Hawaii is home to a disturbing paradox: the economy is soaring yet Native Hawaiian culture is dying. The development of Hawaii after COVID is recovering steadily, with the State of Hawaii's Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism writing that Hawaii state GDP by 2023 has recovered to 95 percent of its value in 2019 prior to COVID (State of Hawaii 2023). Despite this growth, the State of Hawaii's Office of Hawaiian Affairs' meta-analysis of the U.S. census reveals that a consistent mass emigration of indigenous Hawaiians has become a trend, writing that the continental Native Hawaiian population is growing five times faster than in the state of Hawaii and the Native Hawaiians on the continent have now exceeded the population in Hawaii (Office of Hawaiian Affairs 2023). Consequently, Native Hawaiian culture is undergoing a crisis, with its religion, languages, and dances becoming rare or forgotten altogether. If Hawaii's economy is flourishing, what could be behind this mass migration of Native Hawaiians? While Hawaii's rate of growth is still recovering from COVID-19, it's pivotal to investigate the deeper social and economic flaws influencing Hawaii. Overall, Hawaiian policymakers consider economic growth an unconditionally good sign, assuming equal benefits for all residents, however, that simplistic view overlooks how the disproportionate distribution of economic growth has harmed indigenous Hawaiians. Shea Charles, Ph.D. Student in Educational Psychology and multiyear researcher assistant for University of Hawaii, Manoa where she conducted interviews and media reports on Hawaii's tourism industry, explores how urbanization throughout Hawaii for economic activity, including education infrastructure, plantation development, and contemporary urban renewal projects, such as Waikiki, Fort DeRussy Park, and Ala Moana Center, have gentrified several areas in Hawaii, outpricing traditional agricultural areas that Native Hawaiians have tended to for millennia (Charles 2020). Charles' analysis explains why Hawaiians are emigrating away, as the insidious structuring of Hawaiian economics is benefitting the richest while outpricing Native Hawaiians from their traditional agricultural lands. This paper will contend that commercialization has turned economic growth into a harmful process to indigenous Hawaiians, who are systemically outpriced of their lands, homes, and communities. Thus, one can argue the cause of this mass Native emigration from Hawaii is the exact commercialization that Hawaiian policymakers maintain through tourism, media, and urbanization. Although Hawaiian commercial businesses and government want to maintain economic growth, the extinction of indigenous Hawaiian cultures due to the economic and social impacts of urbanization, tourism, and media calls for mass pushback against Hawaiian commercialization. 

It is becoming evident that further growth under the economic structure of Hawaii will continue the decline of indigenous populations, as these businesses that are growing disproportionately benefit the residency of foreign investors and tourists, while systematically outpricing native Hawaiians from their land. Mansel Blackford, Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley with multiple award-winning books regarding the history of American business development on Pacific Islanders, chronicles how Hawaii has undergone over a century and a half of western economic development. This trend started from the period where traders extracted sandalwood from Hawaiian forests to trade in China in the 1790s, continued through the 1830s the islands became important supply points for the whaling business, and onward to the nineteenth-century when sugarcane dominated Hawaiian exports, followed by the rise of pineapple plantations. With the spread of each of these businesses, land ownership became concentrated, until by the early 1940s about one-half of the land in the Hawaiian Islands was owned by just eighty estates and corporations and Native Hawaiians lost out as land was reapportioned (Blackford 2007). From Blackford's historical analysis, one can extrapolate that tourism is just the latest in this long line of economic exploitation. Without exception, every time these huge industries have "improved" Hawaii through economic development, it has always been at the cost of Native Hawaiian land and culture. On the other hand, Gabriella Andrade, Master of Science from the School of Travel Industry Management and professional tourism analyst at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, along with four co-authors Graduate professors majoring in hospitality, tourism, and business respectively, write in their peer-reviewed article that Hawaii's hospitality and travel businesses are highly dependent on tourism, which have been majorly disrupted in the wake of COVID-19. Many locals rely on employment from the tourism sector, and the industries that it encompasses (Andrade et al., 2021). Many in Hawaii hold Andrade's view that Hawaii writ large is contingent on economic development, even the locals, and thus urbanization is the only way forward. However what Andrade fails to realize is these economic decreases, while numerically substantial, should be considered as a far less pressing matter than ending indigenous displacement. According to both Charles's analysis of the effect of contemporary economic growth and Blackford's analysis of historical Hawaiian growth, it can be concluded that tourism disproportionately benefits foreigners in Hawaii, while Native Hawaiians who can't assimilate into these businesses are forced to emigrate, contributing to the Hawaiian cultural crisis. This is important because prioritizing indigenous peoples over foreign investors or tourists in Hawaii is pivotal. If commercial business declines, foreigners can find jobs elsewhere, while indigenous Hawaiians feel a unique, innate connection to the land and ancestry of Hawaii, leading to a much greater impact on this population. Displacement to Native Hawaiians means far more than a lower paycheck, it violently severs them from their ancestry, lifestyle, and spiritual center. Tourism is uniquely displacing, as one can argue it's the most gentrifying industry in Hawaii. It not only requires urbanization to sustain itself, through projects like the Ala Moana shopping mall, but alters the economy to impoverish Native Hawaiians. The economic increases due to Hawaii's tourism industry disproportionately benefit foreign investors and displace Native Hawaiians in favor of mass commercialization. 

Displacement is not the only cultural damage that results from Hawaiian commercialization. The gradual disappearance of Native Hawaiian languages is another direct result of Hawaiian gentrification. Rebecca J. I. Luning, Bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian Language, Ph.D. in Philosophy, and Cultural and Educational Specialist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa where she manages and directs Hawaiian language analysis, writes that after the creation of the state of Hawaii, a ban was placed on the use of Hawaiian in public schools, leading to a rapid decline in Hawaiian language and causing Hawaiian families to encourage their children to use English, believing that it was necessary for their success (Luning and Yamauchi 2010). The ban proves this cultural erasure is intentional, and at least partly state sponsored. Russ Rymer in Vanishing Voices demonstrates that this example isn't unique to Hawaii, because of mass globalization. With mass globalization, smaller languages and dialects spoken in secluded areas, such as remote islands, are no longer protected by natural borders that formerly protected languages from world communication. Specifically indigenous and tribal communities feel they have to reject their ancestral language in favor of assimilation into languages that they feel will permit success, predominantly English (Rymer 2012). Rymer shows how many Native Hawaiians through mass commercialization and globalization of their formerly indigenous dominated lands feel they must assimilate themselves and their children into English for education and jobs, even though the ban on the Hawaiian language has been lifted. With the commercialization of Hawaii, Native Hawaiian communities have been encouraged to assimilate into English, and away from Hawaiian, Pidgin, and other Native dialects. 

The commercialization of Hawaii has extended past the economy and has instead taken to commodifying the cultures themselves through misrepresentation of Hawaii that encourages unethical tourism, as tourists feel they are owed a right to exploit and tour, regardless of indigenous displacement. Ph.D. in Political Science, winner of the Angela Y. Davis Prize by the American Studies Association, and an electorate to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for Native Hawaiian scholarship and activism, Haunani-Kay Trask, writes that American annexation has reduced Hawaii into a vulnerable and sexualized figure, subservient to the mainland, and thus, subject to its impositions. The discourse surrounding Hawaii in politics and business regards it as an object to be exploited. Through these representations, they have substituted personal indigenous relationships to land in favor of recreational, superficial ties to land, a view that was constructed to justify the exploitation of indigenous land, people, and culture (Trask 2008). Building on Trask's claim, this ideology of a subservient Hawaiian land can be extended to modern tourism. This exploitable and sexualized Hawaii is the motivation for many tourists to visit, with many buying into this image of Hawaii, and consequently, tourism firms accommodate their demand by making tourist's expectations of Hawaii—a tropical getaway filled with expensive pools, sexual allure, and luxurious hotels—a reality. Rachel Bonini, M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies at Purdue University and assistant director for Rice University's Center for Civic Leadership, a department specializing in critical misrepresentation of culture and analysis of systemic racism, examines how Disney's stereotypical representation of Native Hawaiian culture as reduces Hawaii's diverse indigenous culture into an essentialized "spirit of aloha", a product to be sold. This normalizes settler colonial and commodified notions of Hawaii into common discourse (Bonini 2022). Further, Bonini’s examination of the assimilation of a commodified Hawaiian culture into media is not unique to Disney and has been a common trend in American media with Hollywood productions such as 50 First Dates, Fantasy Island, and Blue Hawaii exploiting Hawaii as an exotic, colorful background, devoid of all ancestral presence. Hawaii gets pacified into a frontier for foreign, often white male, Hollywood stars to settle and voyeuristically gawk at, normalizing unethical tourism. Hawaii's representation in media is deeply flawed, as it portrays a stereotypical Hawaii that erases indigenous Hawaiian ancestry in favor of a voyeuristic, tourist-centered relationship to land. 

The solution to Hawaiian tourism must be nuanced to counteract the destructive impact of tourism to Hawaii throughout the media and give indigenous power and rights in politics. Many policymakers hold a view similar to Andrade, who says that Hawaii should allow tourists to pay extra for sustainable tourism, because they are willing to front an extra cost to experience authentic Hawaiian culture and support local industries, such as farming. This could create an opportunity to further integrate Hawaiian culture into tourist’s experience (Andrade et al., 2021). However, Andrade's solution of financializing tourism into becoming sustainable may not be feasible and may exacerbate tourism's worst impacts. Hawaiian policymakers must understand that ethically, the very premise tourism stands on—that outsiders have an innate right to a purchased share of “authentic” culture—violates the liberty of Native Hawaiians. The notion Hawaii can resolve the issues with tourism by mandating tourists pay their way into so-called "true" Hawaiian authenticity falls back into the same marketizing logic that justifies exploitative tourism in the first place by commodifying Hawaiian culture into an object to be bought and sold. Hawaii should reject pandering to tourists in favor of syncing representation of Hawaii in media to be closer to reality: an island that is deeply economically and socially flawed—completely detached from the island getaway tourists pay to experience. Instead, Hawaii should educate tourists about the harm they cause indigenous populations and the rich cultures that are endangered through tourism. They must push back against the parasitic, oppressive institutions in the courts, in the legislature, and in government. An example of this progressive legislature would be Act 395, a bill that allowed Native Hawaiian institutions a limited right to sue the State of Hawaii over housing violations, making it so institutions that practiced ignorance of Native Hawaiians came with a risk of being sued. To protect indigenous Hawaiian cultures, Hawaii must both educate tourists and businesses of the displacement cause, while also gaining political and legislative power. 

The State and businesses of Hawaii, and their focus on economic growth over structural issues, have modeled Hawaii into an environment that is harmful to Native Hawaiians, displacing them from their land, language, community, and lifestyles. Tourism businesses and foreign firms, investing in Hawaii from abroad as a means to gain capital, are not the shareholders Native Hawaiians deserve, building over and homogenizing the diverse culture of Native land. From here, Native Hawaiians need to fight commercialization on multiple levels. Indigenous Hawaiians need to foster communities of support to keep language and cultural values alive, gain political recognition and rights to enshrine indigenous protection in government, and create significant media pushback against monolithic representations of the tourist expectation of Hawaii. The State of Hawaii needs to give economic support to Native Hawaiians who are at risk of slipping into poverty. Most importantly, foreigners must change the way they conceptualize Hawaii. The stereotypical idealization of the Hawaiian getaway must be rejected from contemporary discourse in favor of a culturally appropriate approach to Hawaiian representation, one that acknowledges Native Hawaiian relationships to land, and how tourism and the media are systemically harming them. Only by recognizing that tourism and media exacerbate the socio-economic structures impacting Native Hawaiians can decommercialization of Hawaii begin.