•Leave Kalaupapa alone •Pricey picture Leave Kalaupapa alone There was a time when Hansen’s disease patients were not considered fully human. They were herded like animals, separated from family; they were shipped like cargo to Molokai, and in the rocky
•Leave Kalaupapa alone
•Pricey picture
Leave Kalaupapa alone
There was a time when Hansen’s disease patients were not considered fully human. They were herded like animals, separated from family; they were shipped like cargo to Molokai, and in the rocky waters off Kalawao, they were dumped like garbage, left to sink or swim. Because most were weak and infirm, many did not make it to shore. Those who did had it no better. These ill people were expected to homestead on their own, growing sweet potatoes, building their own houses. What a cruel joke! These people were seriously ill and in need of care. This was at the very beginning, before the churches were involved. Needless to say, most patients perished.
Meanwhile during this time in history, this same racist logic had firm rooting in North America. The Chinese Exclusion Act forbid the Chinese who had immigrated to build the railroads, from working any jobs other than the most menial. Jim Crow was in full swing. It was considered essential to the economy that people of color be subjugated, exploited, and denigrated. It sounds preposterous today, doesn’t it?
Tragically, an exploitation continues to which people are as blind today, as they were to the racism of a century ago. That is the exploitation of the planet. Many people still believe the planet doesn’t matter, just as they used to think that people with leprosy didn’t matter.
Which is why I am writing on the General Management Plan at Kalaupapa. When I heard about the proposal to dredge near the pier in order to accommodate a jumbo-sized barge, I was horrified. Anyone who has been to these waters know these are arguably the most pristine waters in Hawai‘i, outside of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The excuse they give us for having to dredge is that it would be economically unfeasible to build and operate a smaller barge. This was the same logic that people used to legislate barring Chinese- or African-Americans from prospering. Supposedly, it would have cost too much money to the rest of society to lose that cheap labor. This was the same logic that justified cruelty to those with Hansen’s disease in Hawai‘i. Supposedly, it would have been too expensive to build accommodations for them, let alone an infrastructure. This was an era when there was nothing at all preposterous about bottom line determining if we treat others with humanity or not.
It is time to understand that the preservation of our planet’s resources is also more precious than bottom line.
The 21st century will be the era where we all come to the realization that the planet isn’t here to take lightly, to exploit, subjugate and denigrate. The marine ecology at Kalaupapa is a wondrous pocket of irreplaceable resources. The crystal waters, teeming with life, must remain so, and we must do everything in our power to preserve it.
Father Damien led the international community to look outside the box, and view those with leprosy as part of humanity. Who among us has the courage to stand up for the environment, which has no voice, as Father Damien stood up for the afflicted who also had no voice, and who were also considered expendable?
What is particularly unfortunate about this public input process is that precious few have ever spent significant time at Kalaupapa, or even visited (which is precisely why it remains so lovely and the waters so pristine). That means that this process guarantees that there will be only an infinitesimal fraction of comments in opposition to the dredging submitted, compared to what would otherwise be submitted if people were more personally familiar with Kalaupapa. Most people in Hawai‘i have no idea what is at stake with the dredging because they’ve never been to Kalaupapa. It would be like dredging Hanauma Bay on O‘ahu, an equally preposterous idea, which, if proposed, would elicit thousands of outraged letters, because everybody has been to Hanauma Bay.
However, we are blessed to have the technology to build and operate a small barge that can work in the existing pier. Let’s do it! Let’s use our technology to save the planet — not to be cheaper, faster, bigger. Citing supposed “prohibitive costs” as an excuse to desecrate this place is a bean-counter’s short-sighted view of humanity’s future. This type of thinking from the last century has already brought all of life on Earth to its knees, with climate change, acidification of the seas, that there is 100 times more plastic than plankton in many parts of the Pacific Ocean, desertification of the continents, depletion of forests and so many other resources, and the list goes on…
The 21st-century mandate to save the planet starts at the local level. Let’s start at home, here in Hawai‘i, at Kalaupapa. Let’s be a model for the rest of the country, and the rest of the world. We must not dredge near the pier at Kalaupapa.
Koohan Paik, Kilauea
Pricey picture
A photo of Air Force 1 with the Statue of Liberty in the background would combine two of our country’s great symbols, a symbol of strength and world leadership with the symbol of liberty. Unfortunately the recent attempt to capture such a photo was handled extremely poorly.
A much better approach, and a much less costly one, would be to use a digital photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop and a computer to combine a digital picture of Air Force 1 with a digital picture of the Statue of Liberty.
Susan Nilsen, Princeville
