Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 12, 1 Kekemapa 2011 — KEEPING UP WITH OUR KŪPUNA Frank Palani Sinenci, master hale builder [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

KEEPING UP WITH OUR KŪPUNA Frank Palani Sinenci, master hale builder

This is the first in a series of profiles on elders who make lasting contributions to our communities anā the Hawaiian way oflife. By Kekoa Enomoīo From the halls of Capitol Hill to the shores of Hāna, a Maui kūpuna is stacking up stones as well as awards. Frank Palani Sinenci was among the recipients of the U.S. Department of the Interior's 2011 Partners in Conservation

Award Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C. He was honored as a master stoneworker and master hale builder who helped lead restoration of the 220-year-old Pu'ukoholā heiau and the adjacent, more ancient Mailekini heiau following a 2006 earthquake. Kapono'ai Molitau, Kahuna Nui of the heiau, and Daniel Kawai'ae'a Jr., Park

Superintendent of Pu'ukoholā Heiau National Historic Site at Kawaihae on Hawai'i Island, also were among the awardees. The three-year, $4 million restoration project involved the hands-on engagement of 600 people, including dozens of Maui stoneworkers, Sinenci said. Among his myriad laurels, Sinenci also garnered Historic Hawai'i Foundation's 1999 Preservation Honor Award, Hawai'i Tourism Authority's 2005 Keep It Hawai'i Recognition Award, The Maui News ' designation as one of the People Who Made a Difference in 2000, and a Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts' Folk and Traditional Arts Grant to train six apprentices in indigenous architecture. Regarding stonework and hale building, "the biggest aspect is laulima," Sinenci said about the cultural value of "many hands" collaborating to ease a task. "You know, me being of small stature - it takes a lot of hands to move lots of stones," Sinenci explained. Stature notwithstanding, his hands are dark brown, leathery, calloused and nimhle. His rapidfire speech mirrors his retirement as an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant with nearly three decades of military service. The Hāna native, 69, said his genealogy includes the Mo'iha, Keaweawe and Kauwawa lines. Sinenci cut his teeth as a stoneworker two decades ago while leading restoration of Hāna's Pi'ilanihale heiau, considered the largest heiau in the Paeihe basin, according to Northern Illinois University

archaeologist Miehael Kolb. "Pi'ilani was tough. Pi'ilani was my teacher," Sinenci recalled. Two of his nine siblings, brothers Peter and Egot, "are master stoneworkers. In fact, one of them was my teacher," he said. Younger brother Peter provided "a three-minute lesson in how to set stone" in the traditional Hawaiian dry-stack style, without cement. "Stones. What ean you say? They have their own mana. They're going where they want to be," Palani Sinenci observed. "When you piek up a stone (you wonder), could you talk to it? And then ... all of a sudden: This is a plaee for it, and you go, 'īhank you.' " Sinenci's pervasive impact in the areas of traditional Hawaiian stonework and hale building includes help passing 2002 Maui County legislation to give indigenous structures legal status equal to that of western dwellings. He also developed and taught a 2003 Universitv of Hawai'i-Maui Colleae

course in hale building, led construction of a 30-by-50-foot hale hālāwai (meeting house) for Hawaiian Canoe Club in 2010, supervised the recent lashing of traditional Hawaiian fixtures at Disney's Aulani Resort in Leeward O'ahu, and is among the master stoneworkers featured in an educational video to be released soon.

Sinenci said he's led construction of at least 10 hale hālāwai on Maui, O'ahu and Hawai'i islands. On O'ahu, one may view the structures at Lyon Arboretum in Mānoa and at Mohala Larms in Waialua. Ever a builder, Sinenci continues to forge awareness of, and provide access to, practices and values of a Stone Age culture. He welcomes the puhlie to participate in the third annual Laulima Symposium during the mid-October 2012 Aloha Lestivals celebration in Hāna. "It's where just a huneh of us hale builders and stoneworkers get together and help kūpuna or families get stonework restored in their yards. This year we had people from Maui and the Big Island. We did three different laulima projects in three different days for Hāna residents. We eall it a symposium because we teach." Sinenci said volunteers are provided laulima T-shirts, food and a plaee to stay, and ean walk in the Aloha Lestivals Parade. (See the hanaculturalcenter. org calendar for festival dates.) So, after two decades of stacking stones and laurels, what has Sinenci learned? "I learned that our kūpuna were very ingenious and very innovative and very inventive," he said, about early Polynesian voyagers to the isles. "Their implements (enabled) them to survive 700 years without having to go back." ■ Kekoa Enomoto is a retired copy editor and Stajf Writer with The Maui News and former Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Sinenci