Corporate vs. Indigenous Motives

Dear Editor, Regarding the La`au point dispute there’s a lot of debate, information, misinformation, speculation, guessing, theorizing, argument, and probably some downright lies.  It’s exhausting and confusing.  As an experiment I tried a different approach.  I tried looking at it in its most fundamental form, free of all details.  I asked myself, in whose hands would I like to see Molokai’s future shaped.  Would I like to see the destiny of this island decided by a group of people who are motivated by the quest for profit and who view the island as a resource to be exploited? Or, on the other hand, would I like to see it formed by those who wish to preserve its sacred and special nature, by people who regard it as a gift to be respected? 

In order to shed light on the answer to this question I looked in on the success rate of the two types of approaches to land management.  I noticed that all across the globe and throughout history, native indigenous cultures have survived on their given parts of the planet. For countless generations they’ve developed methods of stewardship based on the belief that humans inherit a give-and-take relationship and a spiritual commitment to the land and sea.  On the other hand, I see that colonial empires have, in the past five hundred years, fanned out across the globe using corporations & commercial schemes to take resources from others, to misuse those resources, and, in the process, bring the entire planet to its knees.  Native people preserve, corporations destroy. So, what am I gonna choose? Kevin “KB” Brown