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In order for our community to take action to heal our ʻāina, uphold traditional practices, and determine how we make decisions as an island for present and future generations, we need your manaʻo and active participation.
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Volunteer link coming soon.
MOLOKAI HERITAGE TRUST
Community-led, community-driven
Our Objectives
The Molokai Heritage Trust is not a new idea. It is as old as the first prayer uttered to protect Molokai. The Trust’s purpose is to help our people achieve what this island has called on us to do for generations—mālama this land and its people to create ʻāina momona. We exist as we are because kūpuna both living and passed protected this ʻāina and our ways. They acted with intentionality so that we could enjoy it as they did.
Our island also knows what it is to be divided and we know the threat that division creates for our people, our values, and our āina. That is why we stand united in our commitment to this ʻāina and each other. It is our kuleana to bring these blessings forward for our keiki and moʻopuna while embracing the unique challenges of our times—just like our kūpuna did for us.
The Trust shall focus on four interrelated objectives to advance its purpose:
1. Acquisition.
The Trust shall actively explore and incorporate community input regarding the acquisition of lands, including Molokai Ranch and other areas on Molokaʻi. This strategy may involve various funding sources such as bonds, loans, grants, and private philanthropic funds, representing the interests and goals of the Molokaʻi community.
2. Community Governance and Ownership.
The Trust shall actively solicit community input so that it can undertake the future stewardship, access, management, and restoration of lands in alignment with long-term community goals.
3. Community and Economic Development.
The Trust shall guide and provide direction on community development initiatives, appropriate sustainable economic development, local workforce development, housing, education, capital improvements, etc. This oversight extends to Molokai Heritage Trust lands and may include, but is not limited to, acquiring grants, fostering partnerships, initiating capital projects and leases that are grounded in the Trust's Vision, Mission, and Values.
4. Prioritize Molokaʻi Heritage and Culture.
Recognizing the foundational importance of Molokaʻi's cultural heritage and native traditional lifeways, the Trust shall prioritize preserving and promoting the island’s unique culture, traditions, and customs.
History.
In 2017 when Molokai Ranch went up for sale our community saw it as an opportunity to start healing past wounds between friends, neighbors, and ʻohana. The Molokaʻi Pule Oʻo Unity march represented the peaceful coming together of community members from both sides of the divide to heal the ‘eha existing both the land and the people.
In 2021 and after many discussions amongst and within the community, an informal working group was formed to pose a single question to the community-at-large that would change the trajectory of our collective future indefinitely: Rather than placing our hopes in a benevolent buyer, did we want to buy and maintain Molokaʻi Ranch ourselves as a community?
The answer was an overwhelming YES— but not without reservations and many more questions that ultimately came to three big questions: How would we buy the lands? How would we govern the lands? How would we maintain the lands?
We started with educating ourselves by learning from what other communities have done to reclaim their lands, and together learned about the many different strategies, tools and solutions that have helped other communities to answer similar questions. We spent over a year learning together, everything from capital stacks to unique governance structures so that we could be confident in our commitment to buy back Molokai Ranch as a community.
In these meetings, we started to quickly realize that our greatest strength on Molokai is in our unity and that weʻd only be able to accomplish this momentous task with our entire community. As a community weʻre often only categorized as protestors but we who live and love Molokai know that we only protest that which is not pono for our ʻāina and kanaka and as much as we protest, we also build.
Some of the infrastructure that we enjoy today started as grassroots initiatives by our community like the Molokaʻi Library, the Molokaʻi General Hospital, Hikiʻola Farmers Co-op, and many more.
We inherently take care of each other on a day-to-day basis and we love to do it.
We know that Molokai is something special and worth protecting so after assessing the different structures of governance weʻd be able to utilize for this kuleana we decided on a member-managed non-profit structure.
The hope for this structure is to have the accountability of a membership base while maintaining the flexibility of central leadership.
Founding
Board of Directors
Expectations and criteria to serve on the Founding (Interim Working) Board were set by community members who attended the Subcommittee Meetings on August 1, 3 and 7, 2023.
Participants in a Community Meeting in September 2023 nominated and voted to approve the following community members to serve as the Interim Working Board (IWB) for the Molokai Heritage Trust: Malia Akutagawa, Zhantell Dudoit-Lindo, James Espaniola, Keo Hanapi-Hirata & Jason Sykes.
Expectations:
Serve for 1 year or until the founding board is established.
Expected to dedicate (10-15) hours weekly to board work to include; public meetings, working board meetings, and research and writing tasks.
Vested in our Molokai-minded community.
Shared goal of Community Ownership of Molokai Ranch
The Interim Working Board can only voice that MHT is in the process of forming up and give a timeline for the same to any outside interests. If Molokai Heritage Trust is not established in 6 months then the Interim Working Board will have a connection role* in relation to outside interests.
*Connecting Role: IWB can tell the buyer that MHT is in the process of forming up, give a timeline, and provide the buyer with contact info/introductions with different community groups/invite the buyer to address the community at one of the board's public meetings; but IWB cannot engage in meaningful discussions/negotiations with the buyer (those would be the kuleana of the founding board that replaces the IWB).
Required Criteria (all Founding Board members must meet each of the following criteria):
Displayed strong sense of values: aloha, selflessness, community-minded, grounded, aloha ʻāina, compassionate, respect, kuleana, pilina oriented, integrity
Some familiarity with existing community plans.
At least 2 nominees must come from generational (5+ generations) Molokai families and at least 1 of the 2 nominees must reside in Maunaloa or have lineal connections to Maunaloa.
Involved in the current community process enough to accurately represent the 1.5 years of discussions/planning thus far.
Desired Criteria (The Founding Board as a whole must meet each of the following criteria):
A combination of the following technical experience; executive/admin, indigenous rights, ʻike Hawaiʻi, legal, financial, community planning, non- profit, hoʻoponopono/mediation/conflict resolution, writing skills, ecological/agriculture, genealogical-place-based and deep, historical understanding of Molokai, good communications, information technology skills, ability to translate between different world views.
After hosting public meetings for 2+ hours 2-3 times per week since its establishment to work on developing the foundational governance documents for MHT that would lay out how the Trust would make community-led decisions about acquiring, protecting, and caring for Molokai lands for Molokai’s peoples, the IWB realized that in order for this initiative to be truly community-led, it would also need to facilitate admission of MHT’s first class of members as well as administer MHT’s inaugural elections to establish a Board of Directors which directly reflected Molokai communities’ wishes through the voting of community members who have taken on the kuleana of becoming a member of MHT.
On December 7, 2024 the IWB announced that it would update its name to ‘Founding Board’ for clarity’s sake.
Since then, the IWB has held over 100 open meetings that Molokai community members were welcomed to participate in and contribute to developing the MHT Bylaws that were ratified by a vote of the inaugural class of MHT Members on August 21, 2024.
Huakaʻi to
Hoopa Valley Tribe and Sogorea Te Land Trust
On June 17 - 24, 2024 two members of the Founding Board (Keo Hanapi-Hirata and Jason Sykes) were able to attend and participate in a huaka’i facilitated by the Sustʻāinable Molokai Land Back team (Puna Kalipi, Matthew Kamakani Lynch and Kahenawai Hanapi-Hirata (served as intern)).
Three members of the Lahaina Community Land Trust’s Board of Directors also attended, as well as students from University of Victoria British Columbiaʻs School of Indigenous Governance also attended to provide support for the delegation from Hawaiʻi.
The purpose of this huaka’i was to learn from other communities and community-based organizations about successful Land Back initiatives that they had undertaken or supported.
The delegation visited with Sogorea Te Land Trust, PolicyLink, East Bay Permanent Real-Estate Cooperative, The Cultural Conservancy, and the Hoopa Valley Tribe. Each site shared an out pouring of aloha and ʻike that helped to shape some of our thinking around our own foundational documents.
The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led community organization that cultivates rematriation of Indigenous land to Indigenous hands. They graciously hosted the delegation, and were able to share so much about a number of different strategies they have used to successfully acquire and begin caring for ancestral lands that they now legally own and are actively stewarding.
Members and representatives of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California also graciously hosted the delegation on their ancestral lands, where they visited a sacred site that the tribe has been praying at for over 10,000 years. They very generously shared much knowledge that had been gained from their recent acquisition of 10,395 acres to the northwest of their reservation through a partnership with The Conservation Fund.
The delegation is working to create resources to help us share out some of the lessons we learned from this huakaʻi, and are inspired to share these types of experiences with more of MHT’s members so that we can continue to build our communityʻs capacity to take on our own successful Land Back initiatives.
MHT
Board of Directors
Elections were held by the general membership of Molokai Heritage Trust from August 16-19, 2024 to establish its Board of Directors.
Founding board members represent generational ‘Ohana of Molokai, and those whose Ohana have made significant contributions to the health of the community as well as the preservation and restoration of our ‘åina.
Members are generational families of Molokai, leaders in the community, and notable advocates of community benefit and Aloha ‘Āina who represent generational ties to all districts of Molokai, and are Molokai experts in their field of work.
At the board’s first Regular Board Meeting held on August 29, 2024 it voted to appoint Jason Sykes as and Advisory Director to contribute his detailed knowledge of the MHT bylaws as well as his legal expertise.
Elected Board of Directors
James Espaniola
“A dream is a dream if no action is taken. Action taken makes it achievable, so take action and join us, and we shall achieve together.”
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Raised on Moloka’i, primarily in Maunaloa, James has been involved in various conservation and environmental projects since 1999 after graduating from Kamehameha Schools on Oʻahu. Since 2016, he has been a State of Hawaii employee with the Department of Land and Natural resources (DLNR) Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DoFAW), Native Ecosystem Protection and Management (NEPM).
James has led stream monitoring, animal and weed control; outplanting of native plants and building ungulate control fences to protect conservation areas across the state and is currently tending to a few different fencing projects within the East Molokaʻi watershed partnership as well as building the NEPM program on Moloka’i.
Malia Akutagawa
“This is about exercising our self-determination as an island. It is for our ʻāina kupuna, our keiki, and our moʻopuna to come.”
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Malia Akutagawa, JD, ESQ, is from Manaʻe and was born and raised on Molokaʻi. Her ʻohana is of Molokaʻi since time immemorial, with roots in Pelekunu, Wailau, Kamalō, Manawai, Kahananui, ʻUalapuʻe, Kaluaʻaha, Pūkoʻo, Puʻu o Hoku, Hālawa, and Maunaloa.
As a child, Malia’s kūpuna and mākua inspired her to become a native rights and environmental law attorney. A graduate of Molokaʻi High and Intermediate School (1989); she pursued higher education and earned baccalaureate degrees in Philosophy and Biology from Whitworth University (1993) and a Juris Doctor and Environmental Law Certificate from the William S. Richardson School of Law (1997).
Zhantell Dudoit Lindo
“Wehe ‘ia ke alaula. No nahanauna nei”. (Opened the path of life. For the generation of this land)
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Zhan is native to Moloka’i, born and raised on this land, as was generations of ohana before her. She is a bridge builder, teacher, community advocate, visionary and ‘āina warrior who has dedicated her life, skills and experiences to ensuring Moloka’i is well protected, properly managed, responsibly thriving and upholding the integrity of what it means to come from this land.
Hawaiʻiloa “Hawaiʻi” Mowat
“He Ali'i Ka 'Āina.He Kauwā ke Kanaka
(The Land is Chief, Man is its Servant)”
Lori Buchanan
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Lori Buchanan is a born and raised Native Hawaiian from Molokai. She is a mother and grandmother who is passionate about environmental and cultural protection for the future generation. She currently owns and operates multiple small businesses on Molokai and serves as project coordinator for the Molokai Maui Invasive Species Committee.
Lori has decades worth of professional experience in the field of environmental conservation in Hawaii and has received commendations in recognition of her work from the Governor of the State of Hawaii as well as from the County of Maui. As a passionate community advocate and volunteer, she actively participates in community issues and initiatives and has served on numerous boards and commissions including: Chair of the State Game Management Advisory Council, Chair of the Legacy Lands Conservation Commission, and Member of the State Office of Planning Marine and Coastal Zone Advisory Council, and current Chair of the Molokai Planning Commission.
Laʻakea “Laʻa” Poepoe
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Iʻm a Molokai descendant, created & raised here. I do a little bit of everything: kiaʻi loko, kalo planter, native plant grower, conservationist, ahupuaʻa manager, homesteader, gatherer, gardener, executive director, commissioner, council member, board member, first responder, community advocate, volunteer of what have you. I love molokai, and want to preserve our lifestyle forever.
The work that I am doing now is for the benefit of several generations into the future. We fulfill that responsibility by drawing from wisdom provided by the generations before us, applied in the present day. I believe this to be the same formula used by many other groups and individuals across our islandʻs communities.
Hanohano Naehu
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For the last 20 years, Hanohano Naehu has been a kia‘i loko, a fishpond guardian on the island of Moloka‘i, Hawai‘i. He is the caretaker of this environment in which he restores an aspect of Hawaiian aquaculture: a traditional, sustainable, ocean fishpond that itself presents other opportunities for creativity through the healing arts, sciences, and feeling spirituality.
Hano, as he is referred to, is also a community educator, teaching ancient concepts in land stewardship and resource management. His ocean conservation work has allowed him to represent and be a voice for Hawai‘i and indigenous Pacific islanders alike. Hanohano is also the director for Hui O Kuapā 501c3. As an avid activist and artist for aloha ‘āina, he translates his passions through hip hop and lyrical messages under his MC name The Paniolo Prince.
Nanette “Lehua” Grambusch
“Ma ka hana ka ike.”
-Pukui
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In doing so, knowledge is gained. My kupuna and makua taught me that when an opportunity presents itself, you have to make a choice, study the situation thoroughly, ask for clarity, and make the best choice based on the facts presented. Do your part, do what is right. Trust your naau. Malama ka aina and the aina malama you! It is a reciprocal relationship - known as aloha aina.
Born on Oahu at Kapiolani Hospital, raised on Molokai. Kaunakakai and Kualapuu School alumni. Graduated from MHIS 1978. Earned a BA in Hawaiian Language; MEd in Secondary Ed-Social Studies-US History; licensed to teach at the secondary and post-secondary levels in Hawaii. Served the Hawaiian community as an educator, researcher, community organizer, program organizer, and grant writer.
My most important roles in life - granddaughter, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, wife, mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother.
Advisory Directors
Jason Sykes
“This can be Moloka'i's defining moment—a chance to shape our own destiny and preserve the soul of our island for future generations.”
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Jason grew up on Moloka’i, loves it, and hopes to return full-time someday. In the meantime, he is using his legal and communications background to help protect the land and empower the people to let our community control its own destiny and keep Moloka’i, Moloka’i.
What is the VISION of the Molokai Heritage Trust?
ʻĀina Kupuna
(Ancestral ʻĀina)
Our recognition of this lands as our ancestor and an acknowledgement of the generations that protected and stewarded these lands before us.
ʻĀina Aloha
(Beloved ʻĀina)
Our commitment to each other and our lands today. It is our reason, helping to ensure we are pono to who we are, in service to ʻāina.
ʻĀina Momona
(Abundant ʻĀina)
This is what we are striving for, this is our future.
What are the VALUES of the Molokai Heritage Trust?
Mālama ʻĀina; he aliʻi ka ʻāina, he kauwā ke kanaka
We recognize the inherent truth of he aliʻi ka ʻāina, he kauwā ke kānaka–the ʻāina is the chief and the people, its servants.
Kuleana
We understand that our moʻokūʻauhau comes from and is inseparable from ʻāina, thus we are guided by and act with responsibility to all creation and to our piko–our ancestors, those present in this physical realm, and our keiki and moʻopuna to come.
Ea
We are guided by our kuleana and recognize and assert our right to self-determination–to direct our own destiny as we steward our lands, mālama our people and honor our Akua.
Kiaʻi
We are kiaʻi, children and fierce protectors of Molokaʻi Nui A Hina, and dedicate ourselves and our generations to remain steadfast in our kuleana to mālama ʻāina.
Mauli Ola
We commit to the restoration, well-being, and sacredness of kānaka, ʻāina, Akua and the eternal bond between us.
Kūkūlu
We commit to excellence and continuous improvement as we educate, awaken, and revitalize our understanding of our moʻokūʻauhau and kuleana in order to create a strong and paʻa foundation for the care of land, people and Akua.
Aloha kekahi i kekahi
We face each other, sharing life-giving breath, dedicated to pono and reciprocity to strengthen kaiāulu and to aloha and mālama ʻāina.
What is the MISSION of the Molokai Heritage Trust?
As kiaʻi of Molokai, we recognize and honor the truth reflected in our moʻokūʻauhau and we know that protecting the health and vitality of our ʻāina is essential to our island’s well-being and our future.
Together, we will aloha this ʻāina, working with humility, openness, and tenacity to ensure that what makes Molokai special will survive and thrive for generations to come.
We dedicate ourselves to recover, restore, and revive all of Molokai– kahiki kū i kahiki moe.
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In order for our community to take action to heal our ʻāina, uphold traditional practices, and determine how we make decisions as an island for present and future generations, we need your manaʻo and active participation.
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Volunteer Form Link coming soon.
Staff
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Land Back Manager
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He kama kēia o nā ʻāina aloha o Molokaʻi. Mai nā kumu kūpuna o Hālawa a i ka wela o ka lā i Kaluakoʻi.
I am who I am because of my ʻāina, kūpuna, mākua, hānauna, and our collective kuleana to our moʻopuna.
Generationally, we know the importance of the pilina between ʻāina and kānaka and how the two remain inseparable.
I was raised on Hoʻolehua Homesteads while going to school at Pūnana Leo o Molokaʻi and later Ke Kula Kaiapuni o Kualapuʻu where community and culture are central to learning and life.
I then went on to be a boarder at Kamehameha Schools where I graduated high school and remained on Oʻahu to continue my education at UH Mānoa.
I graduated from UH Mānoa in 2017 with a double bachelors in Hawaiian Studies and Psychology and have chosen to continue my education there as a PhD student in Political Science.
My commitment to Molokaʻi keeps me hungry to learn as much as I can, especially while away so that I could grow into the community member my community raised me to be.
I'm grateful now for this opportunity to utilize the resources Iʻve gained over the years in service to Molokaʻi, our ʻāina aloha, and our community.
Ua hoʻi hou he kama o nei ʻāina aloha ʻo Molokaʻi nui a Hina.