The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

While swimming in Hawaii, I overheard a woman talking to her grandson about the protests on Kaho'olawe, the island that seemed just a stone’s throw away from where I was standing.

“I was there, you know,” she told him, catching my attention in full. The day before, at the Maui Ocean Center, I read newspaper article after article about the island, the bombings, and the destruction of a sacred place.

The woman was kind enough to include me in her lesson, but after a quick internet search, I knew that the lesson was barely the tip of the iceberg. Kaho’olawe has a meaning to Native Hawaiians that...