Posted on: Sunday, November 7, 2004

OUR HONOLULU
Red tape endangers a tradition

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Let's hear today from someone who is trying to preserve an ancient craft in the face of bureaucratic red tape, lack of accurate information and roadblocks set up by commercial competitors. He's Sonny Kaukini Bradley, part-Hawaiian, one of the most prolific builders of Hawaiian canoes in the Islands.

Bradley has built more than 200 of the outrigger canoes racing today in Hawai'i. A Bradley fiberglass canoe costs about $8,700. His customers are canoe halau, individuals and the growing crop of outrigger sailing canoe enthusiasts.

Bradley and his son, Tai, work full-time building fiberglass canoes in a huge shed at the top of a steep hill buried in jungle way back in a valley in Kahalu'u. The molds for his racing canoes hang in canvas slings on the wall above a canoe in progress.

But Bradley's heart is in the ancient koa canoe linked to Hawaiian culture by history, myth and ritual. He's built four koa canoes and repaired many more. The last koa canoe he built was sold to a halau in Lahaina, Maui, for $60,000. The halau spent another $40,000 building a canoe shed. The money was raised selling meat sticks at the Maui County Fair.

This column, however, is not about the koa canoes Bradley has built but the koa canoes he and other qualified builders could produce if they could get koa logs. Demand is there. The dream of every canoe halau is to own a koa canoe around which the club can center its history and ritual, and to race in the premier koa canoe events.

But Bradley said he has seen logs of that size go to waste and rot because of problems that prevent their being hauled from the forest.

The last koa canoe log he took out — used to make the canoe for the club in Lahaina — was a fallen tree in the forest above Laupahoehoe, Hawai'i. That was 20 years ago. At that time, he saw 19 fallen trees whose trunks could make canoes. Environmental regulations prevented him from bringing in heavy equipment to take out the log.

So Bradley roughed out the log in the forest with hand tools, then inched the half-finished canoe out over 'ohi'a rollers to the road. He has been refused permission to take out another log. Part of the reason is fear of environmental destruction to the forest. But the underlying reason is commercial koa dealers.

State officials told him that if one person is allowed to take out a koa log, dozens of others will want the same right. Commercial koa dealers says it's discrimination to let canoe builders in and not them.

So logs that could be used to make canoes rot in the forest. There must be a way to distinguish between commercial harvesting of koa and using a log to build a canoe to preserve a Hawaiian craft. What's needed is legislation to register qualified canoe builders, identify canoe logs and provide some method of giving builders a fair chance to bid for them without favoritism.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.