Posted on: Sunday, May 1, 2005

OUR HONOLULU

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Muriel Seto, the original Energizer bunny, says she is going to stop being a public activist. She's retiring to write a book. I'll believe it when I see it. Muriel Seto could write a book with one hand and a letter to the editor with the other while she testifies at a legislative hearing, all at the same time.

This lady was in on the ground floor of the Hawaiian Renaissance as culture chairwoman of the Congress of Hawaiian People. She's been saving the soul of Kailua as culture chairwoman of Hawai'i's 1,000 Friends. She's been Hawai'i's Environmental Woman of the Year. Just last week, she celebrated the designation of Kawai Nui Marsh, her favorite charity, as a Wetlands of International Importance.

On the chance she really is going to retire, we should preserve for posterity how she operates. So here is the Muriel Seto Manual for Moving Mountains. We will use Kawai Nui Marsh as our example of a hopeless cause that has been activated by the Seto magic.

There's nothing to it. The first thing is to get other people involved who couldn't care less. How to do this? Easy, just learn everything there is to know about your cause. Kawai Nui Marsh is the perfect example. Hardly anybody knew much about Kawai Nui Marsh except that it was a swamp.

Two plans for Kawai Nui Marsh surfaced about 1978. One was to put a shopping center there that would make Ala Moana Center look like a mom-and-pop store. The other was to fill it in and turn it into a city park. Somehow, neither plan set quite right with the people of nearby Kailua.

They all had different reasons, but nobody knew what to do with the marsh. Environmentalists talked about endangered endemic birds. Hawaiians talked about sacred lands. It was all jumbled up in bits and pieces. Seto, who married a Hawaiian, started by researching. Now she's the authority on the history of Kawai Nui Marsh.

What she has learned is fantastic. Like: The oldest Hawaiian settlement on O'ahu may have been around Kawai Nui Marsh, circa A.D. 300 to A.D. 500 A.D. Waikiki is a Johnny-Come-Lately. Archaeologist Kenneth Emory got a carbon date from Niu Valley down the coast, the closest dig. It's dated A.D. 1000 A.D. That's at least 500 years later.

Before written history, the area around Kawai Nui Marsh was probably the most important place on O'ahu. It was called the piko (navel) of the island. Seto said it was the home of legendary navigators. Pele's sister, Hi'iaka, reported that she saw their sails laid out to dry on the shore. One of the navigators was Kaula'akalana, who may have invented the Hawaiian fish pond.

A whole literature of myths and legends and songs are linked to Kawai Nui. The marsh is what is left of a bay that was the favorite residence of the ruling chief, Kakuhihewa, founder of O'ahu dynasties. Kahekili, the war chief of Maui, went there directly after he conquered O'ahu. So did Kamehemeha I, after the Battle of Nu'uanu. He washed off his kapu in the water and planted taro with the maka'ainana (common people).

This is the kind of ammunition Seto uses to get other people involved. One of them is Bob Herlinger, an architect, who attended a public hearing in 1972 about plans for Kawai Nui Marsh and got inspired. Like Seto, he sensed that Kailua people didn't want the marsh turned into a shopping center or filled in for a park. But they couldn't articulate what they wanted.

So Herlinger took a year off to figure it out. He asked more than 1,500 people what they would like to see done to the marsh. He listed 35 chants, three legends and six meles (songs) about Kawai Nui and worked out how they were linked to modern people and other places on Oahu. Before Herlinger, planners didn't think the chants and legends had any real connection with history. Herlinger discovered just the opposite. They contain a great deal of information.

What has resulted is the basis for a citizens' plan for Kawai Nui. The plan has become a tool for keeping the marsh intact. It's one of the reasons the marsh has been proclaimed a Wetland of International Importance by the Ramser Convention, an offshoot of the United Nations.

That puts the marsh on a par with the Florida Everglades and Chesapeake Bay. It opens the way for grant money. U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawai'i, is working for designation of Kawai Nui as a national park. Now, all kinds of civic organizations are interested in the marsh.

That's how it's done. Just spend 25 years working your heart out and inspire other people to take a year off from their jobs to help. Easy.