Posted on: Sunday, November 21, 2004
Hawai'i's 'Land Struggles' chronicled
By Vicki Viotti
Photojournalist Ed Greevy has spent decades as the proverbial fly on the wall during Hawai'i's many land-and-power protests, so that people would accept him as part of the landscape and behave naturally before his lens.
Photos by Ed Greevy Greevy, 65, has shot his share of color film rolls and even dabbles now in new-fangled digital photography. But he is best known for his vivid, stark black-and-white images.
Many of the photos and much of the text in this 170-page volume were showcased first in July 2003 at the Academy Art Center at Linekona, where the idea for the book was born.
Surfer Greevy quickly became immersed in the "Save Our Surf" environmental movement of the early '70s, then migrated along with many of the activists into eviction protests of the nascent Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
He acknowledges his empathy for the movement, which over the years has evolved to become less about stopping development and more about asserting political control over land and resources.
But the fringe benefit, he said, was becoming part of the family able to capture important moments as they unfolded.
"It's a period of time that's not in the history books, but I feel it's important," he said.
The result is "Ku'e: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawai'i" (Mutual Publishing, $36.95 hardbound), a pictorial chronicle of the era from 1971 until nearly the present, amplified with essays and captions by Hawaiian nationalist Haunani-Kay Trask.
Save Our Surf (SOS), Kokua Hawai'i-Kalama Valley demonstration at the state Capitol
The watershed Waiahole-Waikane protests that ultimately ranked among the movement's greatest victories, as they warded off massive development in the area, occupy a place of honor in the chronicle, Greevy said: "It's over, but that organization has new blood. The community remains strong in that it can deal with forces in a way that it couldn't before."
"Ku'e: Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawaii." Photos by Ed Greevy, caption and text by Haunani-Kay Trask
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| Jan. 24, 1980: Sand Island residents at Waikiki, homeless in Hawai'i
Photos by Ed Greevy |
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| Members of Kokua Hawai'i speak out against Kalama Valley evictions. |
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| Tutu Kawelo, resident kupuna (elder) of Kahalu'u |
