(waves crashing) (gentle music) [Healani] It's almost like the water speaks to us.

The wai, the water, is the physical manifestation of our spirit.

It's everywhere.

The word wai speaks to the ability of that land to sustain life.

Without water, there is no life.

(Auli'i speaking in foreign language) [Reporter] Last week, 1,300 gallons of toxic fire suppressant concentrate released at Red Hill.

(Auli'i chanting in foreign language) (bright music) [Dani] A lot of people today don't realize that 'Ewa was a place of abundance.

We have such an abundance of water.

You hear it in the place names, Waimalu, Waiau, Waiawa, Waipahu, Waikele, the "wai" keeps coming up.

Kalaimanuia became the queen of Oahu, and so she's credited with really investing and developing these food systems.

[Anthony] Hoʻola Hou ia Kalauao means to return life back to Kalauao.

[Dani] Our mission is to restore identity and abundance, like caring for 'aina, by growing, preparing ancestral foods, and by the return to native Hawaiian values and cultural practices.

- The Ahupua'a system was complex but so simple.

And that was, where that water started from the top, you follow it, you keep it clean all the way till it gets to the bottom.

[Dani] From the springs, it goes into farmland and wetlands, and then it goes into the ocean.

There are mo'olelo, the Akua coming through the moku of 'Ewa with digging sticks and plunging them into the ground.

And these springs coming in through the valleys of 'Ewa.

The water from that would feed into fish ponds.

(soft music) [Iokepa] Varying levels of my family have touched upon these lands since time immemorial.

You know, we've been out here since, ever since.

Lived here, fought for it.

And the way I look at it, we still fighting for it today.

Kuhialoko, we focus on place based Ahupua'a revitalization.

Our 'aina has five different water resources.

Headwaters start on our property.

It flows downstream.

We manage all of that.

Following the flow of water through our 'aina will bring you up right on the edges of Pu'uloa.

Basically, our backyard sits where the Navy holds all the decommissioned ships.

(soft music) Kuhialoko, we still putting food on the table through those same skill sets that have helped feed, you know, generations of my family.

Feeding people in more ways than one, getting food into the community and perpetuating these skillsets.

(gentle music) On the 'Ewa plains, on these lands, they could actually feed and sustain hundreds of thousands of people.

It was the bread basket of Oahu.

But yet it had the most suitable harbors for big military ships.

That was the pearl of the Pacific for the US.

They wanted that, and they took it.

(birds chirping) [Dani] We should be able to see Pu'uloa from here.

And there's all of the ramifications of having the military right there of intense urbanization all around us.

[Kyle] The military had a huge part in destroying what was there, the reefs that were there, the shellfish, pearl oysters, for which Pearl Harbor's named, was once so abundant.

You know, that was the main food source and now you can't find that oyster in that area.

(gentle music) In 1872, general John Schofield led a scouting party to Hawaii for a military base.

He writes back, "This is the key to the Central Pacific ocean.

Valueless to them, to the native Hawaiians, because they cannot use it, but more valuable than all else, the islands have to offer the United States.

So already the Hawaiian world is devalued.

(camera shutter clicks) [Dani] Onto the maps we see over 30 fish ponds.

If you talk to some of the kupuna, they're like, "No, there are upwards of 100 fish ponds in this area."

(camera shutter clicks) [Kyle] According to the Defense Environmental Restoration Program, DERP, there are nearly 1,000 contaminated sites within Hawai'i and hundreds within the Pearl Harbor complex alone.

So it's a giant Superfund site.

Superfund sites are some of the most contaminated places in the country, and the military is one of the largest polluters on the Superfund list.

And Pearl Harbor is one of the largest sites within that list.

(gentle music) [Iokepa] So with the work that we are doing to remediate years of mismanagement, 'cause lot of those impacts are long term.

So for us, it's focused on intergenerational management.

The work I do was started long before my time.

It was started generations before myself, generations before my parents' generation.

(gentle music) [Dani] My mom and her siblings and, you know, her parents and aunties and uncles grew up eating out of Pu'uloa.

And in the '60s they saw the freeway being built and they saw the streams being cemented.

There's a 12-acre fish pond called Pa'akea.

A shopping center now sits on top of it.

We cease to look at this place as a place that can feed us.

For my entire lifetime, I've been taught that these waters are contaminated.

I was never allowed to go to the stream.

I was never allowed to go to the ocean in this area.

And yet I'm finding out as an adult that these are the waters that fed my family.

(tense music) [Reporter] The water in Mai Paul's house is off limits.

[Resident] I smell like I was pumping gas in my car.

[Reporter] Paul and at least 1,500 other families in Honolulu, many military, started seeing fuel in their water about two weeks ago.

[Resident] A lot of us got sick at the same time.

Headaches, nausea, stomach pain.

[Reporter] Complaints of water smelling and looking like it contains fuel.

[Reporter] New video shows the translucent sheen, taken overnight at a home in Honolulu.

[Reporter] Drinking, cooking and bathing with toxic water.

[Reporter] Trial for a massive lawsuit over a family sickened in the Navy's Red Hill fuel spills begin.

[Reporter] The Navy now admits their water was contaminated by jet fuel leaking from this transfer facility.

[Reporter] According to the Navy, the fuel came from the Red Hill Fuel Facility, which was built during World War II and stores potentially millions of gallons of fuel.

I found out the millions of gallons in the Kapukaki that is inches away from where I live brought so much anxiety.

I heard the families, the only way we found out was because of the ma'i that has- [Reporter] That leaky fuel facility sits only 100 feet over a major aquifer that supplies water to Honolulu.

(tense music) [Healani] We have one aquifer, one sole source aquifer.

We all share that.

There's still families that don't have access to clean drinking water.

[Dani] The way that our islands are built, all of that water will come up through the springs, hit the streams, and then it will empty into the ocean.

And so whatever contaminants the Navy has stored at that facility, we're talking about over 200,000 gallons of fuel in addition to the PFAS that has spilled.

PFAS is an array of chemicals that are considered to be, quote unquote, forever chemicals.

We're talking about the poisoning of folks generations from now.

The contamination of every spring, of every stream that will flow down that will affect the plants and animals and people that utilize those spaces.

(somber music) (gentle music) [Healani] There is a place on Kapukaki called Leilono, which is a portal into the next world.

We're right in the pathway of the spirits when they walk into the next world.

Water, there's so many layers to the sacredness and the importance of water.

It deals with something so, so simple.

We're just protecting life.

(water splashing) [Iokepa] This island, only so small.

This planet, only one more island in the sea of stars.

How we treat this is how we should treat everything.

And that's that connection that we need to get ourselves back to, of community, of responsibilities and kuleana.

And of consequences.

- Work in this 'aina is very healing and purposeful.

It's the work of resilience, the work of perseverance.

- Yes, it's about restoring our food systems, but it's also about holding space for people to come and heal.

And be healed in the process of being able to restore 'aina and to create a gathering place for community.

[Anthony] I have a kuleana to see through and that's the vision and the dream that I see for this place, is for it to live.

[Iokepa] Through all the displacement and mismanagement of Pu'uloa in a whole, some of those fish never left.

They held on.

We calling them back.

The native endemic and endangered species that have this place home and giving them a place to thrive.

(soft music) You bring back 'aina, 'aina heal itself, if you allow it to.

So Pu'uloa can continue to be a place of abundance.

(soft music) (soft music continues) (cheerful music) (cheerful music continues)