Well, that title should catch a few eyes if nothing else.
Unfortunately Hannah and I are now reminded daily of our imminent departure from Maui. On the plus side, we are looking forward to my college roommate, Erik Hembre, arriving on Friday and visiting for a week. On the subtraction side (why is this phrase not used more often?), Hannah leaves the same day as him to go to one of HER college roommates weddings. Then just a few days later, I suffer the same fate and our summer in the Pacific paradise of Maui will have ended.
On a more positive note, Hannah and I have both been more involved in work at the land trust recently. Hannah has volunteered to help write some grants for the land trust and they have been kind enough to help her along. She is working on at least one and possibly two grants in this last week or so to help her gain experience. For me, work has picked up and I am juggling a few different projects but the lion's share of my time is devoted to a project that will become my Master's research thesis.
The research goes like this - along the northern and eastern coasts of Maui is the most wild and untamed sections of the island. However, this scenic beauty and seclusion is what has drawn development to it. Therefore, this area, the last bastion of Hawaiian culture and history on Maui, has been subject to much increased levels of luxury home building (luckily only one hotel complex has made it through the development process) and tourism. In fact this Road to Hana (the town at the center of my study) has become a giant tourist trap and suffers tourist gridlock.
My project is to identify some of the unique issues, needs and concerns of this area as its related to land conservation. More specifically, the idea is to conduct interviews of community members to identify important areas for cultural, historic, ecological or other reasons. After interviewing 25 or so individuals I hope to analyze the results to determine what areas are viewed as most important by the community, and therefore what areas are most important to protect from development. This information will allow the land trust to be more proactive towards conserving land as well as have better background information when projects are proposed in that region.
This study seems rather straightforward until you realize that this is all based in Western concepts of law and land rights which many Hawaiians don't recognize. The remnants of the Hawaiian community are still strong and active in this area and there is a range of feelings within the community from being upset about loss of land to everpresent anger about having the land stolen from their ancestors. And loss of land is as serious, or more so, to the Hawaiians as it was to mainland Native Americans - their culture, traditions and indeed subsistence way of life, is directly threatened by development or even restricted land access. Thus, there is considerable distrust and dislike for haole (western and generally white) organizations like mine who play by Western rules. Add to the fact that many of these families and communities have been studied repeatedly by others and have had many promises of help broken in the past, makes me feel guilty and almost dislike or disapprove of what I am doing. Therefore, this study has some serious cultural issues entrenched within it that I, as a white newcomer, was unprepared for. Although this may be a good thing...
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Very interesting Andrew, I had no Idea about the land issues in Hawaii, much less how they may seem to mirror the native American concerns. I hope there are some good ways of dealing with those feelings being developed.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad you guys have to leave so soon.