Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 11/28/07 Section: Mixed Plate

Media Credit: Courtesy of www.gohawaii.com Moloka‘i is referred to as "the island that time forgot."

The 260-square-mile island of Moloka‘i, with a population of 8,000 and no McDonald's or traffic lights, might have some questioning what kind of news could possibly be happening there.

The answer is a lot more than one would expect.

The Moloka‘i Dispatch, one of two newspapers servicing the island, covers everything from the political protests to cultural events. A visit from three University of Hawai‘i alumni residing on Moloka‘i provided UH Mānoa students with insights on the island that Dispatch owner and Editor-In-Chief Todd Yamashita described as "the island that time forgot."

"On Moloka‘i, you know everybody," Yamashita said. "When you go shopping and you see the guys in the store, you know who pretty much everybody is." Newcomers to the island are treated differently because locals automatically know they haven't seen the unfamiliar face before, he said.

Yamashita, a UH alumnus who received a bachelor's degree in sculpture in 1993, explained that a lot of people think the island is backward.

"Actually, the people fight to keep it that way," said Moloka‘i resident Noelani Lee. Lee graduated from Princeton University in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology and from UH in 2003 with a master's degree in Pacific islands studies. She currently works for a non-profit organization aimed at developing a sustainability model for Moloka‘i.

"It's actually the leader in a lot of world trends now, like environmentalism, sustainability, fishing," Lee said. "Some places are trying to go back to that, where they can live off the land."

Many large-scale developments that were proposed on Moloka‘i were shut down because of protest, Yamashita said. Moloka‘i residents also played a key role in stopping the U.S. Navy's bombing on Kaho‘olawe.

The activism on Moloka‘i today can be traced to island's historical legacy, Lee said.

Moloka‘i was known as pulio‘o ("the place of powerful prayer") or momona ‘aina ("the fat land") in Hawaiian because it was never ruled by an outsider, she said. Residents try to keep it that way by having rule come from the residents themselves.

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