Browsing by Author "Genz, Joseph"

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    Koʻa Heiau Holomoana: Voyaging Set in Stone
    (2017-05) Mello, Nicole Antoinette; Genz, Joseph; Heritage Management
    Decades of Western influence led to the decline of seafaring knowledge and cultural practices throughout the Pacific. The 1960s and 1970s saw the flourishing of Hawaiian culture. The revival of open-ocean voyaging and non-instrument navigation was a key facet to this reawakening. Approximately 50 years after reincorporation of this practice, wayfinding is once again part of everyday lives for Pacific Islanders. This thesis elaborates on the navigational heiau Koʻa Heiau Holomoana in its centrality to the organization Nā Kālai Waʻa by being their cultural piko and training ground. Interviews, participant observation, EDXRF analysis, and research combine to begin to determine the heiau’s upright stone origins. This community-based collaborative project documents the heiau in its contemporary setting to contribute to its preservation against the influx of tourists. I demonstrate that Koʻa Heiau Holomoana connects Nā Kālai Waʻa to broader Pacific voyaging spheres in the past and in the present while centering community members to their home training ground and spiritual center.
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    NĀ KIʻI LĀʻAU, THE GODS AND GUARDIANS AT PUʻUHONUA O HŌNAUNAU NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, SOUTH KONA, HAWAIʻI
    (2017-05) Blakemore, Kalena Kahawaiolaa; Genz, Joseph; Heritage Management
    The kiʻi lāʻau (wooden images) stationed at Hale o Keawe on the grounds of Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park represent various meanings and significance to community members in South Kona, Hawaiʻi and malihini (visitors) who venture to this destination from abroad. This research endeavored to understand the contemporary cultural meanings and significance of the kiʻi lāʻau through the lens of ʻŌiwi (Native people). Through collaborative community engagement utilizing oral history methods and archival research, stories were gathered, analyzed, and interpreted. In this MA thesis, I argue that the contemporary significance and meaning of the kiʻi lāʻau to cultural and lineal descendants of Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is the maintenance of a profound spiritual and sacred connection to the puʻuhonua through ritual ceremony and revitalization of cultural practices. In my capacity as both scribe of ʻŌiwi voices and ʻŌiwi anthropologist, I contend that the kiʻi lāʻau represent a foundational platform of symbolism for ʻŌiwi and descendants of Hōnaunau, Kiʻilae, and Kēōkea who express generational pride in the legacy left by the carvers of the 1960s by organizing their understanding of the world through ritualized spiritual maintenance and continued knowledge exchange in order to perpetuate their heritage.
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