Introduction

Puʻu are raised grounds where the seeds of our survival are planted; honua is the unflinching earth beneath us, the enduring Papahānaumoku who outlasts all upheaval. Puʻuhonua are sanctuaries grown in sheltered enclaves – hills, cliffs, shorelines – ritually consecrated to protect those within from peril. In the distant past, Kanaka Maoli fleeing the violence of war or escaping chiefly punishment could retreat to these places of refuge where they would be safe from execution. A traditional sanctum of care and security grown by our ancestors, puʻuhonua provide descendants today with an abiding legacy of practices for cultivating fortified, flourishing, restorative Hawaiian communities as we vigilantly confront the abusive colonial invasions of our lands.

Puʻuhonua also recall cyclical conceptions of childbirth, germination and natality. Our ancestors felt a deep convergence between the growth of a child in their parent’s body and the rising of the land, unifying each in metaphorical harmony. Puʻuhonua are thus revered as a metonym for pregnancy, for lands and bodies protruding with the life teeming within. By recalling this bonded accord between Hawaiians and the ʻāina, even a person could be revered as a puʻuhonua and come to embody these sanctified aspects of care and protection. From Hawaiian ancestral wisdom, we therefore affirm that puʻuhonua are places of refuge on a continuum from land to bodies, and bodies to land.

The cultivation of puʻuhonua has never ceased despite the ongoing colonisation and occupation of Hawaiʻi by the United States today. In fact, sanctuaries for the protection of land and people continue to be born in the present, with each (re)birth of the puʻuhonua lengthening the umbilical connection between our contemporary struggles for Hawaiian interdependence and the ancestors of our past. The puʻuhonua grown at Mākua Valley in 1996 is a well-documented example of this resurgent legacy where over 300 Kanaka Maoli reunited with the land and each other, raising a refuge in defiance of US military bombardment of the ʻāina. In 1994, sovereignty activist Bumpy Kanahele built Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo which has grown into a sustainable village on Oʻahu’s north shore.