Putting Down

The Ritz

Hawaiian activists vow to stop the construction of a luxury hotel over an ancient burial ground on the

island of Maui.

By Michael Moriarty

IN Hawaii has « ■ been opposed in many diffe wJf rent ways but never more swiftly and effectively as in the recent case at Honokahua, on the northwest shore of the island of Maui, where Ritz-Carlton had planned to build a SUSBO million hotel complex on oceanside land owned by the Kapalua

Land Company.

Work began quietly on the sand dunes but in mid-December the local press informed the public that several hundred bodies had been exhumed from the site. Hawaiian activists gained television coverage when they began picketing the site and protests spread to the island of Oahu where Hawaiians set up a 24-hour Christmas eve vigil as a sign of protest, disgust

and indignation. Key local politicians

such as Maui mayor Hannibal Tavares and Governor John Waihee lent their support to the protest. Although Wainee had to admit that as governor he had no legal standing in the mat ter, he called it a “moral issue” and

flatly opposed the development.

I ne site is listed in the Hawaii Reg ister of Historic Sites as a burial ground. Since September 1987, more than 900 sets of remains have been carefully removed for re-burial under an agreement signed before work be gan. The number of burials has been a surprise to both Hawaiians and State officials.

Colin Cameron of the Kapalua Land Company agreed to halt all ex cavation until early January, while the

concerned parties conducted negotia

tions. “It’s just not practical to move the hotel site we have no other hotel site,” he said. Cameron earned the activists’ praise for the costly stop work order and kept negotiations at

an amicable level. But there appears to be little common ground between

the parties.

Activists demand a permanent end to digging, the return of the bones to their original resting places and that the site be preservea and honoured.

Negotiations are continuing but

practical moves are being made by

opponents of the development. The Oil ice of Hawaiian Affairs and Hui Alanui () Makena, a Maui-based com munity group, are asking for the re consideration of a county-issued

Shoreline Management permit which

authorises construction of the hotel.

The permit requires groundbreaking

by February 27, 1989. Kapalua Land

Company had previously acknow

ledged that an extension of the permit would be sought.

This issue highlights the basic con flict between the value system of Hawaiians and the business world’s in terpretation of value only in a monet ary sense. Observers say Mr Cameron appears to be trying harder than some developers to step lightly in Hawaii but critics attribute his approach only to an awareness of the volatility of the issue. Removal of the bodies was be gun quietly and without the formation of an advisory committee of Hawaiians at the start of the venture. The activ ists say that if the removal had been completed quietly, that would have

suited Kapalua “just fine”.

Activists have vowed to fight the de velopment and say they will mount the sort of protest that could be expected if Hawaiians decided to build a hotel complex and resort in Arlington Memorial Cemetery, in Washington DC, and began removing bodies with out consultation or ceremony to make way for the development. D