Ahupuaʻa Signage Project
ʻO wai ka inoa o kou ahupuaʻa?
Over the past year and a half, we have been working with the Department of Transportation to get signage installed to mark the Ahupuaʻa our association members call home. Makahanaloa and Kulaʻimano were the first of our ahupuaʻa to get signs in 2025. In 2026, Kahua, Kaupakuea/ Makea, Kulaʻikahonu, and Kaʻakepa got too! Ahupuaʻa were traditional land divisions that ensured communities had all the resources they needed to thrive as they worked and lived with ʻāina.
This project is something that we have been honored to help bring to life and has been special to our community as well. We hope that we can inspire other communities to take on this kuleana for the ahupuaʻa they represent or are from to help bring back the inoa kupuna of our ʻāina and hear their names spoken and spoken often. What is the name of the Ahupuaʻa that you live in or are from?
Speaking the names of our ʻāina breathes life into the stories, traditions, and knowledge rooted in our ʻāina, and hopefully inspires awareness in our community and passerbyers of the cultural and historical significance of these places.
You have the opportunity to advocate for more signage by completing one of two different applications. There is an application that is used when you agree with the Ahupuaʻa boundaries demonstrated on Hawaii's Statewide GIS program Ahupuaʻa layer. This was put together by OHA, DLNR, and SHPD and is fairly accurate, but there may still be discrepancies. There is a separate application for if you disagree with those boundaries, and it has a few more requirements than the other one.
Below are resources you can download to help learn about the process as well as the applications needed to apply. This LINK will take you to a video recording of an informative Zoom session that we held in July covering the Ahupuaʻa slide deck that is also listed below. Please note, there is a third application for installing a physical ahu as well, but we did not cover this too much in our resources or in the video recording. That's a whole other can of worms!
