'Awa did not arrive in Hawaii on its own. It came the way most of what Hawaiians grew and relied on did -- in a voyaging canoe, carried deliberately by people who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean and chose what was worth bringing with them.
Arrival With the First Voyagers
'Awa, known elsewhere in the Pacific as kava, is one of roughly twenty-seven canoe plants the earliest Polynesian voyagers brought with them to Hawaii and established here, according to the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, which documents at least thirteen distinct Hawaiian 'awa varieties descended from that original introduction. The plant itself originates further south and west -- kava is believed to have first been domesticated on Vanuatu roughly three thousand years ago, according to the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, before it spread with voyaging societies across the wider Pacific, Hawaii among the islands it eventually reached. That spread across the Pacific by "ancient voyaging societies" is also documented in the university's own research guide to traditional Pacific island crops. Once established in Hawaii, 'awa was not a minor or ornamental import -- it was propagated widely enough, and differentiated into enough distinct local varieties, that it became a genuinely Hawaiian plant in its own right, not simply a transplanted one.
Part of Daily and Ceremonial Life
'Awa's role in Hawaiian life was not limited to formal occasions. CTAHR's own account describes 'awa as something consumed after a day of hard physical labor, alongside its role in ceremonial contexts -- in other words, it moved between the ordinary and the significant, part of the rhythm of daily work as well as the marking of important occasions. The root of the plant -- not the stem, leaves, or peel -- was, and still is, the part used to produce the traditional drink. That distinction between plant parts is not a modern technicality invented for a supplement label; it reflects which part of 'awa Hawaiians actually prepared and drank.
The Decline
Hawaiian 'awa cultivation and everyday use diminished substantially in the generations after Western contact, alongside the broader disruption to Hawaiian land use, agriculture, and cultural practice that followed. The most detailed academic account of that decline, and of what it would take to reverse it, is Kawika Winter's ethnobotany thesis on Hawaiian 'awa, completed at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, which traces the plant's history in Hawaii from traditional cultivation through the century in which it nearly disappeared from everyday Hawaiian life. We are not going to attach a specific date or percentage to that decline here without a source in front of us that states one -- what is documented, and worth taking seriously on its own, is that a plant once grown widely enough to produce more than a dozen distinct local varieties came close to falling out of common cultivation entirely.
The Modern Revival
'Awa's revival in Hawaii is not a marketing narrative -- it shows up in concrete, checkable places. The University of Hawaii at Manoa hosts an annual Kava Festival on its own campus, and working farms such as Pu'u O Hoku Ranch now produce USDA-certified organic, biodynamic Hawaiian 'awa, both facts documented by CTAHR. More broadly, the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library describes kava's last several decades as a period in which it "became a major economic engine for the Pacific," marketed worldwide in forms that range from medicinal to recreational. Hawaii's own named cultivars -- Nene, Mahakea, Isa, and others documented in the historical record alongside them -- are part of that same revival: growers propagating specific, named Hawaiian varieties rather than letting the plant's local genetic diversity quietly disappear.
Heartlight's Place in That Story
Heartlight's resin line grows out of that same revival on the Big Island. Nene, Mahakea and Opihikao are Hawaiian 'awa varieties. Isa is not -- it is a variety from Papua New Guinea that is now also grown in Hawaii, and we name it that way rather than folding it into a Hawaiian lineage it does not come from. We are a small part of a much longer history, not the origin of it, and we think that history is worth knowing on its own terms rather than only as backstory for a product page. If reading this leaves you curious to try what these cultivars actually taste like, our resin line is where that history and our own small farm work come together.
