Keoni Alvarez

Help Us Create a Sacred Native Hawaiian Burial Ground E mālama i nā iwi kūpuna — Protect and honor our ancestors. Aloha, my name is Keoni Kealoha Alvarez. I am a Native Hawaiian filmmaker, cultural advocate, author, and founder of KAPU – Sacred Hawaiian Burials, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving, protecting, and educating our communities about Native Hawaiian burial traditions and iwi kūpuna. For more than two decades, I have dedicated my life to documenting Hawaiian burial traditions and advocating for the protection of our ancestors. Through this work, I have witnessed the challenges Native Hawaiian families face when trying to find culturally appropriate places where their loved ones can be laid to rest with dignity and according to Hawaiian values. Today, I am asking for your help to take this mission to the next level: to establish a permanent Native Hawaiian burial ground where Hawaiian families can respectfully bury their loved ones and perpetuate traditional Hawaiian burial practices for generations to come. Our Vision Our vision is to acquire and preserve land in Hawaiʻi specifically for a Native Hawaiian burial ground—a peaceful, protected place centered on Hawaiian culture, spirituality, mālama ʻāina, and respect for our kūpuna. This would be more than a cemetery. It would be a place of cultural continuity—a place where Hawaiian families can honor their loved ones, where traditional knowledge can be perpetuated, and where future generations can understand that caring for our ancestors is part of caring for who we are as a people. Our long-term dream is to make burial opportunities available to Native Hawaiian families regardless of their financial circumstances. What Your Donations Will Support Funds raised through this campaign are intended to help with the steps necessary to establish the burial ground, including land acquisition, planning and professional services, legal and permitting expenses, cemetery licensing and compliance, environmental and archaeological review where required, cultural consultation, infrastructure, landscaping, perpetual-care planning, and other costs necessary to responsibly establish and maintain the burial ground. We will work to keep supporters informed as the project develops and specific costs, land opportunities, approvals, and milestones are established. Why This Matters Our iwi kūpuna deserve dignity. Our families deserve culturally respectful choices. And future generations deserve a place where Hawaiian burial traditions can continue. This is an opportunity to build something that can remain long after we are gone—a protected place created for our people, our families, and generations yet to come. I cannot accomplish this vision alone. I humbly ask our Hawaiian community, friends of Hawaiʻi, cultural organizations, businesses, foundations, and everyone who believes Indigenous traditions deserve to survive to stand with me.

Native Hawaiian filmmaker and cultural advocate Keoni Kealoha Alvarez founded the nonprofit organization KAPU — Sacred Hawaiian Burials with a powerful and deeply important mission: to preserve, protect, and educate people about Native Hawaiian burial sites, iwi kūpuna, and the sacred traditions surrounding our ancestors. For generations, Native Hawaiian burial places have faced disturbance, development, neglect, and desecration. KAPU works to bring greater awareness to these sacred places, advocate for their protection, educate communities and future generations, and help ensure that our kūpuna are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. Your donation to this GoFundMe will help support KAPU’s continuing work to protect Native Hawaiian burials throughout Hawaiʻi. Every contribution, large or small, helps strengthen this mission and gives a voice to ancestors who can no longer speak for themselves. This is more than protecting graves. It is about protecting our ancestors, our history, our culture, and the spiritual connection Native Hawaiians have to the ʻāina. Please stand with us. Donate, share this campaign, and help protect Native Hawaiian burial places for generations to come. Mālama i nā iwi kūpuna. Protect our ancestors. Preserve our culture.

KAPU: Sacred Hawaiian Burials is a powerful documentary by Emmy Award-winning Native Hawaiian filmmaker Keoni Kealoha Alvarez that takes audiences beyond the beauty of Hawaiʻi to reveal a deeply important and often unseen struggle—the protection of sacred Native Hawaiian burial places. Through the voices of cultural practitioners, descendants, elders, and advocates, the film explores ancient Hawaiian burial traditions, spiritual beliefs, and the profound connection between iwi kūpuna, ʻohana, and ʻāina. Filmed over more than two decades, KAPU documents Alvarez’s journey to bring awareness to the disturbance and desecration of ancestral burial sites while sharing a message of responsibility, respect, and cultural preservation. This is more than a documentary—it is a call to protect the resting places of Hawaiʻi’s ancestors and ensure their sacredness is honored for generations to come. The kūpuna have a story. Their resting places deserve protection. Their voices must never be forgotten.

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Keoni Kealoha Alvarez shares the powerful truth beyond Hawaiʻi’s image of paradise in his documentary KAPU: Sacred Hawaiian Burials. The film exposes the desecration of ancient Hawaiian burial sites and the ongoing struggle of Native Hawaiian families to protect iwi kūpuna—the sacred remains of their ancestors. Through personal experiences, kūpuna voices, and decades of documentation, KAPU reminds the world that these burial places are not obstacles to development—they are sacred places that deserve dignity, respect, and protection.

In 2023, eight sets of iwi kūpuna were reported within a burial cave in Waikahekahe Iki, Puna, on Hawaiʻi Island. As a recognized cultural descendant connected to these burials, I became deeply involved in protecting this sacred place. What I witnessed there made it even clearer to me how difficult it can be to protect Native Hawaiian burials from development, disturbance, and years of delay. Protecting iwi kūpuna is not simply advocacy work to me. It is a personal kuleana that I carry. For more than two decades, I have dedicated much of my life to documenting, educating, and speaking out about the protection of Native Hawaiian burials. Seeing sacred burial places threatened, disturbed, or left without permanent protection is heartbreaking, especially knowing these iwi kūpuna are someone's family and ancestors. The years of meetings, research, documentation, travel, and advocacy have required tremendous time, energy, and personal resources, but walking away has never felt like an option. This fundraiser will support the ongoing work needed to protect and preserve Native Hawaiian burial sites and iwi kūpuna over time. Donations will help cover cultural and archaeological documentation, legal and professional assistance, burial-site protection and stewardship, educational materials, community outreach, travel to threatened burial sites, and other necessary expenses connected to respectful preservation efforts. Support will also help document burial concerns and work with descendants, cultural practitioners, communities, and appropriate agencies when sacred burial places are threatened. Just as importantly, these funds will help me continue educating Hawaiʻi and the world about why iwi kūpuna are not artifacts, but our ancestors and family. Through community presentations, educational programs, films, books, and cultural outreach, I want to help future generations have the knowledge and tools to protect these sacred places long after I am gone. Because this need continues over time, recurring donations would provide steady support for the documentation, travel, outreach, and advocacy this work requires. One-time donations are also deeply appreciated and make a real difference. I cannot do this alone, and I am asking for your help. Every donation or share helps carry this kuleana with me and helps protect our ancestors, preserve our culture, and keep these sacred places respected for generations to come.