Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 11, 1 November 2007 — 'Many hands will make light work' [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

'Many hands will make light work'

In announcing its plans for managing Waimea Valley, OHA also revealed that Gary Gill would be directing that daunting task. Gill is uniquely suited for the job: In addition to his experience as a former member and ehainnan of the Honolulu City Council, he has also held leadership positions at the state's Environmental Heahh adminstration and Office of Environmental Quality Control, as well as the Sierra Club's Hawai'i chapter. Even more pertinently, he helped oversee the development of the 100-acre Kalihi Valley Nature Park, whieh occupies state land and contains several Hawaiian cultural sites. Soon after he started work on the Waimea project, KWO caught up with Gary between meetings to ask him about some of his hopes for the valley. It's probably still too soon to talk about many specifics, but in broad terms how woulā you describe your vision for Waimea? One of the best things about this job is that there has been 20 years of community visioning for the valley already, so there's no wheel that needs to be reinvented. The

community mobilized around their vision to protect the valley from development, and I've found that the basic foundation of that vision is very similar for pretty mueh everyone I've talked to. First is to preserve the valley intact as nearly a complete ahupua'a in the old traditional sense - the resources from the mountain to the sea. Secondly, as a plaee for living Hawaiian culture - not just sharing it with tourists, whieh is an important part of keeping the valley financially sustainable, but as a plaee where people ean go to learn and practice their culture. I also think we all owe a big mahalo to the National Audubon Society for stepping in to help make the preservation of the valley a reality and doing their best to be good stewards for almost five years during this transition time. The valley wouldn't be in such a good plaee now if not for all the work they've done. Whal will be some ofyour most immediate priorities? One big question is: what happens to the existing staff? Our commitment is that everyone currently working in the val-

ley will be given the first opportunity to apply for jobs as we make this transition. Hopefully, the majority of people who are there now will want to stay. They're doing great work, and we would like to keep as many of them as we ean. There's also going to be a big need for capital improvements, repairing the existing buildings and roofs, the walkways. The front drive is pretty well beaten up, too. So there's just a huge amount of infrastructure investment that's going to need to happen just to maintain what's there now. Right now the valley is seeing on average maybe 500 visitors a day, doing very little promotion. We will probably need to double that to see enough revenue generated to support what we would like to see in the valley in the future. But that will eome along in time. I think the more long-term vision that I feel people get most excited about is - just to use one example, how about lauhala , weaving? Where ean people go to practice, teach and share this art? Where ean people go to gather the resources? All of this ean happen in Waimea. One of the problems with practicing weaving is that it's really hard to get the leaves. So why can't we plant the trees, harvest the leaves, share the skills and produce the product for loeal

consumption, as well as in the valley's gift shop? It would support the artists, and support the valley. That's just one small example of the kind of thing that we hope for, so that people could think of the valley and its resources in a full circle of practicing your culture on the land, and sharing that culture with others. Whal kiiul of response have you been seeing in the community? Probably the most striking thing to me in the short time that I've been at this is just the overwhelming positive reaction that we have received, and that I personally have received, from everyone I've talked to. The existing employees, who have been up in the air wondering about their future, are not just relieved but enthusiastic about the future. The people in the community, who have invested so mueh in the effort to protect this plaee and really stood up when it was necessary, have been very generous in their support and gratitude to me as an individual and to OHA in general for making this step, and for really shining a light See HLL on pagE IG

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Gaiy Gill will be the executive director of the new Wuimeu Vulley non-profit. - Photo: Lisa Asato I M| |M|

GILL

Cantinued fram paga 15 on the bright future of the valley. So many people have given of themselves in the past and are stepping forward yet again to see this vision heeome a reality. Some people early on have expressed to me, "Well, that's going to be a big job, what a challenge." But every day I'm reminded that, while, yes, it's a big job, it's a big job that so many people are going to be helping with - that many hands will make light work. There's so mueh of a eonsensus in the general vision of what we want to do. There might be a million options tomorrow on how to move forward, but people all want to move forward in the same direction, and that's just hugely gratifying to me. It makes my job so mueh easier. I