Nanakuli museum expanding scope
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward Writer
Until now, the Nanaikapono Community School Museum in Nanakuli qualified as the least known institution of its kind in Hawai'i.
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Even along the Wai'anae Coast, many folks have never heard of the facility, which since the 1960s has quietly specialized in giving Leeward students hands-on experience in kapa making, dance, language and other aspects of Hawaiian culture.
This kapa beater on display at the Nanaikapono Community School Museum predates Western contact with Hawai'i. Officials say the beater, found in Nanakuli Valley in October 2000, adds weight to the idea that the valley was home to a viable, self-sustaining community.
But the obscure 1,800-square-foot structure could soon find itself on Hawai'i's map of important cultural museums.
And along the way, the Nanaikapono Community School Museum could end up changing long-standing notions about the presumed cultural insignificance of this barren, hard-scrabble chunk of West O'ahu.
"This is the right museum in the right place at the right time," said Kay Fullerton, community program manager for Bishop Museum. She said if all goes according to plans, in two years the Nanaikapono facility will be a "mini-Bishop Museum."
Fullerton says the little museum is about to gain prominence due to its location, its mission, and a growing interest in the significance of the history of Nanakuli among researchers, historians and archaeologists.
"The potential of this museum is that it can profoundly change people's perceptions of Nanakuli," she said.
On Wednesday, the museum will open its "Legacy of Excellence" exhibit, which includes five displays from the Bishop Museum that focus on ancient canoeing, fishing, agriculture, kapa making and feather work.
But those displays, and five others that will be added in August, are merely "temporary things the Bishop Museum is doing in the course of a whole big project," said Fullerton.
That project will broaden the scope of the Nanaikapono Museum after it is moved in the next two years from Hawaiian Homelands property to state-owned land on the opposite side of Farrington Highway.
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The school museum, the only one of its kind, will be part of a new $21 million elementary school complex, while the expanded affiliation with Bishop Museum will be paid for through a federal Department of Labor grant.
"This is a hands-on museum," said museum curator Virginia Kapaku.
Those changes are symbolized by a single artifact in the museum's collection: a hohoa, or kapa cloth beater that predates Western contact with Hawai'i. The beater was found in Nanakuli Valley beneath a boulder ledge in October, 2000.
"The beater is important because it confirms the notion that there was a viable, productive, self-sustaining settlement in the Nanakuli area, many, many years ago," said Myron Brumaghim, principal of Nanaikapono Elementary School.
"It is significant because it not only talks about civilization, but it addresses the issues of how the environment looked at that time."
Other discoveries generated by survey studies in Nanakuli Valley in the past decade include adzes, game stones and other precontact artifacts, as well as stone dwellings, native vegetation, large sweet potato terrace systems and evidence of a forest and possibly a heiau.
These findings have prompted further archeological studies that are unearthing the remains of extinct, flightless birds and other indigenous life forms.
"Things are happening," said Nanaikapono Museum curator Virginia Kapaku, who is known to students and teachers as Aunty Lehua. "Everybody is excited."
Kapaku says the museum, which began in 1967 as a Model Cities Program, was at the forefront of a Hawaiian cultural revival. It was operated by the state Department of Education, which later took over its funding.
An affiliation between the school museum and Bishop Museum started in the early 1970s. And although that association diminished as time passed, it has now been rekindled.
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"This is not like the Bishop Museum," said Kapaku. "Our first priority is serving the students, the second is serving the community and finally we serve the general public."
Change is on the way for the 1,800-square-foot museum. In the next two years, the museum will move across the highway, where it will be part of a new $21 million elementary school complex.
In the past, though, Kapaku says visitors who have dropped by expecting to find rows of glass cases filled with ancient artifacts have been startled or disappointed.
"This is a hands-on museum; we haven't had things in cases," explained Kapaku as she opened one of the numerous large "collection kits" she has assembled in more than two decades at the museum.
This particular kit contained examples of kapa cloth and the artifacts used to make it. As ancient as the articles appeared, they were actually made by Nanaikapono fourth-graders, who used wauke bark that Kapaku grows between the building and the nearby sea.
"Kids like to touch things," she said. "You can go and talk to them and explain how things are done, but unless you have something to show them that they can touch, it's in one ear and out the other and that's the end of that."
The museum urges Hawai'i's students and teachers to schedule visits to the museum. Otherwise, Kapaku and other museum workers will tote collection kits to schools and give instruction sessions.
Kapaku says working with Bishop Museum will also mean expanding community involvement, which she welcomes. "My purpose is now to renew my partnership with the Bishop Museum," she said.
Said Fullerton: "What we're doing is trying to revitalize their museum and programming. Initially, the primary audience will be the residents of Nanakuli and the Leeward Coast. The long-term vision of the new museum is that it will be open to the general public.
"We expect to have a lot of community input. What that means is that we're forming a community advisory group, from Nanakuli and the surrounding area. This group will guide the museum on such things as story line and themes."
As part of that effort, last February a dozen Nanakuli residents went through a four-month cultural history and interpretation techniques program. Among those who participated was Nanaikapono Elementary education assistant Charmaine Kapahua.
"We learned where my people settled in the islands, what their resources were and how they survived," said Kapahua. "We learned how they lived, their food sources and how they made things.
"It opened my eyes. I know more about my own culture. And, I have an appreciation for other cultures."
Kapaku says better understanding of cultural history has always been an aim of the Nanaikapono museum. And thanks to recent discoveries, much of that history could be right in her own back yard.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
