Tourism development and cultural sensitivity clashed in 1987 and 1988 as construction crews working on the $80 million Ritz-Carlton Kapalua Hotel unearthed more than 1,100 ancient Hawaiian burials.
An archaeologist for the developer would measure each skeleton and conduct a computer analysis to determine health conditions of early Hawaiians before re-burying the remains a half-mile away.
But the discovery upset the Hawaiian community, including those who said the 1,000-year-old remains belonged to their ancestors. The graves were being desecrated, they said.
Widespread protests about this excavation at the sand dunes at Honokahua were so heated that then-Gov. John Waihee intervened. He called the matter "a moral issue," and the developers agreed to his requests to stop digging.
Eventually, the developers agreed to build away from the dunes, and the state paid $6 million for the move and a permanent easement.
The state needed a permanent solution, though. Part of the problem was that state historic preservation laws at the time offered no framework for what to do with the skeletal remains.
In response, the 1990 Legislature created burial councils to help protect burial sites, funerary objects and remains of Native Hawaiians. The goal was to minimize their disturbance and ensure they are dealt with in culturally appropriate ways.
Clearly, there was a need. In its first five years, the program handled more than 2,349 sets of human remains that were reburied after being unearthed by weather, construction or accident. Nearly all of them were Native Hawaiians whose graves are kept unmarked and unrecorded except in oral tradition.
