Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412290019
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: G6 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HONOLULU LENGTH: Long
The most obvious of the two is the commercially packaged version that lies all around as you walk the 20-acre, 2,542-room beachfront resort on a Friday night. On those evenings, bathed in the light of its 77 gasoline-fed tiki torches, the hotel stages its ``King's Jubilee'' show with 10 hula dancers and a man playing the role of King David Kalakaua, the ``merry monarch'' of the islands who revived interest in hula and Hawaiian music in the 19th century. After the free hourlong performance, the hotel staff explodes fireworks over the beach, and thousands of vacationers stand below and marvel at the indigo sky, the creamy sand, the commotion of the tides.
I took in a portion of that scene the night I arrived. But after a few minutes, I snuck off to the hotel's Tapa Ballroom to spend a couple of hours with the other Hawaii, the one that native Hawaiians are struggling to sustain.
The event was a community children's hula competition, advertised on bulletin boards within the hotel. I paid the $10 admission and sat among several hundred locals to admire the dancing, chanting and drumming of 18 hula schools, known as ``halau,'' and the ``kumu'' (teachers) who lead them.
The annual Hula Oni E Keiki Hula Festival, assembled by the Halau Hula O Hokulani, was created three years ago. If the cultural offerings outside felt vaguely like a Las Vegas floor show, the atmosphere of these performances shared more with mainland Little League games and piano recitals.
Vendors offered homemade crafts. In the front row sat a line of impassive judges. And before them proceeded scores of nervous ``keiki'' - children - some of whom had studied hula for eight years and were just entering their teens. As 13-year-old Jessica Kamalani Bond prepared to take her solo, the master of ceremonies read a few details from her bio.
``When she grows up,'' he said, ``she would like to be a computer technician and professional hula dancer.''
That night, and for the next six days on Oahu, Kauai and Maui, I found two distinct trends at work: Hawaiians are exploring and celebrating their native culture with more enthusiasm than they have in perhaps a century, and the Hawaiian tourism industry is pouring new emphasis into replicating and advertising the most visitor-friendly elements of that culture.
If you're a strictly sun-sand-surf traveler, you're likely to notice small things here and there, many of them merely cosmetic: fewer plastic leis at the hotels, more Hawaiian-made products in gift shops, more taro dishes on menus.
Still, the list grows longer daily: At the Hyatt Regency Kauai, members of the island's historical society meet with interested guests for ``talk-story'' sessions. At the half-dozen sites of Hawaiian Hotels & Resorts, an ``essence of Hawaii'' promotional campaign, devised last year, highlights historical aspects of each site. On the two ships of American Hawaii Cruises, passengers now find that the crew includes a traditional Hawaiian storyteller. Last month on the Big Island of Hawaii, the Kona Village Resort threw a birthday party for 83-year-old Imgard Aluli, one of the state's most prolific Hawaiian songwriters. Meanwhile, Molokai, for decades one of the least tourism-oriented of the islands, now sells itself to visitors as ``the most Hawaiian island'' of them all.
But there's more to this than marketing. Glance at a community bulletin board, chat with a resident, make an inquiring phone call to a museum or cultural group, look in one of the islands' local festivals, or perhaps merely take a closer look at your hotel lobby, and you'll probably find hints of a deeper, more rewarding - and more conflicted - Hawaii.
In fact, a stranger can easily see those 77 closely tended Hilton torch flames as a sign of the strange state of tourism and cultural politics in Hawaii these days: Everyone, it seems, is declaring his or her eagerness to protect the flame of native Hawaiian tradition. But for every torch-bearer, there seems to be another set of presumptions and ambitions and another formula for feeding the flames.
Meanwhile, in the background of the tourist landscape stand leaders of the rapidly advancing but many-headed Hawaiian sovereignty movement. For many of them, ``being Hawaiian'' means not only political empowerment but mistrust of past exploiters, including the tourism industry. Though its leaders cannot agree on whether they want full independence, limited sovereignty under continued statehood, land, financial reparations or some combination of those, the movement has grown so powerful that last year it extracted from President Clinton a formal apology to native Hawaiians, on behalf of the American people, for the behind-the-scenes American scheming that brought the fall of Queen Liliuokalani in 1893.
After an upwelling of public demonstrations in Honolulu on the anniversary of the January coup (``RETURN STOLEN LAND!'' demanded one placard), the movement has largely receded from view of most tourists. But its advances elsewhere continue: In May, after decades of using the island of Kahoolawe as a target for practice bombings - and recent protests by native Hawaiian groups - the Navy yielded the unpopulated, ordnance-scarred island to Hawaiian control. A state commission is deciding how the land will be used.
Clearly, hoteliers and the sovereignty movement leaders aren't natural bedfellows. Yet as these mirror-image trends advance, each reaps benefits from a broader, quieter grass-roots Hawaiian cultural renaissance that has been building for two decades, leading more families to enroll their children in hula classes, more farmers to consider planting taro, whose roots when pounded become poi. In these circles, being Hawaiian is often a more personal matter.
On my second day on Oahu, I walked along the Waikiki waterfront, past stacked surfboards, crimson Texans and two hip-looking Hawaiian teen-agers gently strumming ukuleles while a sign across the street shouted an offer of ``MUUMUU FACTORY TO YOU'' bargains. Enduring native culture in the shadow of crass commercialism, I thought.
But what is native? A 1989 state population study found that just 1 percent or less of the islands' million-plus population was full-blooded Hawaiian, with another 18 percent classified as part-Hawaiian. And if the line between native and non-native history is drawn at 1778, when Captain James Cook arrived, the ukulele doesn't make the cut. As I later learned, it didn't exist in Hawaii until Portuguese sailors arrived in the 1870s bearing small guitars, and locals made a few changes in design.
On Kauai, I stayed happily at the Hanalei Bay Resort, which was rich in tennis courts, immaculately landscaped, featured taro pancakes on the breakfast menu and had just reopened after belated hurricane repairs. When I had a chance, however, I headed down the hill to investigate the lavish Princeville Hotel.
That resort, on bluffs over Hanalei Bay, was renovated in 1991 into one of the most formal settings in the islands, with classical music in the lobby and employees in suits and ties. Then came Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and some rethinking on the part of the hotel's Japanese owners and its ITT Sheraton management. When the hotel reopened in October 1993 the idea was to take on a more Hawaiian profile - more aloha shirts and muumuus, less formality.
But they're still working with the same building. When I got there, the lobby gleamed with black and white marble, the lounge was lined with clubby bookshelves and full of classic European furnishings, and a gold-trimmed piano from Paris stood next to the dining-room entrance. Room rates began at $225.
The most far-flung stop on my Hawaiian itinerary was Hana, the idyllic town on Maui's isolated back side.
To reach Hana by car you must navigate the 50-odd narrow and winding miles of the Hana Highway, a journey that takes three hours or more. Driving the highway, I had that pleasant sense of trading mass commercialism for a world where coconut meat is peddled in driveways and waterfalls roar at every turn.
Reaching Hana, you find that the 66-acre Hotel Hana-Maui and the 4,700-acre Hana cattle ranch are the center of virtually everything. The hotel was born, with 10 rooms and a different name, in 1946, when ranch owner and mainland businessman Paul Fagan imported his minor league baseball team, the San Francisco Seals, to spend their spring training in Hana. Sportswriters followed, as Fagan knew they would. One of them labeled the place ``Heavenly Hana,'' and the exclusive resort was off and running.
Ownership has changed since then - the management is now Sheraton - and a $24 million renovation in 1989 pushed the size of the hotel to 96 rooms and suites, many dressed up with hardwood floors, skylights and blankets of merino wool, woven in England.
As an arriving guest, I felt I had landed in a place apart. This is as it should be, really, because most of us were paying more than $300 nightly. (There are a couple of other much more affordable lodgings in town.)
By day, I drove out toward Oheo Pools in Haleakala National Park. The Oheo Pools are a becalming scene - a river drops by stages over black volcanic rocks into the sea - but they are also a fine illustration of how, in years past, some promoters' idea of being Hawaiian seemed to involve a little artificial history.
Over decades, with encouragement from hotel employees and rental car companies, Hana has become known as the site of ``The Seven Sacred Pools.'' This is despite the fact that original Hawaiians aren't known to have had any particular beliefs or superstitions associated with Oheo Pools or any of the other streams in the area, and despite the fact that, depending on the water flow and how you count, you might see seven or 17 or 70 pools along just about any stream's path. You might as well call them the Several Secular Pools.
Rangers for the National Park Service have abandoned subtlety on this issue and now hand out fliers saying ``Seven Sacred Pools? There's no such place! It's a name made up as a sales gimmick to attract tourists to Hana ... [and] is degrading to native Hawaiians who are trying to preserve their language and culture.''
From Hana I headed home, sand in my shoes. No matter where you are in contemporary Hawaii, there are certain circumstances on which you can rely. There will be sand, there will be sea, and there will be an identity crisis.
by CNB