Kipuka Kuleana: Restoring Reciprocity and Responsibility to Land Tenure and Resource Use in Hawai'i

How are relationships with land and resources built upon obligations to care for, restore, and protect them? On the rural Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, native Hawaiian community fishing practices and land tenure are based on... [ view full abstract ]

How are relationships with land and resources built upon obligations to care for, restore, and protect them? On the rural Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, native Hawaiian community fishing practices and land tenure are based on principles of mutual care taking, reciprocity, and sharing in interacting with nature as family. Building upon two decades of interviews with sixty Hawaiian elders, community leaders, and fishers, this research focuses on communities’ struggles to perpetuate and practice these principles.  Communities face commodification and loss of access to coastal lands where these communities have lived for generations.  They are reasserting local governance based on ancestral values despite centralized state management which conflicts with these values.  Hawaiian families on the north coast of Kauaʻi are resisting dispossession by finding creative ways to continue to exercise responsibilities that come with being of a place. Families perpetuate connections to areas where they no longer own land by returning to harvest, hold reunions, care for the ancestral resting places, serve as guardians and pass on stories and lessons of home to their own children.  In one area community, families have negotiated a stewardship agreement to restore taro patches their families once farmed on state park lands and to create state law based on local level fishing traditions and norms of responsible harvest.  While community actions do not negate ongoing loss and injustice, these stories offer possibilities for restoring lost connections, growing new ones, and building models of local level governance and access that emphasize care taking rather than ownership.