KAHO'OLAWE, THE STONES' NEW HAWAIIAN RESIDENCE

Today, The Grandma has invested in a new project. She has bought Kahoʻolawe. She has thought it could be a good present for The Stones. She has been inspired by The Robinson's story ans she has decided to do this important step.

Kahoʻolawe, anglicized as Kahoolawe, is the smallest of the eight main volcanic islands in the Hawaiian Islands.

Kahoʻolawe is located about 11 km southwest of Maui and also southeast of Lānaʻi, and it is 18 km long by 9.7 km wide, with a total land area of 116.47 km2. The highest point on Kahoʻolawe is the crater of Lua Makika at the summit of Puʻu Moaulanui, which is about 450 m above sea level.

Kahoʻolawe is relatively dry, average annual rainfall is less than 65 cm or 26 in, because the island's low elevation fails to generate much orographic precipitation from the northeastern trade winds, and Kahoʻolawe is located in the rain shadow of eastern Maui's 3,055 m volcano, Haleakalā. More than one quarter of Kahoʻolawe has been eroded down to saprolitic hardpan soil, largely on exposed surfaces near the summit.

Kahoʻolawe has always been sparsely populated, due to its lack of fresh water. During World War II, Kahoʻolawe was used as a training ground and bombing range by the Armed Forces of the United States.

After decades of protests, the U.S. Navy ended live-fire training exercises on Kahoʻolawe in 1990, and the whole island was transferred to the jurisdiction of the state of Hawaii in 1994.

The Hawaii State Legislature established the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve to restore and to oversee the island and its surrounding waters. Today Kahoʻolawe can be used only for native Hawaiian cultural, spiritual, and subsistence purposes.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines Kahoʻolawe as Block Group 9, Census Tract 303.02 of Maui County, Hawaii. Kahoʻolawe has no permanent residents.

More information: Kaho'olawe

Kahoʻolawe is an extinct shield volcano, which formed during the Pleistocene epoch. Most of the island is covered by basaltic lava flows. A caldera is located in the eastern part of the island. The last volcanic activity on the island occurred about one million years ago.

Sometime around the year 1000, Kahoʻolawe was settled by Polynesians, and small, temporary fishing communities were established along the coast. Some inland areas were cultivated. Puʻu Moiwi, a remnant cinder cone, is the location of the second-largest basalt quarry in Hawaiʻi, and this was mined for use in stone tools such as koʻi (adzes).

Originally a dry forest environment with intermittent streams, the land changed to an open savanna of grassland and trees when inhabitants cleared vegetation for firewood and agriculture.

Hawaiians built stone platforms for religious ceremonies, set rocks upright as shrines for successful fishing trips, and carved petroglyphs, or drawings, into the flat surfaces of rocks. These indicators of an earlier time can still be found on Kahoʻolawe.

While it is not known how many people inhabited Kahoʻolawe, the lack of freshwater probably limited the population to a few hundred people. As many as 120 people might have once lived at Hakioawa, the largest settlement, which was located at the northeastern end of the island -facing Maui.

From 1778 to the early 19th century, observers on passing ships reported that Kahoʻolawe was uninhabited and barren, destitute of both water and wood. After the arrival of missionaries from New England, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi under the rule of King Kamehameha III replaced the death penalty with exile, and Kahoʻolawe became a men's penal colony sometime around 1830. Food and water were scarce, some prisoners reportedly starved, and some of them swam across the channel to Maui to find food. The law making the island a penal colony was repealed in 1853.

A survey of Kahoʻolawe in 1857 reported about 50 residents here, about 2,000 ha of land covered with shrubs, and a patch of sugarcane growth. Along the shore, tobacco, pineapple, gourds, pili grass, and scrub trees grew.

Beginning in 1858, the Hawaiian government leased Kahoʻolawe to a series of ranching ventures. Some of these proved to be more successful than others, but the lack of freshwater was an unrelenting hindrance. Through the next 80 years, the landscape changed dramatically, with drought and uncontrolled overgrazing denuding much of the island. Strong trade winds blew away most of the topsoil, leaving behind red hardpan dirt.

From 1910 to 1918, the Territory of Hawaii designated Kahoʻolawe as a forest reserve in the hope of restoring the island through a revegetation and livestock removal program. This program failed, and leases again became available.

More information: Hawaii Magazine

In 1918, the rancher Angus MacPhee of Wyoming, with the help of the landowner Harry Baldwin of Maui, leased the island for 21 years, intending to build a cattle ranch there. By 1932, the ranching operation was enjoying moderate success. After heavy rains, native grasses and flowering plants would sprout, but droughts always returned.

In 1941, MacPhee subletted part of the island to the U.S. Army. Later that year, because of continuing drought, MacPhee removed his cattle from the island.

In 1993, the Hawaiian State Legislature established the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve, consisting of the entire island and its surrounding ocean waters in three km radius from the shore. By state law, Kahoʻolawe and its waters can be used only for Native Hawaiian cultural, spiritual, and subsistence purposes; fishing; environmental restoration; historic preservation; and education. All commercial uses are prohibited.

The legislature also created the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission to manage the reserve while it is held in trust for a future Native Hawaiian sovereign entity. The restoration of Kahoʻolawe will require a strategy to control erosion, re-establish vegetation, recharge the water table, and gradually replace alien plants with native species.

Plans will include methods for damming gullies and reducing rainwater runoff. In some areas, non-native plants will temporarily stabilize soils before planting of permanent native species. Species used for revegetation include ʻaʻaliʻi (Dodonaea viscosa), ʻāheahea (Chenopodium oahuense), kuluʻī (Nototrichium sandwicense), Achyranthes splendens, ʻūlei (Osteomeles anthyllidifolia), kāmanomano (Cenchrus agrimonioides var. agrimonioides), koaiʻa (Acacia koaia), and alaheʻe (Psydrax odorata).

In July 2015, a Business Plan for the Restoration of Hawaiian Bird Life and Native Ecosystems on Kahoolawe was proposed in partnership with KIRC, Island Conservation, DLNR, The Nature Conservancy, Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana, HDOA, American Bird Conservancy, and USFWS. The plan outlines the restoration of Kaho‘olawe Island through the removal of feral cats (Felis catus), rats (Rattus exulans) and mice (Mus musculus). The document investigates and addresses the biological, cultural, financial, and regulatory implications associated with the eradication.

More information: Hawaii Public Radio

They made us many promises,
more than I can remember,
but they never kept but one;
they promised to take our land,
and they took it.

Red Cloud

HAWAII, THE 50TH OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Yesterday, The Stones arrived to Hawaii. They are tired after almost 23 hours flying between Manchester and Honolulu. During the flight, The Grandma was reading about Hawaii, its culture and its history.

Hawaii is a state of the United States of America located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the only U.S. state located outside North America, the only island state, and the only state in the tropics.

The state encompasses nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, which consists of 137 volcanic islands spanning 2,400 km, which are physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. The state's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth longest in the U.S, at about 1,210 km.

The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and Hawaiʻi, after which the state is named; it is often called the Big Island or Hawaii Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago.

Of the 50 U.S. states, Hawaii is the eighth-smallest geographically and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated. It has more than 1.4 million residents, and is among the most diverse states in the country, with the nation's only Asian American demographic majority.

The state capital and largest city is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu. 

Settled by Polynesians some time between 124 and 1120 AD, Hawaii was an independent nation until 1898, when it was annexed by the United States. It became the most recent state to join the union, on August 21, 1959.

More information: State of Hawaii

Hawaii's diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches, oceanic surroundings, active volcanoes, and clear skies on the Big Island make it a popular destination for tourists, surfers, biologists, volcanologists, and astronomers. Due to its central location in the Pacific and successive waves of labor migration, Hawaii is a unique melting pot of Southeast Asian, East Asian and North American cultures, in addition to its indigenous Hawaiian culture.

The state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that it was named for Hawaiʻiloa, a legendary figure from Hawaiian myth. He is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled.

The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki, with the reconstructed meaning homeland. Cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori (Hawaiki), Rarotongan (ʻAvaiki) and Samoan (Savaiʻi). According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, elsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the ancestral home, but in Hawaii, the name has no meaning.

Hawaiʻi is one of two states that were widely recognized independent nations prior to joining the United States.

The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American and European capitalists and landholders.

Hawaiʻi was an independent republic from 1894 until August 12, 1898, when it officially became a territory of the United States. Hawaiʻi was admitted as a U.S. state on August 21, 1959.

Based on archaeological evidence, the earliest habitation of the Hawaiian Islands dates to around 300 CE, probably by Polynesian settlers from the Marquesas Islands. A second wave of migration from Raiatea and Bora Bora took place in the 11th century. The date of the human discovery and habitation of the Hawaiian Islands is the subject of academic debate.

Some archaeologists and historians think it was a later wave of immigrants from Tahiti around 1000 CE who introduced a new line of high chiefs, the kapu system, the practice of human sacrifice, and the building of heiau. This later immigration is detailed in Hawaiian mythology (moʻolelo) about Paʻao. Other authors say there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence for a later influx of Tahitian settlers and that Paʻao must be regarded as a myth.

The history of the islands is marked by a slow, steady growth in population and the size of the chiefdoms, which grew to encompass whole islands. Local chiefs, called aliʻi, ruled their settlements, and launched wars to extend their influence and defend their communities from predatory rivals. Ancient Hawaiʻi was a caste-based society, much like that of Hindus in India.

More information: Hawaii Tourism Authority

The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi. Cook named the archipelago the Sandwich Islands in honor of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, publishing the islands' location and rendering the native name as Owyhee. The form Owyhee or Owhyhee is preserved in the names of certain locations in the American part of the Pacific Northwest, among them Owyhee County and Owyhee Mountains in Idaho, named after three native Hawaiian members of a trapping party who went missing in the area.

During the 1780s, and 1790s, chiefs often fought for power. After a series of battles that ended in 1795, all inhabited islands were subjugated under a single ruler, who became known as King Kamehameha the Great. He established the House of Kamehameha, a dynasty that ruled the kingdom until 1872.

After Kamehameha II inherited the throne in 1819, American Protestant missionaries to Hawaiʻi converted many Hawaiians to Christianity. They used their influence to end many traditional practices of the people.

After William McKinley won the 1896 U.S. presidential election, advocates pressed to annex the Republic of Hawaiʻi. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a friend of Queen Liliʻuokalani. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three non-native annexationists: Lorrin A. Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaiʻi.

The U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. Despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians, the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the U.S.; it became the Territory of Hawaiʻi. The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House on June 15, 1898, by 209 votes in favor to 91 against, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21.

More information: Go Hawaii

Let the old men, the old women,
and the children go and sleep on the wayside;
let them not be molested.

King Kamehameha I