Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 14, Number 8, 1 August 1997 — Molokaʻi: Welfare haven or tropical paradise? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Molokaʻi: Welfare haven or tropical paradise?

Recent newspaper articles describe Moloka'i as a plaee of high welfare and unemployment, where the main solution to our eeonomie problems Ues with a foreign-owned corporation, Moloka'i

Ranch. At the same time, the top song of the year, "Moloka'i Slide." celebrates the natural

wealth of our mokupuni. Two completely different perspectives: One sees an eeonomie wasteland needing quickfix development; the other views the island as an unspoiled paradise - your next meal only as far as the oeean is from your grill. Tmth, of course, is in between. But how do we navigate between the curse of welfare dependency and the blight of foreign corporate greed? How do we chart our future without losing the soul of our Hawaiian past? This challenge faces not just the island of my birth, but the whole state of Hawai'i. On Moloka'i, the development eloek stopped ticking sometime before statehood. The main buildings of our paniolo town are at least 60 years old with no high-rises, elevators, stop lights, traffic jams, or fast-food franchises. After the pineapple companies pulled out, Moloka'i's economy stalled; today it has one of the state's lowest incomes. Despite this "poverty," Moloka'i has riches money can't buy. Everybody knows everybody; you can't go shopping, walk through town, oi spend the day at the beach without getting a personal greeting. Keiki are safe on the streets; everyone is a calabash auntie or unele and we look out for one another. We don't have murders, rapes, or drive-by shootings. Homeless people don't live on our beaches. The majority of people who live here are Hawaiian, or married to Hawaiians. In addition to preserving om loeal lifestyle, the slow paee of development on our island has helped to preserve the quality of our environment. Our beaches are elean, our air clear, endangered turtles and seals play along our coast; rare native plants and birds thrive on the slopes of our pali. We have numerous undisturbed historic sites, some with haunting relevance to the eeonomie dilemmas

that face us today. One of these historic sites, called a mokulua, is in what was onee a mountain forest of fragrant 'iliahi (sandalwood). When Western ships arrived in the 1700s seeking cargo to trade with China, the traders bargained with the ali'i to sell the

'iliahi (for a profit 30 times its purchase piiee). Kamehameha Nui and his snrrpssnrs werp

enthusiastic supporters of the sandalwood trade, since it provided the funds to purchase fancy Western goods. But the > maka'ainana, or eommon people,

became slaves to this new eommerce. Their lo'i kalo and 'uala patches went untended; families starved and workers fell ill in the cold wet forests. Finally, they began to uproot every 'iliahi seedling, so their children would never suffer the hardships of this cruel trade. Today, the only evidence that remains of this trade is a deep pit gouged into a mountainside. It is the size of a ship's hold. Onee this mokulua measured out the number of precious logs needed to fill a Chinabound sailing ship. Today it is a gaping, empty reminder of mistakes that Hawai'i has made in seeking a plaee in the world's economy. The ghosts of greedy chiefs, compliant commoners, and cunning foreign businessmen haunt this plaee. But, the 'iliahi is gone forever and none of us will ever see such a forest. This is the first of two tales illustrating the historic approaches to eeonomie development on Moloka'i. In the next issue, I will introduce you to the ancient Loko Kuapa and its modern impact on Moloka'i's selfsustaining economy.

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Co(ette MmAaAo Trustee, Moloka'i & LānaM