This is the first part of This is Our Hawaiʻi, a new podcast from Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
It's dawn at the Waipiʻo Valley lookout, and there's enough food to feed an army. Trays of eggs, rice and sausage are spread out on folding tables. There are stacks of canned goods and coolers of refreshments. And Sherry Pung is there, under two large tents.
“Cook breakfast, bring it to the table, and wait for whoever comes, and eat,” Pung said.
But Pung isn't here for a picnic. She's manning the kupuna checkpoint for the group Protect Waipiʻo Valley. For months, the tents she stands under have been a physical reminder of a community at its breaking point.
The checkpoint sits in front of the only entrance into the valley of Waipiʻo on Hawaiʻi Island. The area is considered sacred, home to taro fields and heiau. It's also a top tourist destination. Before the pandemic, thousands of visitors took the steep access road down into the valley.
That was until late February 2022, when Hawaiʻi Mayor Mitch Roth issued an emergency proclamation that closed the access road indefinitely. A geotechnical survey showed that rockfall from the cliff above the road was potentially dangerous. Only Waipiʻo residents, leaseholders and farmers would be allowed entrance.
What Roth couldn't have known was that his proclamation would trigger a deep rift among the people of the island.
Whose land is it anyway?
For decades, Waipiʻo residents have voiced concerns of over-use, not just of the road, but of the valley itself.
The closure came on the heels of the pandemic, which had already put a pause on the constant stream of visitors into the valley. Suddenly, the space felt like it belonged to residents again in a way it hadn't for decades.
Kū Kahakalau is the face of Protect Waipiʻo Valley. Her family farms taro in Waipiʻo, and they've been feeling the effects of overtourism for years. Kahakalau said tourists feel entitled to the land, especially after spending money on expensive plane tickets.
“Just because you bought a ticket to be here doesn't mean you have a right to go anywhere you want,” she said. “Ticket to every place in Hawaiʻi? You just bought a ticket to the airport.”
When COVID-19 restricted tourism in the valley, it felt as though those concerns were finally being addressed. Residents had space to breathe. Roth's emergency proclamation extended that sense of relief for some.
But other residents, ones who didn’t own land in the valley but would come to its mile-long black sand beach to surf, felt caught off guard.
Roland Shackelford was one of those residents. He said the 2022 closure left him “dumbfounded.”
“Some of my earliest memories of being a kid are being down in Waipiʻo,” he said. “I grew up with a twin brother, two older sisters and an older brother. And a lot of our life growing up was at the beach, learning how to surf, learning how to understand the ocean.”
Several Hawaiʻi Island community members formed the group Mālama i ke Kai ʻo Waipiʻo, or simply MaKa, with Shackelford as their president.
They sued Roth and the county in April 2022, arguing that the geotechnical survey was flawed and that the county had violated people's right to public shoreline access, as protected in the state constitution.
The division between Waipiʻo residents and other Big Island residents was one of Shackelford's main points of contention.
“What determines who is a farmer [and] who is a resident?” he asked.
That distinction remained murky at an official level. When HPR reached out to the county to see how they enforced their emergency proclamation, they stated in an email that they “relied on folks to use the honor system when going down. Additionally, both of our Parks information specialists at the lookout are both residents and farmers in the valley and have a keen understanding of who farms and lives within the valley.”
The county further clarified that there was “no list” of people with access to the valley; anyone with a Hawaiʻi driver's license was legally allowed to enter, as of September 2022.
Shackelford felt that the county's hands-off approach left community members to fend for themselves.
MaKa entered mediation with the mayor and amended the proclamation as it stands today: Hawaiʻi Island residents in 4-wheel drive vehicles can enter Waipiʻo Valley. In September 2022, Roth reopened the road.
“We felt it was a success,” Shackelford said. “It then got twisted into being a negative.”
Manning the checkpoint
To many who lived and worked in the valley, the lawsuit felt like a betrayal. Waipiʻo residents believed that their access to the road — and with it, their homes and livelihoods — should take priority. The road was barely able to handle residential traffic, they argued. Allowing anyone on the island to use it, on top of tour groups, would put a strain on the land. They wanted to let the valley rest.
“I feel the other side just thinks about what is beneficial for themselves. … That's American culture. That's an American mindset,” Kahakalau said.
To some Waipiʻo Valley residents, entering the valley could be morally wrong, even if it was legally right. People using the valley for recreation instead of letting the valley rest were putting their personal well-being ahead of the needs of the community and the land. In Kahakalau's eyes, that individualistic philosophy was an imported mindset — and fundamentally opposed to Hawaiian values.
“For us, we make our decisions based on what is pono for people, for ʻāina, and for Akua,” Kahakalau added.
The day the valley reopened to all Big Island residents, a group of Waipiʻo residents and their supporters began standing guard at a checkpoint 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, under the name Protect Waipiʻo Valley. The blockade continued for months.
There, members advised tourists that the valley was closed to visitors and asked their fellow community members to stay out — if they could help it.
They also had a petition people could sign to allow only residents and farmers to access the valley until the county addressed all safety concerns related to the road.
“As a wahi pana, Waipiʻo and its unique and irreplaceable resources and traditions need our protection and respect — not only for their historical significance but also for their human significance to modern kanaka,” the group said in a September 2022 press release. “Waipiʻo Valley road is one of these critical resources for all farming and residing in Waipiʻo and must be framed and protected as such.”
If the price is right
With so much attention on the dispute between Protect Waipiʻo Valley and MaKa, it can be easy to forget that there are more than two players in the valley.
Bishop Museum is the majority landowner in Waipiʻo Valley. They control almost 70% of the valley floor and lease land to taro farmers.
In 2016, Bishop Museum announced its intent to sell its land holdings there for close to $10 million. The sale was supposed to keep the museum solvent, but it left leasees and stakeholders scrambling. Three years later, Bishop took Waipiʻo off the market.
Still, the experience rocked residents and community members.
Bishop's attempt to sell was a reminder that everyone's claims to Waipiʻo — even those who have lived in the valley for generations, who farm there, who have a spiritual connection to the land — were vulnerable.
It's also easy to forget that locals are not the only ones who own property in the valley. Wealthy families from the mainland have also purchased land in Waipiʻo.
One such family is the Dagevilles. They run a billion-dollar data cloud company called Snowflake. In 2022, they bought a three-acre parcel at the back of the valley under the name Ballenita Trust.
The purchase was finalized one week after MaKa filed its lawsuit.
HPR reached out to the Dagevilles to ask what their plans were for their property in Waipiʻo. They did not respond to requests for comment.
For as long as community members have been having bitter conversations with each other about who belongs where, others have been able to buy an all-access pass to the land in Hawaiʻi — for the right price. People can file lawsuits or build blockades, but it seems as though true control often goes to whoever has the deepest pockets.
HPR asked Bishop Museum if it was considering selling its Waipiʻo Valley holdings in the future. Raymond Kong, vice president and general counsel for the museum, said he would do everything in his power to prevent that.
“There's more value, in my mind, for the valley [to be] part of the museum, and part of its collection, and part of its mission to educate and preserve, than to sell it to anyone else,” Kong said.
The end of the road
Two weeks after HPR visited Sherry Pung at the Protect Waipiʻo Valley tent, a Kona low system hit Hawaiʻi Island. The checkpoint was blown away. A line of parked cars quickly took its place.
“It was like we were never there,” Pung said.
Once the checkpoint was gone, Pung felt a surprising sense of relief. “To me, it was an uplifting moment,” she said. “Because everybody can go home and spend time with their ʻohana.” Pung said she looked forward to spending more time with her grandchildren.
The county continues to work on the access road. Last month, Hawaiʻi County’s Public Works Engineering Division said it had completed the rockfall mitigation work along the road, covering around 750 feet down the slope. This time, the road was closed to everyone, even residents, every weekday from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The county has now started on phase two to cover the next 1,300 feet of road.
The checkpoint was a different kind of landmark than one would typically see at a tourist destination — a physical invitation for residents and visitors alike to consider their relationship to the land. The checkpoint may have vanished, but the questions it raised still remain.
Like so many other places in Hawaiʻi, it's up to the individual to decide whether they belong in Waipiʻo Valley.
This Is Our Hawaiʻi is produced by Hawaiʻi Public Radio, a member of the NPR Podcast Network, with support from PRX and is made possible in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
This podcast is hosted by Russell Subiono and produced by Savannah Harriman-Pote, with assistance from HPR staff: Ananddev Banerjee, Taylor Nāhulukeaokalani Cozloff, Bill Dorman, Sylvia Flores, Casey Harlow, Sophia McCullough, Liberty Peralta, Krista Rados, Emily Tom and Jason Ubay.
Mahalo to PRX's Mike Russo for his continued support. Logo design by Kristin Lipman.
This Is Our Hawaiʻi was made possible with financial support from HPR members. Consider making a contribution today.
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