Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 9, Number 7, 1 July 1992 — Preservation vs. development: no easy answers [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Preservation vs. development: no easy answers

Viewinq H-3 in a !aroer context

by Jeff Clark

H-3. Just the menhon of the future freeway is enough to anger its opponents, send its proponents running to the barricades. and conjure images of protests, lawsuits, gridlocked traffic and ti-bedecked Hawaiian rock walls. But H-3 should bring to mind the larger, background issue. How do we choose between heiau and jobs, between ho'okupu and neighborhoods? Or do we have to choose? We realize the tension between progress and preservation whieh H-3 represents is nothing if not complex, and there are no easy answers.

After almost 20 years of legal battles over where and whether the freeway should be built, and the controversies over significant ancient Hawaiian sites on both the Kane'ohe and Halawa portions of the project, it becomes neeessary to try and plaee H-3 in the larger context of progress versus preservation, development versus native Hawaiian concerns. While development may mean pollution, noise, traffic, environmental destruction and all the other stress-inducers that eome with a eomplex civilization, it also means jobs, transportation, schools, homes, and yes, modern life itself. While preservation may mean snags in eonstruction and costly stalls in a community's progress, it also means cultural legacy, respect for ancestors and ancestral ways, and the heart and soul of a people.

Both are important. There needs to be a reconciliation between the two, and again, reaching it will clearly not be easy.

Walter Kupau, financial secretary of the Carpenters Union Loeal 745, is frank wlaen discussing development. "We need the work, esp>ecially the Hawaiians," he said, mentioning their low rung on the state's socio-economic ladder. "The more work, the better it is for them." University of Hawai'i professor Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa is just as outspoken when discussing the need to save Hawaiian sites. "Why not preservation for preservation's sake?" she asked at a recent hearing.

Discovery, study and veneration of native Hawaiian sites should not wait on development, said Linda Delaney, land division officer for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. As land officer,

Delaney constantly faces the challenge to define and shape native Hawaiian preservation issues. "Don't go visit an area only because you think it's going to be destroyed," she said, adding that Hawaiians have to be more proactive in studying and enjoying Hawaiian sites. Sites should be visited and enjoyed, and Hawaiians should "protect the opportunity to visit and enjoy the sites" that have already been preserved, she said.

Concern over the fate of ancient Hawaiian sites caught in the path of development has prompted protests such as the one shown above at Bishop Museum over the effect of H-3 on North Halawa Valley.

When development projects and significant sites do meet head-on, "I think projects could adjust," said Delaney, citing how the H-3 project was realigned to avoid Site 85 and now both the state Department of Transportation

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