Maui Hikina — E Ho’oponopono ‘Āina
(East Maui — Restoring Balance To The Living Environment)
At the request of Ms. Gina Young , Director, County of Maui, East Maui Water Authority and members of The ‘Aha Wai o Maui Hikina Community Board, Kumu Pono Associates LLC* conducted detailed research into the history of the biocultural landscape of Maui Hikina. As a part of the study we also reviewed historical records that describe the landscape we see today. How significant changes, driven by commercial extraction of water from the natural environment, and how the resulting impacts disrupted the biocultural environment and sustainable life-ways.
[* Kumu Pono Associates LLC was established in 1995 by Kepā & Onaona Maly who prepared this study
with the support of our Maui ‘ohana, Jen Kamaho‘i & Richard Mather.]
The interruption of the ancient system—through land privatization, water diversion, and external control—was not simply the result of modernization. It was a political and economic shift that devalued ancestral knowledge in favor of profit. But that knowledge was never lost. It was retained in loʻi that continued to be planted, in ʻohana that refused to leave, and in the words of kūpuna who insisted that the streams could run again.
The East Maui Water Authority was established by the voters of Maui County and formalized in the Maui County Charter (2022 Revision, §8-19.5), and the Director of the East Maui Water Authority is tasked with the investigation, acquisition, management, and control of water collection and delivery systems in East Maui. This includes, but is not limited to, the legacy water license areas of Nāhiku, Ke‘anae, Honomanū, and Huelo. The board is authorized to appoint a regional director, review and approve a watershed to provide the East Maui Water Authority with ‘ike kūpuna and local knowledge.
Maui County to Charter Section 8.19.3 established a community board consisting of eleven members, eight of which must have experience in water resource management and watershed restoration in the applicable watershed and reside in the applicable community plan area—one with experience in water resource management who is actively engaged in farming, aquaculture, or loko i‘a (fishpond stewardship), or ranching, in the area where water service is provided; one with experience in water resource management who resides full-time in the area where water service is provided; and one who is a representative of the Hawaiian Homes Commission.
The East Maui Water Authority and its board’s responsibilities are not merely administrative. They rest on a deeper foundation: a recognition that water in Maui Hikina has always been managed through relationships, between people and place, between upland and lowland, between kūpuna (ancestors) and their moʻopuna (descendants). This report hopes to contribute to that foundation. Mākou no me ke aloha – a e Ola i ka Wai!
Maui Hikina has long been recognized by Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians) not merely as a geographic region, but as an integrated living system in which land, water, forest, and people functioned as interdependent kin. In the Hawaiian worldview, resources were not managed in isolation, but as part of an intricate web of relationships governed by kapu (sacred restrictions), kuleana, and the seasonal rhythms of nature. It is in this spirit that we refer to Maui Hikina as a biocultural landscape: a place where cultural practices were inseparable from ecological processes, and where governance was rooted in observation, ceremony, and reciprocal care.
This collection of documents (technical report and accompanying appendices) incorporates extensive translated archival sources, including moʻolelo (traditions) and mele (chant, song) from 19th-century Hawaiian language newspapers, as well as selected references from early ethnographers and government land records. These sources help readers understand the cultural meaning of East Maui’s named places and document the logic and relationships that guided traditional stewardship. Many moʻolelo, such as those referencing akua (gods), ancestors, and elemental forms tied to specific streams or mountains, are rooted in this region and support the continuity of place-based knowledge systems. As the report notes, this archive is not exhaustive, but it is foundational.
This study is not a call to return to the past, but to remember what the past made possible. Maui Hikina sustained an abundance—of food, of water, of knowledge—because its people lived in relationship with the living environment and with each other.
That relationship was not incidental. It was structured, practiced, and continually reaffirmed through work, protocol, and presence.
The interruption of that system—through land privatization, water diversion, and external control—was not simply the result of modernization. It was a political and economic shift that devalued ancestral knowledge in favor of profit. But that knowledge was never lost. It was retained in loʻi that continued to be planted, in ʻohana that refused to leave, and in the words of kūpuna who insisted that the streams could run again.
