Hui Mālama i ke Ala ʻŪlili

Hui Mālama i ke Ala ʻŪlili is a community-based nonprofit organization with a mission to re-establish the systems that sustain community through educational initiatives and land-based practices that cultivate abundance, regenerate responsibilities, and promote collective health and well-being. The founding of Hui Mālama i ke Ala ‘Ūlili (huiMAU)’s programs are direct results of explicit intentions to cultivate healing and social transformation in Hāmākua by re-birthing interdependent relationships with ‘āina and with each other—relationships that were disfigured by the rise and fall of the plantation economy in the past four generations. huiMAU approaches these challenges and opportunities by drawing upon models of regeneration and abundance in the natural world around us. Kīpuka, or forest oases, in the vast landscape of Pele’s domain, provide us with a glimpse into the landscape’s past. These kīpuka hold the seeds of potential for the regeneration and regrowth of the surrounding landscape. Just as there are kīpuka on the volcanic landscape, natural and cultural kīpuka—called kīpuka aloha ʻāina—have persisted in Hāmākua Hikina as well. Two kipuka aloha ʻāina that huiMAU is currently caring for and actively cultivates are in the ahupua‘a of Koholālele and Paʻauilo, Hāmākua.