Credit: Christy Mello
Work to identify unmarked burials—at the invitation of the Saint Damien Burial Council on Molokaʻi—will be ramping up, thanks to a $168,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu.
Preliminary research for “Unmarked Burials at a Molokai Cemetery: Building and Broadening Community Engaged Research Methods, Faculty Networks, and Student STEM Opportunities” began in February 2022. UH West Oʻahu faculty and professional partners have been working to identify names associated with undocumented burials, and to create maps at two cemeteries belonging to Saint Damien of Molokaʻi Catholic Church and Parishes.
Based on community-expressed interest during talk-story focus group discussions, researchers decided to begin work by focusing on the St. Joseph at Kamalo Cemetery to preserve its regional history and the stories of those who live and are buried there. A team had been traveling to Molokaʻi every two–three months. The NSF funding will help to increase the frequency of those visits to one–two months.
Ethical, best practices
The project’s principal investigator is Christy Mello, associate professor of applied cultural anthropology, and co-principal investigators are Kirsten Vacca, assistant professor of historical archaeology; Robert Mann, lecturer of forensic anthropology at UH West Oʻahu and UH Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine; and John Byrd, lab director and forensic anthropologist at the U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Mello said the research team members are not disturbing human remains and are completely avoiding potential ancient burials. They developed an approach that integrates ethnographic insight—gathered through focus groups, participant observation, photography, interviews, archival and genealogical research—with the forensic and archeological methods of excavation (10–12 cm deep), probing and mapping.
“Our work demonstrates best practices for forensic investigations, historical and cultural preservation, as well as cultural resource management in ensuring proper methodologies are mainstreamed,” Mello said. “Further, it provides a rare learning opportunity for students to gain experience ethically identifying actual clandestine burials.”
In the trenches
Rachael White, a former student of Mello, worked on the project for several weekends in 2022, and most recently in March 2023. On her first trip, she dug trenches at the church along with Byrd.
“Those trenches revealed slight variations in the soil that was enough evidence to show that a person was buried there. This was very labor intensive,” White said. “The other times we went to Molokaʻi, I along with Dr. Byrd helped to map the cemetery—both the existing burials and the ones we found (during) the prior trip.”
For White, working on Molokaʻi meant more than doing archaeological work. It also meant getting to know and appreciating the beauty of both the people and the island. “I think the work I did on Molokaʻi was the most exciting and rewarding thing I did in my adult life,” she said. “Every time I went, I felt like I was helping a worthy cause and it was an overall refreshing feeling to help people identify their past relatives.”
Working together to preserve history
Mello noted that the success of the project is largely attributable to the efforts of burial council and community members seeking to document and preserve the history of St. Joseph at Kamalō before more knowledge is lost with the passing of kūpuna.
“This level of commitment makes for lively and dynamic talk story sessions in which our participants enjoy learning from each other,” Mello said. “It is through this rich ethnographic detail in which we are learning on where to focus excavation work, and that we will archive and preserve for future generations.”
The Molokaʻi community will ultimately sustain the project and benefit from its results.
Mello said, “I am grateful for the many hours I get to spend learning from kūpuna and for the opportunity to assist with something so meaningful to the community, for preserving this knowledge for future generations as we engage in ethnographic and archival research together to identify names for burials with no names.”
Republished courtesy of University of Hawaii