Student interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Upper Divison English, clip 13 of 14

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: Hiʻiaka is Pele's... favorite sister, but they fought like... family... They fought like crazy, but Pele referred to Hiʻiakaikapoliopele as her favorite sister. [Her name] actually meaning Hiʻiaka in the bosom of Pele, so it was like the sister, her youngest sister, that was closest to Pele. Pele is renowned. She's the goddess of Kīlauea on Hawaiʻi Island. They came from Tahiti or Kahiki, traveled here [to Hawaiʻi]. So Pele sets Hiʻiaka out on a journey to fetch [Pele's] husband, Lohiʻau on Kauaʻi. So this is the epic tale of Hiʻiakaikapoliopele where she journeys to Kauaʻi and back that I researched and used for my project... In 2010, I think, that's when the first windmill, the wind farm, was constructed in Kahuku, and that kind of sparked my interest when our electricity bills weren't going down and when farmers were evicted from the land... I heard about the wind farms on Lānaʻi, which all of the electricity is transported to Oʻahu, to Waikīkī, so I just thought that was total exploitation of land. So when these windmills were constructed, it just raised red flags, and I was like where's this power going? We're still paying a lot for electricity. It's farmland, so it's arable land that are being used for these industrial machines, so it just sparked interest in me, and that's when I started the Kahuku project of the windmills. And then it's just so relevant too, when I took this class, because they're in talks right now. Developers are trying to develop more wind farms.