Introduction: Traditional Resource Management and Hoʻokumu (Beginnings)

Many indigenous groups around the world continue to value the pursuit, use, and management of natural resources in the present day. Jobs and cash are important in practical terms, but fish, game, and the products of small-scale agriculture contribute significantly to indigenous ways of life. For native people in the United States, social values often relate to the past, to the capacity of traditional ecological knowledge to help feed the extended family in dietary, cultural, and spiritual terms. This chapter describes the history of Polynesian voyagers who found and settled one of the most remote archipelagos on earth and who developed sophisticated means for ensuring sustainable use of land and sea. The lessons and traditional knowledge developed by so doing continue to influence use and management of natural resources in the Hawaiian Islands to this day.