Rebuilding a Hawaiian Kingdom

Go Ahead Bumpy!

By Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer

WAIMANALO, Hawaii — From Honolulu, it takes an hour to drive here, heading north over dagger-like mountains and then east through rolling farm country to the outermost corner of the island known by some as the Hawaiians' Hawaii. Tour buses circling the island don't stop here except to gas up. Those who step off the bus won't find hula dancers greeting them with leis, or five-star hotels, or even two-star ones. They'll find a sleepy, rough-edged, working-class town of 10,000 people, some of whom don't like tourists and don't mind saying so. "Haole, go home!" and variations of whites-aren't-welcome are occasionally shouted from front porches as a reminder that this isn't Waikiki. It's a different world. Locals rule here. Half the residents are native Hawaiians, and many more are part Hawaiian. This is a place where Hawaiian is taught as a first language in some schools and spoken among neighbors, a place where it is widely held that Hawaii was stolen by the United States and that someday these lands will return to the Kanaka Maoli, the ancient Polynesians who settled the islands.

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