Executive Director Dr. Noʻeau Peralto of huiMAU is using ʻāina-centered practices to cultivate a future of abundance for his Hāmākua Hikina community
He aliʻi ka ʻāina, he kauwā ke kanaka.
“The land is a chief, man is its servant.”
Of all the lessons that Noʻeau Peralto, Ph.D., has learned on his journey to educational excellence, aloha ʻāina may be his most important one.
Peralto is the executive director and co-founder of the community nonprofit Hui Mālama i ke Ala ʻŪlili, better known as huiMAU, which is dedicated to cultivating kīpuka (safe regenerative spaces) that foster and regenerate the growth of place-based ancestral knowledge and healthy food- and eco-systems in his home community of Hāmākua Hikina (East Hāmākua).
The Kamehameha Schools Hawaiʻi graduate double majored in anthropology and Native American studies at Stanford, then went on to earn a master’s in Hawaiian studies and a doctorate in Indigenous politics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
But Peralto said it was his grandfather Daniel Miranda, a paniolo who was born and raised in the ahupuaʻa of Koholālele, who was one of the most influential people on his life’s path.
“I had the privilege as a moʻopuna of spending a lot of time with him in his last years of life, and I had the fortune of being able to learn a lot of the moʻolelo that he had to share from his lived experiences in this place,” Peralto said. “He was a farmer, a mechanic, a saddle maker, a leather worker and a hunter. He just loved this place, and he loved to speak with me about the moʻolelo of this area.”
For Peralto, all knowledge was not taught in the same school.
“A lot of the experiences that I’ve had outside of a school setting were really guided by a sense of kuleana to this place, to the community that raised me and to the place that feeds me. I’ve always tried to be a better Kanaka to be able to serve this place, to serve our lāhui, and to be an honorable kupuna for the future generations,” Peralto said.
“But if we don’t spend time there in that place, then we really don’t know that place. So spending time on our ʻāina, doing the work, allowing the ʻāina to teach us, allowing our kūpuna to reveal things to us, and being ready to receive those lessons in all the different forms that might take, that has been a super important part of what has been my educational journey.”
It was in 2011 that he and partner Haley Kailiehu founded huiMAU with their ʻohana.
“There were a number of different issues going on at the time around mismanagement and mistreatment of this ʻāina and our wahi kūpuna (ancestral sites), and we wanted to organize and come together to mālama this ʻāina and channel our energy into creating a future that we wanted to see for this community,” Peralto said.
“It was a time of finding a balance between the kūʻē and the kūkulu of struggling against that which we didn’t want to see continue to happen here in this place, and at the same time filling this space with the aloha ʻāina that this place needed and working toward a future of abundance for this ahupuaʻa.”
From a first-ever project of clearing invasive guinea grass to create a 30-by-30 foot garden of native and canoe plants, today huiMAUʻs kuleana has grown to steward more than 1,100 acres with a staff of 14 full-time employees.
The group’s mission is to re-establish the systems that sustain their community through place-based educational initiatives and ʻāina-centered practices that cultivate abundance, regenerate responsibilities, and promote collective health and wellbeing.
“A number of systems need to be functioning in unison and functioning properly in order for the community to thrive – healthy ecosystems, healthy food systems, governance systems, education systems, family systems, even spiritual systems. Our programs try to address a number of these.”
A $100,000 ʻĀina Community Grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) helps support the work of huiMAU.
Their project is titled “Hoʻonohopapa Koholālele,” which intends to restore a traditional ʻŌiwi food system in Koholālele that will directly benefit the Hāmākua Hikina community for generations to come. Within a 20-acre site which will be restored, 500 ʻulu trees will be planted that will have the potential to annually provide 200,000 pounds of traditional food starting in 2034.
Former OHA Grants Manager Keʻala Neumann said Peralto not only leads by example but also nurtures a future guided by the values of collective stewardship and cultural integrity.
“Noʻeau embodies leadership rooted in kaiāulu, moʻomeheu, and an unwavering pilina with the ʻāina. He has dedicated his life’s work to fostering the resilience and resurgence of aloha ʻāina in his home of Hāmākua Hikina. His leadership is grounded in the ʻike of his kūpuna, blending scholarly expertise with grassroots action to inspire and empower the lāhui.”
Peralto has increasingly been receiving attention for his work.
In 2021, he was honored for his efforts in advocating for native people by being named one of “50 for 50,” which honored the 50th anniversary of the Stanford American Indian Organization, and in 2024 he was named one of “20 for the Next 20” by Hawaiʻi Business Magazine.
“As a lifetime learner, you have to remain humble and know what you don’t know, what you need to learn, and who you need to learn it from,” Peralto said. “Humility was always the value that was instilled in me by my parents. No matter what you accomplish or what kind of recognition you receive, we are all in this together and we all come from the same place.”
Peralto is quick to credit his partner and co-founder Kailiehu who serves huiMAU as the director of creative development.
“There is no way that I would be able to do this work in the ways that I have been all these years without her having been a partner every step of the way,” Peralto said. “I get put in articles, I get the credit, but there isn’t anything that I’ve ever done in this work that was done without her being a partner right there next to me.
“We’ve gone through every single hard time together, and we’ve birthed great new ideas together and she’s helped bring these new visions into reality. Haley has been the most important partner I’ve had in this work for the last 13 years.”
As he looks to the future, Peralto said mentoring huiMAU’s growing staff will be key.
“We have a lot of young Kānaka who work with us. My passion is in moʻolelo, and particularly the moʻolelo of this place. I have to put time into sharing that moʻolelo with our staff, so that they’re able to then teach it and learn how to do research themselves. The hope is that we can collectively build on this foundation of knowledge and on the research that I was able to find during my educational path,” Peralto said.
“Now there’s 14 of us who are experiencing this place and developing our own ʻike that is rooted in the moʻolelo of the past but also in our daily lived experiences in this place. Hopefully we’re applying that to the work that we do in educational programming so that it informs our work on the ʻāina.
“The ʻāina is telling us what it needs us to do, how it needs us to act as Kānaka of this place, in order for the ʻāina to return to a state of thriving abundance again. That ability to kilo (observe) is key, to really pay attention to our ʻāina and then interpret those observations and formulate the best actions to ensure that we’re addressing the needs of this place. What is best for the ʻāina is always best for us, so allowing the ʻāina to teach us, and then putting those teachings into action is our number one objective.”
