Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides

by Mehana Blaich Vaughan

The tide is rising ahead of the early morning sun on the northeast coast of the Hawaiian island of Kaua‘i. Waves rush singing onto the outer reef where two throw net fishermen stalk the surge. An elderly woman with her silver hair in a kerchief makes her way toward shore, two octopuses tucked in her mesh bag. Within hours, two hundred tourists will snorkel, sunbathe, and teeter on the coral, few ever knowing that people fish here or that their catch sustains an entire kaiāulu (community) connected to this stretch of reef.

This coast is known as a playground for tourists and backdrop for Hollywood movies, but catch from small local reefs, and the sharing of this abundance, has sustained area families for centuries, helping them to thrive through tidal waves, hurricanes, an influx of new residents, and economic recessions. Yet fishing families are increasingly invisible and many have moved away, threatened by global commodification and loss of access to coastal lands that are now private retreats for star entertainers, investors, and dot-com millionaires.

Building on two decades of interviews with more than sixty Hawaiian elders, leaders, and fishermen and women, Kaiāulu shares their stories of enduring community efforts to perpetuate kuleana, often translated to mean “rights and responsibilities.” Community actions extend kuleana to include nurturing respectful relationships with resources, guarding and cultivating fishing spots, perpetuating collective harvests and sharing, maintaining connection to family lands, reasserting local governance rooted in ancestral values, and preparing future generations to carry on.

An important contribution to scholarship in the fields of natural resource management, geography, Indigenous Studies, and Hawaiian Studies, Kaiāulu is also a skillfully written and deeply personal tribute to a community based not on ownership, but reciprocity, responsibility, and caring for the places that shape and sustain us all.

Genres: Indigenous, Environment, Anthropology, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[kaelan · Rating 3 out of 5]

First things first, I'd like to take a moment to explain my rating, since it more reflects my expectations regarding this book than it does the book itself.

Kaiāulu (meaning "community, neighborhood, village" in the Hawaiian language) is the result of two decades of interviews with more than sixty elders, leaders and fishers in and around the north shore of Kaua'i. This is what drew me to the book. But while Mehana Blaich Vaughan periodically turns the spotlight on the interviewees themselves—largely in the form of brief epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter—the majority of the work is dedicated to paraphrase, summary and recommendation.

As a practical tool, especially for those working in the fields of Indigenous governance and devolution, Kaiāulu offers a fantastic resource. Blaich Vaughan is an eloquent, effective and nuanced writer, and her analysis of the perils and pitfalls of regulatory lawmaking will prove invaluable both within and beyond the Hawaiian context. Part of me still wishes, however, that I could access the source interviews directly, and hear the interviewees speak in their own voices.

Still recommended for anyone visiting the Hawaiian islands and Kaua'i in particular. But please be warned that, while Blaich Vaughan is nothing less than fair and balanced in her treatment of environmental and cultural degradation, tourists don't exactly come off in the best light. For this reader, at least, perusing Kaiāulu during a weeklong tropical sojourn, I could certainly feel the tint leaching out of my rose-coloured glasses.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mehana Blaich Vaughan has captured the powerful mo’olelo (story) of a fishing community in Kaua’i, Hawai’i and how they have worked to sustain local governance and care for the land and coast among encroaching development, rising land costs, and lingering environmental threats. Defining kailaulu (community) through the kuleana (rights and responsibilities) to the land, Blaich Vaughan draws lessons from the stories and culture of the ‘ohana (families) that have lived and cared for this particular place for centuries. The power of this book is how she has made the context and story of a small local community both unique and universal.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to do this book justice so I took a few weeks (which stretched into months and then two semesters) of sitting with it to write a review. As an entering grad student at UH in Urban Planning, this book felt like the perfect introduction to land use issues in Hawaiʻi. In fact, this book was actually one of the main reasons I chose to commit to UH over other schools I'd been accepted to. I knew I wanted to learn how to do community-led work that builds community capacity and capabilities a la Sen, so to know that there were professors doing research that is so explicitly decolonizing and empowering communities made UH an easy choice. This book was especially valuable for me coming into a new space like Hawaiʻi, as I was exposed to Hawaiian values in Hawaiian terms through a Hawaiian lens. This was my first introduction to concepts like kuleana, a responsibility to care for the land, and the ahupuaʻa land management system. These ideas have helped me to better navigate my time in Mānoa and to understand ways that I can give back to the community that's fostering me during my studies.

Kaiāulu is an especially poignant example of community-led management of natural resources and is a model that deserves careful study for any community. It was frustrating, however, to learn of the ways Hawaiian efforts to preserve land and fish pools are thwarted by US law. It’s ruled as discriminatory to have one set of laws for locals and another for tourists, which means locals have to overly restrict access to certain sites just to protect them from foreigners. The only problem with this is it denies locals the very livelihood they derive from those waters. As with so many other problems facing Hawaiʻi, an obvious solution is Hawaiian sovereignty. While there is certainly promise in such a movement, and I think we should be building it up in whatever ways we can, we should also work out solutions that address the present realities. I think Kaiāulu does a good job of highlighting these tensions and illustrating the multi-faceted approaches being undertaken today.

This was one of my favorite reads of the year and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Hawaiʻi, resource management, or community empowerment.

[Wendy Feltham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaiaulu is a special book about the history of Kaua'i's families, mostly the families who traditionally fished and shared their catch with their communities. Mehana Blaich Vaughan draws on her own life as a Native Hawaiian woman in a loving extended family who became a professor. She spent years interviewing over 60 Hawaiian people about their connection to the land and the fishing areas. She explains clearly how and why these beautiful lands have become exorbitantly expensive as tourists, able to pay the prohibitive taxes, have bought them. I began reading this book as a tourist on Kaua'i, and I encourage other tourists to read it to understand the reality and the complexity behind the guidebooks and websites promoting tourism.