From kupuna to keiki, about 100 Waianae residents and other supporters of Hawaiian culture cleaned rubbish, cleared brush and placed stones at the Ku‘ilioloa Heiau at Kane‘ilio Point in an effort to restore the 800-year-old site.

The Moku O Kapuaiwa chapter of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I organized Saturday’s restoration with the intent to return the site to its role as an educational facility. The heiau at Pokai Bay was used by Native Hawaiians as a training center for navigation because of its strategic location looking out toward Tahiti.

Vaughn Victor, kahuna pule for the Royal Order, said getting people out and instructing them about the significance of the site and its surroundings was as important as the physical restoration of the heiau itself.

The effort included not only representatives from the Royal Order, but also the cultural nonprofit group Koa Ike, Halau Mapuna Leo from Ka Waihona o ka Na‘auao charter school, expert dry-stacking masons from Kalima o Punanaula and volunteers from Waianae-area homeless shelters.

"We need to get the community aware," Victor said. "When we come here, we see people that mistreat the heiau — they drink their beer, they smoke their drugs, they practice their own rituals upon our sacred site. If we get people involved, if we get them to invest their mana and their aloha into something like this, then they themselves will be the curators in the end."

Cleaning the site, the group found beer bottles, tiny bags that once held drugs and other undesirable items among the litter, he said.

At one time, there was even a man living in a teepee-like structure at the top tier of the heiau, considered the most sacred section of the site, Victor said.

In the 1930s, the U.S. military built a bunker and lighthouse over the heiau, nearly destroying it. In 1978, federal funds were made available to restore the site, and the community, with guidance from Bishop Museum consultants, came out in droves for the project.

But in recent years, the site has again fallen into disrepair.

Joe Akana, another Royal Order member, echoed Victor’s sentiments.

"When they start to understand the significance of what this heiau is, they’ll be less likely to degrade it, destroy it, or do funky things on top of it," Akana said. "A lot of times, people don’t understand what it is. They think it’s just a pile of rocks, or just a bunch of trees, that it’s nothing significant."

When they pause to look at it, though, they realize "that (it) is a place of honor, a place of sacredness," he said.

Waiola Higa, who headed the dry-stacking effort Saturday, has spent the past three years on Hawaii island, helping reconstruct heiau at Puukohala Heiau National Park, Puuhonua o Honaunau, Kaloko and other culturally rich areas.

After the 2006 earthquake damaged Kamehameha the Great’s Puukohala heiau, Higa went to South Kohala as a volunteer to help restore the site while learning the art of dry-stacking masonry. He ended up getting hired and stayed three years.

"Hapai pohaku," literally carrying stones, uses neither mortar nor machinery. Several years ago, only a few people knew how to restore the heiau, Higa said. Today, there are 200 to 300 more.