Christine Faye, Executive Director of Hui o Laka, Honored with Individual Achievement Award

By Pat Griffin
Historian, planner and preservationist, former Chair of the Kaua‘i Historic Preservation Review Commission, current member of the Hawai‘i Historic Places Review Board and HHF Trustee

Christine Faye is well-known as an expert in the history of West Kaua‘i. Her family ties to the area began 140 years ago when her great grandfather, Hans Peter Faye, immigrated there from Norway. In 1884 he founded H.P. Faye & Co. sugar plantation at Mānā. Descendants of his followed in his sugar industry footsteps until the closure of Gay & Robinson, Kaua‘i’s last working plantation, in 2009.

Chris herself was involved at Gay & Robinson. She founded a visitor center there in 1999 and organized tours of the plantation’s cane fields and factory, utilizing guides who had themselves grown up on plantations. Through that intimate lens visitors could learn about both the business of the company and the life of the community: its homes, schools, clubhouses, medical facilities and everyday activities. Her work at G&R followed from the walking tour she had previously established for visitors at the Waimea Plantation Cottages and the Waimea Mill Camp, a living neighborhood adjacent to the cottages.

But Chris’s dedication to the knowledge and preservation of the place she calls home is broad. Researchers of Kaua‘i history may have received assistance from Chris during her six years as curator of the Kaua‘i Museum. Her familiarity with the museum’s archives has led more than a few people to remark that Chris found important materials during a document search that they did not even know they wanted—until she brought them out. At the museum Chris used her breadth of knowledge about Kaua‘i history to curate exhibits on topics such as World War II on Kaua‘i, island ranches and dairies, Kaua‘i aviation, Hawaiian quilts, and Queen Liliuokalani’s Royal Progress on the island.

For the past several years, Chris has served as executive director of Hui o Laka, a nonprofit organization that manages the Kōke‘e Museum and the historic Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, the only remaining CCC camp in the islands. During the group’s building restoration and other preservation efforts of the camp (funded in part by a Freeman Foundation grant through the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation), she stressed the importance of creating and following a well-constructed, ongoing schedule of repairs to assure long-term preservation. And, finding a photograph of the original sign, she recreated a similar one to post outside the camp.

Last year Chris seized the opportunity provided by the coronavirus’s closure of Hawai‘i’s state parks to renovate the Koke‘e Museum. She almost single handedly painted its interior, replaced a dated weather display with cultural exhibits from Hui o Laka’s collection, reorganized the natural history section, and contracted with artist Dan Cruces to restore the museum’s 1964 diorama. She also led Hui o Laka to renovate the interpretive Nature Trail behind the museum as well, and she worked with Martha Yent, archeologist at Hawai‘i State Parks, to fund and produce interpretive signs at the four major Koke‘e and Waimea Canyon lookouts.

Chris also participates in community boards and work groups. She was part of a focus group to reinterpret the “Russian Fort” by reestablishing its honored place name, Pā‘ula‘ula, and restoring King Kaumualii to the importance that is his due.

 

Chris well deserves the Individual Achievement award for her dedicated work to perpetuate and preserve the history of Kaua‘i, especially the island’s sometimes overlooked West side. Congratulations, Chris!

Christine Faye will be recognized with a Preservation Award for Individual Achievement at the 2021 Preservation Honor Awards Virtual Ceremony on May 21^st.  Click here for further information.