Noa Emmett Aluli

Kaho'olawe's last section shows how Kua'aina from the investigated culture of Kyipuka has contributed to the restoration of the island's heritages.

Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli | Maui's Island Movies

From this evening, congregational assemblies throughout Hawaii will present a new movie, Status on Soil: stand on sacred: Sanctuary Islands, across the Isle of Kanaloa Kaho'olawe. "Our holy isle, the charity and sacrifice our cupuna and George Helm and Kimo Mitchell have made to stop the defilement of our ashes and the painstaking work to cure the isle are portrayed in this film," says Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli, one of the Founder of Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana.

This 30-minute movie is part of an eight-part serial by movie-maker Toby McLeod. It will open the debate on the new 2026 Strategic Plan for Kanaloa Kaho'olawe. Read the full story from The Garden Island. New Zealand and Hawaii's movie industries (from the archipelago of the demigod Maui).

Kaho' Olav

Kaho'olawe is a strong icon of destruction, re-growth and recovery for three indigenous leaders with close links to the Isle. Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli was a medicine major when he established Protect Kaho'olawe'Ohana (PKO) and headed the move in the 1970s to stop the test attacks on Kaho'olawe.

He was a Navy officeman who supervised the armed cleansing of the islands before becoming Managing Secretary of the Kaho'olawe Iceland Reserve Commission (KIRC). One of the early PKO cleaners, Derek Kekaulike Mar has since been leading the conservation work on Kaho'olawe as an ecologist and local Hwaiian counsel.

You seem to be living in two different realms, with one leg in contemporary West European and the other in Hawaii'nculture. To mark the 50th birthday of the first Kaho'olawe invasion, Emmett Aluli, Mike Naho'opi'i and Derek Kekaulike Mar look back on the violence of the island's past, the continuing challenge of restoring it and the promises that this former shrine offers for the futurolog.

Kaho'olawe was an important practice area for the old skill of pathfinding, heavenly navigational science. Nicknamed after Kanaloa, the hawaiian God of the Atlantic and still regarded as holy to the indigenous Hawaiians, sailors and codfish. It was also used as Pu'uhonua, or shrine, where humans sought shelter and were cured.

At the end of the eighteenth centuary, when Captain George Vancouver and the first Westerners came to the country, he bequeathed 200 nanny boars to Kahekili, the chief of Maui. Together, the greedy hoofed animals eat most of the green on the islands. With no indigenous grass and vegetation, the upper soil began to soil erosion, making the country dry and infertile.

Because of its destroyed ecosystems, the archipelago was left and later used as a punishment settlement. In 1941, after the 1941 assault on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy took over Kaho'olawe and used it as a shooting exercise for the Pacific theatre and warfare. Bombarded for almost 50 years by the army, during which period Kaho'olawe became the most bombarded of all the islands in the underworld.

However, with the ascent of the Hawaiian Renaissance, a group associated with the Aboriginal Lands Of Hawaiian Ancestry (ALOHA) move chose to stop the bombardment and recapture the Isle in 1976. The doctor and therapist Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli is a gentle doctor who manages Moloka'i General Hospital but is not deceived by his relaxed way and whiteness.

Once against the world's most mighty army to stop the bombardment of Kaho'olawe, he is still leading the move to rebuild the Isles and give them back to the Hawaiians. Alluli was one of nine persons who abandoned Maui and on January 4, 1976 crossing the Alaläkeiki Canal to go to Kaho'olawe.

This group was known as Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana (PKO). It was naive and even stupid to defy the U.S. Navy, but its action would alter the story of Hawaii and the tribal rightwing. They were known as the Kaho'olawe 9 from that time on. Whilst the others were arrested and accompanied off the coast that night, Aluli and Hawaii' Walter Ritte wandered inland to investigate the damages of five decade-long bombings.

"There was an unsightly scenery, but there was still a lot of beautiness in the country," says Aluli in the documentation show Standing on Sacred Ground. Aluli was a young surgeon at the height of his illness, who risked his own lives and his own health careers, but he knew that he had a higher vocation to cure his own nation and the country of Kaho'olawe.

Alulí occupied the isle many more time with the PKO. Later this year, under the leadership of Hawaii' s vocalist and campaigner George Helm, the group lodged a collective complaint against the war. Hel once said that Hawaii' s civilization will only survive if "the country's lives are immortalized in justice," and he and Kimo Mitchell of the PKO became a martyr for the cause when they vanished at Sea during a 1977 bailout on the Indonesian Isle.

The PKO filed a complaint with the Navy in 1980 and gained four day a months entry to the isle. Navy has declared its willingness to provide $440 million in compensation to help preserve heritage places, clear surfaces and launch ground protection work. "All we could do was magic," says Aluli.

This was an astonishing achievement, but the PKO still had a long way to go before it reached its destination of reconquering the Isle. As part of the treaty, the Navy was permitted to bomb the centre of the country, and it seemed an impossibility to clean up after 50 years of bombings and warfare.

Mike Naho'opi'i was borne and brought up in O'ahu. After completing Kamehameha Schools, he went to the Naval Academy and was then appointed by the Navy. Tension with the army was high on the centenary of the fall of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Naho'opi'i worked as a Navy sergeant on a nuke when he learned that the commando in charge of the technical Hawaii commandant, Naho'opi'i, seemed to have the right skills.

When he learned that Naho'opi'i was one of the first student groups to research and clean up Kaho'olawe after the PKO filed its complaint with the Navy, the admiral knew that he had found the right man for the work. Naho'opi'i was instructed by the former commandant to await serious hostilities from the local group.

Although there were still tensions about the ongoing bombardment of the Isle, the young officers were helping to mitigate the hostility between the army and the local groups in Hawaii. Naho'opi'i, after leading the clean-up operations for the army, worked for several years as a civil contractors on Kaho'olawe before becoming director of the KIRC.

Naho'opi'i and his 16 employees are responsible for the management of the island's infrastructures, the protection of its heritage and heritage and the cooperation with PKO voluntary workers to further rehabilitate and restore its degraded ecosystems. "We' re looking at everything from the physical reconstruction of the country to the spiritual reconstruction of the country to the spiritual reconstruction of the restored people," says Naho'opi'i.

He is hoping that by educating men on how to be healed, they can return and cure their own comunities. For Naho'opi'i, the aim of restoring the archipelago is not only to plant seed and tree, but also to create guides for the world. "Kaho'olawe has always been the place to train the Hawaiians," he says.

On one of his travels to the Isle, Mar encountered the lady who was to become his bride. They came together by sowing seed and cultivating the country. For the past two decade-long periods, Mar has worked as a frequent PKO voluntary and as an environment adviser and consulting company for Hawaiians working on the redevelopment of the Isle.

Mar Kaho'olawe, an environmental activist, sees it as a symbolic sign of the devastating paths of humanity. However, as a native Hawaiian, Mar thinks that the islands also reflect the best characteristics of the world. He is astonished at the efforts, energies and times that groups and people have spent reviving and restoring the Isle.

Unfortunately, last year the Navy's $440 million estate ended to clear the munitions and finance the work of the Kaho'olawe Island Reserve Commission.