There was a time when it was easy to miss the band of reedy wetland wedged between the Oahu Club's tennis courts and Hawaii Kai Drive. Easy to miss but not easy to dismiss: That wetland, called Keawawa, is a remnant of Loko Ia o Maunalua, once the largest fishpond in the Islands. Hawea is the thousand-plus-year-old heiau (temple) complex at the 523-acre fishpond's apex, believed to be named for a pahu (drum) carried to Hawaii by the ancestral voyager Laamaikahiki. Such is the significance of this drum that sites throughout Polynesia bear its name.
For more than a generation Hawea lay untended, but things changed in 2009 when a developer set out to bulldoze the site. "This whole area, these five acres, was going to be tennis courts, a swimming pool and a putting green," recalls filmmaker Ann Marie Kirk, who grew up just down the road and serves as a cultural adviser for Livable Hawaii Kai Hui, a nonprofit that promotes what it calls "sensible development" that respects cultural and natural resources. "At one point, all that was going to be saved was a petroglyph cut out of a rock and taken to Bishop Museum."
Kirk and two other members of the hui (group), Chris Cramer and Kaleo Paik, put out a kahea (call): "We just said, 'On November 7 come to Hawea, and if you can't join us in person, wherever you are at 6 p.m., even if you can just tap on your heart to the beat of a drum, join us.'" People did and things changed. In 2010 there were changes in ownership and an agreement was reached: The condo project, Hale Ka Lae, would go forward, but Hawea would not be touched. In 2014 the new landowners sold the site to the Trust for Public Land and the hui. The trust then transferred ownership to the hui, which has since worked to restore the site.
Unlike many heiau, which are raised stone platforms, Hawea follows the contours of a hillside. Kirk points out some of the petroglyphs-upslope, there's a surfer; near the water, a fish. There's a new hale (meetinghouse), a medicinal plant garden and a hula pa (platform) for performances-all constructed by volunteers. (Access is restricted, so the best way to experience Hawea is to join a regularly scheduled workday.)
Since 2014 the hui has acquired two additional sites in East Honolulu, but Hawea remains central. "That day [in 2009] was one of those moments that we felt this shift," says Kirk. "I think those kupuna [ancestors] who were here before us, who had been transgressed against for so long, started to believe in us and to be with us. So now we always come back here. It's the place where we come to ask our ancestors for help, to give thanks and do what we can to honor them."
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