About the Book: The enormous impact of sugarcane plantations in Hawai'i has overshadowed the fact that Native Hawaiians introduced ko (sugarcane) to the islands nearly a millennium before Europeans arrived. In fact, Hawaiians cultivated sugarcane extensively in a broad range of ecosystems using diverse agricultural systems and developed dozens of native varieties of ko. Sugarcane played a vital role in the culture and livelihood of Native Hawaiians, as it did for many other Indigenous peoples across the Pacific.