Palapala Hō‘ike: Documents that Define Us
KNB, PALA KA MAI‘A
A Hawaiian Response to the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s “Kawainui Marsh Restoration Plan: Priorities, Protocols, and Participation”
We have serious reservations about the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s Kawainui Marsh Restoration Plan. Although it purports to express the vision of the Hawaiian community and to honor the wisdom of our kūpuna, it strikes us as more of a cut-and-paste white paper than a coherent, Hawaiian-generated plan. It relies on a distorted view of Kailua history and doctored-up Hawaiian cultural concepts to advance a proposal whose effect will be to forestall rather than promote a thriving Hawaiian cultural presence at Kawainui. It claims to speak with the voice of Kailua’s Hawaiians, but it quietly discredits our current leadership, capacity, and integrity. It attempts to impose a newcomer’s sense of place on the descendants of those who came long before. It is, for these reasons, unacceptable. We cannot endorse it.
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A Hawaiian Response to the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s “Kawainui Marsh Restoration Plan: Priorities, Protocols, and Participation”
We have serious reservations about the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s Kawainui Marsh Restoration Plan. Although it purports to express the vision of the Hawaiian community and to honor the wisdom of our kūpuna, it strikes us as more of a cut-and-paste white paper than a coherent, Hawaiian-generated plan. It relies on a distorted view of Kailua history and doctored-up Hawaiian cultural concepts to advance a proposal whose effect will be to forestall rather than promote a thriving Hawaiian cultural presence at Kawainui. It claims to speak with the voice of Kailua’s Hawaiians, but it quietly discredits our current leadership, capacity, and integrity. It attempts to impose a newcomer’s sense of place on the descendants of those who came long before. It is, for these reasons, unacceptable. We cannot endorse it.
...
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25 KUMU HULA AND 15 HĀLAU IN SUPPORT OF THE KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN
A Letter to OHAʻs Ka Wai Ola, June 2014
We are Kini Kailua, a hui of 25 kumu hula with roots in Ko‘olaupoko, ‘Oahu. We are the keepers of the traditions of such respected hula masters as Maiki Aiu Lake, Lani Kalama, Bella Richards, Luka Kaleikī, Darrell Lupenui, and Ellen Castillo. Most of us belong to third and fourth generation Kailua families; some of us, like the Māhoes and Kalamas, have been here forever. Many of us are also second or third generation teachers who carry on the legacy of our parents and grandparents, as in the case of Charnay Kalama-Macomber and Charlani Kalama (granddaughter and daughter of Kekau‘ilani Kalama), Tristin and Adah Enos (granddaughter and daughter of Bella Richards), Lani Girl Kaleikī-Ahlo (daughter of Louise Luka Kaleikī), and Maunalei Love (granddaughter of Ku‘ulei Stibbard). All of our hālau are family organizations; we persist in our work because of ‘ohana, because we cannot turn our backs on the lessons of our kūpuna and the needs of our mo‘opuna. We are actual practitioners of our culture in and around Kailua, yet we are not the people whose names show up when Hawaiian culture is addressed in the Kawainui plans, letters, resolutions, and advisory-board lists proposed by the Kailua Neighborhood Board and its allies. Because we have been regularly misrepresented and ignored there, we speak here for our 15 hālau, our families, and our more than one thousand students; we speak from our years of commitment to our land and culture.
What we would like to say is this: we fear the loss of place in Kailua. Place to teach, share, and practice who we are. We fear for the identity of our great-grandchildren. Will they be shaped by an intimate, hands-on knowledge of their birth sands and kulāiwi? Will they know the stories, songs, and dances that belong to these lands? Will they be fluent in the language that holds these treasures? Will they know the skills of their ancestors, and will they be able to assume the profound responsibility of using these skills as stewards of land, pond, and sea?
...
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A Letter to OHAʻs Ka Wai Ola, June 2014
We are Kini Kailua, a hui of 25 kumu hula with roots in Ko‘olaupoko, ‘Oahu. We are the keepers of the traditions of such respected hula masters as Maiki Aiu Lake, Lani Kalama, Bella Richards, Luka Kaleikī, Darrell Lupenui, and Ellen Castillo. Most of us belong to third and fourth generation Kailua families; some of us, like the Māhoes and Kalamas, have been here forever. Many of us are also second or third generation teachers who carry on the legacy of our parents and grandparents, as in the case of Charnay Kalama-Macomber and Charlani Kalama (granddaughter and daughter of Kekau‘ilani Kalama), Tristin and Adah Enos (granddaughter and daughter of Bella Richards), Lani Girl Kaleikī-Ahlo (daughter of Louise Luka Kaleikī), and Maunalei Love (granddaughter of Ku‘ulei Stibbard). All of our hālau are family organizations; we persist in our work because of ‘ohana, because we cannot turn our backs on the lessons of our kūpuna and the needs of our mo‘opuna. We are actual practitioners of our culture in and around Kailua, yet we are not the people whose names show up when Hawaiian culture is addressed in the Kawainui plans, letters, resolutions, and advisory-board lists proposed by the Kailua Neighborhood Board and its allies. Because we have been regularly misrepresented and ignored there, we speak here for our 15 hālau, our families, and our more than one thousand students; we speak from our years of commitment to our land and culture.
What we would like to say is this: we fear the loss of place in Kailua. Place to teach, share, and practice who we are. We fear for the identity of our great-grandchildren. Will they be shaped by an intimate, hands-on knowledge of their birth sands and kulāiwi? Will they know the stories, songs, and dances that belong to these lands? Will they be fluent in the language that holds these treasures? Will they know the skills of their ancestors, and will they be able to assume the profound responsibility of using these skills as stewards of land, pond, and sea?
...
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KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN OUTCRY: WE ASK YOU TO RECONSIDER
A Letter to MIdweek, June 2014
We have proposed to fund, build, and manage a 501c3 Hawaiian Culture Center and iwi kupuna preserve at Wai‘auia. This center, Hika‘alani, is now being characterized as a for-profit, marsh-poisoning tourist trap complete with a drop-off area for visitor industry buses. Despite our repeated efforts to define the center as a LEED certified, non-polluting, kauhale-modeled facility for the transmission of traditional knowledge to the people of Kailua and the families of our hālau (not to tourists of any kind on any mode of transportation), the opposition has plucked the phrase “culture center” from our Hika‘alani context, given it a Polynesian Culture Center spin, and raised a hue and cry against our desecration of our own kulāiwi. Nothing could be further from our hearts or more at odds with our almost 40-year record of commitment to Hawaiian culture education in Kailua.
We think that the same hue and cry holds true for the proposed Hawaiian education and stewardship centers at Kalāheo (canoe and voyaging), Kapa‘a (culture and environment) and Ulupō (spirituality, agriculture, and food-sovereignty). All are proposed by Kailua Hawaiian non-profit (or soon-to-be-non-profit) organizations led by members of the Kailua Hawaiian community. All are meant as place-based classrooms for the teaching, learning, practicing, and growing of our native culture. But all are being targeted as conspirators in a Master Plan bent on promoting a tourist invasion of our Kailua home.
...
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A Letter to MIdweek, June 2014
We have proposed to fund, build, and manage a 501c3 Hawaiian Culture Center and iwi kupuna preserve at Wai‘auia. This center, Hika‘alani, is now being characterized as a for-profit, marsh-poisoning tourist trap complete with a drop-off area for visitor industry buses. Despite our repeated efforts to define the center as a LEED certified, non-polluting, kauhale-modeled facility for the transmission of traditional knowledge to the people of Kailua and the families of our hālau (not to tourists of any kind on any mode of transportation), the opposition has plucked the phrase “culture center” from our Hika‘alani context, given it a Polynesian Culture Center spin, and raised a hue and cry against our desecration of our own kulāiwi. Nothing could be further from our hearts or more at odds with our almost 40-year record of commitment to Hawaiian culture education in Kailua.
We think that the same hue and cry holds true for the proposed Hawaiian education and stewardship centers at Kalāheo (canoe and voyaging), Kapa‘a (culture and environment) and Ulupō (spirituality, agriculture, and food-sovereignty). All are proposed by Kailua Hawaiian non-profit (or soon-to-be-non-profit) organizations led by members of the Kailua Hawaiian community. All are meant as place-based classrooms for the teaching, learning, practicing, and growing of our native culture. But all are being targeted as conspirators in a Master Plan bent on promoting a tourist invasion of our Kailua home.
...
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IN SUPPORT OF DRAFT KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN
Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Kahikina de Silva, June 2014
I am a life-long kupa of Kailua, in particular of Kaʻōhao - renamed "Lanikai" by early 20th century developers. It is in Kaʻōhao and the larger Kailua that I had my first baby lūʻau, learned to swim, paddle, and dive, tracked the sun's path through the sky, began my life-long dedication to the study and perpetuation of mele and hula, helped three of my aging grandparents pass into the next realm, had my wedding ceremony, and graduated as kumu hula. It is in Kaʻōhao and Kailua that I continue to participate in the intellecutal, cultural, and ritual practices of hula - both as student and teacher - and it is here that I will raise the family my husband and I have started. And it is for Kaʻōhao and Kailua that I compose mele, choreograph hula, and work on my PhD in Political Science.
Spending my almost 38 years in a land native to me and my kūpuna, in an ʻāina that is consistently misidentified ("Lanikai" is a nonsensical name, not grounded in any sense of this place or its history), and on top of that whose misnomer is painfully mispronounced, has made clear to me the far-reaching consequences of a failure to establish a permanent, visible, and peopled Hawaiian cultural presence in Kailua - and one that is conceived, directed, and managed by Kailua's Hawaiian community. The lack of such a presence creates a kind of cultural "free-for-all", a vaccum into which commercial enterprises, "puka shell" tours, and hordes of wandering visitors are pulled. There are no visible stewards of the land or its moʻolelo, no sense of kapu at significant locations, and only the occasional sanctioned appearance of the host people, the true kamaʻāina, as a minority in canoe regattas or providing hula for a local block party. Worse than the effects this absence has on the Kailua community at large are the effects on the Hawaiians of Kailua who have stuck around through decades of irresponsible development, and on those generations yet to come. Like the Washington State natives looking out into the world only to find themselves reflected back as Redskin caricatures, we natives of Kailua look out into our own ahupuaʻa and see nothing of ourselves reflected back to us or to our keiki. This is where the true damage lies.
...
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Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Kahikina de Silva, June 2014
I am a life-long kupa of Kailua, in particular of Kaʻōhao - renamed "Lanikai" by early 20th century developers. It is in Kaʻōhao and the larger Kailua that I had my first baby lūʻau, learned to swim, paddle, and dive, tracked the sun's path through the sky, began my life-long dedication to the study and perpetuation of mele and hula, helped three of my aging grandparents pass into the next realm, had my wedding ceremony, and graduated as kumu hula. It is in Kaʻōhao and Kailua that I continue to participate in the intellecutal, cultural, and ritual practices of hula - both as student and teacher - and it is here that I will raise the family my husband and I have started. And it is for Kaʻōhao and Kailua that I compose mele, choreograph hula, and work on my PhD in Political Science.
Spending my almost 38 years in a land native to me and my kūpuna, in an ʻāina that is consistently misidentified ("Lanikai" is a nonsensical name, not grounded in any sense of this place or its history), and on top of that whose misnomer is painfully mispronounced, has made clear to me the far-reaching consequences of a failure to establish a permanent, visible, and peopled Hawaiian cultural presence in Kailua - and one that is conceived, directed, and managed by Kailua's Hawaiian community. The lack of such a presence creates a kind of cultural "free-for-all", a vaccum into which commercial enterprises, "puka shell" tours, and hordes of wandering visitors are pulled. There are no visible stewards of the land or its moʻolelo, no sense of kapu at significant locations, and only the occasional sanctioned appearance of the host people, the true kamaʻāina, as a minority in canoe regattas or providing hula for a local block party. Worse than the effects this absence has on the Kailua community at large are the effects on the Hawaiians of Kailua who have stuck around through decades of irresponsible development, and on those generations yet to come. Like the Washington State natives looking out into the world only to find themselves reflected back as Redskin caricatures, we natives of Kailua look out into our own ahupuaʻa and see nothing of ourselves reflected back to us or to our keiki. This is where the true damage lies.
...
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IN SUPPORT OF DRAFT KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN
Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Maya Saffery, June 2014
ʻO Maya L. Kawailanaokeawaiki Saffery koʻu inoa. He pua nō au no ke ahupuaʻa ʻo Kailua e ulu aʻe nei i Kamakalepo i loko lilo o ke awāwa uluwehi o Maunawili. My name is Maya L. Kawailanaokeawaiki Saffery, and I was born and raised in the Koʻolaupoko district of Oʻahu in the ahupuaʻa of Kailua on the ʻili ʻāina of Kamakalepo in the back of the valley of Maunawili. I write this letter of support for the HHF/DLNR Kawainui Revised Master Plan as a practitioner of traditional hula who received my training and continues to practice my culture within the ahupuaʻa of Kailua, a Hawaiian language curriculum developer from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa whose research focuses on the importance of place to the education of Hawaiʻi’s children, but, ultimately, as a kupa (native) of Kailua who is calling out to those who will listen, “Mai kuhi hewa ... ola mau nā ʻōiwi o Kailua; make no mistake ... the natives of Kailua are still here.”
I began studying traditional hula in 1989 at the age of nine when my mother signed me up for Hālau Mōhala ʻIlima based in Kaʻōhao, Kailua, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu. I learn hula, oli, and mele that honor our gods, our royalty, our sacred places, and our histories. The words I continue to give voice to and the motions I continue to give life to are the same words and motions that my hula ancestors practiced for generations and that I continue to perpetuate into the future. We are taught as in our hālau that researching the many-layered meanings of our mele and hula and then presenting them on the land for the purpose of honoring the place and remembering the people and events connected to that place are all part of what is required when you accept the kuleana to practice traditional hula. I take this kuleana very seriously. The HHF/DLNR Kawainui Revised Master Plan will allow hula practitioners of Kailua like myself to fulfill this kuleana while the plan adopted by the Kailua Neighborhood Board strives to sever our relationship to our place, thus thwarting us from fulfilling this kuleana.
...
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Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Maya Saffery, June 2014
ʻO Maya L. Kawailanaokeawaiki Saffery koʻu inoa. He pua nō au no ke ahupuaʻa ʻo Kailua e ulu aʻe nei i Kamakalepo i loko lilo o ke awāwa uluwehi o Maunawili. My name is Maya L. Kawailanaokeawaiki Saffery, and I was born and raised in the Koʻolaupoko district of Oʻahu in the ahupuaʻa of Kailua on the ʻili ʻāina of Kamakalepo in the back of the valley of Maunawili. I write this letter of support for the HHF/DLNR Kawainui Revised Master Plan as a practitioner of traditional hula who received my training and continues to practice my culture within the ahupuaʻa of Kailua, a Hawaiian language curriculum developer from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa whose research focuses on the importance of place to the education of Hawaiʻi’s children, but, ultimately, as a kupa (native) of Kailua who is calling out to those who will listen, “Mai kuhi hewa ... ola mau nā ʻōiwi o Kailua; make no mistake ... the natives of Kailua are still here.”
I began studying traditional hula in 1989 at the age of nine when my mother signed me up for Hālau Mōhala ʻIlima based in Kaʻōhao, Kailua, Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu. I learn hula, oli, and mele that honor our gods, our royalty, our sacred places, and our histories. The words I continue to give voice to and the motions I continue to give life to are the same words and motions that my hula ancestors practiced for generations and that I continue to perpetuate into the future. We are taught as in our hālau that researching the many-layered meanings of our mele and hula and then presenting them on the land for the purpose of honoring the place and remembering the people and events connected to that place are all part of what is required when you accept the kuleana to practice traditional hula. I take this kuleana very seriously. The HHF/DLNR Kawainui Revised Master Plan will allow hula practitioners of Kailua like myself to fulfill this kuleana while the plan adopted by the Kailua Neighborhood Board strives to sever our relationship to our place, thus thwarting us from fulfilling this kuleana.
...
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IN SUPPORT OF DRAFT KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN
Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Hālau Mōhala ‘Ilima, June 2014
We the undersigned teachers, students, and families of Hālau Mōhala ‘Ilima wish to express our support for the DLNR/HHF (Draft) Kawainu-Hamākua Complex Master Plan because it allows for a permanent Hawaiian cultural presence at four centers of study and stewardship along the Kawainui perimeter – at Wai‘auia in the east, at Kalāheo in the north, at Kapa‘a in the west, and at Ulupō in the south. All four of these centers are proposed by Kailua Hawaiian non-profit organizations, all are led by members of the Kailua Hawaiian community, and all are vital to the healthy restoration of Kawainui and the pono that once existed between the pond and its people.
...
Read the complete document
Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Hālau Mōhala ‘Ilima, June 2014
We the undersigned teachers, students, and families of Hālau Mōhala ‘Ilima wish to express our support for the DLNR/HHF (Draft) Kawainu-Hamākua Complex Master Plan because it allows for a permanent Hawaiian cultural presence at four centers of study and stewardship along the Kawainui perimeter – at Wai‘auia in the east, at Kalāheo in the north, at Kapa‘a in the west, and at Ulupō in the south. All four of these centers are proposed by Kailua Hawaiian non-profit organizations, all are led by members of the Kailua Hawaiian community, and all are vital to the healthy restoration of Kawainui and the pono that once existed between the pond and its people.
...
Read the complete document
IN SUPPORT OF DRAFT KAWAINUI MASTER PLAN
Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Kihei de Silva, June 2014
I have written earlier and at length in support of the HHF-DLNR Kawainui-Hāmākua Complex master planning process, and I wish to confirm here my endorsement of the Master Plan in its current draft iteration. I have read this draft from cover to cover several times over, have made extensive notes, and will offer a list of corrections and suggestions later in this letter. I know this plan to be a vehicle of hope; it gives the Hawaiian people of Kailua the opportunity, at long last, to reclaim stewardship of the pond we love and to exercise our traditional and unextinguished right to teach, house, practice, grow, and defend our culture there in a manner that we ourselves have the kuleana to define.
While I am not, in the depths of my na‘au, a believer in the legitimacy of the State or Federal government in our islands, I will point to the State’s own affirmation of my rights as an “ahupua‘a tenant” of Kailua and a “descendant of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands before 1778.” Article 12, Section 7 of the State Constitution tells us that:
The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua'a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights.
I am well aware that my claim to these rights has been further qualified in 89 H. 177, 970 P.2d 485:
To establish the existence of a traditional or customary native Hawaiian practice, there must be an adequate foundation in the record connecting the claimed right to a firmly rooted traditional or customary native Hawaiian practice.
So I offer, in response, the following description of Pāmoa, a “hale aupuni” (government house, house of chiefly affairs) that was built in the 16th century by Kākuhihewa on ‘Alele plain in Kailua, O‘ahu. This description was written by the Hawaiian historian Samuel M. Kamakau and published in the Hawaiian language newspaper Kuokoa in 1865.
...
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Letter to DLNR / Helbert, Haster, and Fee
Kihei de Silva, June 2014
I have written earlier and at length in support of the HHF-DLNR Kawainui-Hāmākua Complex master planning process, and I wish to confirm here my endorsement of the Master Plan in its current draft iteration. I have read this draft from cover to cover several times over, have made extensive notes, and will offer a list of corrections and suggestions later in this letter. I know this plan to be a vehicle of hope; it gives the Hawaiian people of Kailua the opportunity, at long last, to reclaim stewardship of the pond we love and to exercise our traditional and unextinguished right to teach, house, practice, grow, and defend our culture there in a manner that we ourselves have the kuleana to define.
While I am not, in the depths of my na‘au, a believer in the legitimacy of the State or Federal government in our islands, I will point to the State’s own affirmation of my rights as an “ahupua‘a tenant” of Kailua and a “descendant of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands before 1778.” Article 12, Section 7 of the State Constitution tells us that:
The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua'a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights.
I am well aware that my claim to these rights has been further qualified in 89 H. 177, 970 P.2d 485:
To establish the existence of a traditional or customary native Hawaiian practice, there must be an adequate foundation in the record connecting the claimed right to a firmly rooted traditional or customary native Hawaiian practice.
So I offer, in response, the following description of Pāmoa, a “hale aupuni” (government house, house of chiefly affairs) that was built in the 16th century by Kākuhihewa on ‘Alele plain in Kailua, O‘ahu. This description was written by the Hawaiian historian Samuel M. Kamakau and published in the Hawaiian language newspaper Kuokoa in 1865.
...
Read the complete document