AVA Konohiki: A Collection of Hawai'i Land Documents

The 1848 Land Commission Awards (LCAs) (8,500 total land awards) from the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi records in the Hawaiʻi State Archives, have been made available online for the general public and U.H. students to access. Land documents and maps from the 1880s, for the 81 ahupuaʻa of Oʻahu, intended to show traditional water management practices for efficient food production in the past, are in the process of being added to the site. Over 10,500 native and foreign testimonies for the 1848 LCAs, as well as the maps are currently being indexed. Numerous educational video presentations and links to additional resources have also been made available to the public online. 'Our grant from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) focuses on two different kinds of work that help us to achieve our goal. First, we teach young Native Hawaiians at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, from both the graduate and undergraduate level, how to harvest, transcribe, and upload handwritten Kingdom of Hawaiʻi land documents and maps from the Hawaiʻi State Archives. Our focus is on documents that were written and produced in the 1840s and 1850s, when lands in Hawaiʻi first went into private ownership. These land records, written by our ancestors, include detailed descriptions of land management practices. The great amount of work done to make these documents digital is our ho'okupu, or gift, to the Hawaiian people of today who eagerly seek this information.'