Growing Connections: Cultivating ʻĀina and Community at Maunawila Heiau

Since January, the team at Maunawila Heiau, along with the support of volunteers, community members, and students from Hauʻula Elementary, Hawai‘i Pacific University, and Brigham Young University-Hawaii, has been establishing a makai zone māla on our site.

We are incredibly proud of this māla, a living link to this cultural space and a tangible connection to the nutrient and medicinal supply that our ancestors carried across the Pacific. By cultivating the same plants as our kupuna, we're not only protecting rare Hawaiian varieties but teaching the next generation about food independence, resilience, and aloha ʻāina.  

The Polynesian-introduced canoe plants include 13 varieties of ʻUala (sweet potato), 27 varieties of kalo (taro), and 17 varieties of kō (sugarcane). For the last seven months, we have propagated La'i (red and green ti leaf), which has grown here for hundreds of years, to distribute across the site. Each plant has its own significance in cultural and medicinal practices and food nourishment.

Additionally, we planted four varieties of ilie'e along the east side of our mala. Ilie'e has some very cool uses! The dark sap was used as a baby medicine, and the pigment was used for tattoos. This indigenous, green leafy ground cover is ideal for erosion prevention along the riverbed, which can result from the removal of the invasive Guinea and California grasses.

It’s been great to have community members get involved in the process. On our last workday, volunteers prepared propagating sticks of each sweet potato variety, which we delivered to Hauʻula for the students to plant in their garden.

The Hauʻula students helped build the garden, moving soil and mulch, building walls, removing weeds (always weeding!), and planting, watering, and maintaining the greenery. Late last month, we enjoyed our first harvest of sweet potatoes with the sixth graders from the school’s Hawaiian immersion program.

Our young helpers really enjoy the work, especially when we set up a competition to see who can remove the most weeds. They run amok throughout the site, often asking me, “Do I really need to wear gloves?” They love getting their hands dirty.

— Makani Walker, Maunawila Heiau Complex Educator & Steward