Kauai students use drones to map heiau, support restoration efforts

Five Kauai Community College students turned paid internships into hands-on preservation work, using drones to map heiau sites, build 3D models and digitize artifacts that help keep Indigenous data in local hands. The project tied high-tech training to a direct Kauai need: protecting sacred places while building career paths on island.

At Malaehaakoa heiau, the students partnered with the nonprofit I Ola Wailuanui to support restoration efforts. Using drone technology, they created 3D models of the historical site, and those models are now being used to inform and guide the restoration work. The effort showed how digital tools can serve cultural stewardship, not replace it, by giving restoration teams a detailed record of a place that matters to Kauai’s history and future.

The internships sat within the University of Hawaii Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation, which describes its work as a catalyst for students, faculty and regional communities to use ancestral sciences and technologies to advance contemporary innovation and restore Hawaii biosystems. UH OIKI has also pushed Indigenous Data Hubs, intended to create community-derived databases of ancestral and contemporary datasets with applications in restoration and other uses. On Kauai, that means more of the information tied to heiau, artifacts and cultural sites can be managed with local purpose instead of drifting away from the communities that know those places best.

Kauai CC said the internships gave students specialized skills, academic credit and career pathways, pairing workforce development with cultural responsibility. The college’s Innovation Center said it supports faculty-led, interdisciplinary projects that address community needs through an Indigenous lens, and the college’s 2023-2029 strategic plan calls for multiple campus innovation hubs and for leveraging Indigenous innovation. That campus direction gave the heiau project a wider reach than a single restoration site: it linked students trained in drones and digitization to a growing field where technology, heritage and island-based jobs are increasingly intertwined.

The five interns were not named in the available material, but the message of the program was clear. On Kauai, preserving a heiau and preparing a student for a technology career were treated as part of the same work.