ON HAWAII'S NIIHAU, PRESENT-DAY LIFE IS A RELIC OF THE PAST (2024)

For more than 120 years, offshore has been about as close as most people can get to Niihau, also known as the "Forbidden Island." But soon that may change.

Only natives are allowed to live on this tiny, arid outpost of the Hawaiian Islands, about 150 miles from Honolulu. Access to Niihau is tightly restricted by its owners, brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson, whose ancestor paid a Hawaiian king $10,000 for it in 1864.

Since then, the Robinsons, who themselves live on the island of Kauai, 17 miles away, have isolated Niihau. While Maui has malls and Oahu has 23 Burger Kings, Niihau is without electricity, plumbing or phones. Niihau is the only place left in the world where the predominant language is Hawaiian.

About 250 natives live on the 73-square-mile island, most working on the Robinsons' cattle and sheep ranch. Guns, alcohol and cigarettes are forbidden. There is no doctor, no jail, no paved roads. Once a week, a World War II barge brings supplies. Disputes are settled by community leaders, including the head of the island's Congregational church. On Niihau, hula dances are performed for pleasure, not tourists.

But tourists may soon descend on the island, a prospect that is a source of some controversy among Hawaiians. Bruce Robinson, who runs the Niihau ranch, is seeking a permit to allow helicopter landings on Niihau. The permit is necessary because of zoning regulations. Robinson's plan is to take tourists from Kauai to Niihau by helicopter; he has said he will also use the craft for Niihau's medical emergencies. He has said further that he will land on remote parts of the island and won't let tourists mingle with natives.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency created to further native interests, protested the proposed tours, saying they would disrupt the very way of life the Robinsons have fought to protect. After the Robinsons agreed to certain restrictions, the agency withdrew formal opposition but will monitor the situation for one year if the permit is granted.

"What are they selling? A look at barren land, rocks and kiawe trees?" asks Moses Kapalekilahoa Keale Sr., the chairman of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Keale, who was born on Niihau but no longer lives there, adds: "Pretty soon, those tourists are going to say, 'Where are these people who speak Hawaiian? I want to see them.' It's like seeing animals in the zoo."

Hearings on the matter are currently being held before the Kauai County Planning Commission. Outside those hearings, the Robinsons don't say much about Niihau. Bruce Robinson declined to be interviewed for this article; Keith Robinson is willing to talk, at length -- but only about the fact that he is now personally clearing 50 to 100 acres on Kauai with a chain saw to create a preserve for endangered plants.

According to those who know them or see them regularly, the Robinsons live simply. They are land-rich, but their fortunes are tied to the hard-pressed sugar and ranching businesses. Unlike most residents of the state, the Robinsons speak fluent Hawaiian.

If Bruce Robinson's tourist plan comes to fruition, it will represent one of the rare disruptions of the island's status quo in recent years. "We have chosen not to change for generations," says Ilei Beniamina, who grew up there. "I'm proud of what Niihau stands for. That's more than I can say about anywhere else in the state."

Indeed, Niihau is a "model community," says Kauai County's deputy police chief, who can't recall any reported crime on the island. "We tell officers who aren't doing well that Niihau will be their new beat." (The police don't patrol Niihau, unless the Robinsons request them to do so.)

Some, however, find the paternalism dated. "Those people are indentured servants," says Mililani Trask, an attorney for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. "It's something from a different era."

No one, including government officials or residents' relatives, is allowed to visit Niihau without the Robinsons' permission. The island has had a few uninvited visitors, however. The day Pearl Harbor was bombed, a Japanese pilot accidentally landed on Niihau. The natives, who had no means of communication with the outside world, didn't know about the bombing and gave him food and shelter. In a scuffle, the pilot shot Niihau resident Benehakaka Kanahele three times. Kanahele, understandably perturbed, picked up the pilot by his neck and leg and smashed him into a stone wall, killing him. For this, he received the Congressional Medal of Merit and the Purple Heart.

For those outsiders seeking invitations to Niihau, patience is a requisite. Jan TenBruggencate, correspondent for the Honolulu Advertiser on Kauai, was allowed to cover a visit to Niihau by Hawaii's former governor at the end of 1985. TenBruggencate had been requesting permission for 14 years.

A history of Niihau, written by a Robinson relative, says that Elizabeth Sinclair, the Scottish ancestor of the Robinsons who purchased the island, "always told her family that she wanted Niihau to be kept in the true Hawaiian way of life." The book says the late Aylmer Robinson, the Harvard-educated uncle of the current owners, often said if "visitors were allowed, many would exploit and spoil the island's way of life."

One who knows a good bit about that way of life is the Office of Hawaiian Affairs' Keale, whose father was a lifelong, well-treated employe of the Robinsons. When Keale's father was ill, he recalls, the Robinson family "gave us 120 pounds of poi {an edible paste based on taro root} a week and all the milk we could drink. My father always said, 'Mr. Robinson is right. You don't challenge him.' "

The younger Keale worked 10 years on the Robinson sugar-cane plantation, doing well, he says, until he began attending union-organization meetings. When the now-deceased father of the present owners told him to stop, Keale refused. He was fired on the spot.

"It was the best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "I would never have left voluntarily. You live in a shell on the plantation. You don't want to venture out." He believes, however, that the island's residents are "very content." He adds: "They are there by choice. You resign yourself to it, like a sharecropper in the South."

Some of the Robinsons' paternalistic ways are supported by public funds. As of last October, 176 Niihau residents were receiving some sort of government aid, according to Kauai's public welfare office.

Shirley Akita, Kauai school-district superintendent, is working to improve Niihau's school, which has about 30 students. Until recently, the school only went to the eighth grade and was taught mainly from the Bible, because of a lack of textbooks. Children are still taught in Hawaiian until the third grade.

"We asked Mr. Robinson if we could have a meeting with the parents," Akita says, noting that he has been "fairly receptive" to the district's ideas. "He has a great sense of responsibility to his people. He's the leader, the owner, the overseer. Unless I work with him, I'm not going to achieve my goals."

Some Niihau parents send their children to school on Kauai, where they live with friends or relatives for the term. A group of Niihau youngsters on Kauai expressed hopes to visit Disneyland and Hollywood, but all said they want to live on Niihau. One 11-year-old had been to Honolulu but wasn't impressed. "Too many cars and too much noise," she said.

They noted other differences. On Kauai, said one, "the water is in pipes." They raved about Kauai's video-game parlors, its movies and its stores. At home, they fish, swim and hunt wild pigs for fun. On Niihau, their fare consists mainly of fresh fish, rice and the island's abundant lobster. "I like Hawaiian food, not the haole {Caucasian} food," said an 8-year-old.

Besides the traditional Hawaiian songs Niihau children sing with their families, they like the music of Madonna and Run DMC. While the girls say they prefer hula dancing, the boys favor breakdancing.

Ilei Beniamina, formerly of Niihau, says the Robinsons are sincere about preserving Niihau. "It's a money-losing venture, but they feel an obligation to the people. Sometimes I wonder what type of hold that island has on that family."

The Robinsons paid for Beniamina's education at the University of Hawaii, and today she is a counselor and lecturer at Kauai Community College. Her mother, the first person from Niihau to attend college (also at the Robinsons' expense), is now one of the island's two certified teachers.

"Mom went home because she feels it's closer to God," says Beniamina, who plans to eventually return, too. In a world filled with change, Niihau is an island of stability. "On Niihau," she says, "the rocks are in about the same place they were when I was a child."