2015-10-22 Leeward Exh A (SMA 15-060)

Home

KAHUI: Aloha, Commissioners. Aloha kākou. My name is Bo Kahui. I serve as the executive director for LaʻiʻŌpua 2020, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Our mission is to build community facilities and provide social, educational, recreational, cultural programs here in the Ahupua‘a of Kealakehe and Keahuolu. In addition I serve as director for the Villages of LaʻiʻŌpua Homestead Association, which currently comprised of about 275 units, close to about 900 members. I want to first start by saying that on behalf of our association and our non-profit corporation, we support Kamehameha Schools for the planned, for this particular educational center. We believe that we need to look at our future, what it means to protect our knowledge, how do we exercise that now, how do we express the kupuna knowledge, and where do we do it, and how has that been transformed not necessarily in a classroom setting but in a setting that’s more natural, more meaningful, more enlightened. My good friend George Helm says, “You cannot practice your culture in a glass case.” My kupuna Uncle Harry Mitchell, a taro farmer out of Ke‘anae, Maui, you know, had a deep relationship with the land, and everything he did was knowledge-based. We miss the knowledge. We have lost a lot of our kūpuna who carry this knowledge with them. This center is important so that we can begin to express that now and begin to share the knowledge with our ‘ōpio, with our keikies so that they can take the knowledge on. I think Kamehameha Schools has a protected interest in this particular project, you know, both in its mission and the protection of our cultural resources. When we look at the case law PASH, we have an inherent right to protect these resources. And when I look at PASH again and I look at how the plan is being devised, we ought to take serious how we protect these cultural resources like the heiau and what kind of access and limitations we give that. And I think we support Kamehameha Schools because they thought hard about this particular component, you know. Our high schools, our public schools, they don’t have unrestricted access. How come our cultural center has to have unrestricted access? We’ve got to ask ourselves: Is our cultural center as important as our public school? And is so, maybe we should look at it then that way, because we begin to protect those things that are important to the very fabric of our being, the very fabric of our native identity. If we cannot protect that, if we cannot exercise that, then we no longer become Hawaiian, just become another public school. Okay? So with that said, mahalo. UNGER: Mahalo. CRAIG: Aloha. My name is Alaina Craig. I live in the Ahupua‘a of Kalamakumu in Captain Cook. And I come here today as a student of the Na ‘Ōpio program in support of this project. As a participant in the program, I have been lucky enough to learn and experience a lot of things at Kahalu‘u. And I only hope that the students following our footsteps and who may join the program next year and the years following, could experience the things that we have and much more. Mahalo. UNGER: Mahalo. Thank you. Kalani Nakoa, Kalani Hamm, Tava Taupu. T. TAUPU: Aloha. My name Tava, sorry, but Teikivaeohu, but they call me Tava. But I’m giving my space to my wife, Cheryl Taupu. Mahalo. C. TAUPU: Kala mai for the change. UNGER: Aloha. No problem. 10 EXHIBIT A