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Are we welcome in Maui?

 As soon as you land in Maui, you feel like you have taken a step back in time. There are friendly faces at the airport who welcome you to their sacred land. At the same time, when you take a cab to your hotel, you start to appreciate the beauty that you cannot find in the mainland of the United States of America. The hotel representatives almost treat you like humans but from their eyes it is very clear that they would rather be elsewhere.

The commercialization of Maui was an eye opener of sorts. There are more tourists on the island than what the island can accommodate. The resorts on the island are almost disconnected from the culture of the locals. They provide a shallow experience of the centuries old culture of the locals in Maui and the clueless tourists lap up the lūʻau as if in a couple of hours they would be welcome in to the Maui culture.

The experiences on the island are far ranging. Kids singing Hawaiian songs for a small crowd gathered in the Outlets of Maui gives you a small insight into how the Maui people are trying to prolong their cultural habits to the next generation. Small food carts on the side of the road serving fresh coconut to banana bread to sugarcane juice provide the knowledge that there are folks who migrate to Maui from the mainland in search of inner peace. Sunsets at Haleakala depict the true beauty of the island while also giving a reminder that the island can only take on so much before man-made structures ruin the few places that are untouched in this world.

Acknowledging the raw beauty of nature can only be done when tampering of the beauty is in control and places like Maui or Alaska are gateways for the next generation to admire the places their ancestors used to live in.

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