Press Release, 02/08/2012

OHA awards Garden grant to build hale
Three NTBG sites and three Hawaiian communities to be involved

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kalāheo, Kaua`i, HI USA (Feb. 8, 2012) - The National Tropical Botanical Garden has announced it will be the recipient of a $97,513 grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) to involve three Hawaiian communities - in west Kaua`i, north Kaua`i, and east Maui - in the building of traditional hale, creating three sites for interpreting Hawaiian culture and history. The project, entitled 'Three Traditional Hale for Three Hawaiian communities', aims to encourage in these communities a strong connection with their native culture, and the places, people, resources, and history of their ancestors.

At NTBG's McBryde Garden, in the Lāwa`i Valley on Kaua‘i, members of the West Kaua`i Hawaiian community, with McBryde Garden staff members from Ni`ihau, as well as with students from various Kaua`i and Ni`ihau schools, will construct a hālau wa `a. At its Limahuli Garden in Hā`ena, Kaua`i, Hawaiian community members and students will erect a hale noa, a multipurpose structure for educational and cultural gatherings. The third component of the project will involve members and students from the Hawaiian community in Hāna, and students in the local Ma ka Hana ka `Ike (knowledge exists through work) program, to build a hālau wa `a at NTBG's Kahanu Garden on Maui.

The finished hale will also become educational tools to teach Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians, particularly schoolchildren, of the history, significance and import of this deeply spiritual culture so intensely rooted in the `āina.

"We are quite excited to receive this grant award from OHA and would like to thank its Board of Trustees for approving funding of this project, which will mean so much not only to us but to these Hawaiian communities," commented Chipper Wichman, the institution’s director and CEO. "NTBG has been working with the Hawaiian community for close to four decades. Research and education in the cultural uses of plants (ethnobotany) has been part of our mission and activities almost from the time we broke ground for our first site back in 1970." Collections of canoe plants’, species brought to the Islands by ancient Polynesians in their voyaging canoes, are at each of the three named gardens, and are used in teaching programs that offer students hands-on experiences in traditional use, and as a resource for indigenous practitioners. In fact, these plant collections facilitated a revival of the art of kapa making on Kaua‘i in the 1990s, as at that time practitioners could not find wauke (the paper mulberry plant) anywhere else on the island.

National Tropical Botanical Garden is a not-for-profit, non-governmental institution with nearly 2,000 acres of gardens and preserves in Hawai‘i and Florida. Its mission is to enrich life through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education by perpetuating the survival of plants, ecosystems, and cultural knowledge of tropical regions. NTBG is supported primarily through donations and grants.

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Media contact: Janet L. Leopold, administration@ntbg.org
, (808) 332-7324, ext. 213 at NTBG Headquarters

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