I Ulu I Ka ‘Āina

Pa‘a Ke Kahua

Dana Nāone Hall

Introduction

Even in these difficult times when economic interests exert a seemingly all-powerful hand in what happens to our islands, it is still possible to claim places where our culture can revive and the spirits of our ancestors and their iwi can rest undisturbed. Honokahua, a place of endings, was the beginning of my efforts to protect burial sites—a lifelong task to help make firm the foundation on which we can continue to grow and thrive as a people.

A Calling at Honokahua

The disturbance and disinterment of more than a thousand Native Hawaiian burials at Honokahua might easily have been the subject of after-the-fact speculation and rumor and might never have garnered statewide attention and the recognition that unmarked burials required protection. Chance or fate made it possible for Isaac Hall and me to be in attendance at the last Maui County Planning Commission meeting of 1986, held on December 19.

We were present that day for another agenda item when someone at the meeting mentioned that a Planning Department staff member had reported to the Commission that a section of the Pi‘ilani Trail had been identified on shoreline land where Maui Land and Pineapple Company, through its subsidiary Kapalua Land Company, planned to build a luxury hotel. The staff report also referred to a burial site.

Isaac addressed the Commission before it voted on the Special Management Area (SMA) permit. This would be the final discretionary required for development in shoreline areas. He asked the Commission to defer action on the permit until the Hui Alanui o Makena had a chance to review and comment on the information submitted. However, the Commission did not hesitate to grant the permit.

Shortly thereafter, we obtained a copy of the archaeological report containing information about the burial site and trail. In the late 1960s, the burial site was identified by archaeologists who found human skeletal remains eroding out of the partially lithified dune behind the beach. The Honokahua burial site was placed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places, then removed in the 1970s, along with numerous other significant sites, because of a State Attorney General determination that landowners must first be notified of and approve any listing.

Our first visit to Honokahua with the Hui occurred in January 1987. The shoreline dune consisted of two connected sand formations: an upper dune and a lower dune. Fragmented human skeletal remains were visible on the dune surface among the weedy plants and sparse grasses—evidence of the effects of recent activities by a horse stable operation, as well as disturbance caused by transient campsites. A historic-period dump also impinged on a portion of the dune.

We left Honokahua with the feeling that something more needed to be done. A review of the hotel development plans revealed that the entire dune (and, consequently, all the burials in it—an unknown number at that time) would be removed. An underground basement and parking garage were planned for the lower dune, and the new lobby of the hotel would displace the stepping-stone trail on the upper dune.

A motion for reconsideration of the Planning Commission’s decision to grant the SMA permit was prepared by Isaac, and a hearing on the motion was set for February 20, 1987. In the few weeks before the hearing, the Hui informed community members of the finds and solicited the support of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

The hearing took place in the fluorescent-lit Civil Defense conference room before nine Commissioners, none of whom were Hawaiian. Everyone testifying, with the exception of Kapalua Land Company President Colin Cameron and his attorney, spoke eloquently for the preservation of the burial site and trail and against the granting of the permit. At the end, only the commissioner representing the island of Lāna‘i voted in our favor, stating that he had learned more about Hawaiian culture that day than at any other time in his life.

Sorrowful as the Commission’s decision was—the mood following the meeting was black and thunderous—I felt, inexplicably, that we had not been defeated, that Hawaiian people had spoken up to protect the graves of their ancestors, and that somehow, someday there would be a cataclysmic shift. I had no reason to feel this way, but perhaps in stepping forward and speaking up, we had reconnected to our ancestors in a fundamental way.

Aunty Alice Kuloloio had said with regard to the Hui’s struggles with Seibu (the Japan-based owner of the Makena Resort), “We are nothing. We are like the dust.” Rather than feeling diminished, I took her words to mean that Seibu, with all the power and money at its disposal—not to speak of government support—had everything. We, on the other hand, had nothing and, therefore, had nothing to lose. Only Seibu had something to lose. Being like the dust, free we were to act with imagination and conviction. I have attempted to do so ever since when working on myriad issues believing that this is one of the ways in which we keep the culture fresh and relevant to our time.

Because the Hui had pressed so adamantly for the protection of the burial site, the Commission, without irony, made one concession to the concerns raised: it issued a decision in which the Hui was invited to develop “sensitive” disinterment and reinterment plans for the burials at Honokahua, along with the State Historic Preservation Officer (who also serves as the chair of the Board of Land and Natural Resources) and with Kapalua Land Company and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The Hui was faced with a daunting dilemma. How could it participate in devising the conditions under which the very burials it had sought to protect were dug up? The thrust of the testimony had been that there was nothing inherently sensitive about disinterment.

It could appear that the Commission’s proposed sop to Hawaiian feelings and beliefs wasn’t much of a dilemma at all. Washing one’s hands of the whole enterprise and walking away was an option chosen by some of the earliest participants, who said with a departing retort that the hewa would be on those who dug up the iwi. For the Hui, it was not so simple, and as the crisis of conscience deepened, the kūpuna buried in the Honokahua dune made their prensence known.

Six weeks after the Commission hearing, on the Friday in April before Easter, two members of our group headed to Honokahua for a late-day visit. One of the men had been stirred to prepare ho‘okupu for the kūpuna. He had been feeling their presence for weeks and believed he he had to gather four specific items. One was kalo, which he cooked for the first time in his life—it was also his first ho’okupu—and another was kapa because, he said, the kupuna were cold. He said he did not hear voices or see spirits. Rather, he expressed his connection to the kupuna as one of understanding what they were feeling.

What transpired after the men arrived, beginning with a dark cloud forming over Moloka‘i and quickly advancing to the northwestern coast of Maui where they sat below the dune, put an end to the dilemma about whether or not to participate in developing procedures for the disinterment plan. The kupuna had shown themselves, and we could not ignore what was about to happen to them. If anything, we had a duty to be there to comfort them and to bear witness to the coming acts of desecration.

We entered into several months of discussion and negotiation, which occurred, for the most part, between the contract archaeologist for Kapalua Land Company and the Hui. Our primary position, from which we never wavered, was that the burial site should be protected and preserved, not dug up. Lacking the power to persuade the other parties, we turned our attention to limiting the amount of disturbance that would occur to the iwi kupuna, especially with regard to osteological examinations and to ensuring that any moe pū, grave goods, found with individuals would be reburied with these same individuals.

We had no example to go by. Instead, we had to think deeply and feel our way around problems, guided by the desire to reduce wherever possible additional harm to the kupuna. It later turned out that the resolutions of many of the thorny issues we puzzled over formed the basis of—and were later incorporated into—Hawai‘i’s burial law, Chapter 6E-43 of the Hawai‘i Revised Statues. But that was several years away.

After a memorandum of agreement (MOA) was executed by the four parties (State, Kapalua, OHA, Hui), disinterment commenced in August 1987 with a small crew of archaeologists. With the terms of the MOA as a framework, strict control was exercised over the manner in which the burials were recovered and transported to a temporary storage facility. The archaeological supervisor in charge of field operations for the project was meticulous and proved over time to be an ally, rather than a nemesis. She was always forthcoming with information, and on my numerous trips to the site, I learned a great deal about archaeology, traditional burials, and burial practices, albeit under dire circumstances.

The quiet, unhurried pace began to quicken as the months went by and the size of the crew grew in number. The MOA required a careful series of steps, which made the disinterments time-consuming and costly. Nevertheless, the burials continued to be extracted one by one. By August 1988, a year later, Kapalua executives were becoming increasingly concerned over whether construction could be initiated within the two-year deadline imposed by the SMA permit. In order to meet the deadline they decided to focus on completing disinterment of the lower dune: the company erected a barrier between the two dunes that would allow pile driving to commence on the lower one, satisfying the permit condition. Kapalua then began seeking approval of its plan.

During an incendiary meeting at which a Ritz Carlton official was present, the Hui vigorously opposed the plan. It reiterated that the disinterment of the dune was wrong to begin with and that if Kapalua could not follow the MOA, it should stop the digging altogether. To back up our brave words, I flew to Moloka‘i, where the OHA board was meeting, to seek the trustees’ support of our position. If OHA could be convinced, it would make it more difficult for the State, another signatory of the agreement, to side with Kapalua, and at a minimum, there would be a stalemate. The Trustees, confronted by the mounting numbers of disinterments—now more than several hundred—agreed with our position.

Word began to circulate more widely about what was happening at Honokahua. Pualani Kanahele was teaching at Maui Community College at the time. Enrolled in one of her classes, I informed her of the increasing number of burials being excavated. A letter to the editor written by Edward Kanahele—Pua’s husband and later the founder of Hui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna o Hawai‘i Nei—was published in one of the Honolulu dailies, calling attention to the ongoing disinterment. The media became much more active in reporting on Honokahua, and as activity at the burial site accelerated—the initial crew of fewer than five ballooned to more than eighty before the digging was finally halted—statewide interest intensified.

Before Honokahua, thousands upon thousands of Hawaiian burials had been routinely dug up since the arrival of the missionaries in 1820. Disturbing and displacing Native Hawaiian iwi was not new. What differentiated Honokahua was a drawn-out excavation process that occurred over many months—not a quick unearthing and scattering witnessed only by a few. This made it possible for people to comprehend the magnitude of what was happening and, most important, to reflect on the spiritual and moral dimensions of such actions. Once the reality of Honokahua pierced the public conscience, the digging had to stop.

The rest of this story is well documented. People in Hawai‘i were galvanized by Honokahua. In December, Governor Waihe‘e stepped in to stop the digging and conduct a reassessment. Maui Mayor Hannibal Tavares joined in the effort. There remained a number of steps before final resolution of the controversy, but the changes wrought by Honokahua were monumental. Protection for burial sites was expanded through the adoption of Hawai‘i’s burial law in 1990, which put in place a deliberative regulatory framework for determining whether to preserve in place or relocate unmarked buried human skeletal remains.

Twenty-two years later, implementation of the burial law has weakened, and the law is being distorted by twenty-three interpretations that divest island burial councils of their proper jurisdiction, thereby denying burial sites and the places where they are found the protection they deserve. While the current situation is regrettable, it can be corrected. The iwi of our ancestors are planted in the land. We exist and flourish because they exist. Honokahua still calls. We must answer that call today.