Our community begins where the rain-filled clouds over ever-green hills retreat at the sea of jagged black rocks, where under the grey sky only the mighty ʻōhiʻa lehua, immovable ʻaʻaliʻi, and tenacious ʻuhaloa dare to grow. 

We are where miles of black top loneliness lead through a desert larger than neighboring islands with a population smaller than major city blocks. We are off-grid and off-radar, solemn and seemingly forgotten. We are where those seeking escape are found and those seeking existence escape from. 

We are a land forged from the fires of Maunaloa, the largest active volcano on Earth, a beacon that brought the first wayfarers to our rocky shores – the first Native Hawaiians. Life has always been difficult here and those who remained, earned renown for their resilience – they were given epithets spanning ages: Kaʻū mākaha – Kaʻū of the fierce fighters; Kaʻū malo ʻeka, kua wehi – Kaʻū of the dirty loincloth and black back.   

Perhaps it was our own grit that made us an appropriate heir to the expertise of the vaqueros and under their guidance, our paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) culture was born when beef was big in the 1880s. Rodeos are still big around these parts and many of our families still cling to their cowboy ways.  

The turn of the 20th Century brought western settler colonialism and gifted the fierce fighters economic hardship. As the black backs sought shade and opportunity in the urban core, there were none left to tend to the māla. The farms that once fed communities went fallow – the land slept as our ancestors wept for their departing children. 

There were the land-grabs of the 1980s, where devious developers capitalized off of fledgling land laws and fleeing families, converting tens of thousands of acres of lava desert into sprawling subdivision grids marketed to unsuspecting foreigners as their chance to buy a piece of paradise. 

Many tried to carve a life from this sharp and unforgiving stone, but most never make it. Some have no choice. Those of us with deep enough roots are lucky enough to hold on much stronger than the rest. But, there’s only so much we can hold and for those of us who have forgotten why are our roots run so deep, we don’t seem to possess the will to hold on for much longer. 

Today, Native Hawaiian descendants of the first people to set foot in these islands share this land with non-Native settlers. We’re an eclectic mix of people, the impoverished living next door to short-term vacation rentals serving as income-generating assets to millionaires. Like the countless flows of lava that made our community, our identity flows in rivers of fire; some are lost to the sea, while others fortify the land, creating more. 

This is Hawaiian history passing right before us – how Native Hawaiian identity was lost to the sea. However, we can (and should) learn from the past and we have the means to alter the course of this repeated history. We need to stop the pattern of forced Native Hawaiian outmigration, which leaves our ancestral lands void of our presence – our absence leaves our sacred sites and natural-cultural resources unprotected and vulnerable to desecration and destruction. To keep us here, in our homeland, we need the space to grow and more importantly, we need to remember why this place was so special to begin with.