AINA MOMONA
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Mission Statement
‘Āina Momona is a Native Hawaiian nonprofit dedicated to achieving environmental health and sustainability through restoring social justice and de-occupying Hawaiian lands.
About This Cause
ʻĀina Momona is a native Hawaiian nonprofit dedicated to achieving environmental health and sustainability through restoring social justice and de-occupying Hawaiian lands. We have four primary focus areas: wai, fresh water, ʻai, food and agriculture, ‘āina, land and natural resources, and ea, social justice. ‘Āina Momona has a eight-person board, composed of highly qualified Native Hawaiian Ph.Ds. who are experts across a variety of disciplines. We employ thirteen staff, all of whom are constituencies of the communities we serve. ‘Āina Momona (meaning “abundant land” in Hawaiian) focuses on issues critical to the health and well-being of Hawaiʻi’s future and applies a grassroots approach to all work done. It is our wider aim to equip Native Hawaiian communities with the resources needed to be self-sufficient, sustainable, and resilient in the face of capitalism, colonialism, and the ongoing climate crises. We envision an ecologically and politically sovereign Hawai‘i, where natural and cultural resources thrive under the care of a just, healthy, and sustainable population. Our key constituencies are Native Hawaiians, low-income families, youth, and local, underserved, rural communities in Hawai‘i. Majority of our work focusses on the island of Moloka‘i, one of the most rural and underserved islands in the Hawaiian Archipelago. The island population is roughly 5,000 people, where residents are largely Native Hawaiian and low-income. Over 90% of needed goods are shipped to Moloka‘i through a single harbor. As early as 2018, barge shipments were stalled due to climate change induced storms, leaving the community even more vulnerable and food insecure than normal. Significantly, despite its marginalized position, Moloka‘i has the highest level of sustainability in the state, with 38% of food consumed on island coming through traditional subsistence practices rather than being purchased in stores. A key part of ‘Āina Momona’s ambitions is to grow the subsistence economy on island, and address the inter-connected educational, economic, environmental, social justice and entrepreneurship needs through restoring land and traditional food systems. In striving to bring greater justice to Molokaʻi, one of the key issues our team focuses on is the potential sale of Molokaʻi Ranch, an enormous private estate that takes up one third of the island, and whose sale has major implications for Moloka‘i’s future. Due to climate change-induced storms, winds, and rains, as well as decades of mismanagement from private owners, the soil on Molokaʻi Ranch has become heavily eroded, creating dangerous coastal runoff that puts Molokaʻi’s abundant fringing reef at risk. Invasive species have also become an issue, as well as exacerbated erosion caused by uncontrolled deer populations. Notably, these land issues and their impacts are seen and felt throughout Molokaʻi, going beyond Molokaʻi Ranch lands and covering huge areas of the island, pointing to the need to better current management practices. Noting these concerns, our team began conducting civic engagement in 2017 to reach a consensus on how the community would like to see the Ranch lands used and restored. We led extensive surveys and collected data that revealed an overwhelming agreement that the community wants the Ranch owned by a responsible, community-friendly owner who will consider their sustainable vision for the future and work to protect natural and cultural resources. This data went into the updated 2018 Molokai Community Plan, which was accepted by Maui County as an official document regarding all decision making for Molokaʻi. Over the past four decades, a familiar narrative has repeated itself on Molokaʻi: Large landowners and outside developers try to impose land-use plans and profit models on the island that are incompatible with the essence of Molokaʻi. In reaction, the community continually advocates for the preservation of the island’s integrity. Today, Molokaʻi is ready to redefine this historical narrative, to act instead of react. Since the shutdown of Molokai Ranch in March 2008, which ended a century of controversial corporate rule, Molokaʻi is not just defending their island from outside threats but also proactively working to shape their own future through grassroots community planning, which our team helps to lead. In our effort to bringer greater resiliency and justice to this community, ‘Āina Momona is committed to restoring land on island and placing it back under the stewardship and care of the native population. ‘Āina Momona is currently based out of Keawanui Fishpond and Cultural Learning Site on the east end of Moloka‘i in the Ka‘amola ahupua‘a. In partnership with Kamehameha Schools, we manage a 55-acre ancestral Hawaiian fishpond and 8 acres of agricultural land. It is our goal to use this restoration project to create a scalable model for community-driven restoration and conservation that can be transferred to the Moloka‘i Ranch lands in the future. We hope that this rehabilitation project will show the potential the Moloka‘i community has to get degraded lands restored and used sustainably. Since 2020, ‘Āina Momona has been working with our partners at Māla Kaluʻulu Cooperative to develop an agricultural plan for the site that will guide our food production and land restoration efforts for the coming years. Given the intense erosion and groundwater depletion on our land base, we are building a community-led, scalable plan that works to stabilize soil and helps shelter the site against rain, storms, and winds. With agroforestry as a major goal, our design also optimizes the integration of native trees, alongside native food crops. Currently we plan to have an expanded ethnobotanical garden, a designated area for pollinators, an agroforestry ‘ulu grove, māla for native starches like kalo and ‘uala, an open nursery for plant propagation, and more. As work to revitalize the Ka‘amola land section, we aim to build capacity on island by training community members across multiple generations in the skills needed to restore, preserve, and protect our precious natural and cultural resources in perpetuity. In addition to our agricultural efforts, our team also works to manage Keawanui fishpond, a 55-acre loko kuapā, (closed wall fishpond) that once produced hundreds of pounds of sustainable protein annually. As we work to mitigate erosion upland of the pond, we simultaneously strive to revitalize this key subsistence resource, which provides fish for our community members on a regular basis, without impacting the reef or native fish populations. ‘Āina Momona’s strategies for achieving our goals are rooted in bottom-up decision-making and community-led work that aims to both increase capacity through training and educational opportunities and works to offer solutions to longstanding community-identified issues that impact our land, culture, and people. As an indigenous-led nonprofit, we believe in building power within the Native Hawaiian community, particularly native youth, and increasing their access to meaningful leadership opportunities. We recognize that marginalized groups, like our own, are greatly empowered when they come together to identify issues and take a lead in finding solutions for needed change. In this way, our strategic approach for our goals is always centered on giving our community opportunities for self-determination and self-governance, all while working to combat longstanding problems that current governance structures fail to address. We build alliances and partnerships with groups doing similar work, recognizing the power in base-building across BIPOC, low-income communities that are similarly impacted by capitalism, colonialism, and climate change. In addition to building strength at the grassroots level, we also work to make national and international interventions on behalf of our community, working with groups such as The Nature Conservancy, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the UNFCCC to advocate for indigenous rights and offer our indigenous solutions to global issues. In entering these national and international spaces, moving power and transforming current power structures are key goals. Our programs implement community-based climate and environmental justice work that centers traditional ecological knowledge and our ancestral connections to this landscape.