I am now well into my seventh decade and during this time I have been witness to our state attempting to address the issues and concerns of Native Hawaiians. These have always fallen short despite court cases, etc.
We have recognized Native Hawaiians as the indigenous peoples of our islands; we have incorporated many of the traditional and cultural practices into state law; we have utilized traditional Native Hawaiian values in organizational plans and models for living on our islands. And, yet, the political processes have never resolved one of the real issues: The issue of land and home ownership in our islands despite the mana‘o (thinking) and efforts of many members of the Native Hawaiian community coming forward and expressing their distrust and dissatisfaction.
No Native Hawaiian should be homeless in this, their homeland. Sadly, this has not been the case throughout my lifetime. Much of the frustration has been directed at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands; this is misdirected. The department has attempted the impossible since its beginning in 1921. It has always been the stepchild of our state government. When it’s had successes, these successes have been mitigated by compromise.
Prior to the 1850s mahele or division of lands, all land ownership was vested in the mo‘i, or monarch. After the 1850s, titles of land throughout the kingdom were vested privately in the various chiefs, including the mo‘i, as a chief; publicly in the government; and in the office of the monarchy or crown.
When the monarchy was overthrown, the land titles held by the government and the crown were co-mingled into one “public land trust” by the usurping government. And, when Hawaii was incorporated within the United States, the U.S. Department of the Interior received, as part of payment, title at no or little cost to all the public land trust lands (formerly crown and government lands). In 1921, it is from this land corpus that Hawaiian Home Lands (HHL) were carved out and designated as such under federal title.
When Hawaii became a state in 1959, the federal government returned title to most of the public land trust lands, including HHL lands, to the new state which, in turn, carved out lands for the various countries for their respective functions. This is a very simplified account — but what I want to point out is that the rudiment history and land base of today’s state and county lands is the public land trust, which in turn was created from former government and crown lands of the kingdom.
My question, then, is: Why are Native Hawaiians today homeless and the waiting list within the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) so extensive, when the original land corpus received by the new state of Hawaii and that created the DHHL was one in the same?
Today, these lands are all administered separately by our various state and county agencies. This separateness has created the feeling within each agency of entitlement, that their respective lands are their own to do with what they wish in terms of their respective mandates.
There is generally an unwillingness to transfer lands out of their inventories, which have mostly been derived from the same corpus as the DHHL. Transfers in the past have occurred, but they have been based on appraisals and like values, not for the purposes of addressing housing shortages and homesteading needs of our “First Peoples.”
It’s time to revisit state and county agencies that have in their inventories undeveloped lands that could be designated for homesteading, and prioritize these lands for transfer to DHHL for homesteading. The Legislature and the executive with DHHL then need to commit to infrastructure development, which would greatly boost our construction industry. The waiting lists within HHL could be eliminated quickly if there was a real political will to do so.
Hardy Spoehr is the retired executive director of Papa Ola Lokahi.
