New Maui County archaeologist values all island history

As a child growing up in rainy Humboldt County, Calif., Janet L. Six devoured books about King Tut and Pompeii and decided to be an archaeologist. But instead, at age 18, she moved to Maui and worked for a resort and on a glass-bottom boat.

Ten years later, in 1988, Six was running a fishing company on Maui when her inner archaeologist was reawakened by the unearthing of more than 1,100 ancient Native Hawaiian burials at Honokahua during construction of a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Kapalua.

“Hawaiians had told them this was a burial ground where a civil war raged for years, but that information was not taken seriously,” she said.

The hotel was ultimately relocated inland, and Six was inspired to enroll at Maui Community College with the goal of becoming an archaeologist who would “include people who have not been part of the process and take oral information as seriously as written and apply it to a site.”

More than 30 years later, after earning a master’s degree and doctorate in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, leading decades of fieldwork and teaching in Hawaii, and founding a consulting company, Sixth Sense Archaeological Consultants, the Maui resident was considering retirement when Mayor Michael Victorino offered her the newly created job of staff archaeologist — a first-of-its-kind position among Hawaii’s counties.

Six accepted and started the job June 1, working from home under coronavirus restrictions.

Although her county salary for the full-time position, which falls within the range of $59,616 to $88,248 per year (she declined to give the exact sum), is far less than what archaeologists can earn working for developers, Six accepted because “I feel I can make a difference, heal some of the damage that’s been done historically, by really listening to individuals from the community,” she said in a phone interview.

Part of that healing would include preventing such damage going forward: “Burial grounds and heiau need to have another level of scrutiny before you bulldoze, another layer of eyes on the site,” Six said.

Through working with the county geographic information system (GIS) department and collecting community stories, Six plans “to look at the significant places and make a cognitive overlay map of the island, and create legislation that provides for site avoidance and not simply mitigation” of harmful effects from development, she said.

She wants to introduce “21st-century technology” that can, along with historical information from the community, reveal the layers of the past that current surveys and methods miss.

Members of the Hawaiian community, according to Six, envision “a cultural layer in GIS where you can spatially record information provided by lineal descendants (of burials) as well as known archaeological sites.”

Her wish list includes drones equipped with remote-sensing LIDAR, or light detection and ranging radar, that can “see” through dense vegetation and map in great detail structures such as shrines, house platforms and terraces.

Six’s official duties “include identifying, developing and maintaining an inventory of locally significant natural, cultural, and historical resources for protection and perpetuation,” and making “preservation plans for archaeological and cultural resources that outline short- and long-term preservation and mitigation measures,” according to a county news release announcing her hire.

WHILE there is a Maui- designated archaeologist within the Archaeology Branch of the State Historic Preservation Division, which reviews projects with potential impacts to historic properties, adding a county archaeologist will allow for more thorough vetting of sites before development permits are issued, Six and others said.

“We’re so happy that we have Janet now,”“ said Jennifer Noelani Ahia, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner and member of Malama Kakanilua, a Maui community organization that pressed the county for a dedicated archaeologist.

“Our state laws are not set up to prevent desecration, but only to mitigate once something happens,” Ahia added, citing current contested case proceedings before the Maui Planning Commission opposing the expansion of the Grand Wailea Resort into a burial ground; the group also seeks to protect the sand dunes of Kakanilua, which, “in addition to being an ancient burial ground — a wahi pana, sacred place — and ecological treasure, is also a historic battleground.”

On June 6 the Hawaii Supreme Court ordered the Planning Commission to answer a petition filed by media outlets requesting the contested case proceedings be open to the public; the court also ordered the commission to provide justification for closing the proceedings.

Alan Downer, administrator of the State Historic Preservation Division, praised Six as “somebody familiar with the archaeology of the island” who could screen permit applications and advise the county as to which she could review and which should be sent to SHPD. He noted his agency’s Archaeology Branch is understaffed and “months behind” on the thousands of submittals for review it receives yearly.

“My wish would be we would be able to be more proactive, go out and do a systematic research effort, identify sites so we could get ahead of things rather than right now, somebody says, ‘I want to build something in this location,’ and we say, ‘You have to do an archaeological survey,’ and we get these very location- specific results back.”

Ahia, who said she is allowed to attend meetings of the Maui Burial Council, which recognizes her as a cultural descendant of soldiers killed at Kakanilua, said iwi, or remains, that are missed in a developer’s archaeological inventory survey and unearthed once construction starts are classified as “inadvertent” finds and entitled to fewer protections than iwi that were included in the survey and classified as “previously known.”

“Private archaeologists will ‘look for iwi,’ but because they’re paid by the developer, it’s often in their best interests to not find iwi,” she said.

And because taking samples can’t tell the whole story, it’s crucial that government decision-makers listen to community members such as Ahia, who offer the history of places, Six said.

“It’s pretty hard to dig up the meaning of a site,” she said.

LOOKING back on her career, Six said perhaps her most formative experience was working in 2010 and 2011 as principal investigator on the archaeological excavation and eventual reconstruction of Mokuula in Lahaina, the home of Kamehameha III and former seat of the Hawaiian kingdom.

“Considered one of the most sacred sites in all of Hawaii, Mokuula was negatively impacted after Western contact (1778) and was finally abandoned in 1914,” she said.

“When I moved (to Maui) in 1978, the history they talked about was whaling days, and I had no idea Lahaina had been the capital of Hawaii where they wrote the Hawaiian Constitution.”

The way to erase a people’s history is to “bury it, literally,” Six said, noting that Mokuula was buried under a baseball field. “It really taught me if you want to steal a kingdom, you have to make people somehow less, make their burials less important than Christian burials.”

In another favorite project, Six worked with Native Hawaiian students on mapping features and creating a preservation plan for a ritual compound and its associated agricultural features in Iao Valley, including what was left of Loiloa, long taro patches that ran from the valley to the ocean “and are now largely buried under Wailuku.”

Having also studied Hawaii’s plantation history and sites for her Columbia University master’s thesis focused on the sugar plantations of Hilea and Pahala in Kau on the Big Island, and mapped sites associated with the construction of the Haiku sugar plantation ditch on Maui, Six stressed she values all layers of island history.

“We’re all part of a context, a palimpsest, which means layering,” she said. “Marquesans, Tahitians, the first Western explorers, missionaries, plantations all built on top of each other, ideally to be layered in GIS.”

Maui cultural practitioner Clare Apana, founder of Malama Kakanilua, said she has full confidence in Six, whom she has known since they met working at Mokuula. She pointed out that Six went to community meetings and “was the first (archaeologist) to come to try to do something,” Apana said.

Noting that Six also has the administrative chops to build an eventual county archaeological department, having worked for the chancellor of the University of Hawaii Maui College for many years, “I think she brings this ability to write procedures and protocols using the best archaeological practices combined with cultural knowledge.”

At the same time, Six said she wants to make clear she also supports responsible development and creation of jobs — adding to her community value, said Ka­maunu Kahaialii, a musician, cultural practitioner and part-time Hawaiian studies teacher in Maui schools who met Six at Loiloa, where he was working on preserving water rights.

“We’ve been waiting for an archaeologist to come forward and work with both sides of the aisle,” Kahaialii said. “We’ve often encountered real challenges from both the commercial and cultural sides, and Janet will bring forth balance.”

He expressed gratitude for her work at Mokuula and elsewhere, where he was impressed by her presentation of evidence of history going back 500 years and more.

“Without our past we don’t really have much of a future,” Kahaialii said. “People like Dr. Janet Six give us an opportunity to bridge our past, present and future.”

The foundation, Six said, was people’s coming forward to offer their history and knowing their voices were being heard.