huiMAU: Cultivating Healthy ‘Āina and Strong ‘Ohana

By Karen Rose

“Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono” is typically translated as “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” However, according to No‘eau Peralto of huiMAU, a more appropriate translation is, “The sovereignty of the ‘āina (land) continues on because it is pono (righteous).” This saying is not only Hawai‘i’s state motto, it is a source of ancestral wisdom and a way of life for the staff and volunteers of Hui Mālama i ke Ala ‘Ūlili, or abbreviated “huiMAU”.

Founded in 2011, huiMAU is a community-based nonprofit organization of families from East Hāmākua who are committed to creating safe, healthy spaces for cultivating and revitalizing Hawaiian ancestral knowledge, healthy food and ecosystems, and strong families who will thrive in the Hāmākua district for generations to come.

No‘eau Peralto is the current President of huiMAU, and dedicates his time to the nonprofit’s goal of re-establishing systems that lead to community abundance. “Our mission is to re-establish the systems that sustain our community through educational initiatives and ‘āina-based practices that cultivate abundance, regenerate responsibilities and promote collective health and well-being,” said No‘eau.

“We started off as a hui (group) of families coming together from this area to take care of our kuleana (responsibilities), to mālama (care for and protect) the ‘āina (land) and the community,” said No‘eau. “It’s important we understand that the well-being of the land is tied to the well-being of the people who care for that land and vice versa.”

Education Programs

One of their educational initiatives is the HoAMa After School Mentorship Program (hō‘ama means ‘to begin to mature or ripen’). The goal of the program is to mentor and cultivate the next generation of youth leaders in Hāmākua. It is important to huiMAU to be rooted in the values of aloha (love), ‘ohana (family), kuleana (responsibility), ha‘aha‘a (humility), and aloha ‘āina (love for land) for the next generation of youth. By sharing and teaching these cultural values, the program aims to restore abundance, and cultivate a strong sense of responsibility to care for the land, family, community and the nation.

“In 2015, we started our educational programs,” said No‘eau. “The focus of our program is really about aloha ‘āina, instilling the values of kuleana to place, kuleana to community. These are the responsibilities we have to care for our homelands, our families, our community and the practices of aloha ‘āina. If we’re talking about sustainability and long-term well-being of our people, we need to focus on restoring the well-being of our land, our ocean and our water.”

The HoAMa After School Mentorship Program is a safe afterschool learning environment where students cultivate strong relationships and support networks with peers, mentors, and ‘ohana. No‘eau and huiMAU believe these support systems increase the likelihood of a childʻs success in school, at home, and in their community. By having a solid foundation, children become successful, healthy adults.

“It starts with our kids,” said No‘eau. “We look to the examples our ancestors left us through stories, genealogies, songs and chants, and we see they created time-tested models and systems of caring for our land for hundreds of generations. We need to get back to that way of thinking again—not just for a year or a few years, but for multiple generations ahead.”

The afterschool program engages students and their families in hands-on learning through ‘āina-based education, community gardening, arts and crafts, storytelling through mele (song) and hula (dance), lessons with local kūpuna (elders) and more. The HoAMa staff and mentors also provide students with academic support and guidance, encouraging them to achieve their academic and life goals, all while mentoring them to become productive and thriving members of the community.

“We start working with the kids at the age of five to teach them these values and empower them to become leaders in our community,” said No‘eau. This is all while being rooted in these values of aloha ‘āina, mālama, kuleana, and caring for kānaka, and our ‘ohana.”

Land Restoration Project

In 2013, huiMAU started a land restoration project called the Mālama ‘Āina Koholālele Project. This kuleana-based project began as an effort to restore land located within the ahupua‘a (land division) of Koholālele to the fertile and productive state their kūpuna had fostered for generations.

“Our kūpuna left us a legacy of abundance, not just an ecosystem that allowed them to survive, but a state of abundance that enabled and empowered people to thrive and become specialists in different arts and sciences,” said No‘eau. “This kind of expertise doesn’t happen in a society unless there is a thriving environment and state of abundance in terms of food and ‘āina.”

By initiating this project, huiMAU hopes to lead by example in cultivating the living practice of aloha ‘āina within the community. Mālama ‘Āina Koholālele is a volunteer, grassroots project to reclaim space along the coast and eliminate invasive species while simultaneously planting native species and Hawaiian food crops. It is creating a space for families to come and learn about caring and reconnecting with their responsibility to care for the land.

Community Garden

Another sustainability project founded by huiMAU is the KaHua HoAMa Project (KaHua means ‘base or foundation’) in Pa‘auilo. This community garden and art project reflects the organization’s long-term vision of transforming and elevating the cultural and political consciousness of the Hāmākua community. By restoring the local food systems, it encourages increased food sovereignty within the community and within Hawai‘i as a whole.

Students and staff from huiMAUʻs HoAMa After School Program work together to cultivate a culture of responsibility and healthy living. With the garden as their classroom, the students learn the skills of gardening, environmental observation practices, and healthy food preparation, all while sharing the history and stories of Hāmākua.

“We look to the stories of this place, and in particular Hāmākua Hikina (East Hāmākua)—stories of one of our famous chiefs who lived here 18 generations ago,” said No‘eau. “His name was ‘Umi-a-Līloa, and he became the ruling chief of this island. Because of his characteristics of caring for the land, and caring for the people, he was chosen to become the next chief and created a system of land tenure, governance and agriculture that was celebrated and replicated by every single chief after him on this island. It created a time of abundance and prosperity that every generation after him tried to replicate.”

Building for the Future

No‘eau believes this story is a good example of leadership and how to live as ‘ohana. He believes by sharing these stories, the community can promote balance and abundance to be sustained over generations.

“If we don’t share these stories, the knowledge held within them can be lost, and then those practices can become unsustainable and detrimental to our ‘āina, and ultimately, detrimental to our people,” he said. “We’re fortunate that many families in our Hāmākua community are connected to ‘āina and still take care of the land. They still carry those values within their families. There’s a lot of support for our program, from the parents especially, and this has a huge influence on the kids.”

The HoAMa afterschool program is almost two years old now, and leaders see the transformations and growth in the students who have participated. The program now has more than 40 children, up from nine students when the program first began. No‘eau shares one of their student’s success stories:

“There’s one particular young man that we’ve worked with for a couple of years now,” said No‘eau. “He’s in high school now, and his family lives here in Pa‘auilo. He was real quiet and shy when we started working with him, and he was struggling a bit in school. As part of our program, we did an imu (in-the-ground oven). We had a couple of uncles and elders lead and teach the kids about it. In old-school fashion, they just made the kids sit and watch, especially because most of the kids are really young and they didn’t want them getting in the way. When they chose one of the boys to come and help them, it was this young man. He thrived in this situation. It was a moment where his intelligence and leadership abilities became apparent, and his knowledge and background was valued. We selected him as one of our first leadership interns for our summer program, to work with him one on one, and now, two years later, he’s thinking about college to learn more about caring for the ‘āina and working with youth here in our community.”

No‘eau and others in the huiMAU community hope to fulfill their personal and familial responsibilities to the land, and by doing so, they can inspire other families and communities around Hawai‘i to do the same.

“It’s easy for us as people to get caught up in thinking that we are entitled, but we have immense responsibilities,” said No‘eau. “It begins at home with our own families, with our own kids, and then radiates out from there. We see the kids we work with as part of our family. We treat these kids like they are our own and we try to create a place of learning they can feel safe in, and feel loved in. A place where they can learn, grow, and heal. All of the things that happen in a family that’s thriving, in an ‘ohana that’s thriving. This is why we are here.” ❖

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Photos courtesy of huiMau

For more information: alaulili.com, Email: kealaulili@gmail.com