Discovering Kaloko-Honokohau

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park celebrates the indigenous people of Hawaii by preserving evidence of a thousand years of society, along with values, ideas, beliefs, legends, traditional skills, and art forms, offering a view into the lives of generations of Hawaiians on the land where they lived and a future in which traditional values can flourish. The Hawaiian people are the real treasures of Kaloko-Honokohau, and its fishpond walls, made of stone and built in the ocean for commoner and chief alike, stand as tangible evidence of the connection between people, land, and sea. Honu rest and feed in the same shallow waters that ancient Hawaiians modified to attract and keep fish, while the homi connect the ancient Hawaiian concept of malama-aina, care of the land, to the present. A Hawaiian proverb, Hanau ka aina, hanau ke alii, hanau ke kanaka, expresses the bond between land and people, and at Kaloko-Honokohau the land was of special importance to the alii, with especially vivid evidence of the lives of both alii and kanaka and of how they worked, played, and interacted on the rugged land they shared.

Kalaoa, Hawaii · United States