Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
U.S. government grants are involved in the funding of the nation, and you will often
see huli huli chicken stands (especially in the Wahikuli section of Lahaina) that help
raise funds toward reinstating the lawful Hawaiian government.
Proponents of the Hawaiian Kingdom do not hope to seek “Nation within a Na-
tion” status such as those granted to Native Americans because this would mean
formally ceding the nation to the overall governance of the United States. Instead,
they would prefer to continue with their sovereignty, which was never formally ab-
olished.
There was once a time when the island of Lana'i was believed to have been dominated by
spirits. Abandoned and considered as taboo, the island was open to settlement in the 1400s
when a chief by the name of Kaka'alaneo banished his mischievous son Kaulula'au there,
only to find that when Kaulula'au's campfire could be seen burning from Maui each night,
it meant that the spirits had been driven out.
Lana'i passed through the next few hundred years as a satellite of Maui. Its population
of 3,000 natives was ravaged in 1778 by Kalaniopu'u, aging king of the Big Island. The
pillaging sent the population of the island into decline so that by the start of the 20th cen-
tury only a handful of Hawaiians remained. The old order ended completely when one of
the last traditional
kanaka
, a man named Ohua, hid the traditional fish-god Kunihi and died
shortly thereafter in his grass hut in the year 1900.
No one knows his name, but all historians agree that a Chinese man tried his luck at
raising sugarcane on Lana'i in 1802. He brought boiling pots and rollers to Naha on the
east coast, but after a year of hard luck gave up and moved on. About 100 years later a
large commercial sugar enterprise was attempted at Maunalei. Although this time the sug-
ar company built a narrow-gauge railroad to carry the cane, again sugar cultivation was
foiled. Scholars today suggest that since stones from native
heiau
were used to build the
railroad, the desecration of a sacred place is what ultimately turned the water brackish and
caused the plantation to fail.
Meanwhile, in 1854 a small band of Mormon elders tried to colonize Lana'i by starting
a “City of Joseph” at Palawai Basin. Walter Murray Gibson came to Palawai to lead an
idyllic settlement for the Latter-day Saints. While he set to work improving the land with
