The statement from the Hawaii Supreme Court on a decades-long legal fight has come down, and it couldn’t have been said more plainly: The state has failed in its trust responsibilities to deliver on a promise first made by the federal government a century ago, to provide homesteading for Hawaii’s indigenous people.

In a 5-0 ruling handed down on Tuesday, the justices found that the state “has done little to address the ever-lengthening waitlist for lease awards of Hawaiian home lands.” The damages sought in the case accrue from the financial burden prospective homesteaders bore because they were simply left to wait.

This decision left little doubt of the court’s intent that this debt be paid without heaping even more delay on final closure for the beneficiaries.

Kalima v. State is named for lead plaintiff Leona Kalima, one of the original class of 2,700 Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries. The lawsuit was filed in 1999, the starting point on a long litigation road. Nearly 400 of the beneficiaries languishing on the long homestead waiting list since have died.

What happens next is currently in the hands of the state Department of the Attorney General, which has declined comment while the lawyers review the opinion.

But what should happen is that the state should move swiftly to pay what is owed, whether that final calculation comes in a settlement or through an individualized administrative process. The finding that the claims should not be settled through an endless series of court actions was one of the bounties of this ruling.

Hawaiian homesteading was established as part of the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921. That act sought to implement a policy “to enable native Hawaiians to return to their lands in order to fully support self-sufficiency for native Hawaiians and the self-determination of native Hawaiians … and the preservation of the values, traditions, and culture of native Hawaiians.”

The provision was seen as a means of redress to the core population of Hawaii’s native people for the loss of sovereignty and the cultural suppression that followed the overthrow of the kingdom and U.S. annexation. Beneficiaries were identified as those with 50% Hawaiian blood quantum, a steadily diminishing population.

The trust became a state responsibility upon Hawaii’s admission to the U.S. in 1959. The program was endowed with roughly 200,000 acres of land scattered across the islands, but for many decades it was cash-poor. The lack of capital for infrastructure was a key factor that inhibited development of lots; the fact that much of the land inventory was undevelopable was another.

But there have been myriad other hurdles DHHL has encountered in fulfilling its mission, some due to bureaucratic inertia, some due to the accelerating economic and social woes Native Hawaiians faced. There have been efforts more recently to find ways of assisting with housing for Native Hawaiians more creatively, including helping with the financial planning required of homeownership.

Wisely, however, the court did not see Native Hawaiian poverty and inability to qualify for mortgages as any mitigation for the state’s obligation. Among the justice’s conclusions is that a beneficiary who deferred pursuing a lease because of inability to qualify for a mortgage did not put a lid on any more damages accruing.

In the final analysis, it remains the state’s kuleana to administer its trust responsibility to relieve the poverty of Hawaiians, through the homesteading process. Now that the court has made that duty crystal- clear, the state must not waste more time in fulfilling it.