Aloha ʻāina, which translates to “love of the land,” is a central concept of Native Hawaiian thought, signifying the sense of being connected to and responsible for all living things. Aloha ʻāina has evolved to represent a modern movement working to harmonize human health with the health of the land, which, for many Native Hawaiians and their allies today, also requires challenging the legacies left to the islands from the illegal overthrow and continued settler occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The notion of “loving the land” through sustainable practices as well as finding justice after the annexation of Hawaii is at the heart of two University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) master’s projects based in Moloka‘i, the least developed and least visited island in the accessible Hawaiian island chain. 

Spearheaded by SEAS PhD candidate Malu Castro, whose family is from Moloka‘i, the work of the first project supports one of the largest Land Back efforts in the modern era of the movement, and the second contributes to fostering and maintaining the longstanding tradition of subsistence agricultural production and other efforts to promote food sovereignty on the island.

In August 2023, Castro and his students spent three weeks in Moloka‘i working with the two organizations that they are collaborating with in these efforts, Sustainable Moloka‘i and Moloka‘i Heritage Trust. While there, the students were not only focused on the work but also on building relationships and community. Castro says that the students lived together, cooked together, and processed the magnitude of this work together. 

“It was a magical and transformative experience for all of us,” says Castro. “The students experienced the power of engaging in a project in a place where you don’t live but where you’re working for a community, so you have an opportunity to develop deep relationships. Building these relationships and trust is the outcome of a good environmental justice project.”

Supporting an Indigenous Land Back initiative

The Land Back efforts are focused on Moloka‘i Ranch, which takes up more than 55,000 acres—about a third of the western portion of the 38-miles-long and 10-miles-across island. First privatized in 1897 when a group of businessmen purchased the land to grow sugar cane and raise cattle and other livestock, it was later leased to Libby and Del Monte for pineapple plantations. Eventually, it evolved into a touristic area consisting of a glamping resort, high-end lodge, restaurant, golf course, movie theater and more. 

Then, in 2004, there were plans to develop hundreds of multi-million dollar luxury homes along the pristine shoreline. This was the point at which the residents of Moloka‘i, numbering a little more than 7,000, with almost half of Native Hawaiian ancestry who prefer to preserve their rural lifestyle, language and traditional culture, drew a line in the sand and brought to fruition a decades-long fight to protect their love of the land in the face of what had become unethical development. 

Castro says that the plans to build luxury housing on the shores of the protected beach, which are considered sacred lands, saw such high levels of pushback and resistance from the community that, in 2008, the current owners shut down all their projects and then, in 2017, put the entire property up for sale. “The concept of resistance is not new for people in Moloka‘i—we have a long history of resistance, rebellion and self-determination,” says Castro. “If you read about the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s, a lot of the leadership came from Moloka‘i.”

In fact, activists on the island have been speaking up and activating to put control of this huge portion of the island back into the hands of residents since the late 1990s, and while it was devastating to the economy when Guoco Group, the Hong Kong-based billionaire investment firm that currently owns the parcel, abandoned it, this act also mobilized and energized the community to pick up on their efforts to buy back the land for the asking price of $260 million. If successful, it would be one of the largest land buy-back successes in the world. 

To help with the Land Back effort, Castro developed the SEAS master’s project, “Moloka‘i Ranch in Hawaii: Implementing Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for an Indigenous Land Back Initiative.” He says that getting environmental justice students involved in this work, at a time when locals are galvanized and mobilized to make this happen, provides an unprecedented opportunity to center Indigenous rights. 

"The residents of Moloka'i have always understood the power of their self-determination. This community, like many others, has demonstrated through its activism and organizing an unending history of their rights. Bringing students who can align that history with international frameworks of Indigenous rights and how they can be leveraged has been critical to taking this fight to the next level," says Castro. 

The group of six students was asked to help build some of the evidence and resources that are necessary to start implementing an Indigenous rights process and framework. He says his approach with the students has been to encourage them to dive in and compile resources and knowledge that can then be used to build a case. 

“At this point, we’re considering all our options, even the possibility of a legal case at an international level. The students have conducted 17 interviews with elders, community leaders and activists and, in the process, have learned how these folks engage in community decision-making, resistance and organizing,” says Castro, adding that the goal is to show an unbroken tradition of self-determination and that doing so can help in making a case for the rights of Indigenous People in Moloka‘i.

Georgina Johnston (MS '24), who is on the project team, says, “This community has both a commitment to the land and care for the community, and they are using creative strategies in the process of exploring the options. There’s no status quo, no playbook for how to do this, so to witness and contribute to supporting them in the process has been an incredible experience.” 

Castro has asked his students to carefully consider the benefits and possible drawbacks in depth as they help in the Land Back efforts, including the issues that could come from a community suddenly becoming land-rich. 

“This is a transition that would need to be planned. How would we employ everyone, and what does that mean in a community that resists capital and colonialism but yet can’t get fed without having money to spend? I’m having them think through all these complex issues and potential scenarios,” says Castro. 

Developing and designing a sustainability and resiliency hub to promote food sovereignty

The second project is called, ”Developing and Designing the ‘Umeke ‘Ai Center: An Indigenous Sustainability and Resiliency Hub,” and is focused on supporting an organization that’s working to maintain the longstanding tradition of subsistence agricultural production in Moloka‘i to help promote food sovereignty. 

In subsistence agriculture, people grow what’s needed to meet the needs of themselves, their families or a small group of people. Castro says that among the Native Hawaiian population on the island, people on average obtain about 30 percent of their food from subsistence, whether that be hunting, fishing or small-scale farming. “That’s a big number of people living off the land,” says Castro. “And what it means is that, even with a high rate of unemployment, people are still able to feed themselves.”

The students are working with community partners to foster the process of living off the land and also growing how food exchanges can occur. Castro explains that, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the residents developed deer hunting networks to gain access to meat and that this is the type of network that the students are working to expand. “We are working on figuring out the best way to expand food exchange across food systems. If someone has a lot of eggs, how do we get them out into the community? We need a food hub, a place where people can easily exchange food,” says Castro. 

The current reality is that most of the Hawaiian islands’ food is imported, and while a good number of Moloka‘i’s residents practice subsistence, through this project, they intend to help that number grow. During their time in Moloka‘i, SEAS students went on site visits and conducted feasibility assessments on parcels of land where a hub could be built, which would help support subsistence agriculture efforts. 

Castro says that the whole point of the project is to figure out a structure and framework of how to coordinate distribution and empower the community to live more sustainably. “Building a food hub can make this all possible, so residents can be less reliant on imports,” says Castro. “This approach makes more free food available to people, while also focusing on locally grown and healthy foods which promotes a healthier and more sustainable future.”

L’Oreal Hawkes-Williams (MS '24) is on this project team and says that learning about these sustainability efforts in Moloka‘i was eye-opening. “Every moment that we were in Moloka‘i was very intentional and I now feel so connected with the community because we had a chance to learn about their way of life, which is a sustainable way of life—not because someone told them it should be sustainable but because they believe in living that way,” says Hawkes-Williams. “Doing this work to help restore the people’s connection to food was empowering and productive.”

Building projects that achieve impact

For Castro, the outcomes of the work in Moloka‘i are deeply personal, which is one reason why he designed projects that would allow students to participate in and help to move forward the residents’ efforts, but weaving such efforts into his educational pursuits is something Castro has prioritized since he was a graduate student at Michigan State University (MSU). 

While pursuing his PhD at MSU, he met Kyle Whyte, an environmental justice scholar who is now a professor at SEAS. Castro says that he “followed him” to SEAS after Whyte explained the unique opportunity he’d have to develop master’s projects into impactful platforms. Castro says that he saw this as a chance to design projects that are personal to him but that also align with the interests of the environmental justice students he’d be working with. 

Castro also knew that these projects could provide communities access to technical support and academic resources that often require a much higher overhead cost than they can afford, particularly as they deal with the day-to-day crises common in environmental justice organizing. “Knowing that I could build projects to work on with environmental justice master’s students at SEAS was an opportunity to bring together things that are important to me and that are highly vetted to provide students with an opportunity to make a real impact,’” says Castro.

Emma Fagan (MS '24) says that, at first, she was drawn to the Moloka‘i-based project because of their history of community organizing, but that it was the focus on relationship-building that has stuck with her and that she will carry with her after she graduates. “Having the history of community organizing in Moloka‘i as the focus for how they deal with the present issues is incredibly powerful,” says Fagan. “But one of the most fruitful things for me has been seeing and understanding the power of Free, Prior and Informed Consent that allows Indigenous Peoples to engage in these processes, and how the power of working through decision-making builds relationships.”

This focus on building relationships extends beyond those built within the Moloka‘i community, according to Sierra Mathias (MS '24), who adds that the continuance of the relationships that they, as representatives of SEAS, built with the residents of Moloka‘i is also a priority. “One of the reasons I chose SEAS for my graduate degree is because of the unique capstone project experience offered here, and I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to work on one that’s so valuable and impactful,” says Mathias. “Knowing Malu will continue this work with the next cohort of students, and that we can pass the torch to them so they can pick up where we left off is important to all of us because this work is not ‘one and done’ but an ongoing process with a community where we’ve built relationships and trust.”