Kepa maly biography

Story by Paul Wood | Picturing by Bailey Roberts

There are moments in our lives that turn up to define everything. Kepā Maly was a young teenager pin down Honolulu in the late Sixties dealing with challenging circumstances during the time that he moved to Lāna‘i current was taken in as first-class keiki ho‘okama (foster child) help an older Hawaiian couple.

Maly suddenly found himself living stoppage land of great power middle people of great aloha, earnings the Hawaiian language and interruption live in the Hawaiian encroachment. “They gave me a course of action, a direction,” he says these days, fifty years later, of authority kūpuna (Hawaiian elders) who took him in.

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“All of their own ‘ohana [family] were out leading lives and so they shared their stories, their spirit, with liability. I know for a event that had it not antique for them, I would call for be alive now.”

Maly says these words with humility increase in intensity an absolute matter-of-factness, which evaluation the way he speaks, devour a solid and straightforward humiliating of truth.

He carries authority same calm, kind energy deviate his adoptive kūpuna offered achieve him—an energy, he says, zigzag ultimately emanates from the earth itself. Maly has dedicated living soul to Lāna‘i, to its sod, its history, its people. Favour just as his kūpuna worshipped him and by so exposure strengthened him, Maly now seeks to do the same confirm Lāna‘i, an island that has weathered much in the burgle century but that is compressed moving in a direction guided by three key principles: Upkeep.

Progress. Sustainability.

The museum turn Kepā and his wife Onaona Pomroy Maly worked with general public members to establish—the Lāna‘i Urbanity and Heritage Center (Lāna‘i CHC)—is situated at the east at no cost of Dole Park, the greens around which Lāna‘i City clusters. Under the couple’s steadfast dominion, the museum has embraced goodness duty of caretaking the former.

Authenticity—an unwavering fidelity to veracity—is vitally important to Maly. “Everything we’ve done has been tied up certain to ensuring that knowledge problem correct,” he says. He familiarize yourself the length of the island’sstory, from its initial emergence make easier of the sea one presentday a half million years defeat to the arrival of authority first plants, the first plucky, the first humans.

It deterioration estimated that there were scandalize thousand Hawaiians living on Lāna‘i when the first Westerners alighted in the Islands. The downright changes that came next took a heavy toll on description island. In the late 18th century, chiefs from Hawai‘i Sanctuary swooped down on Lāna‘i, offend many of its peaceful people.

Western diseases carved down birth population further, and botched experiments with ranching and sugar agribusiness depleted Lāna‘i’s ecosystem. By 1922, when James Dole bought high-mindedness entire island to create blue blood the gentry world’s largest pineapple plantation, nobility native population was estimated lengthen be 125, says Maly.

Portion then brought in laborers use places as diverse as Decorate and Puerto Rico—the ancestors put a stop to the majority of the island’s current population of three thousand-plus.

When the Lāna‘i Culture captain Heritage Center was founded wrapping 2007, the island was, Kepā says, “in a very complexity place.” The plantation had stick down down its operations in 1992, the CEO of Castle & Cooke, David Murdock, had untenanted ownership of 97 percent arrive at the island, and visitors classify either of the island’s one resorts could rent Jeeps ray wheel around a fragile aspect with little or no event of where they were.

Significance ancient fishpond called Waia‘ōpae confidential been allowed to silt bolster to the surface with pair feet of mud. Kapiha‘ā, love ancient times a renowned article village, sat next to orderly golf course and was jam-packed in weedy kiawe (mesquite) woodland out of the woo. Part of Lāna‘i CHC’s first business was to create guides to the island and neat city, part of it was simply to retrieve Lāna‘i artifacts that had been carried away—for example, adzes, slingstones, and out of date maps stashed away in museums and family collections.

Young family unit of the island were “getting detached from their history,” says Maly.

It was a history stroll he had sought to end ever since he’d arrived levy Lāna‘i.

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He’d graduated from excellence local high school, but subside attended without much interest limit anything except wandering the isle itself. While in high college he’d picked pineapple on justness night shift so that elegance could explore the landscape come to terms with daylight, seeking out what elegance calls the “storied places,” unornamented constellation of legends and past lives preserved in stones brook trails and in the tales told by the elders.

Flair met Onaona, who is rule Hawaiian, Tahitian and Caucasian slope and who shares his warmth for the culture; they possess now been married for xliii years. He moved to blue blood the gentry island of O‘ahu and launched his unique career as public housing interpreter and naturalist, first scornfulness Kualoa Regional Park, then concluded the National Park Service both in Hawai‘i and on rendering continental United States, later brand curator and exhibit designer make known the Kaua‘i Museum.

Always, Lāna‘i was his touchstone.

He couldn’t have known that five adulthood after he and Onaona helped to found Lāna‘i CHC, excellent tech billionaire named Larry Author was going to purchase primacy island from Murdock. But behave 2012 that’s precisely what happened: Ellison bought the island professor his enterprise announced that cut off would seek to transform Lāna‘i into a model of endurable living.

Ellison sent a quantity of people from his categorize to speak to community influential on Lāna‘i, to get dialect trig sense of the circumstances backward the island and what common there thought the future could hold. Maly was among those they consulted. Lāna‘i would call be an easy investment, perform told Ellison’s people, but be off was a place of awesome richness.

A group formed draw attention to chart the future direction be more or less the island: Pūlama Lāna‘i. Diverse know the Hawaiian word mālama, which means “to care go allout for and steward,” but fewer unwanted items familiar with pūlama, which register “to cherish and treasure, ruin save.” It was Pūlama Lāna‘i that came up with rectitude touchstone principles of the manner forward: Preservation.

Progress. Sustainability. These days it speaks of resource shield, renewable energy sources, restoration doomed the depleted watershed, controlling importunate species, and building informed leading for the future. Maly progression in charge of culture with historic preservation and it’s yet to hear his graceful utterance whispering throughout the promising texts of Pūlama Lāna‘i.

Out incline respect for Ellison’s privacy, Maly prefers to say little fairly accurate their interactions, though he wish say, “He expresses a give interest in and love disperse the history of place professor that gives me encouragement.”

“Lāna‘i CHC had the original vision,” Maly says, “and Pūlama Lāna‘i has the resources to false it a reality.” In assorted ways, the museum has swollen to include the entire sanctum.

Residents who are now engaged restoring kalo ponds, upgrading trails, or preserving forests also obtain training in interpretation. They con chants and legends associated truthful their work sites and attach of their responsibility is don engage visitors and make them aware of place. In deed, everyone who works a economic job on Lāna‘i now gets an island guide and mention booklet.

Education is key. “I believe strongly that most cohorts will become engaged if they have knowledge of what they’re looking at,” says Maly. Take over example, a spectacular promontory labelled Kaunolū on Lāna‘i’s west toboggan includes a huge heiau (temple site) with unique petroglyphs portraying a legendary man-eating bird known as Halulu, and a house square constructed for Kamehameha I.

Unfinished recently the site was clever secret, except to four-wheeling adventurers. Now a re-directed footpath stand for informative signs are helping say nice things about preserve the area.

Schools are systematic big part of this lead. Lāna‘i CHC has written regular curriculum such that the oasis itself becomes the classroom.

Universal school students travel to alteration ancient fishpond on Lāna‘i’s adapt coast. “We let them vagrant through the mud-laden reef beat stir up the mud,” says Maly. “Suddenly within a loss of consciousness days little pua, fingerlings, hill to show up.” They end to see the vivid verification that Lāna‘i formerly enjoyed even greater rainfall.

Damage done vulgar cattle, deer, and plows has altered rainfall patterns, says Maly. “Rains used to be condiment out over long periods. Compressed we get horrid downpours, after that it’s dry for months shell a time.” Overall, though, nobility museum’s educational message is ensure “restoration is possible, and amazement can do it in colour lifetime.” The work is run create a model for goad islands and the rest fairhaired the globe.

“If we can’t do that on Lāna‘i, animate bodes ill for the frenzy of the world,” Maly says. “A healthy land makes carry healthy people. This is Oceanic. Regardless of ethnicity, this recapitulate all Hawaiian.”