Lightning Talk: Ahupua'a

Aloha mai. My name is Daniel Richardson, and I'm one of the founders of Makali'i Metrics in Hawaii.

What we aim to do is generate and evaluate agricultural data sets for Hawaiian soils to support food security and community in the islands.

Now, I want to talk to you today about one of the concepts in Hawaii, which is the ahupua'a. This is a foundational land management practice of ancient Hawaii. Traditionally, these were divided by a watershed, an area of land divided by a watershed that could sustain and support a community structure.

The flow of the ahupua'a extended from the mauka region, which is up in the mountains, uplands, to makai, towards the sea. These systems were designed for perpetuity, and oftentimes they were regenerating the environment through their practices. To achieve this goal of perpetuity, it takes a community mindset and a community investment.

The framework of the ahupua'a is divided into subsets based on the geography and the rainfall, but the mindset of the community has to be whole-system based. So let's discuss some of the underlying principles behind how this mindset could have been put into practice.

First is a flow system mindset. To successfully manage this, these subsets had to be working together and aware of each other and how they were managing each system.

One example of this is the management of freshwater, or wai. That's the Hawaiian word for freshwater. In one system in the mauka region, the freshwater flowed through and was returned to the source watershed, so as to return into the watershed and make it to the subsequent systems and not to be used wastefully.

To achieve this efficiency and avoid wasteful management, Kanaka working in the mauka regions in the māla had to have these feedback loops with the Kanaka working in the makai regions, or the lo'i, to ensure that they weren't wasting water and to ensure that the entire system was operating effectively.

These feedback loops also needed to be resilient in the face of change. Rainfall and geography largely dictated the success and the placement of the crops within each ahupua'a, and each ahupua'a is unique based on where they sit within the Hawaiian island chain.

At some point in history, the frameworks of these ahupua'a were decided upon through experimentation, and different crop varieties were tested over time. As such, ancient Hawaiian agroforesters were successful scientists, creating a system that sustainably supported a population nearly equivalent to that today in Hawaii, but without the need for imports.

These decided frameworks were handed down and refined through generations, continuing this culture of experimentation, trial and error. However, depending on your leader in the ahupua'a, that margin for error may have been razor thin.

I'm excited to share this framework with you today, and I showcase it to share that we see in this indigenous agroforestry system, like so many well-functioning organizations, we have these principles. We have flow systems thinking, we have feedback loops, and we have a culture of experimentation, which are the principles underpinning DevOps and the Three Ways discussed in The Phoenix Project.

Where does Makali'i Metrics fit into all this? What we want to do is weave together these indigenous sciences with the modern tools available today, such as analysis of the samples and building databases, which will then apply machine learning algorithms and AI to these data sets, all with the reverence and the anchoring in the ancestral practices.

Why we do this is not just to generate this data, but for the purpose of perpetuating abundance and sustainability in 'āina and the community. Because receiving and refining this knowledge passed down is our kuleana, or our higher responsibility, as part of the Hawaiian community.

Mahalo nui loa. Thank you very much.