Managing Environmental Diversity for Sustainable Human Communities: Lessons from East Maui, Hawai‘i, USA - Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region - page 94

Unlike Kihei, Lahaina, Ka'anapali, and Kapalua, where tourism has systematically
transformed communities and landscapes over the past half century, the cultural
kipuka of East Maui, including the communities of Ke'anae, Nahiku, Hana,
Kipahulu, Kaupo, and Kanaio, have been spared from mass tourism development.
Nonetheless, tourist traffic in rental cars and tour vans through these communities
is a daily reminder of the dominance of the tourist industry on the island.
East Maui, and particularly Kipahulu, is a place where residents simultaneously
resist assimilation and re-create cultural landscapes that offer residents and visitors
a glimpse into the past and an emerging future (Farrell 1992 ). A group of East Maui
residents negotiated an agreement with Haleakala National Park to reclaim ancestral
lands for agriculture, forestry, arts, crafts, and house construction. The objective of
the nonprofit Kipahulu 'Ohana is to restore and nurture what has not been com-
pletely erased from the cultural landscape, with the goal of a viable working agricul-
tural community. The challenge is to do this, in part, within national park boundaries.
Resurrected in 1995, the group continues work initiated in the 1970s to reopen the
pre-existing agricultural fields that lay dormant for over a century.
Kapahu Living Farm occupies approximately 1 ha of land in Haleakala National
Park less than an hour's hike from the visitor center in the lowland zone of the
valley. Currently, more than a dozen lo'i produce taro, the staple of the Hawaiian
diet. In addition, many of the principal crops brought to the Hawaiian Islands by
Polynesian voyagers are cultivated, including uwala (sweet potato), ulu (bread-
fruit), ma'ia (banana), ko (sugar cane), and 'awa (a plant used in ceremonies and
as a medicinal). The farm also has an enclosed pen where captured feral pigs have
been raised for food.
The collaborative efforts and combined facilities of the Kipahulu 'Ohana and the
national park serve as gathering sites for demonstrations and discussions for
educational purposes and provide a “living history program to share with park visitors”
as well as community school groups (Monson 2002 :1). One outcome of collabora-
tive management has been the perpetuation of culture through involvement of
community youth. The practice of shared work among families and neighbors helps
to sustain East Maui communities despite the shared challenges associated with an
unpredictable service economy. East Maui residents, community organizations and
their supporters and advocates have reconstituted the identity of Kipahulu with a
Hawaiian sense of place, more firmly constituting the cultural kipuka . In this case,
reclamation of access to and restoration of cultural landscapes contributes to the
reaffirmation of a community's place identity.
Resistance to Mass Tourism Development
The island of Maui became a major tourism destination through conversion of sugar
and pineapple plantation landscapes and infrastructure to tourist resorts, destinations,
and infrastructure, including resort properties with golf courses and luxury second
homes, commercial retail spaces, water resources redirected from agricultural to