A Healing Place
Slack key guitarist George Kahumoku Jr. finds solid ground on the Big Island

It’s no surprise that Hawaiian slack key guitarist, pig farmer, and educator extraordinaire George Kahumoku Jr.’s favorite spot in the Islands is in south Kona on the Big Island. As a child, this is where his family taught him the ancient Hawaiian ways—methods for healing, techniques for playing music, and the importance of ‘ohana (family).

So when he needs a break from his hectic schedule, he heads to Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park in south Kona. Also known as the Place of Refuge, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau was a sanctuary where kapu breakers of old Hawaii could go for absolution and noncombatants could find shelter and protection. This sacred ground was home to a royal palace and the Hale o Keawe heiau, where the bones of at least 23 Hawaiian chiefs were placed. Today, people can take a self-guided tour through the park and visitor’s center.

George stops by the park when he can, seeking spiritual refreshment and healing. While there, he visits a place that has special meaning to him: Just offshore, within the tide pools, is a lava rack about the size of a Volkswagen—a spot known to locals but not likely found in visitor guides or on maps. It is here George comes to sit, think of ancient faces, and hear long-ago voices.

“It’s a huge stone thrown up from the ocean. It’s like a cradle; it’s the shape of the moon. Within, in the middle, it is like a meditation stone, like a healing stone,” George says. “I’ve been going to this rock since I was a little kid. My tutu Koko’o showed it to me. I was dying—really sick with asthma—so she took me there to be healed. Now I go every chance I get, at least once a year, sometimes three or four times a year.

“Sometimes I go there just to pay homage to my ancestors; they were priests who gave advice to Kamehameha,” he says. “Sometimes I take my kids or grandkids.”

George, on sabbatical these days, is working on his master’s degree in education in Santa Cruz, California. When at home on Maui, he teaches students in the Special Motivation Program at Lahaina Luna High School. Many of them have missed half the semester or flunked their classes. But he inspires these kids—who might not be impressed that he has entertained for the Queen of England, the Premier of China, and the Prince of Thailand, or that his recent CD, Hawaiian Love Songs (Dancing Cat Records, 2001), reached seventh on Billboard’s world music chart—just as he strives to inspire his own children and grandchildren.

“If we don’t know where we came from, we can’t know where we are going,” says George, bringing reverence to an old adage.

And so he goes to the Place of Refuge, walks past the Great Wall (a 1,000-foot-long, 10-foot-high lava-rock wall built to separate royalty from commoners) and finally to the tide pools, where he visits the rock, his sentinel of comfort and meditation. He listens. And thinks. Finds inspiration for songs and life as the sun moves across the sky. “It’s a tranquil place for healing,” he says. “It helps me get centered.”