At the back of Waimānalo is a place separated from modern society through an act of sheer will. Here in rainy, windward Oahu is a valley ringed with impossibly steep cliffs, a pali that soars thousands of feet overhead draped in lush greenery. At the base of those cliffs is a place where an older culture finds a place to shelter, a place of refuge.
I am here to attend a tech event, a hackathon where various makers like myself use technology to solve problems. This event has been arranged by the folks of Purple Maiʻa, an organiztion dedicated to tech education. The theme this time? Instrumenting an ahupuaʻa, learning from the land by installing a network of instruments to monitor such things as temperature, water quality, stream flow, and more.
Thus an early morning alarm leads me through parking lots, crowded airports, and Honolulu rush-hour traffic. The journey ends on a quiet one-lane road underneath towering trees and calling birds. I step from the car, we have a few minutes, in the cool morning I let the rush of the last few hours melt away and look to see what lies ahead… We wait to be admitted in front of a large steel gate surrounded by bold signs declaring the Nation of Hawaiʻi.
I will admit my visit to the nation was a bit of a personal concern. During the height of the Mauna Kea controversy many of those in the Hawaiian separatist community viciously attacked the science community to which I belong and believe in. The accusations were unrelenting, highly insulting, repeated by celebrities and politicians, and often entirely built upon lies. I routinely attended official proceedings and listened to some of these lies, wondering where such vitriol came from.
Suffice it to say I am now a bit prejudiced against some of the more outspoken Hawaiian activists, a position quite the opposite to what I held a decade ago. Stepping into the Nation of Hawaiʻi was entering into enemy territory.
Stepping from the vehicle we found ourselves in a little piece of ancient Hawaiʻi. A small stream poured down from the stunning cliffs above through a dense forest. Along the stream a series of stone terraces supported loʻi kalo, taro ponds, with water spilling from one terrace to another.
On the opposite hillside a group of modest homes stand, home to those who call the Nation of Hawaiʻi home. A collection of greenhouses and odd agricultural buildings complete the scene. Below there is a small sawmill, on the hill above a community center, and other structures that the nation uses to make a living.
The loʻi kalo are well tended, clearly a great deal of effort has been expended to create and keep this place. Standing beside the loʻi one can feel the life in the water, in the kalo. I work with my hands, I till the earth and tend my own garden, I know the effort it takes, the dedication it takes to do this. Here one feels a connection to the generations of those who fed themselves and a culture from these terraces.
Some of these walls are new or rebuilt, some we are told are the originals, ancient loʻi kalo freed from the forest and returned to the purpose for which they were built. The kalo is beautiful, the vibrant green leaves promising an abundance that comes from the water and sunlight of this place, from the hard work of those who rebuilt these loʻi in the forest.
Over the past year, on the last Saturday of the month, the community has been invited to join in rebuilding the walls, to tend the kalo. Apparently last month it was several hundered people who joined the effort, not only Hawaiians, a majority of those folks were from other cultures, here to work and learn.
We gather on a partially complete terrace, those who have built this place are introduced, explain a little of the history, their struggles, and what they hope to achieve here.
Dennis “Bumpy” Pu‘uhonua Kanahele, the president of the Nation of Hawaii relates a quick version of his story, of protests, of deals with the state, of founding this place. Other officers of the nation fill in some of the details. There is more to the tale, but our time was short, I would love to hear a more complete version sometime from the source, rather than the romanticized or sterilized version so often told second or third hand.
I find myself liking the people I meet, the leaders of the nation, they are worthy of the roles they have assumed, of leading a community. There are good practical answers to the questions I ask. I see the respect with which they are treated. In an era when too may leaders are so clearly incompetent buffoons they are a welcome example.
As part of the morning we put in a bit of work, a small contribution to this place. It feels good to pass the stones up the hill, to feel the pōhaku in my hands as a pile of rock grows alongside a partially rebuilt terrace ready to be set in place. These are old, stream worn and rounded rocks that have a character to them I appreciate.
The forest around us is lush, deep green, and towers overhead. It is also nearly completely non-native trees, massive eukalyptus, towering albezia, and many others I do not recognize. I struggle to spot a single native tree, an ʻōhiʻa or koa. In several places ʻōhiʻa and wiliwili seedlings have been planted, an attempt to return at least a bit of this forest to the trees that once dominated here.
I realize my fundamental problem with separatist groups like this is that they are attempting to build walls. In this case the wall is not really the large steel gate at the entrance to the nation, it is the idea of sovereignty itself, the idea that they are separate. That they find it necessary to declare that they are not part of the larger community.
I write this from a contradictory perspective, I am an enrolled member of sovereign nation that is formally recognized within the United States. A member of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe. As such I carry a mixed heritage, sometimes finding myself a little conflicted on the idea of sovereignty . This is why I find it necessary to consider these thoughts, to look at a group like the nation, to think a bit, and perhaps write down my thoughts.
The comparison is intensely interesting to me. When visiting the Nation of Hawaii it is impossible to not know you are entering… Large signs, a big steel gate, it is clear that you are here. Entering the Shoalwater Reservation is a bit more subtle, indeed if you are not looking for it you can be on the reservation without knowing. I suspect many of the folks that travel State Route 105 through Tokeland never even realize they entered a reservation.
Over the day I note many other differences between the nation and the reservation. The comparisons are stark and revealing. From many within the nation I feel a sense of pride, but also a bit of a siege mentality, of a constant fight against the society outside the gate, the State of Hawaii, and the smothering forces of Amerian culture.
I understand the motivation here, far too many Hawaiians feel disposessed in their own homeland. Unable to own a home where real estate is some of the most expensive in the world, pushed out from places their families once freely spent their days. Beaches that are now hemmed in by exclusive resorts, or luxury homes with an endless array of gates, walls, and no parking signs.
This brings me to another question I sometimes struggle with… How much of the current Hawaiian expereince is racial discrimination, and how much is simply being pushed around economically, a matter of have and have not. Consider the thought process here… If you are poor and not part of some minority group, you then have nothing to blame for your condition. If you are poor and a minority? Then it must be discrimination! The cost of living in Hawaii, the cost of food and housing, makes it all too easy to be poor, even when earning a wage that would be sufficient many other places.
Decades ago this answer would have been easy, a large part of the problem was clearly outright racial discrimination. In the modern age this may not be the case, that being Hawaiian is no longer the handicap it once was. This is due in large part to the continued struggle and hard earned success of the Hawaiian community to earn recognition. My personal conclusion is that the primary factor of inequality today is economic disadvantage, and this is even harder to overcome.
The problem becomes this… If the major issue is economic disparity rather than racial discrimination, then efforts to address the wrong issue are destined to failure.
Hawaii is a place of economic extremes, where economic disparty comes to the fore quite rapidly. So much wealth comes to visit the posh resorts, or comes here to buy a piece of paradise. To buy a luxury home on the beach, unaware, or simply not caring, that this expensive home was built over the bulldozed remains of modest family home that once nurtured generations of a local family.
The state is dependent upon tourism. And while much is said about breaking this dependency the fact remains there is no other industry that can support the local economy, nothing that can replace tourism. And with the tourists, with the imported wealth, come the issues that underpin everything the Nation of Hawaii is struggling against.
I have been reading about the nation’s history. I find what they have accomplished admirable, even if I have reservations about the underlying premise. I wonder about the future of such efforts, will they succeed or fail.
Is the Nation of Hawaiʻi actually sovereign? They believe they are and proudly proclaim it. But in the end they are not, there is no official recognition from any entity that truly matters in this issue. There is no concensus in the Hawaiian community supporting the Nation of Hawaiʻi, indeed they are one of three groups claiming to be the proper representatives of the Hawaiian people.
The nation is as sovereign as the State of Hawaii allows them be until it becomes a problem. I get the feeling that the state finds it useful to let them be… for now. As a result the nation is destined to fail as an independent government, never to be officially recognized.
While completely understandable, building walls around yourself, or around your culture is simply wrong and in the end self defeating. While that wall can be useful in preserving a culture, it also divides peoples. Implicit in a wall is the idea that people are not equal, it requires the assertion that someone belongs on the other side of the wall. When a concept like race is used to define the wall the issue becomes even more problematic.
We need to find a way to preserve languages, to preserve cultures, without walls.
There was another idea that was mentioned by several folks through the day, a very Hawaiian idea I find far more compelling than sovereignty… Puʻuhonua. Several times this little piece of land occupied by the Nation of Hawaii was referred to as Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo.
Puʻuhonua is simply translated as place of refuge, but the Hawaiian concept encompasses more than that. It is a refuge from injustice, a place of healing, a place of redemption, and more. It was clear from my short visit that Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo is such a place, a refuge from the often overwhelming pressure of western culture. Perhaps a place still exploring its relationship with the wider community.
I wonder if expanding this concept, or even the establishment of other places of refuge through the islands might be a more successful method of preserving and teaching what Hawaiian culture can truly offer. An increasing number of Hawaiian immersion schools have been a successful way of furthuring this process, is there another idea that can be added to the solution.
Imagine a place that is a refuge, but at the same time very much an integral part of the surrounding community, no walls or gates beyond perhaps a ceremonial barrier representing the boundary of the refuge. Something more like a church, synagogue, or convent, recognized as set apart, with an understood legal status, and not always subject to the same laws.
Consider a place where Hawaiian language and culture is dominant, and taught to those who seek it out. A place where entry is allowed to any who respect what the Puʻuhonua stands for without regard to race, religion, or cultural origin.
There exist a number of places like Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo that could become this, may already be such refuges in many aspects. Could these places be officially recognized and become something more?
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