Everything Wrong with "Don't Come to Hawaii" Social Media Posts (as a local)

about 10 million people visit Hawaii each year that's more than seven times Hawaii's entire residential population this is not sustainable non-native people need to stop coming to Hawaii Wow Let's talk about it [Music] so I came across an opinion piece in the daily princetonian entitled Hawaii is not and will never be your vacation paradise and as a local who was born and raised here and is currently living here in Hawaii I want to give my opinion because a lot of the statements in this piece we're pretty bold and they offer one opinion but not the only opinion so I want to go through the article and provide another Local's perspective about visiting Hawaii I also want to note that I'm not native Hawaiian but I consider myself a local I was born and raised here graduated from high school here I did spend some time on the mainland in college and post-grad but then I moved back here and I'm now currently raising my family and I mentioned this distinction because it's important between native wine and local and if you feel that being non-native Hawaiian disqualifies me from this conversation and by extension all non-native Hawaiians are excluded from this discussion well I guess you can just skip the rest of the video but if not and you just want to hear another Local's perspective then let's get started when people see the word indigenous who do they think of for many if not most non-indigenous people native Hawaiians aren't the first to come to mind as a native Hawaiian who is repeatedly encountered the non-native perspective or lack thereof about the connection between Indian indigenuity indigenous indigenous engine indigeneity gosh you can't say that word between indigeneity and native Hawaiian sorry in public school I feel comfortable making this inference interactions with non-natives have revealed to me that people rarely think about how Hawaii was annexed or pushed in the statehood or how this history impacts native Hawaiian Life today in fact many people believe their relationship between Hawaii and America is something we should be proud of okay so first just a couple of comments on here I think when people think of indigenous people and you take a sample worldwide or even just within a nation domestically I don't think native Hawaiian comes up that often just speaking as someone who was born and raised in Hawaii when I hear the word indigenous I'm thinking of people like people in South America or Australia that's the term that I'm associating with that word and maybe that's based on just my Western education but that's what I grew up with here in Hawaii and this other statement interactions with non-news have revealed to me that people rarely think about how Hawaii was annexed or pushed into statehood so in my interactions with I guess as the author would call them non-natives basically like it's not people who aren't from Hawaii or people who are in Hawaii who aren't native Hawaiian I'm not exactly sure the the reference here but either way for my interactions on the mainland people really think about Hawaii and you don't know that until you actually move away and for anyone who's been away from Hawaii for a significant amount of time you know this when you're in Hawaii everything is a big deal right the newest place that opens up for boba tea or that new store that just opened up or the traffic or whatever concert's coming into town those are really big deals here and even State politics it's a big deal here locally but the thing is when you move outside of Hawaii you rarely hear about Hawaii unless it's a volcano or they happen to win some kind of like college sports title you rarely hear about Hawaiian I didn't realize that until I went away to Colorado nobody even cared about Hawaii it doesn't mean that Hawaii wasn't important it's just that nobody thought about Hawaii the way that we think about Hawaii here and I think it's important to remember that that on the mainland Hawaii is just one place it's one of 50 States and it's the most isolated so people don't really think about Hawaii at all the same way that people in Hawaii don't think about places like Delaware or or Maine or Montana not saying that those are bad places it's just we don't think about those things because they're so far away we're so concerned with what's going on here locally that there's really no interest in that so I don't really blame I guess non-natives for not thinking about Hawaii because yeah they don't all right moving on this mindset is tangible the romanticization of Aloha or of a Tropical Paradise of seeing Hawaii merely as the 50th state of taking advantage of Hawaii's forced Reliance on tourism and jumping at every opportunity to visit the lack of regard for native Hawaiians when it comes to honoring our indigeneity and existence Israel I could say at that time and its effects are visible and it has been impacting native Hawaiians and quality of life in Hawaii for far too long okay so a couple things just want to mention here I don't know if it's unnecessarily forced Reliance on tourism I feel like Hawaii has put itself in that position we had other economic Industries like agriculture but Hawaii is limited our resources here are limited and our ability to produce anything I personally think of of real material value we just don't really have that in a large enough scale where we can consider that a main driver in terms of economic output and so tourism obviously in makes sense we have the natural resources for that our state is sort of advantageous in those geographical features we have beaches we have nice Green Mountains we have nice weather those types of things you don't get every single place in the U.S and even in the places that do have those people want to get away from that and so they come here and so I don't think that Hawaii is forced into tourism that's convenient because of the things that we have here but I don't think we're ever forced into tourism we could try other things and I was hoping that the state would open up to different Industries and different Technologies perhaps just different areas where we don't have to rely so much on visitors coming here spending some money and then leaving possibly introducing industries that could pay higher wages that really could contribute other things to the world besides just basically service and entertainment frankly Hawaii didn't see too many new Industries emerge in the past few years when we actually had hands it just didn't really happen we were trying to just stay afloat and so that's too bad that's on us that's on the state to hopefully change that and to diversify and really think about what can we do here besides just luau's and helicopter rides about 10 million people visit Hawaii each year that's more than seven times Hawaii's entire residential population this is not sustainable non-native people need to stop coming to Hawaii on record we got over 10 million people that came in 2019 then we saw the huge dip in 2020 and it's slowly recovered and frankly we're on track to even break that record I'd say next year especially once the Japanese market returns I mean domestically we've gotten huge amounts of tourists coming from East Coast and West Coast primarily and that's been able to carry us economically here in Hawaii but we haven't seen too many Japanese visitors when I came back from Japan late last year our plane was really empty it was convenient because we had two kids but it was pretty empty and you don't see as many Japanese tourists but you're starting to see more and more them and once they return in full force which could be I think they projected by possibly the end of 2023 I forgot what HCA had mentioned but I think their projection is for late 2023 unfortunately they were projecting it a lot sooner but if that ends up happening that sets up 2024 to be the year that we top 10 and a half million possibly 11 million we'll see I don't know if this can keep going up to paint on the overall U.S and World economy but assuming we watch this trend we could see a record-breaking year in 2024 and it wouldn't surprise me if we reached close to 10 million in 2023. I do agree that this is not sustainable and they've talked about ways to make it more sustainable right sustainable tourism I'm not sure what that means it's a pretty nice buzzword but they've talked about that but in terms of non-native people needing to stop coming to Hawaii that's a sentiment that I don't agree with I'll address that more later in this article but I just want people to know up front if they don't make it to the end or towards that part of the video that not everyone thinks that way I know there are some locals who are very expressive of that opinion and they want to persuade people to not come to Hawaii completely understand that's their right to say that and that's their opinion likewise I feel like I want to share my opinion and explain why I don't necessarily agree with that opinion but anyway moving on besides the fact that over tourism has created excessive congestion on the islands and has thrown the distribution of resources into an imbalance for residents native Hawaiian culture also continues to be overly commodified misconstrued misconstrued and exoticized these mental and physical tolls caused by tourism are often most severe for native Hawaiians who continually bear the trauma of centuries-long colonization on top of being a significant portion of the homeless population and being constantly priced out of our homeland by the Myriad of non-natives who insist on moving to Hawaii native Hawaiians are having a grapple with the psychological and spiritual effects of witnessing the complete disrespect for and misrepresentation of native Hawaiian culture and our aino in terms of native Hawaiian culture being overly commodified misconstrued or exoticized I think about places like Polynesian Cultural Center or Bishop Museum is that overly commodified or is that simplified I don't think so that's I think a pretty good explanation of not just native Hawaiian culture but also different cultures of the Pacific Ocean and Pacific Islander cultures so I don't know if that's necessarily overly commodified I mean there's definitely some images I'm sure people can think of where it's got like the hula and you got like the luau and all these different things and yeah it's not really a real Luol but that's a commercialized version of it that's what the tourists come here to enjoy and that's what the hotels and these tourism industry people that's what they provide and on top of being a significant portion of the homeless population and being constantly priced out of our homeland by a myriad of non-nativists who insist on moving to Hawaii so I do agree that native Hawaiians do tend to make up a large proportion of the homeless population which is quite sad and I don't really understand why that is but that usually seems to be in the numbers every time they do a point in time account of the wholeness in Hawaii I think we tend to think that oh it's all these people from the mainland being shipped here and that's why our homeless population is so bad and there definitely are some people who aren't from Hawaii who are homeless here but just based on the numbers if native Hawaiians make up the largest portion our largest percentage of the homeless population in Hawaii whatever you're going to do about that why is it like that and we have agencies to hopefully address that we have the office of Hawaiian Affairs and Department of Hawaiian homelands those are two state agencies that could offer assistance so I don't understand how come that continues to be the trend here but it definitely is the trend I've come face to face with the effects of Tourism and absolute disregard for Native existence throughout my entire life ignorant of Hawaiian history culture and basic respect non-native visitors come to our islands and trespass on lands that are often culturally significant and sacred similarly tourists visit places that physically cannot accommodate everyone because they are so overpopulated despite the countless broadcast about issues caused by over by such overcrowding ignorant of Hawaiian history culture and basic respect non-native visitors come to our islands and trespass on lands Etc I just want to make sure that this is not a statement that's blanketed towards all visitors because not everyone acts that way maybe some do but not all visitors act that way and I think it's important to recognize that and it's too bad that we do see incidences of people disrespecting you know natural resources here animals and it's definitely something that is looked down upon and shamed online which I don't know if that necessarily changes anything but I don't think a statement like that applies to everyone and to all visitors non-native visitors I don't think it applies to everyone and in terms of being ignorant of Hawaiian history culture and basic respect obviously they're not going to get hawaiiana wherever they're from they're not going to know about Hawaiian history that's part of the reason why they want to maybe come here to learn about those things so I don't think that that can be held against them likewise if you probably ask a lot of local people who grew up here who maybe aren't native Hawaiian maybe some who are native Hawaiian but people who aren't native Hawaiian who are local here in Hawaii I think you probably be shocked by how many people don't know Hawaiian history to be perfectly transparent I don't remember much from high school and it wasn't until I read that little Kalani Memoir that it really refreshed my appreciation and just awareness of what happened in Hawaii and how life used to be because it's something that we just kind of forget over time and basic respect well can't always control that but I do believe that a lot of tourists are pretty respectful there are some tourists who aren't very respectful just like there are some locals who aren't very respectful but I like to think that the majority of them are respectful and I think if you have that kind of Outlook then it's not as bad at least that's the way I choose to live my life where I try to believe in the best of others all right next part as someone who lives next to major tourist hot spots in the countryside the nearest grocery and drug stores are often inaccessible to my family and I due to the sheer number of people that drive down every day for these destinations this makes us have to take longer drives out of town just to get basic necessities I know family and friends who must plan out their entire schedules around traffic or tourist traffic because if they do not they risk getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end sometimes these family and friends have no choice but to sit in traffic because roads are often still congested by the time they're on their way home from work this is our everyday reality the North Shore infrastructure is just not built it wasn't planned for having tourists to come up there it's one lane both ways there's also a lack of parking I mean I remember when we were trying to find parking up there you kind of just park wherever and you're Crush there's just not a lot going on up there which in part is to keep the country country right but at the same time it's just not a place that can handle that many tourists and they've tried to look for Alternatives whether it's like one of those bridges that you can walk over or a better parking lot or just reroute the road but until they actually move on that unfortunately that part of the island is going to be just stuck with a lot of traffic but there are also a lot of other places that have traffic too and it shouldn't be ignored this isn't just a North Shore problem it's a problem in a lot of other places on Oahu where once the tourists are in yeah it gets pretty bad so definitely one thing that I feel bad for the people up in North Shore and I'm not quite North Shore where I grew up but I'm on that side windward side but I do feel for that I know it's a hard thing so I definitely understand trying to build your life around traffic and making sure that you don't get stuck in traffic but at the same time I think that's more about the infrastructure and just the road conditions I'm gonna skip a couple things about the Red Hill thing but they're in the article if you want to read that you'd like to think that such a life-threatening situation would warrant a halt or at the very least that the client of tourist arrival in to Hawaii so that residents and tourists wouldn't have to compete for clean water a basic necessity yeah nothing was done to mitigate this issue completely unaware of what residents and eight people were facing tourists continue to arrive in droves and people suffered because of it so I understand what happened with the water I was here when it happened and they're still trying to figure out what they're going to do with that hole that whole situation but in terms of tourists continuing to come to Hawaii I don't think that was ever the message during that time or even now I don't think the message has been don't come because we're going through this water situation here and it just impacts a portion of this Ally it doesn't impact the entire Island and I can just say that for people who live not in that area that halawa I think Watershed aquifer area it hasn't impacted other parts of the island as much now it doesn't mean that what those people are going through is not important I'm just saying that it doesn't impact the entire Island particularly in the Waikiki area and so I don't think tourists even if they knew about it it would have that much of an impact and people suffered because of it I'm curious how people suffered from that particularly what because of the result of tourists coming that they had a negative impact I just don't see the connection between tourists coming during that time or during this time and people suffering in terms of the relation to the water situation maybe the connection is just lost on me but I don't really see that getting on the home stretch here so when I see countless Princeton students flying to Hawaii for a vacation to see the same overcrowded and often desecrated attractions I'm reminded of what kanaka go through day in and day out unless something changes kanaka have no choice but to continue to endure these living conditions it is us who must face these problems and find resolutions for them non-native visitors have a home another place they can go back to we don't a couple of points here I do want to agree with I do agree that a lot of people come to see the same overcrowded I wouldn't say desecrated attractions but they like to see the same and overcrowded stuff and it's always surprised me why people tend to always gravitate towards certain things and I guess they just want to experience it and share it now on social media say that they did it but frankly I think it's just kind of boring when you go and do the same thing that everyone else does you know I mean aren't there enough pictures of Diamond Head or of the ocean or of makapu Lighthouse and that's not to say that people can't take new pictures it might be beautiful and amazing but pretty much have seen it all in fact I kind of want to make a video where I vacation Hawaii by not actually vacationing and doing anything but just green screening myself in front of where everyone else goes because I feel like when you look online it's the same types of shots because people just look and they're like oh that looks like a good shot and they just end up copying so I do agree that people tend to do the same things and if people were to ask oh well what should I do then what types of things should I do if I don't want to copy and just keep doing what everyone else does try to explore some areas outside of the tourist attractions and you might enjoy Parks or you might enjoy hikes that aren't your stereotypical hikes maybe shopping in places that aren't all Moana or Waikiki and eating at some places that aren't always on the top 10 places to eat in Hawaii lists on Yelp Just places that local people eat I've recommended some of them on this channel and they provide foods that real local people actually buy orosi's restaurants wouldn't exist because tourists don't go there and that last sentence non-native visitors have a home another place they can go back to we don't this is definitely a sentiment that I agree with when it comes to when people move here you know when people from the mainland move to Hawaii and let's say they decide they're bored or they don't want to live here anymore they can always go back to where they're where they're from and that's okay but when you grow up here in Hawaii and you get kind of priced out you don't have anywhere else to go because you have to go to a new place because you're from Hawaii and so that is a little discouraging and I think that's one of the things that a lot of local people face which I think is why a lot of people end up gravitating towards places where there are a lot of other local people like Las Vegas there are always several counter arguments against the point that people shouldn't visit Hawaii many people feel entitled to visit Hawaii because Hawaii's economy relies on tourism and they're simply contributing to the tourism Revenue but the truth is a lot of the time people don't really care about the state of our economy they just want to fight a Hawaii guilt-free and it shouldn't be a surprise that most of the tourism Revenue doesn't even benefit native Hawaiians whom the tourism industry exploits the most a lot of people don't really care about the state of our economy and not to sound so cynical but why should they they're a visitor they're just coming here to have a good time and that doesn't mean that they can act however they want like like they'll act like that but they're not gonna look at our economy and try and figure out what's going on and try to put money where it needs to be and there are some local people who don't even understand our economy or what's going on in current events here and so you can't really expect tourists to understand the state of our economy they know Hawaii relies on tourism so to me the best way to support that if I'm a tourist who's not very familiar with Hawaii is to participate in that tourism economy to be a good tourist to spend money to stay at places to go eat at places to go shopping that's what they do that's how you support a tourism-based economy and if you want to change that then we have to change our economic system here but we're not so how else would they contribute to us I don't quite understand that they just want to fly to Hawaii guilt-free I can say as a visitor as someone who's visited other places I'm not going to another place to feel guilty I'm going there because I want to experience a new culture I want to have a good time I want to relax that's what a vacation is and you can do those things by being respectful but I don't think people want to come here and feel that guilt nor do I feel like they should come to Hawaii and feel guilty because I'm just thinking why would I pay all this money to fly all the way over here to feel guilty that doesn't make too much sense I mean I could spend my money in so many other ways guilt-free and to come here and to expect people to feel guilt for something that they don't even understand I don't think that's right to place that on them as a visitor and in terms of the tourism industry exploiting people when you look at the tourism industry and the wages that are paid and the people who work in the tourism industry primarily honestly I see a lot of Filipinos who are working and not saying that it's exploiting them but I'm just pointing out that when you look at a lot of the service industry workers directly connected to tourism that's who I'm seeing those are the people that are having to bus in or drive in from wherever maybe they live close but typically I just anecdotally hear people just you know they gotta catch a blast to go Waikiki right maybe they're working two three jobs and if we want to talk about certain ethnic groups I think just go Waikiki and look at who's making the beds who's checking in people who's cleaning up stuff down there and you might have a different answer I don't know if it's necessarily just native Hawaiians are impacted by tourism I think it's everybody here and now the last paragraph and it ends it ends with a home run in honor of this year's indigenous people's day I want to emphasize this the writers not not me okay I'm not saying this you cannot claim to respect advocate for or try to empower indigenous people while also traveling to Hawaii thinking otherwise just means you don't see Hawaii for what it is a native Hawaiians or who we are a nation that is fighting for our autonomy and deserved place in our own land so I just want to repeat that one more time because that's that's pretty strong you cannot claim to respect advocate for or try to empower indigenous people while also traveling to Hawaii thank you I don't agree with that I think that you can I think that you can respect the local culture native Hawaiian culture local people native Hawaiians and still visit Hawaii I don't know the history behind a statement like this but again not everyone thinks this way and I think it's important that people remember that I don't think you can make that assumption about others if they just come here that they don't respect native Hawaiian culture I think if you step back and you think about it that tends to make a lot of sense but when I read this statement especially because it was the end of this article I think that was the one that kind of like that was the Catalyst for me to make this video because I really don't want people to believe that everyone thinks that way in fact I don't think most people would think that way and if you pull that statement out and if that is the emphasis of this article I want to emphasize this then I think you could see that that statement may not necessarily be true so I just want to point that out I do want to acknowledge that there is structure between locals and tourists so it shouldn't be ignored that some local people don't like tourists and some tourists are also snobby and rude and disrespectful you can't get around that that just seems to be like The Human Condition of how people are if you just took a random sample from anywhere in the world you're just going to get people who act like that I like to think that most people are good most visitors are respectful and good they want to be here and they want to have a good time and yeah they're sensitive to what's going on here culturally I mean sure Shooters can be maybe irritating sometimes I I use that term very Loosely but sure they can be irritating at times if they get lost or they go the wrong way or they say something like with poor pronunciation but again you can't blame them for it I generally find tourists to be pretty respectful and nice they're just here to have a nice time to enjoy all of this because wherever they came from is not here and they work hard to come here and the thing is as locals we'd probably act the same way somewhere else and hint we do sometimes act that way somewhere else but just like how all tourists don't act that way that rude snobby very just self-centered tourists not all locals have this anti-tourism sentiment tourism is definitely something that is important and a big issue that we should talk about here in Hawaii as a local you just learn to grow up with tourists like oh look there's a huge Bus full of tourists or there's three trolleys going together and they're just taking all these tourists taking pictures and they're having a good time or oh they're lying kind of long here because get plenty of tourists it's like yeah you just grow up with that being in a tourist destination that's just part of growing up here in Hawaii and of course I like our local economy to expand to exciting things like technology or maybe agriculture where it could be very sustainable I'd love to see our state do that but we're just not making those steps yet and one last thing I want to mention about these types of Articles or social media posts where it's basically don't come to Hawaii type of sentiment I think they actually hurt the tourism industry and the experience that locals have with visitors because they dissuade people who would actually be good tourists they might make them go on the fence and be like ah we shouldn't go and it's because they're good people that they consider that and they see that or hear it or read it and they decide okay that's just not worth coming and that's too bad because those are the visitors that we want the respectful ones the kind ones the ones who actually will read the sign and listen and you know follow directions and not go where they're not supposed to go like those are the visitors that we want but by posting stuff like this and making it sort of the main opinion it almost seems like online for how locals view people from the outside it really is hurting those people that group of people from coming here and experiencing Hawaii and so what's left is the people who aren't even going to pay attention to that kind of stuff anyway and they're going to go do those disrespectful things and just act however they want to act they're just going to come here because they're going to ignore all these posts anyway and so it it doesn't really do much I feel like in that narrative in that discussion because those bad tourists are going to come here no matter what you say and it just ends up persuading the tourists who are good who are thinking about it to choose somewhere else and so in the end I hope that people really hear that not all locals think that way I know it's the main voice sometimes on social media and maybe that's just part of what I can do to contribute to this discussion to just share that not everyone thinks that way not everyone is to that extreme and I'm not sure what caused that extreme opinion to be a narrative coming out of Hawaii or about Hawaii but I hope that people understand that that's not the only one that it's one perspective I respect that but there are many perspectives on this spectrum and you just don't hear about it because most people don't feel the need to have to talk about it because it seems I think pretty obvious like yeah just come be kind respectful have Aloha it's pretty simple right it's pretty simple yet the people who would exercise those things and behave that way they may not want to come because of what they see or what they think local people think about them but to close on this what would Hawaii look like without tourists let's say the author had their wish and non-native people stop coming to Hawaii well what happened well we got to experience that in 2020 and most of 2021 where Hawaii lock the door and not that many people were able to come and as someone who was living here I can say that it was an interesting experience it was actually quite enjoyable minus the whole you know World catastrophe pandemic thing going on but locally it was actually quite nice there was no traffic a lot of places weren't open but we seem to get along okay and we could enjoy a lot of the natural resources here like the beach when we could come or even some just outdoor places it was never really that crowded never had to worry about parking or anything the quality of life was just nice but it came out of sacrifice you look at some of the businesses that weren't able to make it and a lot of businesses who still won't be able to make it in the coming future and the only reason why Hawaii was able to make it was because we had Federal money to save us but if visitors were to leave now there's no federal money coming more businesses were shut down people would go on unemployment would be pretty hard life in Hawaii would be even harder and it's hard to imagine but life would be even harder so until we have some kind of other industry that can take over or at least supplement tourism to eventually grow maybe to something more we're kind of left with tourism only but I don't want to see Hawaii without tourism I know maybe that's a bold statement but it just seems like it's part of our culture it's part of growing up here now PC tourists and hey there's a tourist right but until there's something else I don't think that will solve our problems in fact I think it'll make it a lot worse and harder in Hawaii love to hear what your thoughts are in this article thanks for watching and although hello hello hello hello hello [Music]

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 49,575

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life

Id: 6ExCMvYcGcw

Length: 31min 45sec (1905 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023