Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [389]
Great-great-grandsons Keith and Bruce Robinson are highly protective of Ni’ihau’s isolation and its people. The family owns a significant amount of Kaua’i land and a sugar company.
Keith and Bruce Robinson are unpretentious outdoorsmen. Both are fluent in Native Hawaiian, just like any NI’ihau resident. Bruce Robinson is married to a Ni’ihauan woman.
Thanks to its isolation since the purchase and the quarantine during the 1950s outbreak of polio, the island has been able to divert many diseases from its shores, including AIDS. To this day, residents’ medical care needs are met either by the Robinsons’ insurance or the Department of Social Services.
POPULATION & LIFESTYLE
Ni’ihau’s population is mostly Native Hawaiian. The island’s population has dropped from 600 in the 1980s to 160 in 2007 (the latest available data). Most residents live in Pu’uwai (‘heart’), a settlement on the dry western coast. It’s a simple life; water is collected in catchments, and the toilets are in outhouses. Residents hardly live ‘without,’ however. Though all residents are ‘off the grid,’ most have found ingenious ways to harness power, and several utilize hydro or wind sourcing, often backed-up by gasoline generators. Cell-phone signals reach some of the island, which also relies on a radio communication system.
Ni’ihau has a schoolhouse where teachers host classes from kindergarten through 12th grade. Courses are taught in Hawaiian until fourth grade. Students learn English as a second language.
Ni’ihau business and Sunday church services are conducted in Hawaiian. Throughout the islands, the Hawaiian language spoken by Ni’ihauans is known as the purest remaining form, differing at times from the evolving language that has come out of University of Hawaii-Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language, which has developed words to define modern terms. Some people have critiqued the new UH-Hilo terms as sounding too similar to Western languages. An example is the word kamepiula for computer; in an attempt to stay truer to non-Westernized Hawaiian language, critics opt for using the two older Hawaiian words lolo uila, which literally means ‘electrical mind.’
GEOGRAPHY & ENVIRONMENT
A mere 17 miles from Kaua’i, Ni’ihau is the smallest of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands: 18 miles long and 6 miles at the widest point, with a total land area of almost 70 sq miles and 45 miles of coast. Ni’ihau rainfall averages a scant 12in annually because the island is in Kaua’i’s rain shadow. Its highest peak, Paniau, is only 1250ft tall and cannot generate trade wind–based precipitation.
Unique to the island are its shells: warm-hued and delicate sea jewels from the island are strung into exquisite and coveted lei costing from $125 to $25,000. In late 2004, Governor Linda Lingle signed a bill mandating that only items made of 100% Ni’ihau shells and crafted entirely in Hawaii can carry the Ni’ihau label. Residents of Ni’ihau make exquisite lei for sale at the Ni’ihau Helicopters office, which they use for bartering trips to and from Kaua’i.
Almost 50 endangered monk seals live on Ni’ihau, monitored by Bruce Robinson. Unfortunately, the draw of the pristine has threatened Ni’ihau. Its waters have suffered depletion by sport and commercial fishers who sail in to fish and pick ‘opihi (edible limpet) from the island’s shorebreaks. The outside world also has threatened Ni’ihau fisherman and residents, who couldn’t eat fish between January and March of 2009, after a dead baby humpback whale and thousands of fish were found washed up on a Ni‘ihau shore. Though officials conducted necropsies, and despite speculation that