During a DeTours of Pearl Harbor, Mr. Kajihiro pauses in the “Oahu court” between the Pearl Harbor galleries and the museum and asks guests to look at the placards in the hallway. At the placard that says, “The Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893,” he explains that this one sentence has been controversial with the United States government because it acknowledges the government-backed overthrow of Queen Lili’uokolani, which unsettles American claims to Hawaii. In the museum’s Attack Gallery, Mr. Kajihiro points to a small image of the Hono’uli’uli internment camp where Japanese people were held during World War II and uses it as a jumping-off point for a conversation about immigration and civil rights.

“People already come here with so many images and ideas about what Hawaii is that it’s really hard for them to see something different, so that’s why we started calling our work ‘DeTours,” Mr. Kajihiro said. “To swerve off the path that most people are going to see or understand and consume and shake it up by raising some more critical perspectives and introducing a lot of historical facts that are not so pleasant.”

A new type of tourism

The DeTours team is part of a movement looking to change what tourism means in Hawaii. Ms. Nuss, of Conscious Concepts, is originally from Oahu and returned in 2009 after working in hospitality in the Caribbean, New York, Miami and other places on the United States mainland.

“I came home seeing something happening in Hawaii that I didn’t see when I left,” she said. “My generation was stepping into their leadership roles and doing it differently, reconnecting for a movement back to the land.”

But she quickly realized that what many companies were doing didn’t align with her vision for supporting tourism while ensuring the well-being of overworked Hawaiians.

In 2015, Ms. Nuss created her company to find ways to support Hawaiian businesses function sustainably while also remaining a key part of the most important sector in Oahu — tourism. Ms. Nuss has worked with farms, artists and nonprofit organizations to change their offerings so they can appeal to tourists, while still benefiting Hawaiians. A farm hoping to attract tourists to volunteer might turn to her to figure out the best ways to reach them. She described her work with as “consciously creating experiences for travelers and opportunities for locals.”

“I had a realization about how our tourism industry is presently run, which is coming from the commodification of culture,” she said. “I realized what was happening in my communities and the value systems that were driving it were contradictory to the form of tourism that I was being a part of.”