Development on Maui will desecrate the graves, homes, and remnants of the ancient Hawaiian villagers, and by doing so, the hearts, hopes and symbolism of a society that is in great danger of fading from existence.

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Puu Olai is an ancient, weathered cinder cone that juts seaward near Makena Beach on Maui. It is also sacred ground; home to the bones of the ancestors, and at its base, one finds beautiful lava formations and tidepools. Hiking up the steep volcanic slopes from Makena’s Big Beach, those with an open heart recall that they feel the push of strong hands guiding them upward to the resting places of the ancients and heavenly views of Molokini Crater, as well as the islands of Lanai and Kahoolawe.

Over 1,000 archeological sites have been identified on 1800 acres at the base of Puu Olai. These sacred grounds are now in the hands of developers. Only 16 sites are slated for preservation according to island activists and the organization, Save Makena.

The New York Times (April 2007) described a development that will desecrate the graves, homes, and remnants of the ancient Hawaiian villagers, and by doing so, the hearts, hopes and symbolism of a society that is in great danger of fading from existence.

The beleaguered Hawaiian indigenous population will be left with nothing, while billionaires and millionaires will have an 11 acre gated community on Makena Bay, “With the 18th hole of a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., separating it from the coastline,” according the NYT.

Instead of reasonable housing and access to ancient fishing grounds, there will be 2,300 to 3,500 square-foot, two- to three-bedroom units in 11 two- to four-story buildings and two three-bedroom, 4,500-square-foot bungalows.

“All the residences will have stone floors, wine storage, wireless Internet access and lanais with water views and grills, and the bungalows will feature private swimming pools and whirlpools. A private clubhouse with an infinity pool, a lounge, a restaurant, a fitness center and the full-service spa will be built, and adjacent to the project is a white sand beach where kayaks, snorkels, surfboards and other equipment will be available. Culinary classes and wine tastings will be offered, and a concierge service will arrange golf and other activities,” touts the NYT.

To make matters worse, this development intersects and cuts off the “Kings Highway.” King's Highway was once a footpath that encircled the island and connected all the villages. Anyone who hikes to the end of the Makena road lava fields can see the relics of homes and heiaus (temples)—whispers of a once thriving community of people who fished, hunted, worshipped and gathered along the slopes of the mighty Haleakala volcano. The spirits of the amakua could always be counted on to protect the family in times of danger. A’a (lava rock) is still piled in the ruins of centuries-old native Hawaiian structures, and hardened rivers of lava stretch like tendrils to the summit of Haleakala

The Maui News has been reporting on another residential condominium development that won approval from the Maui Land Use Committee. Planned for a 1.55 acre site near the Makena Bay project, the 4,000 square foot condos call for “careful construction practices—four swimming pools and 16 parking stalls.” These “amenities” will be adjacent to an ancient heiau.

Archeologists working for the developers swear that the sites are closely monitored, but speak to anyone on Maui who is of Hawaiian ancestry, or who cares about the culture, and the stories are long and tearful of artifacts and bones which are uncovered and never reported. Ghosts and disembodied kings wielding torches are marching along the King’s Highway, and those with open and pure hearts hear the chants and see the long processions on the star-filled nights.

Whether you believe in the spirits or not, it is very clear that these excavations are desecrations of holy ground. Bones are still scattered among the rocks on PuuOlai, heiaus are everywhere, and it is impossible to believe that the scope of the construction digs in Makena are not a sacrilege and assault on Hawaiian spirituality.

This is not news.

This writer has been coming to the Islands for over ten years and the stories are only getting worse, the destruction more and more evident. During sunrise at the 10,000-foot summit of Haleakala, a native woman spoke of the despair of locals who no longer come to the summit to worship as the sun rises over what is considered to be a spiritual testing ground for the Hawaiians. For those who seek, Haleakala is power unleashed, the earth’s conductor of cosmic energy. The great kahunas (teachers) brought their students there for initiation. Today, crass tourism is becoming the norm and one will very seldom see a Hawaiian praying openly on Haleakala. The rocks, considered the bones of the ancestors, are etched with multi-lingual graffiti—an inexcusable and horrific desecration.

How does one write about this? How does one bring it home to the heart? The answer, like love, came when the writer was not seeking and brings another story to the page—a story of pure friendship that has been long overdue for the telling.

Along the shores of Makena is a hidden, sacred beach called Palauea, or sometimes “white rocks” because of the bleached coral that is caught and held in the embrace of the black lava. The south end of the beach is called Holoa Point, and beneath the great Hawaiian waters are shallow caves, lava arches and huge stands of coral. Fish and sea turtles are regular visitors, as well as eagle rays and reef sharks that inspire mind, heart and soul.

The ashes of my friend, mentor, singer, songwriter, woman, rascal and inspiration are scattered there. I bring her protea flowers, and her amakua, the sea turtle, sometimes devours them when I sit on the rocks and speak with her. She spoke clearly to me this week.

This sacred area, holy to both the Hawaiians and to me, also contains rare cultural sites and is in danger of being lost to the local people. Condos and new developments now are within 150 feet of the ashes of my friend. This outrages me. I wonder if my feelings can be compared to the sadness and despair Hawaiians feel at the loss of their holy places?

Some who read this piece will know whom I am writing about. My fantastic, gutsy woman friend taught me how to be compassionate and caring when I was a young woman, and I am certain she died not understanding the depth of what she imparted because I was never able to tell her in life. I had planned to—but it was not to be, and this explains my yearly pilgrimage to Palauea in the month of her death. Death stole her when she was helping a young native man get to the store. Fate conspired with death and intervened in the specter of a fatal car crash that spared the young man but took my friend to be with the ancestors of a people that she came to love and whose culture “brought music back to her soul.”

My spiritual guide’s resting place is being desecrated and it fills me with anger.

You could never say we were close over the years. We wove in and out of each other’s existence, but always found a way back in unexpected ways. My rascal friend’s personal challenges caused her to literally disappear from life and music—and music was certainly her muse. It is said that she taught Bob Dylan the banjo—what the Hawaiians remember is that she played the banjo for the Makawao library at Christmas, and came dressed as Mrs. Santa Claus to boot. The research librarian helped me find the accident site, where my friend does not dwell, but where shards of the demolished car are still scattered in the rocks—four years after she danced away with the ancestors.

My friend is part of my personal mythology and the musical lexicon of Chicago where she sang her heart out for many years. The producers who would visit the clubs to hear her talent would come away shaking their heads that she was certainly gifted, but not pretty enough, and way too gay in the 1970’s to be of any importance or commercial viability.

I often wonder if this heartache and uncertainty caused her to lose her way for so many years, only to find it again under the great Hawaiian skies. She wrote to me and told me some of these things, and of her own uncertainty, and that maybe she had changed in ways that I would find unacceptable. I think all great teachers change. It did not concern me, and I never had the chance to say so.

What I can say with certainty and conviction is that my friend found peace in her final days—a peace that was closely tied to Hawaiian myth and belief. Her remaining songs are testimony to this in ways more profound than I can explain here. So, also, is a photo she sent to me weeks before she left this realm.

I am angry that her sacred ground and beautiful bones are in danger.

What my friend did not know was how she shaped my life by an action that she thought to be insignificant, but an action that forever changed my life and cemented her forever into my personal sense of spirituality.

When my friend was singing in Chicago, I was a destitute college student and literally had safety pins holding my clothes together. I worked when and where I could, and some of that work involved filling in doing staging and lighting gigs here and there—mostly on college campuses. My gang of friends would go to hear her sing, each nursing one drink all night long because we could not afford anything else.

My friend and guide, whose resting place is in danger of desecration, would graciously sit with us, making us feel welcome and not strangers at all to her world. John Prine, Steve Goodman, and Fred Holstein—all shared the stage with her.

One day she called and asked me to stop by the next time I was in her neighborhood—that she had something she wanted to give me. When I finally showed up, the “something” turned out to be her car! Of course I protested. I could not accept a 1967 gold Karman Ghia roadster! The strength of her determination and a fifteen-year age difference sealed the deal and I drove the car home and quite simply parked it for two weeks.

I called my teacher and friend. “I cannot possibly keep the car,” I wailed.

“Why not?”

My friend/kahuna would never give me reasons WHY I should keep the car—it was up to me to present reasonable, rational reasons why I should NOT keep the car.

I see now that the lesson was about me, and not about her extraordinary generosity. There was never a string attached, but the situation demanded that I reason my way out.

It was my initiation into the adult world, and I had no other adults to guide me. I depended upon a teacher, and like the kahunas on Haleakala, my friend became a great spiritual teacher.

I worry that her ashes will be desecrated.

Finally, I found the strength to drive the roadster back to her apartment and sheepishly rang the doorbell, keys in hand. My strength of spirit was accepted and my great teacher took the keys back from me without one word, look, or sign of reproach.

“Come in. Can you stay for a bit?”

Music went on the turntable, tea was poured, and we did nothing more than talk about music, life and where we both wanted to be going.

Then. A song she wanted me to hear. It will always be a prayer not to be spoken and I will not reveal the words here.

“What does this say to you?”

I muttered something inane under my breath that was a lie.

My teacher retorted with a great belly laugh and said that one day I would be brave enough to be a truth-teller, but that I had a long way to go. She always encouraged the writing that was to be in my future.

I mourn for her sacred ashes, just as I imagine the Hawaiians mourn their lost heiaus.

I walk to Palauea’s white rocks just as the ghosts of the ancient kings still haunt the fragmented King’s Highway. I speak to my friend’s amakua, just as the kahunas still chant on the slopes of Haleakala when the tourists have returned to the resort playgrounds.

I ask for guidance and relief from the pain of a newly broken heart, hear the great belly laugh echoing in the vaults of my memory, and remember that relief will not come from any attempt to reason my way out, but only an acceptance and integration of the wounded heart into the soul. Truth is the only way out. I sit on the white rocks and no longer fear the tears that flow into the Great Hawaiian waters.

The Hawaiians have been gravely wounded. The heart of the people is broken. We must speak the truth about what is happening here, and all over the world to indigenous peoples.

Soon there will be no great force of hands pushing humanity up the slopes of our existence if we do not stop this insane quest for money and “economy” at the expense of all that is holy.

Authors Website: http://www.georgianne-nienaber.com

Authors Bio:

Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online Quill Magazine, the Huffington Post, The Ugandan Independent, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, Glide Magazine, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, Bitch Magazine, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction expose of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and was living in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction and getting to know the people there in 2007. Nienaber is continuing "to explore the magic of the Deep South." She was a member of the Memphis Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and is a current member of Investigative Rorters and Editors.