Puanani Lindsey
Maui Cultural Lands, co-founder
as told to CHRIS AMUNDSON
“I feel the spirit in these lands. I’ve learned that when the spirit wants you to know something, you will feel it.” – Puanani Lindsey
“We must preserve something for our children today and something for the children of tomorrow. That was mine and my husband Ed’s main focus for preserving the cultural land assets of Honokōwai Valley, Mālama Launiupoko and Mālama Kaheawa-Hanaula. I am born and raised in Wailuku. We started in 1999 and had our nonprofit, Maui Cultural Lands, by 2002.
It started with Honokōwai, one of the most sacred sites in Hawai‘i. In the late 1990s, the plantation got local people together and gave them a blackboard, nothing on it. They said, ‘Plan what you want this area to look like in 20 years.’
I went to the valley, the Hawaiian homelands, with Ed. We cleared grass and haole koa (foreign koa), exposing and revealing ancient home sites and walls. Back in the day, there were 600 families who lived here. We discovered lo‘i (stone terraces) that date back to the 1200s.
They were growing taro, banana, sweet potato, and they traded for fish with the fishing village where the Sheraton now is. My husband used to say, ‘In those days they did not have McDonald’s and Burger King. They ate well.’
When the missionaries came, they didn’t try to understand our ways. They put tunnels to divert water. Lāhainā didn’t have water for the king. Families were able to survive because water ran all the way down to the ocean in those days, and taro needs cold water. But when you don’t have water, you can only take away so much and live so long. The last family left in 1931 when sugar was king.
Clearing invasive species took us two years before we actually started planting. The biggest invasive was the java plum tree and foreign koa. They sucked up a lot of water. Those were the early days, and to see our plants growing now, they are now big trees.
We learned to work with what the land gave us. In the early days, we hauled water in barrels, filled them from the stream when it flowed and pumped it to the plants. Some days we were out there from morning until the sun was straight overhead.
Everyone had a job – weeding, watering, cutting back brush and clearing trails. We’d bring lunch and sit under the shade, talking story. Some folks from the mainland came to volunteer and they couldn’t believe what we were doing by hand. But when they saw the walls and terraces, they understood.
Volunteers have cleared more than 10 acres in Honokōwai Valley. We gather every Saturday morning before work. Everyone who goes into the valley comes out with positive energy. We work with each other, side by side, and it brings out the best in us all.
In 1987, when The Ritz-Carlton was being built and they discovered those iwi kūpuna (ancestral bones) – over 1,000 bones – I was working at the police department. I knew I had to help. I wrote a letter to ask permission, and I was one of 10 women selected to do the kapa (bark cloth) beating for the iwi. There was a heaviness, a kuleana (responsibility). That’s sacred work. It changed me.
Sometimes, I feel the spirit in these lands. I’ve learned that when the spirit wants you to know something, you will feel it. My mother-in-law always told us, ‘If you feel something, don’t be afraid. You will feel the spirit if they want you to know something.’
One day, walking through the Honokōwai Valley, I started to sob. It came from nowhere. I knew – that was them. In what little Hawaiian I knew, I gave thanks. I can understand what our families went through in the past. Mahalo for letting me feel that.
I always try to stay positive in everything I do. I teach my grandsons, Ka‘elo, Keolewa and Keoni, when they have a negative word, to stay positive. That came from my husband.
That’s what we do in the valley too. We do a breathing exercise to clear the mind. Don’t worry about the sun, the animals or what you’re doing in the afternoon. Leave it all here and clear your mind.
[This project] has to continue. I don’t think it will ever be done. It was my husband’s mom and dad that were the inspiration. There’s always more to do. The spirit and the heart have to be clean, and you have to gather the right people. We need to be one mind.
They need to see how the sites were done, feel it, be in it, understand why and the hard work. Until you go through that understanding, it’s just a place to people. We hope we can share the values of aloha (love, compassion), mālama (to care for properly) and being positive in things we do with everyone who works with us.”
