Most days, Kia‘i Collier can be found in a dried-out wetland in Maui, carefully stacking rocks for when the water returns.
The 32-year-old native Hawaiian resides less than 100 yards from the site, which was once an inland fishpond used for aquaculture. But neither he nor anyone else on the island has seen it functional—the “pond” has been dry for a century.
“Water shapes a community,” Collier says one summer morning from his home in the Waihe‘e area of Maui. “Especially one that used to have water, then got disconnected from water for about a hundred years, and now we’re bringing it back.”
The water’s disappearance is part of the tragic legacy of the sugar industry in Hawai‘i, as plantations diverted inland freshwater supplies to feed their crops. Those plantations are long since closed, and Collier and other indigenous land stewards are restoring the waist-high stone walls that once held the brackish water across a six-acre pond.
Collier will be in Pittsburgh on September 8 to discuss this project’s significance to both the ecology and the indigenous culture in Hawai‘i, part of the R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar series at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He says the fishpond restoration—which employs the traditional methods of his ancestors—is about repairing communities as much as it is stewarding the land.
“Keeping the core values of a tradition really helps to solidify culture,” Collier says.
To people in the mainland United States, the term “fishpond” likely evokes a different image than the cultural sites Collier is restoring in Hawai‘i. For centuries, these rock-walled enclosed structures provided an essential source of water for irrigating crops and raising fish. The ponds—there are six different types, both inland and coastal—are enclosed by thick walls of stone that had been selected by indigenous craftspeople and woven together using a technique known as “dry masonry,” or uhau humu pohaku. The stone walls are gated, but permeable, allowing juvenile fish to pass through the gate to feed off the nutrients without the threat of predators lurking in the vast ocean. In this way, they function like a fish nursery, from which Hawaiians could manage food stocks.
Collier says fishponds offer spiritual nourishment, too. Practitioners stack rocks by hand the way their ancestors did, repairing broken connections with their culture. By the turn of the 20th century, sugar plantations had erected enormous ditches to divert the island’s freshwater pools—as much as 25 million gallons of water per day—for irrigating sugarcane.
Today, native Hawaiians are bringing the fishponds back. There are around 40 fishponds in some stage of restoration, including the inland pool in Waihe‘e that Collier is helping to rebuild by next year. The water is scheduled to be piped back in June 2026.
A native of Maui, Collier grew up with an acute awareness of his heritage. He attended a Hawaiian language immersion education program where he learned about the precolonial history of Hawai‘i and his culture. Collier left for college in California before returning home to work as a heavy equipment sales representative. The pull of his ancestry convinced him to become a healer through practicing massage therapy. But it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that he discovered a path that would allow him to heal the land and his community.
“It becomes a sense of spirituality, as far as understanding the stones and seeing where they want to go … and having the guys kind of get more empowerment through consistent indigenous practice.”
Kia‘I Collier
In 2020, Collier took a COVID-relief-funded job with the Hawai‘i Land Trust as a field supervisor for a waterway rejuvenation project. That led to a permanent position with the land trust the following year, providing a pathway for Collier to restore the Waihe’e fishpond.
The project combines traditional indigenous science with modern methods. A team of a dozen local workers is rebuilding the wall by selecting and placing rocks so that gravity alone holds the wall together. As they stack the stones using the same methods that their ancestors used, the group sings traditional chants to draw even deeper connections.
“It becomes a sense of spirituality, as far as understanding the stones and seeing where they want to go, really listening and being more aware of your surroundings and having the guys kind of get more empowerment through consistent indigenous practice,” Collier says.
The team will use more modern technology to bring the water back to the pond. A 12-inch pipe will channel the freshwater from a nearby river, which is more efficient and causes less erosion than the traditional method of digging a trench.
Nicole Heller, curator of Anthropocene Studies for Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is working with Collier and University of Pittsburgh sociocultural anthropologist Tomas Matza to research the revitalization project. Together, they hope to learn how traditional techniques can help us better address contemporary sustainability problems.
“This work is not about taking from or extracting knowledge from indigenous communities,” Heller says. “Instead, how do we elevate and partner with indigenous communities and share our resources in ways that can help them—and us—understand and care for life on Earth.”
That partnership has brought Collier to Pittsburgh to help spread awareness of indigenous science and how it can heal ecosystems and communities.
“I hope that after hearing about the work we’re doing down here to help heal our own community,” Collier notes, “it gives people initiative to go out and heal their own community.”
