Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Staying Hawaiian
Evolving from ancient Polynesian traditions, Hawaiian culture was attacked and sup-
pressed in the two centuries after first Western contact with Captain Cook in 1778. But
beginning with the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance, a rebirth of Native Hawaiian cultural
and artistic traditions, as well as the Hawaiian language, has taken hold. For more than
three decades now there have been Hawaiian-language immersion programs in public
schools, and Hawaiian culture-focused charter schools are popping up all over the place.
Today Hawaiian culture is about much more than just melodic place names and luau
shows. Traditional arts like
lauhala
(pandanus leaf) weaving,
kapa
(pounded-bark cloth)
making, and gourd and wood carving are all experiencing a revival. Healing arts like
lo-
milomi
('loving touch') massage and
laʻau lapaʻau
(plant medicine) are being shared
with students both within and beyond the Native Hawaiian community. Ancient heiau
(temples) and fishponds are being restored, native forests replanted and endangered birds
bred and released into the wild.
Being Hawaiian remains an important part of the identity of the islands, reflected in
ways both large and small - in spontaneous hula at a concert, an
oli
(chant) sung before
important occasions such as political inaugurations or development ground-breakings,
the
lomilomi
treatment you receive at a spa, or listening to the word of the day in ʻ
olelo
Hawaiʻi
(the Hawaiian language) on local radio stations.
Although few island residents can agree on what shape the fragmented Native Hawaii-
an sovereignty movement should take, or even if it should exist at all, its grassroots polit-
ical activism has achieved tangible results. Decades of protests and a federal lawsuit filed
by sovereignty activists finally pressured the US military into returning the island of
Kahoʻolawe, which it had used for bombing practice since WWII, to the state in 1994.
Sovereignty activists also helped spur the US federal government's official 1993 apology
for its role in the unjust overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi a century before.
Seeking Sustainability
Before the 19th-century arrival of foreign whalers, traders and Christian missionaries, the
population of the Hawaiian Islands was somewhere between 200,000 and a million
people - almost what it is today. It's mind-boggling to think about how all of those an-
cient people were sustainably supported using natural resource management practices
and without metal or technology. As Hawaii's population swells - which it did by almost
200,000 between 2000 and 2012 - new housing developments sprawl, stressing the
state's water resources, transportation systems, public schools and landfills.
Hawaii is less stable today than it was before first Western contact. That's because the
islands have become wholly dependent on the outside world, meaning the US mainland
