Long ago…cradled fondly in familiar arms, his aloha warmed her as he laid her to rest in her one hānau, her birth sands of Mo‘omomi, Molokai. The waves embracing Mo‘omomi’s shore and her gathered ‘ohana soothed her. In this new life, her boundless ‘uhane (spirit) would reside with her ‘aumākua. Her iwi (bones), rich with mana, would return to Papa, imbuing the ‘āina with her life’s mana. Her ʻohana would care for her burial sands. She would visit and mālama her moʻopuna (descendants), and they would heed her voice—a feeling in their na‘au (core), a vivid dream, an inner voice.

Something didn’t feel right. He looked at the lists again. And then he spotted it. “A po‘o (crania) from Mo‘omomi is missing. Do you know what happened?” asked Halealoha Ayau of Hui Mālama i Nā Kūpuna o Hawai‘i Nei. The question was for a staff member at the Bishop Museum. It was 1989.

This was a year before Hawai‘i state burial laws and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act were enacted to protect unmarked burials and to require museums in the US to repatriate human skeletal remains to descendants. But the nearly 1,100 sets of iwi kūpuna (ancestral remains) disinterred from the dunes at Honokahua, Maui had already stirred this young Hawaiian attorney from Moloka‘i to locate stolen iwi and return them to rest.

Ayau recalled, “Bishop Museum explained that they gave the Mo‘omomi kūpuna to the Cranmore Ethnographic Museum in Kent, England, and that it had since closed. Its collections were split among several institutions.”

That was the beginning of a 23-year quest.“When we started, the British wouldn’t respond to our letters,” said Ayau. At the time he was the Burial Sites Section Lead for the State Historic Preservation Division, and William Paty was the Chair of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

“I thought if the State of Hawai‘i made the inquiries, we might get some answers. So I asked Mr. Paty if he would assist. I wrote a form letter, addressed them to 200 institutions, and Mr. Paty signed each one. Then the replies started coming in, but it wasn’t good news,” said Ayau.

The Keeper of Palaeontology at the British Natural History Museum (NHM, Museum) replied with a two-paragraph letter saying that they held “about 140 registered items from Hawaii…most of which are crania” and that they would release information of those items only “to bona fide scientific research workers.”

“Was the Mo‘omomi kūpuna there? I wasn’t sure. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the biggest problem,” said Ayau. “The number was far larger than we imagined, and without any information about these kūpuna, we were disadvantaged in arguing for their return. The problem was daunting. But we focused on what our kumu, Edward and Pualani Kanahele taught us. We would pule. We asked our ‘aumākua for help and we asked the kūpuna in the museums to aid in their own rescue.”

Edward Kanahele remained mindful of opportunities the kūpuna might present. A year later, Desiree Moana Cruz, Kanahele’s Hawai‘i Community College student requested to be excused from class for a trip to London.