Mauna Kea

Pualani Kanahele

(from: Wakea - Ancestor of the First People of This Land)

This is Mauna a Wakea. The mountain belongs to Wakea. It doesn't belong to you, it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Wakea. Our first thought should be the mountain and to Wakea.

CHANT

What we should do is maintain the integrity of the mountain. The mountain is sacred. It is Wakea. It is not Mount Joe. It is not Mount Kilroy. It is Mauna a Wakea.

CHANT

Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa to us are kupuna and as long as they're there, we know that we always have land to live on. They're the beginning and the mole, or the taproot for our island. Mauna Kea is the first-born to us, like the taro was for food, like coral polyps were for food in the ocean. We have many first-borns. Mauna Kea is the first-born.

Sometimes we tend to abuse the things we have. And the things that are of higher quality to us, most sacred sometimes, it becomes abused.

And so, at this time of our life, when we have to fly airplanes and we pass Mauna Kea and we see all the buildings up on the mountain, that's real hilahila to us.

It's our fault that it's there. Because when they were being built, we didn't say anything. And so, in our shame, we turn away knowing that that is a hewa, that is not supposed to be there.

Because that's where our roots start, that's where our island begins, that's where the first rain from Wakea hits, is our mountain. That's where the first sunlight that rises every morning hits. That's our mountain. That mountain is the first for everything we have.

And so for that purpose we are here. And we are here to ask our kupunas to help us in this cause, to stop so much building up there.

They have to do, you know, what they have to do, reaching up to the sky for whatever purpose. But we have to do what we have to do. And we build ahu up there and we reach to the sky as well, before those ahu, and we need to contact our kupuna so that our kupuna will be here at this time helping us, so that they will be here at all times to help us. And be able to inspire us to do those things that are pono for this land, for the land that we need to leave to our mo‘opuna and their mo‘opuna.

We've been asked in the past few months, how many times do you use the mountain? How often do you go up? Those kinds of questions. We don't have to go up anywhere to use it. We can use it from wherever we are.

And it is a land feature that is outstanding. It is a land feature that we cannot make ourselves. You know, it has been given to us.

And because we live out in the great ocean, and we're really land creatures, we're not ocean creatures, we have these few pieces of rocks here in the greater Pacific ocean whereby we can stand on. And we're grateful for those little bits of rocks that we have.

Our kupuna have made us aware of that, that these rocks we have to be grateful for, because if they're gone, they're gone, and we don't have any place to live. And we're not continental people, we're island people.

And so, we fight back any way we can.

CHANT

In all of our islands put together, from Kure down to Hawai‘i, we only have two peaks, two peaks, for almost 2,000 miles. We don't have a land mass. We have islands. It doesn't make sense to crowd this one peak with all of these buildings.

Let this not be another Waikiki. Build one building. Let's build 50,000 more. If next year, they decide to build all of those buildings up there, I am responsible. It's not only Group 7 or Keck or the Japanese or whoever else is going to come in. I am responsible. And I have to stand up to my grandkids and say "I never do nothing."

CHANT If everybody knows that the mountain, the very top of the mountain is the most sacred, when we say that the very top of the mountain is the most sacred, I know what that means to me. All you that are sitting down here, when you say that the very top of the mountain is the most sacred, what does that mean to you? Is that just words that I said? Is that just words that other Hawaiians said to you? And that's why you're putting it down: "The top of the mountain is the most sacred." But you don't know what that means to us.

We only have two mountains in these islands, only two. Go build it some place else where they get plenty mountains.