NI'IHAU & LEHUA, THE ROBINSON'S FORBIDDEN ISLAND

Today, The Stones and The Grandma are enjoying a wonderful day in Niʻihau, one of the Hawaiian Islands known as the forbidden island and inhabited by The Robinsons.

Niʻihau is the westernmost main and seventh-largest inhabited island in Hawaii.

It is 28.2 km southwest of Kauaʻi across the Kaulakahi Channel.

Its area is 180 km2. Several intermittent lakes provide wetland habitats for the Hawaiian coot, the Hawaiian stilt, and the Hawaiian duck.

The island is designated as critical habitat for Brighamia insignis, an endemic and endangered species of Hawaiian lobelioid.

The United States Census Bureau defines Niʻihau and the neighbouring island and State Seabird Sanctuary of Lehua as Census Tract 410 of Kauai County, Hawaii. Its 2010 census population was 170.

Elizabeth Sinclair purchased Niʻihau in 1864 for $10,000 from the Kingdom of Hawaii.

The island's private ownership passed on to her descendants, the Robinsons. During World War II, the island was the site of the Niʻihau Incident, in which, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese navy fighter pilot crashed on the island and received help from residents of Japanese descent.

The island, known as the Forbidden Isle, is off-limits to all outsiders except the Robinson family and their relatives, U.S. Navy personnel, government officials, and invited guests. From 1987 onwards, a limited number of supervised activity tours and hunting safaris have opened to tourists. The island is currently managed by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson. The people of Niʻihau are noted for their gemlike lei pūpū (shell lei) craftsmanship. They speak Hawaiian as a primary language.

More information: The Vintage News

Niʻihau is located about 29 km west of Kauaʻi, and the tiny, uninhabited island of Lehua lies 1.1 km north of Niʻihau.

Niʻihau's dimensions are 10 km × 30 km. The maximum elevation (Paniau) is 390 m. The island is about 6 million years old, making it geologically older than the 5.8-million-year-old neighbouring island of Kauaʻi to the northeast.

Niʻihau is the remnant of the southwestern slope of what was once a much larger volcano. The entire summit and other slopes collapsed into the ocean in a giant prehistoric landslide.

Elizabeth McHutchison Sinclair (1800–1892) purchased Niʻihau and parts of Kauaʻi from Kamehameha V in 1864 for $10,000 in gold. Sinclair chose Niʻihau over other options, including Waikīkī and Pearl Harbor.

By around 1875, Niʻihau's population consisted of about 350 Native Hawaiians, with 20,000 sheep. This era marked the end of the art of Hawaiian mat-weaving made famous by the people of Niʻihau.

Makaloa (Cyperus laevigatus), a native sedge, used to grow on the edges of Niʻihau's three intermittent lakes. The stems were harvested and used to weave moena makaloa (mats), considered the finest sleeping mats in Polynesia. The mats were valued by aliʻi and foreign visitors alike, but by the end of the 19th century, Hawaiians had stopped weaving makaloa due to changes in population, culture, economics, and the environment.

In 1915, Sinclair's grandson Aubrey Robinson closed the island to most visitors. Even relatives of the inhabitants could visit only by special permission. Upon Aubrey's death in 1939 the island passed to his son Aylmer, and in 1968 to Aylmer's youngest brother Lester. Upon Lester's wife Helen's death, the island passed to his sons Bruce Robinson and Keith Robinson, the current co-owners.

More information: Travel Awaits

Ku’ia kahele aka na’au ha’aha’a.

A Humble Person Walks Carefully So As Not To Hurt Others.

Hawaiian Proverb

After meeting The Robinsons, altogether have flown to Lehua Island a wonderful paradise north of Niʻihau and a Hawaii State Wildlife Sanctuary. Both families have watched some of the most beautiful endemic Hawaiian species and have learnt which projects are protecting the island nowadays.

Lehua Island is a small, crescent-shaped island in the Hawaiian islands, 1.1 km north of Niʻihau, due west of Kauai. The uninhabited, 1.13 km2 barren island is a tuff cone which is part of the extinct Niʻihau volcano.

Lehua was one of the first five islands sighted by Captain James Cook in 1778 which he spelled as Oreehoua.

Lehua Island is a Hawaii State Wildlife Sanctuary. As a restricted sanctuary, all activities are prohibited on the island without a permit. Public access to the island is restricted to areas below the high tide watermark.

Lehua provides habitat for at least 16 species of seabirds, as well as non-native Pacific rats. A population of European rabbits had lived on the island for many years, but were removed in 2005.

More information: Tourist Destination

When weather and wave conditions permit crossings from Kauai, Lehua is a noted destination for snorkelling and scuba diving. It is also well known for an unusual geological formation dubbed the keyhole. Located in one of the crescent's narrow arms, this is a tall, thin notch cut from one side, all the way through to the other side of the arm.

The United States Coast Guard maintains Lehua Rock Light (a lighthouse) on Kaunuakalā, at 215 m the highest point of the island.

Lehua is one of the largest and most diverse seabird colonies in the main Hawaiian Islands with 17 seabird species and 25 native plants (14 Hawai'i endemics, occurring nowhere else in the world) inhabiting the steep, rocky, windswept slopes of the tiny island.

Lehua is an important part of native Hawaiian culture -the Ni'ihau community gathers 'opihi (limpets) in adjacent marine waters and on the island are several important native Hawaiian cultural sites.

Invasive rats were foraging on native plants and seeds, which imperilled the entire ecosystem. These impacts contributed to erosion, which can in turn impair near-shore marine and coral ecosystems and fisheries. Native birds like the threatened Newell's Shearwater were likely being restricted from breeding on Lehua Island due to predation by rats. Smaller, open-nesting seabirds such as terns and noddies were conspicuously absent from Lehua save small numbers found in sea caves, also a suspected artefact of rat predation. Invasive rats ravage other threatened birds.

Therefore, in August 2017, the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) with project implementation partner Island Conservation implemented an aerial application of bait with supplemental hand application to eradicate non-native invasive rats. Signs of seabird revival were found post-eradication.  The official Final Monitoring Report Issued on Lehua Restoration Project found no rodenticide in environmental samples and minimal impact to species other than rats.

More information: Hawaii Magazine

Kuhi no ka lima, hele no ka maka.

Where the hands move, there let the eyes follow.

Hawaiian Proverb

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