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The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is not trying to build “cultural villages for kanaka maoli” as John Shockley claimed (“Kakaako Makai not fit for residential high-rises,” Star-Advertiser, Letters, May 16).
OHA’s aspirations are in line with its mission: to address the many needs of its beneficiaries by fostering economic advancement.
Hakuone will become an engine for growth, and a place for Native Hawaiians and everyone else. Shockley’s patronizing dismissal of OHA’s role in providing housing and other services for Hawaiians and others reflects a colonial mindset that treats Hawaiians as wards of the state who should be satisfied with any incremental improvement and refrain from seeking all that is due to them as the indigenous peoples of Hawaii.
OHA should be allowed to do with its land as it sees fit, and for Shockley to presume he knows better is offensive. Trade coveted oceanfront property for some inland parcel, just to make things easier for the state? No way.
Karl Veto Baker
Punchbowl
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