build dorms for students. Unfortunately for UH-Mānoa, the area is a flood plain. The plans for a new dorm were scrapped and the land was condemned. Due to its condemnation, the area was treated as a waste collection site and it lost all agricultural importance. For years this place was neglected, until a group of Native Hawaiian scholars rediscovered the old ʻauwai (irrigation) system. With the guidance provided by Harry Kunihi Mitchell, a prominent Native Hawaiian elder and taro farmer, the group known as Hoʻokahe Wai Hoʻoulu ʻĀina (based on the philosophy, “make the water flow, make the land productive”) began cleaning out all the trash and reestablishing the taro farms. When the work of restoring the loʻi was complete, Hoʻokahe Wai Hoʻoulu ʻĀina realized how important it was to protect this place in perpetuity for generations to come. To accomplish such a task, they worked and lived by three rules: laulima (many hands), mālama ʻāina (care for the land), and puʻuhonua (sanctuary). Laulima are needed to mālama ʻāina in order for this place to remain a place of healing and self-discovery, a puʻuhonua.

Today, Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai has one of the largest collections of Native Hawaiian taro varieties in the world and is a beacon of hope and unity for Native Hawaiians who traverse the University system. Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai has established itself as an Urban Kīpuka. As the surrounding areas of the campus became increasingly urbanized, the loʻi has continued to support communities across Hawaiʻi by providing huli (taro starters) and by educating everyone who comes through on the proper ways of managing Hawaiʻi’s waters and agricultural systems. Since the reestablishment of the loʻi at UH Mānoa, many others have begun reestablishing their areas as well, from home gardens to large-scale agricultural systems. The spreading of the seeds of inspiration and farming, however, does not just happen—it requires a vector, and the Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai Urban Kīpuka vectors are the kānaka (humans, kanaka = singular human) that care about these areas. It is our job to spread the seeds so that we can grow more forests and continue the cycle of rejuvenation in our urban spaces.

As with other case studies that follow, Ka Papa Loʻi o Kānewai is an example of how Urban Kīpuka can be revitalized to green our urban spaces in ways that allow for better food security and comradery amongst community members. By supporting seed banks like these to thrive, we are allowing the cycle of urbanization to not end in destruction, but rather to encourage abundance in the places we live, work, and play. However, in order to reach that goal, kānaka cannot separate themselves from their environment; rather, we must act as vectors to carry and foster these seeds so that the communities in Hawaiʻi can thrive once again, to continue to laulima and mālama ʻāina in these spaces and to perpetuate the puʻuhonua that these spaces create (Figure 5a–e).

4.2. Kaʻōnohi: Cultivating Kīpuka in Kalauao, ‘Ewa, O’ahu

By Danielle Espiritu and Anthony Kawika Deluze

Kalauao was known to be a place of abundance. The gathering of wai in the uplands of the Koʻolau took the form of the (ka) multitude (lau) of clouds (ao) that poured over ʻāina. After years of percolation, this wai re-emerged through pūnāwai (freshwater springs) that lined the ahupuaʻa (traditional land division). It was so abundant that Kalauao was known to be the residence of Kalaimanuia, a renowned mōʻī (queen, high chief) of Oʻahu who was known for maintaining a time of peace. Recognizing the abundance of wai in the area, she is credited for building numerous loʻi kalo and loko iʻa, speaking also to the intellectual genius of our kūpuna who engineered and cared for complex agriculture and aquaculture systems. Springs fed into streams and loʻi kalo, which then poured into loko iʻa and offshore fisheries. Kalauao and the larger moku (district) of ʻEwa was once a place of abundance and we envision it returning to a place of abundance.

Today, the ahupuaʻa of Kalauao is almost completely covered with concrete. Forests have been cleared, streams channelized, springs covered, loʻi filled, and fishponds destroyed—and yet, in the middle of one of the sectors of heaviest urbanization in Honolulu, Kaʻōnohi shows its will to survive. The last fragments of cultural-based agriculture emerge through its concrete and fast-paced surroundings. In what was once a complex and unique spring-fed loʻi kalo system now covered in pavement and topped by the third-largest shopping mall on Oʻahu, only a mere three acres remain dedicated to the crops of ka poʻe kahiko (the people of ancient times). For the past twelve years, this humble acreage has shown its resiliency in the face of all odds stacked against it. This kipuka serves as a reminder both of how far removed society has become from being self-sufficient and of the importance of returning to aloha ʻāina!

Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao was created in late 2013 out of restoration efforts at Kaʻōnohi and from the desire to give back to the community through traditional and contemporary Hawaiian education. The name Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao means to revive and to bring life again to Kalauao. One of our goals is to restore the knowledge of our wahi (place) by breathing ea (breath, life, sovereignty) into the inoa ʻāina (place names; inoa: name, term, title), and moʻolelo (history, stories) of Kalauao, often referred to today as “Pearlridge” (Figure 6).

In addition, we work to create and maintain kīpuka where culture can thrive, food can be cultivated, and ʻāina and kānaka can heal and be restored. Today, Kaʻōnohi is one of those kīpuka and remains for our organization as a result of mahiʻai (farmer) Anthony Kawika Deluze and his ʻohana’s commitment to kūpa’a (be steadfast, firm, constant, immovable, loyal, faithful) in aloha for ʻāina amidst the urban sprawl of ʻEwa. Many of our community initiatives center around caring for a three-acre farm in Kaʻōnohi, which remains one of the last agricultural land holdings in ʻEwa dedicated to the perpetuation of Hawaiian culture and values, the growing of ʻai (food, food plant, kalo), and the cultivation of native tree and plant species. Kaʻōnohi also provides a model for urban agroforestry.

Although Hawaiʻi has the climate and capacity to grow food year-round, we continue to import over 87% of the food we consume [55]. Without the basic ability to feed ourselves, we are left almost entirely dependent on the outside world, and thus vulnerable to political and economic forces and natural disasters. In hopes of being that drop in the bucket of collective change, we as an organization have committed to the practice of cultivating ʻai for the purpose of community sustenance. This comes from recognizing the immense need in our communities for locally grown, healthy food. In addition, just as breathing life into inoa ʻāina restores ea to the kānaka and ʻāina who hear them, so too with our food systems. Allowing wai to flow through loʻi kalo and ʻai to pour out into ʻumeke (calabash) helps to ensure that our ʻāina and people are thriving. It too restores ea, and it is a kuleana (responsibility, privilege) we hold with the utmost care and importance (Figure 7).

Choosing to kūpaʻa comes with its challenges. In addition to issues of pollution, illegal dumping, overtaxed soil, lack of funds, and theft, over the past several years, we have had the additional challenge of farming through seasons of unpredictable weather, salt water intrusion, and a significant decrease in water flow coming from the pūnāwai that feed the loʻi kalo at Ka’ōnohi. We have also received word that new projections show the possibility that jet fuel will spread from the U.S. Navy’s underground Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility through our aquifer and into Kalauao springs, which feed the lo’i kalo we care for [56,57,58]. This is particularly troubling, with over 378,541 L (100,000 gallons) of documented fuel leaks, including catastrophic releases in 2014 and 2021 [59]. In addition, a 4921 L (1300 gallon) release of cancer-causing Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF, or “forever chemicals”) leaked from the facility in November 2022 [60]. As of this writing, the Department of Defense has yet to defuel a single gallon from the “Red Hill” tanks, leaving approximately 104 million gallons remaining in the underground facility [61].

Despite these challenges, we continue to kūpaʻa, knowing that our very presence is an act of resistance and healing. Caring for a kīpuka is no small feat. However, as we choose to hoʻomau (persist, perpetuate) today, we do so on behalf of the generations after us who will have the privilege to eat from Kaʻōnohi and the kuleana to care for her. Our vision is to see a thriving and abundant ʻEwa moku, and as such, we are committed to protecting and restoring the ahupuaʻa of Kalauao. To those who are able, join us. You will be joining generations of aloha ʻāina who remained steadfast in their love for their land, nation, and people (Figure 8). In closing, we share the words of James Keauiluna Kaulia. Allow his words to heal, inspire, and encourage you. “Mai makau, e kupaʻa ma ke aloha i ka ʻāina…A hiki i ke aloha ʻāina hope loa.” “Do not be afraid, be steadfast in aloha for your land…Until the very last aloha ʻāina.” [62].

4.3. Ola Nā Kini “Life for the Multitude”: Growing Plants and People to Create Community

By Chelsey Jay

The Waiʻanae mountain range located on the Leeward side of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, boasts almost four million years of growth, evolution, and history. In addition to being the older part of the island, it is also home to the highest peak on Oʻahu, Mount Kaʻala, and an abundance of native plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. For many who come from the surrounding communities, the Waiʻanae mountains serve as a Hōkūpaʻa (Northern star) or guiding light, representing a source of strength and pride which instills a deep sense of kuleana to care for this place. Although the peaks and valleys of this mountain range have faced massive transformation over time due to centuries of human impact, there is a concerted effort by non-profit, private, state, and government agencies and the community to preserve the natural and cultural resources that make this place so special.

The native ecosystems that remain intact in the Waiʻanae mountains exist within specific areas and elevations that are not easily accessible by the public. The deep connection and quality of the relationship between people and place have been altered because the character of the place has transformed due to the introduction of cattle and other ungulate species for grazing, the establishment of non-native invasive plant and animal species, limited water resources, and continuous wildfire threats. Native Hawaiian species and ecosystems seem like foreign concepts to those who do not actively use or work with them, where distinguishing between a native and non-native species is a seemingly difficult task. In our work, we know that we cannot restore entire ecosystems, but we can create kīpuka that are relatively accessible by our community where they can (re)learn and (re)establish pilina (relationship, connection) to our kūpuna plants within these Urban ʻĀina sites that serve as symbols of resistance, resilience, and hope in our communities.

Mālama Learning Center (MLC) is an ʻāina-based education non-profit organization that serves the West Oʻahu region through hands-on learning opportunities that bring together science, conservation, culture, and art to promote sustainable living throughout Hawaiʻi. Ola Nā Kini is the restoration program of MLC that stewards multiple sites spanning mauka to makai (from the mountains to the sea). Officially launched in 2017, the main goal of this program is to heal the land, ocean, and multitude of life through active engagement and education of students, teachers, and community. Ola Nā Kini has emerged on the slopes of the southern Waiʻanae mountains, bringing life-giving plants and trees back to places where they once thrived. Through public and private partnerships, the initial regeneration programs have broken ground on public and private conservation and agricultural lands within the historic Honouliuli and Nānākuli ahupuaʻa. MLC does not own land, but as an education organization, we prioritize sites that are in proximity to neighborhoods and schools and are relatively easy to access (by vehicles or walking) due to the heavy student and community involvement of this program. Urban ʻĀina sites are important to us for this reason.

Our Pālehua dryland forest restoration site is located on privately owned land in the southern Waiʻanae mountains situated above the Makakilo residential area in the ahupuaʻa of Honouliuli, moku of ʻEwa. Because this restoration site is located on private land, visitors must coordinate with our organization to access the restoration site. From the Pālehua gate located within the residential area of Makakilo, it is about a ten-minute drive spanning about three miles to get to this site. Although not immediately accessible to the public, the landowners do work closely with our organization (and others) to give access to their designated restoration sites, especially for educational groups that come from the surrounding neighborhoods, which make up the majority of our program participants. Our hope with our restoration efforts at this site is that the communities who live near this place first understand the significance of the resources of this area in the southern Waiʻanae mountains and feel a sense of belonging as well as kuleana to care for their home. It is surprising (or not surprising) that many people who come from West Oʻahu never knew that cultural sites, conservation and restoration efforts, trails, cattle ranching, and much more existed beyond the gate. We know that we cannot restore the entire mountain, but we do hope that the small kipuka where we mālama are accessible to those who are willing to join us in our efforts and serve as sources of inspiration for our communities. One day, we would like to have the capacity to quantify how our ‘āina-based restoration and education work at this site impacts the overall health of this area ultimately benefiting the resources and residents below.

At this site, there is no shortage of environmental issues and challenges we face on a day-to-day basis (dry/no water, invasive species, erosion, lack of biodiversity, fire-prone). While it is unnerving, we also see how this site holds great potential and shows the need for the type of work we do with our community. Since 2017, we have had the special kuleana of bringing multiple school and community groups mainly from West Oʻahu to our Pālehua site in order to accomplish three main goals: (1) transform this landscape back to a native kīpuka forest that will provide ecosystem services; (2) mitigate the effects of climate change via the planting of native/edible/culturally significant plants (in partnership with the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa); (3) use this space as an outdoor classroom to make learning engaging and relevant and to connect people to their culture and ʻāina, igniting a sense of kuleana as an action to be practiced beyond a one-time experience.

The need for change as it relates to our economy, education, and natural resources management is undeniable and we believe our community holds the key to a more sustainable and pono (just) future. It is evident that there is a longing and need for ʻāina-based work and education, especially now as we find ourselves in a global pandemic that has completely transformed our lives and society, isolating us from many of our loved ones, including ʻāina. ʻĀina is that which feeds us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and is inclusive not only of our land and sea, but also our people. We consider our ʻāina as ʻohana, kumu, and classroom and treat her with such regard and respect in how we conduct ourselves within these spaces. It has been wonderful to see (and experience) how the Urban ʻĀina sites are able to mālama act as conduits for bringing ʻohana and communities together to learn and connect with each other, serving as a safe space for healing. These Urban ʻĀina sites will continue to play a significant role in addressing and feeding our many needs as island people as we move forward into an unknown future. We know that with the collective effort of our communities, we can restore pilina and momona (abundance) back to this place. We would like to highlight the important work happening in West Oʻahu, telling our story of healing and restoration of land and people from our perspective and lived experiences.

Each workday at our Pālehua dryland forest restoration site starts and ends with a circle. We introduce ourselves to each other and this space, set our intentions for the day, and reflect on how in a relatively quick timeframe, we grew with each other and the land that we were in service of as haumāna (students), kumu, community members, and facilitators of ‘āina-based work. Being in a circle reminds us that the work that we do is generational and we will not reap the benefits now, but future generations can inherit a better place. As we work for just a few hours at our restoration sites, we experience some of the most powerful moments while we huli ka lima i lalo (turn our hands down to the soil). On one workday while planting native species at our Pālehua dryland site, one haumāna said to his plant, “I love you so you should grow”. A simple but profound phrase said with so much aloha because this haumāna understood the deeper relationality he had to this kūpuna plant after learning its inoa Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian name) and moʻolelo (story). Nearly all the trees and plants we have planted were grown by our staff and volunteers in our two nurseries. Seeds/cuttings were collected within the same mountain range to maintain genetic integrity. We are focusing on common native Hawaiian plants and trees, not rare and endangered ones as we need to build the foundation of the forest first. This is the essence of our community-based restoration efforts—growing plants, growing people, growing community!

Ma ka hana ka‘ike—in working one learns—By my actions, teach my mind.

Aunty Manu Meyer (#2088) [19]

At our Pālehua dryland forest site, we have experimented with multiple planting methods over the years and it is interesting to witness what has worked and what has not. Prior to 2019, we utilized a specific planting formula that was prescribed to us: trees were planted 10 feet apart and larger shrub species were spaced 5 feet apart between those trees with smaller shrubs and groundcovers intermixed. For a while, we planted that way and our site looked very uniform and “neat”. However, we noticed quite a bit of plant mortality with trees such as lama (Diospyros sandwicensis), lonomea (Sapindus oahuensis), and wiliwili (Erythrina sandwicensis). The wiliwili did well for a while, but then was attacked by the gall wasp, resulting in 80% mortality. The trees and plants that did survive—wiliwili, ʻaʻaliʻi (Dodonea viscosa), and ʻuhaloa (Waltheria indica)—are alive, but overall plant health is not optimal. While honing in on our kilo (observation) skills at this site, a haumāna recognized that the plants were “socially distanced”. She noticed that these isolated and physically distanced plants did not look healthy or happy. A bit frustrated with the lack of progress, we enlisted the help of a friend and tried something new in the summer of 2019. Butch Haase of the Molokaʻi Land Trust visited our site and taught our staff his planting method that we now call “community-style” planting. Invasive species are removed, and native species are planted in high density, covering the area that was just cleared. Butch also taught our staff to work intensively in small units while planting, focusing on the depth rather than the breadth of the area. This is with the understanding that we cannot just plant hundreds or thousands of trees at once without fully preparing the land (removing all of the weeds by root) and ensuring we have enough plants and mulch. We plant during the wet months and focus on maintenance (weeding, mulching, watering, collecting seeds/cuttings, and ramping up plant production in our nurseries) during the dry months. Using large amounts of mulch is key to protecting the soil surrounding the newly planted plants. While we thought the native plants would compete for resources being in such close proximity to each other, we found that the opposite is true. Just over the span of 2.5 years, we have seen the native species thriving and flourishing together. It seems that the “community-style” planting method helps to retain moisture, suppress weeds, provide shade for other plants, and add nutrients to the surrounding soil, all while increasing diversity in a small area.

Results at our Pālehua dryland forest site show that community nō ka ʻoi (is the best)! From an observational perspective, the native plants in this “community-style” planting are showing signs of increased survivorship, increased growth both vertically and horizontally, are producing seeds, have seedling recruitment, and are suppressing weeds. In our eyes, this is a success! This has been a beautiful lesson for us to learn and to teach our volunteers: people are like plants—we thrive together rather than on our own. It is a mutual emergence of people and plants in the same space! We are not prescribing this method to anyone but we are showing folks that this is a method that has worked for us in this particular environment. In this process, we honor and treat our kūpuna plants as our ancestors and greatest teachers (Figure 9).

4.4. Niu Now: Honoring Our Coconut Heritage

By Indrajit Gunasekera

Cocos nucifera L. (Arecaceae), commonly called the coconut tree, is known as niu throughout Moana-nui-ākea (the expansive Pacific Ocean). Coconuts are a traditional food and the most common urban tree in Honolulu, representing about 23% of all municipal urban trees inventoried (https://pg-cloud.com/hawaii/) (accessed on 23 April 2022) [54], not including those on private property. Many of our tropical islands’ ancestors collectively chose the niu as the tree of life, highlighting its kinship with humanity. This is the tree that provides the visual expression of stories found in legends and myths. As every part of the tree has a use, the niu provides us with nutritionally rich and functional foods along with materials that enrich the daily and spiritual experiences of tropical living for thousands of years. In other words, when coconuts did well, people who lived and cared for them also did well. When the coconut tree lived long, so did the people. “Kupu ka niu kupu ke kanaka! When coconuts grow, humanity flourishes!” [63].

Six years ago, Jesse Mikasobe-Kealiinohomoku and a team from Aloha ʻĀina Students Service Club at the University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu invited me to visit a kupuna uluniu, an old coconut grove. It had been known and cared for at one time and it stood as hundreds of tall palm trees on the makai tip of the ahupuaʻa of Honouliuli. By the time we walked in, the centuries-old grove had only eight trees alive at the end of their life cycle. We walked back that day asking ourselves a question: What can we do to step into this cycle to invite at least one of those last trees of this grove to produce seed nut? At least one mature seed, known in Hawaiian as niu malo’o, would need to grow over the next eleven months to become a healthy nut to plant and thus keep this distinct coconut variety alive. For the next four years, we witnessed the palms slowly dying without producing fruit.

In 1793, Captain George Vancouver’s log describes a coconut grove in this area at Barber’s Point while navigating along the coast of Wai’anae [64]. In October 2021, I witnessed the dropping of the heart of the last coconut tree of this glorious century-old uluniu where that natural underground hydrological system no longer functioned. Today, the entire grove is uprooted, and even the very existence of such a renowned uluniu has been erased. When a coconut grove becomes a vital part of a place and the identity of the local community and is then wiped out, local cultural identity is also diminished. We experienced a feeling of great failure as we were unable to bring at least one niu malo’o to add to one of our newly established niu nurseries. We then asked: What is the destiny of Hawaiʻi’s coconut tree?

The arrival of a serious invasive pest—coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB), Oryctes rhinoceros—has been exacerbating existing coconut genetic erosion. First detected on 23 December 2013 on Joint Base Pearl Harbor—Hickam, an area that has become the epicenter of the invasion, CRB has since spread to devastate coconuts across West and Central O’ahu but is now found across the entire island. Although neighbor islands have not yet detected CRB, inter-island shipments of niu and mulch risk moving CRB adults or larvae with them. Adult CRB feed on the heart of the coconut tree, impacting the emerging palm fronds and leaving the tree vulnerable to drought and disease, which ultimately cause widespread death, as is now occurring in Guam. Since 1942, when CRB was discovered on the island of Palau, 50% of its palms have been lost, and a similar fate threatens O’ahu [65].

A letter written to a Hawaiian Newspaper [66], Nupepa Kuokoa, on 15 December 1865 by a Hawaiian mahiʻai (farmer) named Luhua, expressed a common concern at that time as he wrote passionately: “…let us plant coconuts. Before, when our ancient chiefs were living, all of our beaches were made beautiful by the coconut groves. But we are the new generation who have grown tired of coconut trees and let them fall. These beautiful groves which made Hawaiʻi proud are vanishing”; he continued, “this is true, and we should be ashamed of ourselves.” Today, over 158 years later, we have even greater concerns. There has still been very little done to document, preserve, and understand Hawaiian traditional coconut knowledge and or the coconut diversity within the Hawaiian Islands. With a lack of record-keeping or coconut conservation strategies, the extinction of specific and unique coconut varieties could easily go unnoticed and undetected. How would we even know of the existence or genetic erosion of such varieties?

Something needed to be done. Thus began our cultural agroforestry movement, Niu Now! Our vision grew from direct experience and collective effort: We see niu as a relationship rooted in the community and aloha ʻāina. This approach is the foundation of our discipline where we engage all communities, from babies to kūpuna, to learn and teach aspects of niu with various outreach services: niu workshops, the establishment of niu nurseries, niu cooking, niu webinars, and revitalizing Hawaiʻi’s ancient uluniu. We seek to deepen and strengthen our foundation through all experiences with coconuts: talking about, planting, preparing, walking among, and even climbing coconut trees is now needed!

The establishment and maintenance of uluniu, coconut groves, requires sophisticated knowledge and an understanding of niu’s biological and genetic diversity, as well as its ecological and socio-economic functions. However, as it has always been throughout coconut-growing nations, this knowledge belongs to the common people of their places. The people whose cultures are shaped around the food, art, and spiritual inspiration of their uluniu are the ones who have maintained these practices. Therefore, the kumu niu—coconut palm—is a vital source of our collective and cultural emergence because of its capacity to support life for over one hundred million people around the world. The coconut holds cultural understanding, telling the tropical islands’ Indigenous stories of who we are within places, and as people. Hawaiʻi is no exception, and we are on this path of reclamation! However, what we have in contemporary Hawaiʻi is the negation of these true and ancient niu values. Current beliefs and practices of the coconut palm force niu to be fruitless here in Hawaiʻi. The coconut palm has become an overproduced exotic symbol of tropical islands, designed to lure tourists to our white sandy shorelines, and systematically creating coconut illiteracy. The niu is now labeled as an “ornamental tree” in Hawai’i and considered mostly a liability. A number of historical botanical authors have indicated that “Coconut did not do well in some parts of Hawai’i and Indigenous Hawaiians did not fully utilize the coconut as a vital resource to the extent seen in other Pacific Nations” [63]. One of the earliest statements can be found in 1888 [64], but that statement on the underutilization of the coconut as a vital resource has been repeated [67,68,69], without including the second part of the original statement which also acknowledged the coconut tree “still thrives very well” [70] (p. 452) in most parts of the Hawaiian Islands. Today, it is clear that there are discrepancies between European and Hawaiian accounts of the importance of niu in Hawaiʻi. This historical inaccuracy is one of many examples of the misunderstanding of niu, which we strive to transform with niu knowledge and re(niu)ed awareness. How can this kind of disparage be possible when there are hundreds of different and unique ways to describe the niu, the uses, the stages, the stories, the linkages with deities and the famous uluniu (coconut groves) of each island? Some points of evidence include having hundreds of different and unique ways to describe the coconut, the uses, the fruit maturity stages (Figure 10), the stories, the linkages with deities, and the famous uluniu of each island with cultural and emblematic applications [15,67,68,71]. The marginalization and mistreatment of kumu niu are changing.

The Uluniu Project at the University of Hawai’i West O’ahu began with the collaboration of Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer and me. We are creating an inclusive community that is rediscovering niu as a cultural remedy standing right in our front yards, and now in our campus setting in Kapolei. We are building a community of skilled students, faculty, and staff who work to understand the use of land by utilizing the resources available naturally with niu-centered planting practices—cultural agroforestry. With our newly created Aloha ʻĀina Student Service Club, we stepped into a campus community with a commitment to learn and lead with others by sharing our niu knowledge.

As we continue to support our community with Indigenous-based niu-centered land practices, we are beginning to understand the skill and knowledge-based support and resources our communities need. We engage ancient tropical island coconut knowledge that seeks expression in this time of climate change—soil mitigation practices, water retention, biotic and abiotic stress relief practices, and a renewed interest in moon, rain, and wind cycles. Our work recognizes kumu niu as a vital resource to strengthen three main areas: (1) culture: rejuvenation of Hawaiian and Moana-nui practices and mo’olelo; (2) food sovereignty: encouraging coconut as a local, sustainably sourced, nutritional, and diverse food resource; (3) ecology: linking niu with forms of soil rejuvenation, coastal land restoration, moisture retention, and conservation and to provide sustainable pollen source for pollinator service providers.

Over the past 6 years, we have been utilizing the coconut husk for water retention as a climate change mitigation practice and for coconut genetic conservation. We have created a teaching and learning lab at UH West Oʻahu, documented over 100 Hawaiian in situ coconut varieties, and completed eight niu nurseries sowing over 2000 seed coconuts. At our UH West Oʻahu Campus, we have planted 12 niu selected from 6 unique dwarf varieties, along with 8 ‘ulu (breadfruits) of 4 varieties; developed a niu nursery (germplasm) system and germinated over 1000 seed nuts of 60 documented varieties; and gifted in 2021 and 2022 over 1500 coconuts seedlings of over 40 varieties to over 150 community members on Oʻahu. Currently, we are extending our niu revitalization mission to the neighboring islands of Molokai and Maui. We will continue to document and produce niu seedlings that will be freely available to the communities who seek to connect and grow with niu practices in the functions of culture, ecology, and community (Figure 11).

4.5. Ho’oulu ʻĀina: Growing the Land in Urban Kalihi

By Puni Jackson and Maya Han

  Hānau ʻo Laumiha, he wahine i noho iā Kekahakualani

  Hānau ʻo Kahaʻula, he wahine i noho iā Kuhulionua

  Hānau ʻo Kahakauakoko, he wahine i noho iā Kulaniehu

  Hānau Haumea, he wahine i noho iā Kanaloa akua

  Then was born Laumiha, the woman that dwelt with Kekahakualani

  Kahaula, the woman that dwelt with Kuhulihonua

  Kahakauakoko, the woman that dwelt with Kulaniehu

  Haumea, who dwelt with Kanaloaakua [73]

To reach Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, you drive all the way up Kalihi street, one of the most urban or developed areas in Oʻahu, until the street posts are overtaken by foliage, and you pass the “Dead End” sign. In the recent past, when you came upon the gates of Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, there was a sign that read: “This land is your grandmother, and she loves you”. We are born from the earth. As part of her genealogy, we are descendants with familial connections to all of the Earth’s children [16,74,75]. Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s name is translated as “to grow the land and to grow because of the land”, and the community of Hoʻoulu ʻĀina is growing, restoring 100 acres located within the ahupuaʻa and valley of Kalihi in the moku of Kona on the Island of Oʻahu. The mission of Hoʻoulu ʻĀina is to be a welcoming place of refuge where people of all cultures sustain and propagate the connections between the health of the land and the health of the people. These are the connections that restore ancestral vibrancy and abundance.

Each year, over 5000 volunteers come to Hoʻoulu ʻĀina to nourish and restore the relationships between land and humans. Through the four interwoven program areas—Koa ʻĀina (Native Reforestation), Hoa ʻĀina (Community Access), Mahi ʻĀina (Community Food Production), and Lohe ʻĀina (Cultural Preservation)—Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s team of caregivers facilitate the healing process between ‘āina and community. Most of the staff are from Kalihi and are a tight-knit team of skilled farmers, foresters, artists, and healers all working to rejoin the continuum of aloha ʻāina set by our ancient history in a new and changed context.

The word Kalihi means “the edge, border or boundary” [15]. While some historians claim that this name refers to how Kalihi marks “the edge” of the city of Honolulu, the ancient name for the valley “Kalihilihi-o-Laumiha” appears in the Kumulipo, a genealogical chant dating far before the urban elements of Honolulu would see Kalihi as its edge. The Kumulipo names Laumiha as the goddess, born from the brain of the female creator deity, Haumea (hānau ma ka lolo). Liliʻuokalani, our last reigning monarch, translates the name Laumiha as “profound silence”, an element of Kalihi’s upland that remains in spite of the close proximity to Honolulu’s highest urban density that includes Hawaiʻi’s largest urban public housing complex (Figure 12).

In customary times, Kalihi was known as a sacred site and prosperous agricultural area revered for its spiritual significance and its abundance of fresh rainwater that allowed for thriving loʻi kalo. In the 19th century, the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom lead to the removal of Kamāmalu, Kalihi’s traditional kanaka caretaker. The land was then used for ranching, which destroyed much of Kalihi’s native forests. Following ranching, the land endured a commercial nursery that brought many exotic invasive species and sold Kalihi’s soil in bags at garden supply shops. In the 1970s, settler developers purchased the land and planned private gated residential subdivisions on the 100 acres, but the proposal threatened to further destroy Kalihi’s forests, pā pōhaku (ancestral stone terracing), and ʻauwai, and so Kalihi’s elders came together to fight against the development.

Twenty-seven years of community voice in letters of protest prompted the City of Honolulu to purchase the site, and after seventeen years of neglect, the City traded the parcel to the State in an exchange. After eight more years of the land being used as a dumping ground, various legal battles were waged to develop the 100-acre site to be used as a space for the community to gather and engage with the environment. Following the conveyance to the State Parks Division, Kōkua Kalihi Valley (KKV), a trusted community-based non-profit health center, negotiated a lease in order to provide ancient and innovative solutions to serve and improve the health of the community and environment. This is the stewardship history of the wahipana now known as “Hoʻoulu ʻĀina” (Figure 13).

ʻIke aku, ʻike mai: kōkua aku, kōkua mai; pēlā ihola ka nohona ʻohana.—Recognize and be recognized; help and be helped; such is family life. To thrive, a family life requires an exchange of recognition and help.

[76] (p. 183).

As Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s caretakers began to restore this site in the early days of the organization, the key element was a shift in the relationships between land and human. The ancient pōhaku terraces were in disarray due to years of neglect and invasive forest growth, the pathways for travel and water were eroding from lack of care, and the soil was depleted due to years of mining, which allowed the most aggressive invasive species to establish themselves as dominant in the ecosystem. What was true for the forest was also true for the community members who were suffering from illness, overrun by colonial systems of greed and extraction, and had lost familial accountability to the land. While they seemed to have forgotten how to connect and care, they were bursting with the desire to heal and longing for the memory of land as kin. What seemed insurmountable became possible only through the intentionality in how we welcomed people home to their own kuleana. Relationships are key to long-term sustainability, and key to the transfer of ancestral knowledge [18], and community members built relationships in every process—forest and farm, feeding the community, advocating and activating to the ʻ‘āina herself, rekindling relationships, and igniting aloha ʻāina. As part of KKV, a Federally Qualified Health Center that serves a dense urban population, it was immediately apparent that the Kalihi community benefited from the integration of clinical services with culture- and land-based healing modalities. The Urban ʻĀina connection began to heal individuals, the environment, as well as systems (Figure 14).

Today, Hoʻoulu ʻĀina caretakers have the kuleana of welcoming the many thousands of people who visit annually, inviting them to heal their relationship with ʻāina. In Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s welcoming protocol, ʻāina is introduced as our oldest ancestor using her full and proper name, Papahānaumoku. Participants share their name, home, and an ancestor they wish to bring to the circle. A pule (prayer, intention) is offered, and the circle moves into ʻāina spaces, planting, weeding, making medicine, carving, harvesting, and many other forms of mālama ʻāina. This deep connection to place through mālama ʻāina brings school children, families, patients seeking healing, and scholars seeking expansive knowledge. Some volunteers come back year after year and sometimes develop deeper kuleana, evolving into leadership and caregiver roles over time.

‘Ike nō i ka lā o ka‘ike; mana no i ka lā o ka mana.—Know in the day of knowing, mana in the day of mana. Knowledge and mana—each has its day. Another day may bring greater knowledge and greater mana than today

[19] (#1212).

• Wholeness—you are safe. Ancestral wholeness guides us to our future wholeness.
• Disruption—you are not alone. Stories of disruption remind us we are not alone.
• Sovereignty—you have agency. Sovereignty liberates us into the values of relationships.
• Ceremony—we are connected. Ceremony is where we heal through connection.

The core of Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s work is the generational connection to ʻāina. Our connections go far beyond ourselves and our lifetimes. As we begin to understand our responsibilities, our kuleana to care for the Earth and one another, we look to the knowledge and wisdom left to us by our ancestors, the ʻāina. This ʻike (information, knowledge) guides our choice making, and teaches us to study our environment as our eldest familial teacher. When we nourish the relationship between us and the land, we find the accountability that protects, preserves, and perpetuates mana in all relationships. We are accountable to ancestor, to descendant, and to all that feeds; we call this ʻĀina Accountability.

ʻĀina Accountability provides a re-storying framework that honors and normalizes native ways of knowing, lifting up ʻike kūpuna as the navigational stars that guide choice-making in aloha ʻāina and ʻāina stewardship. Developed in partnership between Hoʻoulu ʻĀina and The Kohala Center, the approach reorients our observations and measurements toward these navigational stars to identify which conditions cultivate mana. Primary to recognizing the indicators of mana are the connections between kānaka, ʻāina, and ākua [17]: when these elements are connected, mana is present. As more people are invited with aloha to be included in aloha ʻāina work, ripples of mana extend out into the world.

ʻĀina Accountability invites us to “re-story” our experiences to value that which feeds, to embrace our kuleana to heal land, to heal history, and to heal ourselves. Not all are ready to embrace this work; land as grandmother challenges land as commodity, which challenges colonial perspectives on entitlement and wealth. ʻĀina Accountability is a fierce commitment to create and protect generational and generative abundance, addressing equity and justice, native economics, LANDBACK activism, cultural safety, and more.

Mana expresses an invisible connection that ties the living with the dead. It is a spiritual support that allows us to do something above and beyond what we’re capable of doing right now. We inherit mana from our kupuna and our ʻaumakua, but we also receive it through our personal achievements in life. Everyone has mana.

Lynette Kahekili Kaopuiki Paglinawan

Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s powerful description of ʻĀina Accountability provides the space to begin and facilitate the cultivation of mana. This starts with the kāhea (the invitation) to kuleana, which is the beginning of determining how kānaka, ʻāina, and akua will orient to one another, calling us into practice and relationship. First, we must start with ourselves, our fellow humans, with mana kānaka—an invitation that engages us when offered with aloha, not to take, but to partake, sharing in the work, the food, the prayers, the connection, and the responsibility. This allows us to energetically orient ourselves to honor mana ʻāina—the forest, the stream, and the loʻi kalo call for care and protection, e hoʻoponopono a pono (make it right until it is right). Once our eldest earthly ancestor is honored, we can be spiritually oriented to witness mana ākua—ceremony and ritual move us into alignment so hōʻailona, or elemental wisdom, speaking in the language of environment and natural physical form.

ʻĀina Accountability Partnerships aim to increase mana by feeding these relationships, hānai pilina (hānai: to raise, feed, nourish). We locate ourselves on a continuum of relationship and care—the hānai pilina is a mo’o’ōlelo. To whom are you accountable? To whom are your kumu accountable? To whom are your ancestors accountable? To whom will your children be accountable? These are questions that we must collectively ask ourselves in order to restore the deep relationship between ourselves and this world.

By being accountable to our grandmother, the ʻāina, we are simultaneously taking responsibility for and healing ourselves and our community. Through ancient wisdom and ancestral practices, we return to ways of living that balance and align our kin relationship with ʻāina.

5. Transparency: Results and Solution-Oriented Discussion

Urban ʻĀina practices examined through the Pewa Framework, elaborated through ʻĀina Accountability, and demonstrated in each of the Urban Kīpuka case studies collectively offer a paradigm for effective place-based action. Our forestry, agroforestry, and agriculture case studies are practice-informed examples of Urban Kīpuka as social interventions through which biocultural wellbeing is restored and enhanced. The Pewa framework is used to contextualize both the overall paper and the case studies, and to illustrate how Hawaiian ways of knowing are simultaneously ancestral and contemporary (2) used in the modern day. We conclude that ancestral accountability points to this paradigm being scalable—from a small plot to the ahupuaʻa to the moku, but also from the restorative case studies to other green and blue systems in urban spaces to the many habitats and fisheries that make up ʻāina. Organizational relationships are pivotal to implementing this paradigm at larger scales [77]. In this section, we summarize the unifying themes of each case study. We also provide a table that contains suggestions on how different stakeholders can utilize the knowledge shared in this paper.

Reconnecting to ʻāina, reestablishing reciprocal relationships, and perpetuating cultural practices through stewardship for the health of people and planet are seen as oppositional to existing colonial systems that devalue kinship-based systems focused on lōkahi (harmony). Hawaiian communities are addressing the haki (break) resulting from past traumas and injustices, and they are kūpaʻa (steadfast, firm) as they kūʻē (oppose, resist, protest) the legacies of colonially driven disruptions. These communities are catalysts that huli (turn) agency models to achieve societal growth and adaptation. For example, in one of the most urbanized areas of Oʻahu, Kaʻōnohi Farm’s very presence is an act of resistance and healing. As people exercise their kuleana of caring for a place, they simultaneously assert their connection and right to be in the place. Watts [78] (p. 22–23) explains: “if we do not care for the land we run the risk of losing who we are as Indigenous peoples … It is not only the threat of a lost identity or physical displacement that is at risk but our ability to think, act, and govern becomes compromised because this relationship is continuously corrupted with foreign impositions of how agency is organized”.

Urban ʻĀina can be viewed as a cultural kīpuka [79], which we conceptualize as literal but also metaphorical islands of Native Hawaiian biocultural expression in otherwise built, often hardened urban settings. Urban ʻĀina sites are distinct from other types of urban greenspaces—e.g., urban parks or Miyawaki forests [80]. Urban Kīpuka are refuges for trees, plants, and animals that represent cultural keystones [81] and support the continuation of Indigenous lifeways, knowledge, and practice. They are places where hard-to-find culturally important species that include native, Polynesian-introduced, and other trees and plants that produce food can be stewarded and made accessible for harvest. Whereas gathering plants for food, medicine, textiles, or ritual is typically not allowed in public spaces of the urban core [82], Urban Kīpuka are created and tended specifically for these purposes, thus supporting community members’ efforts to (re)learn and (re)establish pilina (connection) to kūpuna plants and places. Results from a recent survey [83] of community-based, non-profit, and education-based stewardship groups in urban O’ahu (n = 128) indicate that their efforts are strongly focused on sites of food production (e.g., agro-ecosystems such as loko iʻa, loʻi kalo, and mala or garden), in contrast to forest restoration sites, street trees, or parks. There is potential for native, Polynesian-introduced, and other trees and plants that support subsistence gathering to be more present in the urban forests of Honolulu today. Research is needed to identify which species those may be, and which will thrive in a changing climate. Engaging the community in tree species selection and planting design is a powerful entry point for expanding collaborative, community-based urban stewardship.

Urban Kīpuka are also sites of innovation and adaptation. For example, Native Hawaiian and local expertise in resource stewardship and food cultivation technologies is developed, innovated, and shared in these Urban Kīpuka, which can help community members develop leadership skills. Further, intergenerational mentorship can capture the hearts and minds of the next generation. As described by Kumu Ulukoa, the act of growing food in Urban ʻĀina is simultaneously an act of reclamation (of ʻāina and culture) and an act of planning for resilience in times of crisis as climate change increasingly threatens food security locally and globally (personal communication, 10 February 2023).

An important element of Urban ʻĀina practices is the sacred nature of the work, aligned with the description by Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina [41] (p. 57): “[S]acred relationship must be the foundation of any successful sustainability effort, with success achieved only when resource management practices and policies engage the spirit and are aligned with equitable and respectful interactions among human and non-human. By sacred, we refer to those sentiments, actions, and commitments that emerge from spirit-based relationships that are founded on love, respect, care, intimate familiarity, and reciprocal exchange. By spirit, we refer to that which gives life to the material body, the enigma that is our collective conscious, subconscious, and unconscious beings.” This fundamental relationship fuels the personal desire to be accountable to the environment and to each other and therefore facilitate just and sustainable lifeways. It is for these reasons that we have chosen to expose you, the reader, to ceremony and to a discussion of spirituality.

Through the practice of mālama ʻāina, and by embracing the Pewa Framework, Urban ʻĀina supports healing relationships between people and place. The case studies featured the inclusive collaboration of diverse people who aim to build interventions that address the reason for the fracture and hold each side equally strong, a tenant of the Pewa Framework. It has been observed that “the multiple challenges of sustainability in a time of accelerating global environmental change can encourage communities to seek out other ways of knowing and being, as ways to care for the people and places in their communities. Specifically, the urban social-ecological system requires that multiple and necessarily diverse knowledge systems interact in the process of creating and applying novel ideas and practices to the stewardship of urban resources, and in the process the knowledge systems shape and become shaped by these resources” [28]. Our case studies demonstrate that by making space for native Hawaiian and Polynesian-introduced species and the people who steward and teach about these plants, we speak life into these kūpuna plants. By simply saying their names and telling their stories, we heal our relationship with ʻāina and perpetuate the legacy of our ancestors.

Urban ʻĀina practices bring healing that is layered and multidimensional. In urban Oʻahu, many historic and cultural sites that have been developed as public green spaces have been neglected, just as some members of society have been neglected. Kumu Mikiʻala describes the stewardship of Urban ʻĀina as a powerful and holistic intervention not just for green spaces but also for their socio-cultural dimensions. There is a healing of place and people to come from caring for these sites and the communities who traditionally were connected to them or who are connected to them today (personal communication, 11 February 2023).

6. Conclusions: Our Vision of Sustainable Urban Stewardship as Urban ʻĀina

Urban ʻĀina relies on a biocultural, place-based stewardship ethic that is grounded in kinship with and has accountability to the land and ancestors. This ethic supports ecological sustainability, social–ecological resilience, food sovereignty, and restorative justice in urban geographies. In urban Hawaiʻi, the broader application of this ethic means intensifying the planting and maintenance of naturally occurring and cultivated native and Polynesian-introduced trees, crops, and plants. It also means providing access to community members to engage in reciprocal relationships with Urban ʻĀina so that they can both steward and harvest.

As described in our case studies and in other examples from cities of South Africa [84], Mexico [85], New York [86], Canada [87], and more [88], Indigenous People have relationships with what have become urban green and blue spaces because they continue to support cultural identity, connections to ancestors and deities, healing, the perpetuation of cultural practices, and food sovereignty. This understanding highlights the potential benefits of sustainable urban green space design and stewardship when Indigenous people can select the species to be planted or spared, determine how plants are to be maintained including allowable uses, and serve as primary stewards of planted areas, including receiving the benefits of harvest [10].

We hope that you are inspired to connect with and support those Urban Kīpuka areas in your geographies. This can begin simply by asking yourself: where are the “Urban Kīpuka” in my area, who are the Indigenous people who steward or should steward those spaces, and how can I support their efforts? Based on our collective experience and insights based on years of community work, below, we provide guidance on how to respectfully engage with urban spaces and the Indigenous communities that are connected to them (

Table 1. Guidance to advance Indigenous-led biocultural approaches to urban stewardship—specific suggestions for different audiences.

Guidance to Advance Indigenous-Led Biocultural Approaches to Urban Stewardship
For All: Recognize that urban spaces have always been sacred, Indigenous spaces. Recognize that Indigenous and other community members have expertise based on ancestral teachings. Through acts of responsibility and care, their expertise sustains urban biocultural communities and creates abundance. Recognize that stewardship requires the support of everyone but must be led by community members. Supportive agency specialists are welcome but need to respect the leadership and decision making of community members. Recognize that strong relationships built over time are needed to form collaborations built on trust. Collaboratively create data-sharing agreements that recognize and fully honor Indigenous data sovereignty. Recognize there are multiple ways to embrace Indigenous knowledge in urban areas while unlearning overly simplistic or racist notions of what constitutes Indigenous knowledge and practice. Be holistic and inclusive by including food production and restorative justice goals in formulating tree canopy and green infrastructure plans. Include the local community as drivers of this planning so that the sites best meet community needs. Understand that engaging Indigenous communities most often means working in solidarity with these communities to support their efforts to sustain their lifeways, their ways of knowing, their approaches to sustainability, and their resilience to change.
For Funders and Agencies: Work with leaders that have been identified by the community to co-design requests for proposals, so they align with their needs and values. Invest time and build relationships in a community to be able to identify these leaders. Work with communities to collectively re-define metrics for evaluation and performance measures that speak to their place-based goals, needs, values, and ways of knowing. Recognize that technical expertise exists within communities, and that community experts such as elders and cultural practitioners merit compensation for their time and shared expertise, just as consultants and scientists merit and so expect to be paid for services. Value and prioritize long-term relationship building with communities, so that projects support community-based goals and efforts. Provide long-term timelines for funding support. Short-term or one-off funding sources are often inadequate for making progress to address these issues.
For Researchers: Involve and invest in community members from the onset of the research. Ask communities what they need to answer their own questions instead of approaching them with predetermined research questions. Continue the collaboration through to dissemination and implementation of findings. Help community-based groups document the impact of their work using metrics that are meaningful to them as well as metrics that speak to funders and agencies. Take appropriate measures to ensure communities maintain ownership of and rights of use over their data.
For Managers: Work with communities to impact sustainability, conservation, urban forestry goals, policy, and ways of engaging. Learn which community members and groups are already working in the geography or topical areas you are managing. Tools such as the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project and ʻĀinaVis can help identify those groups.

).

This work moves at the speed of trust [89], or in the words of Uncle Keoki Apokolani Carter of the Kaʻūpūlehu Forest on Hawai’i Island, progress happens on “tree time,” not on the scale of an academic year or a grant cycle. This work needs patient investment, and a willingness to listen, understand, and spend time to know the right questions to ask. It calls for co-planning, co-designing, co-implementing, co-monitoring, co-evaluating, coauthoring, and, when appropriate, co-celebrating.

When we heal land, we heal ourselves.

Aunty Manu Meyer

6.1. Pani—Closing Ceremony

In ceremony, closing is for spiritual protection, to close the door you opened with the initiation of the ceremony. Much has been shared here—our sources of knowledge, our contemporary practices, and insights into our sustainability and urban forestry approaches that are grounded in equity, reciprocity, and transparency. This knowledge is sacred, cherished, and radical, as many of our elders and community members have been attacked for upholding ancestral teachings. We now seek to protect them and you, to help the collective us on our journey, and to foster growth and perpetuation of our urban kīpuka, by offering E ulu ē, a Pule Hoʻoulu (prayer for inspiration).

E ulu ē
E ulu ē	Grow
E ulu kini o ke Akua	Grow the multitude of gods
Ulu aʻe ʻo Kāne me Kanaloa	Grow from Kāne and Kanaloa
Ulu ka ʻŌhiʻa a lau ka wai	The ʻōhiʻa grows until fruit are many
Ka ʻieʻie	like the ʻieʻie
Ulu aʻe ke Akua a noho i kona kahu	The gods grow from and live through their kahu
Eia ka wai lā	Here is the water
He wai ola	the water of life
E ola iaʻu i ke kumu	I live through the source
E ola i ke poʻo, ke poʻo puaʻa	Give life to the head, the head of the pig
E ola i ka pae, ka paepae	Give life to the banks, the support
E ola i nā haumana, nā haumana a pau	Give life to the students, to all the students
ʻEliʻeli kapu, ʻeliʻeli noa	Profound the kapu, profound its lifting

6.2. Acknowledgements and Genealogy of Ideas

As ʻāina is our greatest teacher, we acknowledge the ʻāina that has been featured here. These lands are sacred to Kānaka ʻŌiwi, the Native Hawaiian people. This is the genealogy of ideas and knowledge as they have been shared with us. We honor Aunty Puanani Burgess and Bob Agres’ community-based and Indigenous-centered planning frameworks which enabled student researchers to identify and articulate the numerous services practitioners provide in communities. We honor the Kanakaʻole ʻohana, and especially the teachings of Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaʻoleohaililani, who has so generously carried her family’s knowledge and spirit to so many of us, enabling us to deepen our connections to our places, our work, and each other. We recognize Niegel Rozet, who was a graduate student in the class Kamuela Enos taught when the Urban ʻĀina term was born—a result of relationships with Kehau Kupihea at Mokauea, and Kumu Mikiʻala Lidstone at Hālau Kaululauae.

We thank Pauline Sato for her inspiration and contributions to the conceptualization of this paper generally and for her guidance with the Mālama Learning Center case study specifically. We thank Katie Schwind, who supported the conceptualization and framing of the origins of Urban ʻĀina. We acknowledge Makahiapo Cashman and the many Limahana of Kānaewai who shaped the ʻāina of Kānewai and thus the case study that features it. We thank Jenn Deluze for weaving the lei that deepened the connections among us coauthors and with our ʻāina. We thank Lindsay Campbell and Emily Perry for reviewing and commenting on an early draft of the paper. We thank the co-editors of this special issue who have generously shown their support. We dedicate this paper to Uncle Noa Emmett Aluli, whose passing we learned of while writing this paper. He was a cornerstone of a community of resistance and practice that many of us rely upon. In life and death, he will always be a cherished kupuna that exemplifies aloha, kuleana, and what it truly means to be Noa (free).