A lifetime of waiting
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
BE prepared to feel angry by the time you finish reading this column. It contains a litany of treachery and deceit involving one of the volatile issues in the Pacific land rights.
An emotional affair, the quest to protect native land often pits indigenous peoples against the remnants of colonialism and the voracious demands of developers.
Consider the case of Hawaii.
On the surface it would seem to offer something of a model for well-intentioned restitution for past imperialistic evils in particular, the overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen in 1893 by a group of businessmen backed by US Marines.
At the time US President Grover Cleve land condemned the coup as “lawless”. But he was ignored by Congress and the businessmen merrily sold off 1.5 million acres of land to fellow merchants and plantation owners.
When Hawaii was later formally annexed by the United States, it was decided that the 1.5 million acres should be held in trust for native Hawaiians.
In other words, the stolen lands were to be given back. what followed is instead a case study in hypocrisy and corruption. The losers are, naturally, native Hawaiians and the outrageous breach of promise against them is being exacer bated every day.
Firstly, some brief grimy history. By 1921 the amount of land to be made available has dwindled from 1.5 million to 200,000 acres after backroom deals between Hawaii’s powerful planters and the local government and the seizure of a significant portion for federal use, mostly military.
Even so, the US Congress was adamant that the diminished acreage be returned to try to save the even more rapidly diminishing native Hawaiian people, who were dying in urban slums from cholera and venereal disease.
That was 70 years ago. Most native Hawaiians the 200,000 or so of the islands one million residents who claim to be part Hawaiian are still waiting even for this morsel of
compensation.
The appalling story of how and why they remain in limbo was recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal in a comprehensively damning piece entitled “Broken Promise - How Everyone got Hawaiians’ Homelands Except the Hawaiians.”
It is a powerful and astonishing article which deserves replay here.
For instance, it revealed that more than 60 per cent of the land has been rented on the cheap to non-natives, many of whom figure among Hawaii’s richest and most powerful families.
“Other land,” the article says, “ has gone to multinational corporations for quarrying and mining operations, to the US military for the Pacific naval headquarters, to state agencies for waste-water treatment plants and airports and cemeteries, to mayors and legislators for their own private companies and personal estates, to prominent businessmen for auto dealerships and shopping strips and tourist attractions, and to shrewd investors who have turned around and subleased the property for as much as eight times their rent.
“Native Hawaiians, who are among the poorest and most ill-housed in the state, hold just 17.5 per cent. . . While about 5800 (native) families have been awarded land, the state bars
more than a third of them from moving on to their land because it lacks basic infrastruc ture which the state itself is supposed to build.”
According to the 1921 federal law, the Hawaii government must provide utilities, roads and water as well as home and farm loans to help get native Hawaiian home steaders started.
But the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which administers the act, has cried poor even though, for example, the federal government has allocated US$l.2 million for the department every year since 1988. The department has spent none of it.
It has also left US$24 million in cash untouched in various banks.
The department points to frustrating bureaucratic entanglements and potential cost overruns.
“If (the bids) were above (the cost of the project), we chose not to go through with it
because we’d have to go back and get more funds,” one official told The Wall Street Journal.
At the same time, its has spent lots of money helping to redevelop lands leased by non-natives. Recently it allocated US$l.4 million to build a road and street lights at a new shopping mall built on native land which is leased by a non native.
In contrast, native Hawaiians at Kawaihae on the northern coast of the Big Island are still waiting for running water. The department was allocated U 55990,000 to provide basic infrastructure there in 1979 but delayed work so long that the
appropriation lapsed unspent.
And so it goes on. The department announced it would construct 448 new houses in 1990 it built 19. Such is the farcical nature of the laws implementation that some native Hawaiians, who have been among the few to be granted their meagre portion of land, have been evicted by the government because the government has failed to provide any infrastruc ture.
Some families have taken to squatting. One family who moved onto a beach bordering their land were evicted by police. “The Hawaiian has no home but the beach,” they said.
There seems to be little that the 21,000 Hawaiians on the wait-list for land can do. They have no right to sue because the 1921 act gives the right only to the federal government (although a new law means native Hawaiians can sue in some circumstances).
Federal officials said they felt no obligation to enforce “that darn law” there are just too many other responsibilities to attend to.
The wealthy developers and ranchers leasing the land seem to be the only group pretty relaxed about the situation.
Ronald Tongg, whose father Ruddy founded Aloha Air and leased a 1126-acre ranch run by his son, said he had no qualms about renting the Hawaiian land for US$6 an acre.
“To be perfectly frank, if they haven’t gotten land or it’s been mismanaged or whatever, that’s their problem,” Mr Tongg said.
But department officials get testy particularly when asked about the 21,000 people still on waiting lists some since the 19505. “People should be disciplined enough to wait,” said director Hoaliku Drake.
Like Sonny Kaniho. His family has been on the list for nearly 40 years. His father died waiting. D