Cultural panel to monitor digs

By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

A group of Native Hawaiians living along the Wai'anae Coast who believe in the need to protect the bones of their ancestors have formed a volunteer group to act as cultural consultants and monitors on a five-year construction project on Farrington Highway.

Archaeologists Alton Exzabe, left, and Carly Antone watch with cultural monitor David K. Nu'uanu Jr. of Ma'ili as water crews install a water line along Farrington Highway. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

Despite laws to protect iwi kupuna, or ancestral bones, descendants often become angry when they believe that the remains are not being treated with respect.

To try to ensure proper treatment during the Farrington Highway project, a group of Hawaiian elders is volunteering to assist the city Board of Water Supply as it works on a massive project digging up the culturally sensitive area to lay new pipe along the length of the road from Makaha to Nanakuli.

Before the project even began, the Board of Water Supply sought residents to act as cultural consultants — guiding the project and acting as intermediaries with the community — and cultural monitors, watching over the construction sites for iwi when digging is taking place. The monitoring group includes about a dozen people.

"This method is probably going to be the best thing for us," said Kamaki Kanahele, president of the Nanakuli Homestead Homeowners Community Association and a cultural consultant for the project. "I appreciate what the Board of Water Supply is doing, because they have taken the initiative to try and do something correct."

The idea of involving the Hawaiian community to head off problems before a construction project begins evolved from an O'ahu Island Burial Council task force charged with developing policies and procedures to handle the inadvertent discovery of iwi.

The state's burial sites program, established as the result of legislation passed in 1990, grew out of the uproar when nearly 1,000 Native Hawaiian burials were uncovered during ground preparation for the Ritz Carlton Kapalua resort development at Honokahua on Maui. Those remains eventually were reburied on a site at Honokahua set aside for them.

"I was an OHA trustee during the Maui incident," Kanahele said. "That thing was going to be a bloodbath, and people were going to die."

Procedure in place

Statewide, there were 304 burial cases at construction sties in 1999, and 391 in 2000, according to state figures. Historic preservation staff reviews thousands of development project proposals every year, providing technical information and advice on historic sites.

According to state law, when iwi is found at a construction site, work must stop in the area, and police and the state Historic Preservation Division must be notified immediately. The Historic Preservation Division will make a decision on their disposition.

In some cases, those protections have not proven enough to satisfy the Hawaiian community.

Wal-Mart is building a Sam's Club and Wal-Mart store on a 10.5-acre site known as the Ke'eaumoku superblock, bounded by Sheridan, Makaloa, Rycroft and Ke'eaumoku streets. A preconstruction survey of the site concluded that the property had been urbanized for so long it was unlikely any remains would be found.

To date, 38 sets of remains — some complete and some partial — have been found at six locations at the Wal-Mart site. An archaeologist has established that most of the remains are likely from the 1853 smallpox epidemic that struck Honolulu.

The state does not require that an archaeological survey be conducted on private land, and determined that archaeological monitoring was sufficient for the project, based on an assessment of the probability of burials or cultural deposits being disturbed by the Wal-Mart project.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin said the company had done everything required by law and more, and was trying to be sensitive in the handling of remains, and not working in the area near the finds.

Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai'i Nei, an organization that oversees perpetual care of the remains of Native Hawaiians, has complained about the treatment of iwi found on the site, and said the state was not doing enough to minimize disturbance of Hawaiian remains and ensure they were dealt with in culturally appropriate ways.

Possible model

That is precisely the goal of Hawaiians in Wai'anae monitoring the Board of Water Supply's night work in Nanakuli.

Cultural monitor David Nu'uanu Jr. stood in the rain on Farrington Highway last week, staring into a hole in the ground as city crews dug trenches for new pipes.

"You're standing right in the middle of the road," Nu'uanu said. "It's hard to see in the trench and watch for cars on the road."

William Aila, a consultant for the project and a member of Hui Malama, said asking the community what it thinks in advance should become a required part of the development process.

"With more construction comes a higher probability of unearthing iwi kupuna," Aila said. "How we measure ourselves as descendants is going to be how we behave today. If the community has been consulted at Wal-Mart and Honokahua, they would have had less problems."

Valuable lesson

Cliff Jamile, water board manager and chief engineer, said he learned a valuable lesson in 1999 when some 100 sets of iwi were exposed as crews dug into Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki to replace water mains. Three years later, a memorial mound was built at the edge of Kapi'olani Park for the remains.

"I went into that eyes closed, head down, and I walked into a hornet's nest," Jamile said. "There I was — and I had Hawaiian communities on my back. I said, let's fix this and make sure it doesn't happen again. We have to have a plan in place to permit us to do what I'm charged to do, and at the same time have the proper concerns for the iwi."

Jamile then embraced the cultural consultant plan.

The historic preservation division operates under the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, where director Peter Young says developing the cultural consultant/monitoring program is simply the right thing to do.

"I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of including the community early, before a problem happens," Young said.

He held the first in a series of meetings to bring together developers, government and utility companies with Hawaiian groups to open lines of communication, and he will look at the program used by the water board.

"The point was to get this group together to say that even if we have the most extensive archaeological study and review of a site, that there is still a chance, in some cases a probability, that we will find unfortunately an inadvertent burial or something that was not anticipated," he said.

Young is creating a checklist for developers on how to be culturally sensitive, and setting up a data base of sources in Hawaiian communities who are willing to become consultants.

"It's trying to make contact with the potential lineal and cultural descendants before the work starts, so that a line of communication is open early," he said.

Positive first step

Hawaiians do not like to reveal where their ancestors are buried, and say the determination of what to do with any remains should be made only by cultural or lineal descendants.

A. Van Horn Diamond, chairman of the O'ahu Burial Council, said there is no single answer for every situation, but the monitoring program is a positive step.

"My hope is we keep working to refine the process," Diamond said. "It is a good start. If somebody has an attitude, it can get screwed up. Developers need to remember they are not saints, and Hawaiians are not martyrs."

Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2431.