Kāneikawaiola ma Mānoa: The Life-Giving Waters of Mānoa and a History of Water Rights in Hawaiʻi from Antiquity to 1900

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dc.contributor.advisorRosa, John P.
dc.contributor.advisorKameeleihiwa, Lilikala
dc.contributor.authorHopkins, Jaime
dc.contributor.departmentHistory
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-05T19:57:50Z
dc.date.issued2022
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation explores the history of water in Hawaiʻi and its importance not just as a necessity for life but also as a central agent in organizational and management systems, with a narrowed focus on the transitional period between 1840 and 1907. It begins with a conceptual understanding of wai, water, as an akua, environmental force. Due to its importance in sustaining life, the flow of water and access to it became the foundation for kānāwai, the word used for “law” in Hawaiian. The law of water was implemented through Ua-ala-ka-wai, the Mōʻī Māʻilikūkahi’s kānāwai that instituted the ahupuaʻa land divisions, and this dissertation argues that ahupuaʻa were shaped around access to ka wai ola, water that sustains life. The word “waiwai,” the reduplication of “wai,” also meant “value” or “wealth” thus indicating that water and its management was associated with abundance. Starting in the 1840s, land ownership and western-styled laws solidified boundaries and appurtenant water rights accompanied this petrification. This work will focus on the Private Ways & Water Rights Commission, the judicial body that governed water rights after the imposition of western-based legal structures. It then narrows the scope down to a case study of Mānoa on the island of Oʻahu by identifying the valley’s water sources, reviewing water management and usage, and analyzing several disputes over water in Mānoa and Kamōʻiliʻili between the 1870s and 1890s that were adjudicated by the Commission. These cases show that the imposition of land ownership in Mānoa precipitated the drying out of the land, thus proving that fair access to communal water is directly related to how well a community cooperated together and that the deterioration of a communal mindset correlates with the slow but sure transition to the individualization of water rights.
dc.description.degreePh.D.
dc.embargo.liftdate2024-06-25
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/102140
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa
dc.subjectWater rights--Management
dc.subjectWater resources management
dc.subjectPrivate Ways and Water Rights Commission
dc.titleKāneikawaiola ma Mānoa: The Life-Giving Waters of Mānoa and a History of Water Rights in Hawaiʻi from Antiquity to 1900
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.dcmiText
dcterms.spatialHawaii
dcterms.spatialHawaii--Mānoa Valley
local.identifier.alturihttp://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:11292

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Ph.D. - History