This is a sign posted outside the Foodland here in Laie. It asks the community members to "Please kokua"(kokua means help). This is a good example of the Three C's balancing one another. Here we see that the main goal is commerce (increasing profit by preserving the shopping carts). However, the business owners seem to recognize this is a team effort so they are appealing to the community members for help. In this appeal, they incorporate the Hawaiian word "kokua", thus preserving what culture they can.
This is yet another development here in the little town of Laie. Soon we will have a gas station, which will attract more cars and business, and we will be even more overcrowded. While this will create more jobs for the community members, it will also take away even more land and more tradition and culture.
Here we see a Filipino employee of the Polynesian Cultural Center. Many immigrant came over to work on the plantations here and one of the largest groups of laborers were from the Philippines. Today there are still many Filipino people all over the Hawaiian islands and they are helping to preserve Hawaiian culture. This employee is standing next to an Umu (underground oven). We see that it is not totally traditional. There are modern tools used to allow tourists to eat the cooked food inside this Umu. However, it is traditional enough to give us the general idea of the culture. I think the PCC does a good job of preserving culture while still keeping up with society.
I would like to draw attention to these two pictures in an effort to make a comparison. One thing I notice here in the community is that many of the local people, whose ancestors lie in this earth, use public transportation. However, it is the strangers who come and visit that drive around in fancy cars and seem to have little respect for the way things are here. In tourist communities, the big hotels and businesses really are prostituting the Hawaiian culture. The Hawaiian people are left with little space while visitors come with their money, have a good time, then go.
Ah, my little home community of Anthem, Arizona. Well, at least it used to be little. Actually, it used to be all desert. I was there before Anthem popped up out of nowhere. Some trucks came in and in less than 5 years hundreds of families moved in. We liked it because stores and things were closer to us... but many people were disturbed by this. They basically forced people to sell their homes if such homes got in the way of development.
