The push to save one of Hawaii’s only voyaging temples

On Hawaii Island, in the hills of North Kohala overlooking the Pacific, a unique Hawaiian cultural site sits beneath the stars, free from light pollution. The ancient Hawaiian heiau, or temple, called Koa Heiau Holomoana, is one of the rare few dedicated to long-distance ocean voyaging. Some think it was built over a thousand years ago. A training ground for navigators, its standing stones are aligned, with keen precision, with islands on the other side of the Pacific, farther than the eye can see.

For decades, the coastline of North Kohala has been under threat of resort development, and the island’s county council supported its development.
Despite community opposition, one after the other, developers proposed large hotels, condos, homes and an 18-hole golf course on land that contains this sacred heiau and 174 other historic cultural sites, such as shrines, burials and trails.

When the latest developer’s plans fell through, the Kohala community partnered with the nonprofit Hawaii Land Trust to try to buy the 642 acres and preserve the land into perpetuity. “There’s been a very, very long-term community use of Mahukona for a bunch of things, from recreation to cultural practice to subsistence gathering, and the community was worried that had that resort been developed, they would have lost access and ability to continue those practices,” Olu Campbell, CEO of Hawaii Land Trust, told SFGATE.

Hawaii Land Trust is actively campaigning to raise $20 million, to be used to purchase the land from a holding company, as part of an agreement that expires on Dec. 15. It has raised enough funds to acquire the property, but needs the total amount to support immediate stewardship activities. “I’m optimistic, but yeah, there’s definitely a chance that [we won’t reach it]. We’re about $1.3 million away from completing that goal,” said Campbell. The purchase would create 4 miles of protected coastline, including Kapaa Beach Park to the north and Lapakahi State Historical Park to the south. 

“It allows us to continue to steward Koa Heiau Holomoana,” Chadd Paishon, expert navigator and executive director of Na Kalai Waa, a Hawaii Island organization that perpetuates traditional ocean voyaging. (Aside from the coastal trail, Mahukona is on private property and visitors are not allowed to visit the heiau without permission from Hawaii Land Trust.)

Long before modern-day GPS and even prior to the invention of the compass, Polynesians voyaged across the islands of the Pacific by using the positioning of the stars, moon, sun and ocean swells to navigate their way. They traveled between Hawaii and the South Pacific on voyaging canoes for centuries. But for unknown reasons, voyaging declined and ceased in Hawaii around the 14th century. Some surmise that the voyagers’ time and energy turned to cultivating land for its growing population.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Hawaiians, with the help of Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug, rekindled their relationship with the voyaging traditions by building the double-hulled canoe Hokulea and sailing successfully to Tahiti in 1976.

Na Kalai Waa’s founders Clay and Shorty Bertelmann were involved in this resurgence of voyaging — and, in the 1990s, when they were building Makalii, their voyaging canoe for Hawaii Island, kupuna (elders) from Kohala introduced them, and Paishon, to Koa Heiau Holomoana.

“It had been in their family for generations,” said Paishon. “In the stories that we have learned, that particular heiau was used as a training ground, a school for potential navigators. And because we’re continuing that tradition of voyaging, they wanted us to know about the place and really to care for it. And so we basically, still utilize that heiau as our school.”

The navigational heiau looks a bit different compared with other heiau in Hawaii, such as the large, stacked-stone heiau at Puukohola on Hawaii Island or the large enclosures of heiau Puu O Mahuka on Oahu. In contrast, Koa Heiau Holomoana is made up of upright stones pointing toward the sky. Paishon says its construction is similar to others found atop the island’s volcanoes and on Mokumanamana in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Like a map, the heiau’s standing stones are aligned with the stars used by navigators to lead to certain islands, Paishon explains. They’re pointed across the Pacific, toward Samoa, Cook Islands, Tahiti and the Marquesas. The stones are also not from Mahukona – they were brought to this spot long ago from other Pacific islands.

Paishon says Na Kalai Waa takes student navigators to the heiau to teach them about these connections between stones, stars and other Pacific islands. “It’s about understanding what islands are connected to which stones, so that in the process of the movement of the stars, you can see which stars align to certain stones and whether the other stars are in alignment to those particular stones,” he says. 

The heiau helps prepare students before a voyage. Their next long-distance voyage is in two years. If construction had proceeded at Mahukona, development would have obscured the night sky, making it impossible to continue the practice, which is why Paishon sees this purchase as a necessary step for conservation. “It allows that part of our culture to continue,” he says.

Editor’s note: SFGATE recognizes the importance of diacritical marks in the Hawaiian language. We are unable to use them due to the limitations of our publishing platform.