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History of efforts to create a Hawaiian tribe from September 1 through December 31, 2023; including efforts to create a state-recognized tribe and efforts to get federal recognition through Dept. of Interior regulation, executive order, or Congressional legislation; and efforts to get local and international recognition of an alleged continuing independent nation of Hawaii.

INDEX OF NEWS REPORTS AND COMMENTARIES FROM SEPTEMBER 1 THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2023

September 5, 2023: Article in "Peoples World" [successor to Communist "The Daily Worker"] entitled "Imperialism and capitalism set Hawaii ablaze"

Sept 7: "The Guardian [newspaper in England] publishes article highlighting demands for Hawaiian sovereignty being pushed in response to Lahaina wildfire tragedy; article reprinted in other media that are anti-American.

Sept 9: Leon Siu, who imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom, says that the world is watching how Hawaiians conduct themselves in response to the Lahaina wildfire disaster, so it's important not to lash out in anger (as some have done) but to practice "kapu aloha."

Sept 25: Leon Siu, who imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom, back home after spending 2 weeks at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva Switzerland, says people throughout the world have special affection for Hawaii and many popular media, as well as academic publications, are increasingly acknowledging and receptive to the message of liberation for Hawaii from American oppression.

October 1, 2023: Colin Kippen, interim CEO of Office of Hawaiian Affairs, authored two articles in the OHA monthly newspaper that are stridently race-nationalist.

October 14: Leon Siu, who imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom, complains about "the callousness and deafness of those in government and business to the appeals of the people to provide adequate time and adequate resources to recover from the tragedy, before reopening for business [after the wildfires]. ... Once again, our experience in Hawaii under the American system, shows us their main priority is always: money over the people. ... we have to free ourselves of the American money-power driven system."

October 28: Leon Siu imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom. "... Over the years, as I have attended Pacific regional meetings and conversed with heads of states, diplomats and parliamentarians, they invariably mention they would be very happy if Hawaiʻi (as the Hawaiian nation, not the U.S. ‘state’) was to become an active member of the Pacific family of nations to help with the critical issues facing our islands. It was the intent of several of our Kings, especially Kalākaua, to bring together our ʻohana of Moana Nui to work for the betterment of our peoples and nations. This great vision was rudely dashed by the assault and abduction of our nation by the United States. Fortunately, we are on the verge of overturning that wrongful taking and restoring the Hawaiian Islands as a sovereign, independent nation. ..."

Nov 14: Leon Siu says the location of the capitol of any absolute monarchy, including the Hawaiian Kingdom, automatically follows the King's residence; thus Hawaii's first capitol (after consolidating power in the Battle of Nu'uanu) was Waikiki, then moving to Hilo, Lahaina, and Kailua-Kona. His son Liholiho Kamehameha II moved the capitol back to Lahaina, where Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III continued to reside.

Nov 15: Ken Conklin posts new webpage providing protest sent to PBS-Hawaii CEO Ron Mizutani re 150-minute double-feature propaganda prime-time broadcast of a panel discussion and film pushing for Hawaiian independence by trashing the overthrow of monarchy (1893) and annexation (1898).

Nov 21: Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation publishes three summaries with links to full articles, all collected under one headline: "Cultural Intellectual Property, Traditional Knowledge, & Data Sovereignty: Empowering Cultural Stewards and Knowledge Keepers" The overall concept is that political sovereignty for a Native Hawaiian tribe or state political entity would include legal protection for its cultural intellectual property rights, traditional knowledge, and control of how data about members are gathered and disseminated. These concepts were generated by a working group authorized by the state legislature in 2023 with a view toward enacting laws in the upcoming session of 2024.

Nov 24: Leon Siu imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom. "This year, 2023, is the 180th anniversary of an historic moment for Hawaii. November 28, 1843 was the day the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and the Kingdom of France jointly proclaimed their recognition of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign nation ... King Kamehameha III declared November 28 as Lā Kuʻokoʻa, Hawaiʻi Independence Day"

Nov 28: The State of Maine, unlike Hawaii, has federally recognized tribes. But the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act undermines tribal sovereignty and treats Wabanaki Nations as municipalities that are subject to state law. The nations often have to work with the state government to implement federal Indian policies such as the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the Violence Against Women Act.

Dec. 8: Leon Siu imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom. He asks whether the presence of U.S. military in Hawaii might provoke another attack on Pearl Harbor like the one 82 years ago. To avoid that, let's push U.S. military out of Hawaii, removing the reason why a foreign power might feel a need to attack us.

Dec. 14: Native Hawaiian Environmental Activists and Greenpeace USA Protest the arrival of Hidden Gem, one of the world’s largest deep-sea mining vessels, as it entered Hawaiian waters off of Honolulu, to demand a ban on Deep Sea Mining. This protest illustrates how Hawaiian sovereignty activists work with groups outside Hawaii to undermine federal, state, and local government lawmaking authority.

Dec. 24: Randall Roth, Professor Emeritus at University of Hawaii Law School specializing in trust law, warns of continuing corruption among government officials and illustrates by reviewing the scandal over Bishop Estate (Kamehameha Schools) which he called attention to and publicized in his newspaper commentary (1997) and his book "Broken Trust" (2006)

Dec. 26: Article published at end of 2023 by an international organization which specializes in magnifying and publicizing ethnic and race-based grievances that are highly divisive and intended to undermine the sovereignty of national, state, and local governments. ICMGLT (international center for the study, prevention and treatment of multigenerational legacies of trauma inc) touts troubles of ethnic Hawaiians in Maui after wildfires destroyed town of Lahaina, and focuses on failure to deliver land leases for 29,000 on waitlist for Hawaiian homelands -- despite the fact that in 2023 the state government agreed to a settlement, and is paying out $328 Million in damages to the plaintiffs!

Dec. 29: Leon Siu imagines himself to be Foreign Minister of the still-living Hawaiian Kingdom. In this final post of "Ke Aupuni Update" for 2023, he summarizes his position that there was never an annexation of Hawaii; therefore the Kingdom of Hawaii remains in place, Hawaii is not part of U.S.A., and Hawaii "is being unlawfully suppressed, occupied, and callously ruled by the United States."

END OF INDEX

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FULL TEXT OF ITEMS IN THE INDEX FROM SEPTEMBER 1 THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2023

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/imperialism-and-capitalism-set-hawaii-ablaze/
Peoples World [Founded 1924; "continuing "The Daily Worker""] September 5, 2023

Imperialism and capitalism set Hawaii ablaze

BY ANDREA BROWER

Over 100 people (likely many more) were burned alive and many are still missing on Maui, in one of the most deadly and destructive wildfires in history. The dire crisis continues as hospitals are overwhelmed with burn patients, residents inhale highly toxic air, the community reals with trauma, and basic necessities fail to get to those most in need.

Countless Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and workers—including many undocumented and unprotected immigrants—lost everything and may never be able to re-establish their lives in the Lāhainā area. With only 25% of the devastated area searched by rescue teams, developers and realtors are already swooping in to try to buy land from displaced locals—a callous incarnation of our current social order.

The human-caused roots of the Maui atrocity—and the already-in-motion fight for what happens next—have everything to do with empire, capitalism, elite power, and their ravaging of the planet and people. But what has emerged from the bottom-up in response to the disaster—ordinary people collectively and creatively organizing to generously and selflessly care for one another—shows us the alternative to the world that imperial capital has compelled. It is also the world that the vast majority of us long for so deeply.

Multiple wildfires across typically wet, tropical islands are a chilling reminder that climate catastrophe is upon us. The “absolutely unprecedented” is our new norm. Our planet is ablaze; the impacts of climate change are hitting harder and faster than scientists predicted even less than a decade ago. Tipping points and cascades are already occurring at around 1.2°C of warming. On our current trajectory, we are facing a cataclysmic 2.7-4.4°C of warming by the end of this century.

Parallel to climate change, “tinderbox” conditions were created by appalling land and water management for benefit of the elite.

In Hawai‘i, we are increasingly accustomed to floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, even sea level rise. But wildfires of this nature came as an absolute shock to most of us, despite scientists’ warnings to government and large landowners for years. Heat and severe drought turned parts of Hawai‘i into a “tinderbox,” before a high pressure system in the north and a hurricane passing to the south lowered humidity and caused forceful winds to blow up multiple fires. All of these effects of climate change are going to get worse. Hawai‘i is already getting 90% less rainfall than it did a century ago, with the severity of drought being particularly acute in the past 15 years.

Parallel to climate change, “tinderbox” conditions were created by appalling land and water management for benefit of the elite. Major water diversions—first for plantation agriculture and then for tourism and gentlemen estates—have radically altered ecosystems.

Landowners and water diverters like the old sugar barons Alexander & Baldwin may bear some direct culpability for the death and destruction on Maui. The company has a long history of ferociously and corruptly fighting Kānaka Maoli and environmentalists over restoring diverted water to its natural watersheds.

Some of the very same players diverting water, like Alexander & Baldwin, left broad swaths of land covered in highly flammable invasive grasses, despite abundant warning that they were creating a potentially catastrophic fire hazard. Fire-prone vegetation like guinea grass, brought to Hawai‘i by sugar oligarchs to feed livestock, has been left to cover over a quarter of Hawai‘i’s land in the transition from monocrop plantations to tourism development.

Climate change and water-deprived land covered in combustible non-native vegetation have led to other serious fires in recent years, a phenomenon Hawai‘i is highly unprepared for. Multiple studies and articles have warned that Hawai‘i is “primed” for wildfires. In 2018 and 2021, fires burned thousands of acres and destroyed hundreds of homes. The growing threat was largely ignored because it was inconvenient and expensive to the powerful.

When the recent fires broke out, the occupying U.S. state—which ideologically justifies its presence through appeals to “protection”—failed in its emergency response. Not a single alarm siren was activated during the fires. Power lines stayed on despite fire hazard warnings from the National Weather Service. Firefighters and disaster response teams were radically under-resourced to save people, and remain “overwhelmed” in the days after.

Weeks later, despite the immense resources held by the U.S. military and settler elites in Maui—Bezos, Oprah, Jimmy Buffet, Jensen Huang, just to name a few—ordinary people were still without food, fuel, and water. Mutual aid efforts led by Kānaka Maoli have proven far more effective at delivering disaster relief.

The proximate causes of the horrific Maui tragedy—a rapidly warming climate, land “primed to burn,” and lack of preparedness—share the same underlying roots. Capital and empire, or more specifically, a social system violently forced upon most of the world, that is premised upon unending extraction and exploitation of people and environment for accumulation of private wealth.

In Hawai‘i, imperial capitalism has dispossessed most of the Native population, consolidated power and resource control to a remarkable degree, created a society of lavish wealth alongside extreme poverty, ravaged the ‘āina (“that which feeds,” or land), commodified Hawai‘i and Hawaiian culture, and increasingly delivered huge chunks of “paradise” into the vacation home portfolio of the elite.

These are the conditions that created water diversions, denuded land, and neglect of potential disaster that always hits hardest at the bottom of social hierarchies. As Kaniela Ing succinctly put it, “colonial greed is burning down our home.”

These histories, and the monstrous repercussions, are relatively recent ones in the long span of human history in the islands. Knowing the recent history of imperialism and capitalism in Hawai‘i—and their ongoing contestation—denaturalizes the current social order. It reminds us that much different kinds of social orders have existed in our human past, survive in our present, and are possible in our future.

For over a millennium, Hawai‘i’s peoples lived in steady balance with the rest of the web of life, sustaining dense populations through sophisticated agroecological production. Structured by relationships of reciprocity, Indigenous Hawaiian production was organized cooperatively around ‘ohana, or extended family units. People freely accessed land, water, sea, and forests.

While evolving Indigenous Hawaiian society was not free from class hierarchy, it was defined by beliefs and structures of collectivity, human freedom, reciprocity, and redistribution. Systems of production and distribution were designed to ensure that all had enough and that careful stewardship and reverence for the Earth were maintained.

It was a society in which the logics of capitalism—of unabated exploitation of land and people for personal gain, extreme individualism, absolute private ownership, accumulation of wealth for wealth’s sake, and the deprivation of many alongside excess riches for very few—would have been structurally impossible and culturally unintelligible.

The social relations that have existed since time immemorial in Indigenous Hawai‘i remind all of us that a world beyond the prisons of capital and empire are possible.

Kānaka Maoli power in and over the islands remained strong in the first decades of increasing contact with Euro-American capitalists and imperialists, even as they navigated widespread death from introduced disease.

The 19th century was one of competitive Euro-American imperialism throughout the Pacific, and military-imposed agreements for repayment of supposed debt ensnared Hawai‘i in the imperial-commercial economy even before it was recognized by colonial powers as a sovereign nation. While the Hawaiian Kingdom worked to maintain sovereign Indigenous governance for almost all of the 19th century, capitalism and its violent backers steadily engulfed the islands.

As the interests of sugar capitalists increasingly collided with the Hawaiian Kingdom, white oligarchs secured the backing of the U.S. military in overthrowing the Indigenous government. By the early 1900s, five sugar corporations—descended from four missionary families—controlled virtually the entirety of the economy and the government that served it. Sugar production thrived for decades because an anti-democratic, illegally occupying state secured the industry’s elite minority interests, maintained extreme class and ethnic inequalities, and delivered the land, water, and laborers that it demanded.

Sugar production in the mid- and late-20th century moved to cheaper locations of exploit, largely in response to militant interracial worker organizing. However, the legacies of the plantation persist. Today, Hawai‘i is entirely dependent on a vertically integrated corporate tourism economy. It provides cheap labor, natural resources, infrastructure, and other government support in exchange for low-wage jobs and an inflated cost of living—a change in form but not in function from plantation days of past.

Lāhainā embodies these colonial and capitalist assaults, as well as their resistance. Pre-colonial Lāhainā—with older names like Malu‘ulu o Lele, “land of the flying breadfruit”—was a place of wetlands and extensive food tree forests. It has long been seen by Kānaka Maoli as a highly sacred place. Ali‘i (problematically translated to “chiefs” by colonists) would gather in Lāhainā for governance, and it was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom for 50 years.

Lāhainā became one of the first commercial centers of the islands with the entrance of whaling, which gave rise to a growing population of foreign traders looking to “grow rich rapidly” in the islands. Thick groves of breadfruit and fishponds were destroyed to make way for export-oriented sugar production. In the 1960s, sugar capitalists started cashing in for land development, which continued to require water diversions and further “denuding” of the land. West Maui is now choked with hotels and tourism infrastructure that services two million people who visit every year.

Amidst the ongoing systematic extraction of wealth and resources from Lāhainā, it remains the home of many Kānaka Maoli, their sacred sites, burials, and cultural centers, like Na ‘Aikane o Maui. Invaluable cultural artifacts, documents, and art were turned to ash in the flames that burnt Lāhainā to the ground. It’s a chilling symbol of the rapaciousness of capital and empire.

Others at the bottom of Hawai‘i’s social hierarchies are also hardest hit by the fires. Housing is excessively unaffordable and difficult to find in Maui, and the thousands of working-class people rendered homeless will not simply be able to find new places to live. Those already living on the edges—which are the majority in Hawai‘i—will be further pushed into lives of precarity under the existing social order. A large portion of Lāhainā’s population was immigrants; many will lack access to federal relief. As the ash settles, inequalities will be further cemented.

The struggle now is the one that punctuates all moments of crisis: the forces of disaster capitalism versus the people attempting to build a paradise out of hell. Capitalism compels a grotesque search for profit wherever it is to be made—even in desperate times, the system knows no morality. As capital and empire turn Maui and the planet into a burning nightmare, power could consolidate in increasingly violent and extractive ways. The people that are and will be hit the hardest are those who have already been most brutalized by the past centuries of imperialism-capitalism-racism-patriarchy that delivered us to this apex.

But even at this apex, the future is not a foregone conclusion. The social relations that have existed since time immemorial in Indigenous Hawai‘i remind all of us that a world beyond the prisons of capital and empire are possible. The ways people are mobilizing to care for one another in the wake of Maui’s disaster illuminate our deepest human selves—generosity, compassion, cooperation, interdependence.

Both show us the alternative to systems premised on hierarchy, exploitation, and greed. They show us that humans are absolutely capable of constructing far more utopic futures that are structured to incentivize, inspire, and cultivate the best of our human capacities rather than the worst.

Our different potential future trajectories couldn’t be more stark. Maui is a powerful reminder that we all need to fight like hell to get out of hell. Support mutual aid efforts on Maui.

This article was distributed by CommonDreams. As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the opinions of its author.

CONTRIBUTOR
Andrea Brower is an activist and scholar from Kaua‘i. She is an assistant professor in the Solidarity & Social Justice Program with Gonzaga University's Department of Sociology. Her research, writing, and teaching on capitalism, colonialism, the environment, food, and agriculture is embedded in social movements for justice, equality, liberation, and ecological regeneration.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/07/native-hawaiian-sovereignty-maui-wildfires
The Guardian [England] Thursday September 7, 2023

‘Occupied by the US’: wildfires renew Native Hawaiian call for sovereignty
As disaster capitalists descend on Lahaina, Indigenous Hawaiians fight for self-governance

by Claire Wang

At a time of climate crisis, dwindling resources and unfettered capitalism, the decades-long Native Hawaiian struggle for sovereignty has gained a renewed sense of urgency following the August wildfires that incinerated west Maui.

Indigenous activists say restoring Hawaiʻi as a self-sufficient island nation is the only way to preserve it for their children and grandchildren.

“When we talk about sovereignty, it’s about literally, physically and spiritually taking up space that we were forcibly removed from,” said Noelani Ahia, an Indigenous activist and healer in Lahaina who has been organizing mutual aid initiatives for fire victims. “The people in this movement have been fighting for our community, our land, our ocean for decades. It’s woven into the fabric of who we are and who we stand for.”

When the fire decimated Lahaina, Indigenous leaders across Maui organized distribution hubs to bring food, medicine and shelter to thousands of displaced and hungry survivors. But already, Ahia said, disaster capitalists have descended on Lahaina to exploit development opportunities that pose immense danger to the island’s fragile ecosystems – and the Indigenous people who have lived there for thousands of years. Real estate agents were cold-calling survivors just days after the fire with aggressive offers for their ancestral homes, prompting the governor, Josh Green, to explore a moratorium on property sales.

“The potential of being further displaced is very real,” Ahia said. “If that happens, that is going to feel like the end for us.”

For much of the 19th century, the Hawaiian Kingdom was an internationally recognized sovereign nation. Then in 1893, a group of US sugar magnates overthrew Queen Liliuokalani in a coup d’état that paved the way for the US to annex the islands five years later. Today, Native Hawaiians are the only Indigenous group in the nation that does not have self-governance rights.

The grassroots sovereignty movement grew out of demands to reclaim the nearly 1.8m acres of kingdom lands that the US took, said Jonathan Osorio, the dean of the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. But in addition to self-determination, he said, advocates are also fighting to reclaim Indigenous culture and language.

In recent years, sovereignty groups have mobilized against rampant development, such as the construction of a massive telescope on Mauna Kea, a sacred volcano on Hawaiʻi. But federal efforts to establish a Native Hawaiian government, which would have given the group self-governance rights similar to Native American tribes, highlighted divisions within the movement, as some advocates consider it incompatible with the goal of re-establishing the islands as an independent nation.

In west Maui, the issue of sovereignty featured most prominently in long-running disputes over water and land access, through grassroots campaigns to return diverted streamwater and restore cultural practices like taro farming. Many of the Indigenous organizers leading relief efforts in Lahaina also emerged from the sovereignty movement, said Healani Sonoda-Pale, an Oʻahu-based sovereignty activist and spokesperson for the Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi political action committee.

Tiare Lawrence, a community organizer and sovereignty activist, converted her home into a makeshift donation hub for displaced families in the Upcountry area. Kaipo Kekona, a taro farmer who has spent decades fighting for food sovereignty in Lahaina, organized a major food and clothing distribution hub in the nearby town of Napili. The values of caring for one another and rebuilding their home in a sustainable way, Sonoda-Pale said, is linked to the struggle for sovereignty.

“It’s no accident that Hawaiians lived here for 2,000 years,” she said. “Hawaiians are good stewards of their resources. It’s not just about making money, tourism and developing.”

When state and federal aid lagged in the days after the fire, Indigenous-led and faith-based organizations stepped up to provide shelter and resources to survivors, said Tamara Paltin, a West Maui county councilmember. A host of volunteer-powered distribution tents provided food, clothing and medication, as well as acupuncture and lomi practitioners.

“As far as I’ve been taught, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi still exists,” she said. “We’re a nation occupied by the US.”

The fire displaced more than 10,000 people and destroyed some of the only low-income housing units on the island, where the median cost of a home exceeds $1m.

Hawaiian lawmakers, however, have limited power to alleviate the housing crisis that has hit Indigenous people the hardest, Paltin said. Green has extended a program allowing wildfire victims to stay in hotels and short-term vacation rentals while they look for alternative housing. But because Hawaiʻi is a US state, he said, lawmakers cannot prevent non-Hawaiians from buying properties.

“The governor is not allowed to simply say a resident of Hawaiʻi can buy this house, a resident from California can’t buy this house,” Green told Honolulu Civil Beat last month. “This is a very tricky legal question, and as much as we’d like to snap our fingers and just do it for local people, it’s hard.”

Paltin said: “If and when occupation ends, Hawaiʻi could run itself like other nations.” She noted that Tahiti, for example, has a law making foreigners ineligible for home ownership. Sovereign status would also allow Hawaiians to collect tax revenues generated by airports, harbors and universities built on kingdom lands, she said.

While progress is often slow and costly, she said, Native Hawaiians have come a long way toward restoring their culture after decades of erasure. When she went to kindergarten 40 years ago, Paltin said, it was illegal to speak Hawaiian. Now, many children can attend Hawaiian-language immersion preschools.

“Those of us who are born and raised here love this place with all our hearts,” Paltin said. “We’ll fight tirelessly for our future and our kids’ future.”

Resistance to US occupation has always been strong, Osorio said, but anti-military activism and the rising tourism industry during the 1960s and 1970s sparked the modern sovereignty movement.

The adverse environmental effect of Hawaiʻi’s second world war-era military bases, particularly on the islands’ air quality and shoreline, has long been a point of conflict between sovereignty groups and the US government. It came to a head last year when the navy confirmed that an oil leak from one of its tank facilities had contaminated Pearl Harbor’s tap water.

A decade after Hawaiʻi became a US state in 1959, annual visitors jumped from 250,000 to more than 1.7 million. Last year, more than 9 million tourists traveled to the islands. During those decades, investors from all over the world began buying land in Hawaiʻi, inflating property values and displacing thousands of Indigenous people. Native Hawaiians today comprise just 10% of the islands’ populations.

“Since the 1980s, generations of Native Hawaiians have been demanding the restoration of our control over these islands,” Osorio said. But the climate crisis, Osorio said, is shifting the conversation around land rights to creating a sustainable society for future generations. For many Native Hawaiians, the ruins of Lahaina are a harbinger of what’s to come if Hawaiʻi continues to follow the capitalist system under US occupation. “Lahaina has burned to the ground and people have lost so much: lives, families, businesses, possessions,” he said. “What happens to that aina – that land – now is tremendously suggestive of what our future is going to be.”

Claire Wang is a journalist based in Los Angeles who covers politics, culture and Asian American issues.

--- ** "The Guardian" newspaper's Editor's appeal to online readers:
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would consider taking the step of supporting the Guardian’s journalism. From Elon Musk to Rupert Murdoch, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives. And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media – the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. While fairness guides everything we do, we know there is a right and a wrong position in the fight against racism and for reproductive justice. When we report on issues like the climate crisis, we’re not afraid to name who is responsible. And as a global news organization, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective on US politics – one so often missing from the insular American media bubble. Around the world, readers can access the Guardian’s paywall-free journalism because of our unique reader-supported model. That’s because of people like you. Our readers keep us independent, beholden to no outside influence and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.

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** Ken Conklin's note: This article was republished in other news media around the world, including some who will use it to reinforce anti-American propaganda. For example
Al-Mayadeen Media Network
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/maui-wildfires-prompt-calls-for-breaking-away-from-us-occupa

Who are we?
Al-Mayadeen Media Network, an independent Arab satellite news channel, launched on June 11, 2012, and based in the Lebanese capital Beirut. Despite being a rather newly established channel, Al-Mayadeen has become one of the most widespread and influential Arab channels. Indeed, it has become the top news channel in more than one Arab country because of its commitment to professionalism and balance in work, which made it a public space for social encounter and interaction.

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/09/ke-aupuni-update-september-2023-lets.html
Free Hawaii blog, Saturday September 9, 2023

Let’s not forget Kapu Aloha

If there is any time for Kapu Aloha, this is it. The fires that ravaged Lāhainā a month ago has brought out the best in us — many acts of kōkua, mālama and aloha kekahi i kekahi — as well as some unfortunate venting.

The world is watching us like never before. How we behave now, in this time of crisis, is going to speak volumes on whether the world’s sympathy and outpouring of concern for the people of Hawaiʻi is warranted.

We just celebrated the 185th birthday of our Queen Liliʻuokalani. If there was anyone who would have been justified to lash out in anger, vengeance and bitterness against those who deposed her, stole her kingdom and subjugated her people, it was her. But she maintained her composure anchored in her faith in Ke Akua Mana Loa and Kapu Aloha.

And just a few years ago, we witnessed and participated in one of the greatest outpouring of Kapu Aloha — Kū Kiaʻi Mauna. It was a situation that could have easily turned ugly, but because of the steadfast guidance of our Kūpuna who spoke, sang, chanted, prayed and counseled our people to embrace and trust in Kapu Aloha, Kū Kiaʻi Mauna became a modern-day example that Kapu Aloha works amazingly.

Let us not forget these lessons and the many more in our history and allow it to guide and inspire us in the challenging times ahead.

One of the insidious legacies of colonialism is the tendency to think like an American — in legal terms, laws, rights, contracts — rather than in human terms of caring, respect, aloha. The American way is adversarial, trying to defeat your opponent rather than working things out through friendship and good will.

About a year ago, I was having a conversation with the Ambassador from Kiribati (our nearest neighbor to the West). He said “I don’t use the term, ‘win-win’. Instead, I use the term, ‘happy-happy’.” This means relationships should not be based on winning over or defeating someone, it should be to make both parties happy. Hence, ‘happy, happy.’ This is quite profound! This is the Pacific way.

This is what we have lost because we have been trained to think in terms of adversarial positions, where you battle things out, rather than of friendly positions, where you work things out. The whole idea of hoʻoponopono is that you work things out, you make things right (pono) between the two of you. You’re ‘happy-happy,’ both sides happy with the result.

The American colonial system is based on winning and losing, buying and selling, owning and owing, using and being used. People’s lives only matter when it serves the American system. Why not, instead of adversarial, adopting a system based on kindness and respect and helping one another? This is the way we should behave as Hawaiians, as People of the Pacific and as Human Beings.

In our efforts to restore our beloved Lāhainā as well as our beloved nation, we should not do so at the expense of our honor and our aloha.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

“FREE HAWAII” T-SHIRTS - etc.
Check out the great FREE HAWAII products you can purchase at
http://www.robkajiwara.com/store/c8/free_hawaii_products
All proceeds are used to help the cause. MAHALO!

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/09/ke-aupuni-update-september-2023-telling.html
Free Hawaii blog Monday September 25, 2023
Ke Aupuni Update

Telling Our Story

I’ve been “on the road” again. For the past two weeks I’ve been at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland attending the 54th Session of the Human Rights Council, where we continue to use the UN platform to raise the issue of rampant violations of political and human rights in Hawaii, a direct result of the United States’ illegal usurpation of our nation.

Over the years, many stories about our situation have been published in the international press, including the current issue of Diva International Diplomat, a magazine published at the UN in Geneva. (To read the story online, click here, and scroll to page 20)
http://online.flipbuilder.com/cyqgf/vzjm/index.html
The timing of the story provided valuable support and credibility for my visit there. Articles like this go a long way in lending credence to our pursuit for a Free Hawaii.

But it’s not only these specialized foreign-affairs publications that mention our rejection of the United Statesʻ claim that it owns the Hawaiian Islands. Main-stream media has caught on to the real story too. For instance, nearly every story analyzing the Lāhainā fire — or surfing in the Olympics, or the Thirty-Meter Telescope, or over development, homelessness, the Hawaiian diaspora — whether it be the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, USA Today, The Guardian (London), Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera and other international press, invariably allude to (or plainly say) the fact that Hawaiians dispute the U.S. claims to Hawaii and are working to restore Hawaii as an independent nation.

It is out there! The media’s awareness has been piqued. Our story has legs. They are beginning to get a glimpse of our nation rising. Why is that?

Sure, for the past 50+ years, we have been in the trenches, resisting and protesting abuse of our ʻāina by the U.S. military; displacement of our people by encroaching development; calling attention to the injustice of an economic and political system that marginalizes and treats Hawaiians as illegal aliens in our own lands. We have been telling our story and challenging the U.S. in the political and legal arenas, seemingly to no avail.

But, what’s different now? Why is our story now being believed and given credence? I propose two reasons:

One: There is a growing aversion among the people of the world to the harmful greed and corruption of the global economic-political system imposed by powerful countries of the world. It’s an exploitative colonial system rooted in domination and “development” in the name of progress... and decent people are disgusted by it.

Two: People all the world harbor profound Aloha for Hawaii. What? We always think of Aloha as a spirit-force that emanates from Hawaii and its people. But we don’t realize that spirit of Aloha is being reciprocated by people around the world, for Hawaii. Everyone I have ever met in my travels around the world has expressed a fascination and inexplicably deep love for Hawaii. It’s like in-bred and automatic. That’s why they are drawn here. Some of the people who care the most about what happens to Hawaii are those who have been here on what was essentially their personal pilgrimage the source of Aloha.

These two reasons are why people are much more receptive to our message of liberation for Hawaii. Now is the time to show them that our nation is alive and growing, that we have a vision for our future, and a plan on how to get there.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

----------------------

Note from website editor Ken Conklin: Colin Kippen was recently chosen to be Interim CEO of the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and probably hopes to keep his job permanently. During the past 30 years (or longer) he held numerous positions in institutions, including OHA, dedicated to political and financial support for racial entitlement programs and working to create a Hawaiian tribe and get federal recognition for it. He authored the following two essays in the OHA monthly newspaper for October 2023, which are stridently race-nationalist -- the Hawaiian version of White nationalism on the maninand. The first essay can be regarded as a statement of OHA's official position, because it is in the newspaper's space where the CEO writes in his official capacity

(1) https://kawaiola.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/KaWaiOla-Oct2023.pdf
Ka Wai Ola [OHA monthly newspaper], October 2023, page 3.
Also available as a freestanding essay with its own separate URL at
https://kawaiola.news/oha/ceo/one-people-one-lahui-the-mantle-of-nationhood/

One People, One Lāhui: The Mantle of Nationhood

By Colin Kippen

Aloha mai kākou,

Our lāhui is a nation; the Kānaka Maoli who descend from the original inhabitants of Hawaiʻi. We who descend from voyagers.

Armed overthrow, wanton theft, raging disease, and forced assimilation over 245 years could not do away with our nation. Now, the market and the ledger conspire to do what boldfaced colonialism could not.

On islands that supported a population of one million Native Hawaiians pre-contact, the average ʻŌiwi cannot own their own home. In one of the most fertile environments on Earth, a cart full of fresh food is enough to break a Hawaiian ʻohana’s survival budget. If this is Hawaiʻi capitalism in 2023, it is the devil’s arithmetic. Hundreds of thousands of Native Hawaiians have been carried away. Half are living on the continent.

But make no mistake: although our people are being displaced, our nation is growing again. Quickly.

There are now almost 700,000 Native Hawaiians, up from 400,000 at the turn of the millennium. Our demographic revival is stunning. Can we match it with social, cultural, and political revival too?

Hawaiʻi needs all the warriors she can muster to bring about this change.

A Native Hawaiian on the continent can lobby their congresspeople. As constituents, they, not us, are the ideal messengers for our lāhui. A Native Hawaiian on the continent can donate to social justice at home. Costs on the continent are lower; they just may have more to give. We should have high expectations of our kin living abroad, and they should have high expectations of us.

History is strewn with groups forced to live in diaspora. The Jewish and Armenian peoples are two who were evicted from homelands, the Near East to Eastern Europe, over millennia. Some eventually made their way to the continental U.S., yet a connection to a shared culture and history continued. The desire of Armenian Americans and Jewish Americans to support historic homelands has manifested itself in advocacy and aid – for Armenia and for Israel – that continues to this day.

And let us not forget the Koreans and Chinese who came to Hawaiʻi. From these shores, they organized to free their motherlands.

Hawaiʻi, our ancestral homeland, will always be first in Hawaiian hearts. We who have the privilege of remaining at the piko of Hawaiian civilization should exemplify inclusive leadership.

Let us recognize Hawaiians on the continent as an integral part of the nation. Let us provide opportunities for those in exile to support our advocacy for the lāhui and for Hawaiʻi. Let us consider ways to keep our kin connected to their culture, and to furnish their children with an authentic, living understanding of their Hawaiian identity.

Hold the diaspora close. If we limit ourselves to a parochial vision of “Hawaiianness” circumscribed by purity tests, we risk losing our brethren to the slow death of assimilation.

Instead, take up the mantle of nationhood. We are, and must remain, one people.

Colin Kippen
Ka Pouhana Kūikawā | Interim Chief Executive Officer

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(2) https://kawaiola.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/KaWaiOla-Oct2023.pdf
Ka Wai Ola [OHA monthly newspaper], October 2023, page 7.
Also available as a freestanding essay with its own separate URL at
https://kawaiola.news/oha/mai-hilahila-uncomfortable-conversations-are-our-kuleana/

Mai Hilahila: Uncomfortable Conversations are our Kuleana
["Mai hilahila" = Don't be bashful; be bold]

By Colin Kippen

Survivors of the Maui wildfires have embarked upon the long road they must travel to regain some sense of the normalcy and repose that constituted their lives before the fires raged in August.

Deeply personal and painful loss is at the center of heated debates ranging from who is to blame for the devastation, how effectively the response was rendered, and what the rebuilding process will entail.

While these conversations are uncomfortable, it is our kuleana to aloha one another by embracing this discomfort. It’s a time to invite complex and critical thought, and it’s a time for listening.

We are in a polycrisis – a period of great disagreement, confusion, and suffering that is caused by many different problems happening at the same time so that they, together, have a very big effect.

Articles have surfaced telling the history of the marginalization and dispossession of Hawaiians by American businessmen who, in concert with the United States, forcibly overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi; how their plantation systems ended the ahupuaʻa system of diversified agriculture and diverted and dewatered Native Hawaiian communities who depended upon that water to survive.

Analysis of the global climate crisis provides additional insight into understanding forces that fanned the flames.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ longstanding efforts to return stolen water to Native Hawaiian communities are legion. Lahaina, once known as the “Venice of the Pacific,” was a lush wetland with fresh waterways coursing through it before it was dewatered and became dry and parched. These histories tell of America’s imposition of settler laws designed to elevate the rights of business interests over Native Hawaiians living in the western region of Maui known as Maui Komohana (West Maui).

To move forward, we must acknowledge what got us here. Sometimes love comes in the form of accountability.

Most Hawaiians I know pride themselves on their relations with one another and their practice of aloha. We are a networked people and our connections have lifted our lāhui through numerous trials and tribulations.

We are haʻahaʻa (humble). We fill each other’s cup even when we’re running on empty. We are generous. We are pono. It is due to these, and many other immeasurable qualities, that I am proud to be a Kanaka Maoli.

However, we must be careful not to subconsciously carry out the legacy of colonialism which blurs the lines between humility and shame.

Shame means we are told, time and time again, “Eh, no ask questions,” and, “If you no can say something nice, more better you say nothing.” We’ve become so accustomed to being silenced that we participate in silencing ourselves.

We do the work of the oppressor and suppress one another in the name of respectability politics and to “make nice.” This line of behavior precisely follows the playbook for internalized oppression.

It’s like thinking about who we might run into at the family lūʻau – a son who works in tourism, a cousin who is in real estate, a sister who teaches in Hawaiian immersion, an aunty who works as a county planner, and a friend who is a kalo farmer – everyone wearing the hat that pays the bills. Yes, we all must survive and make a living, but we must also remember that we are connected as Hawaiians and locals first and foremost.

Cultural and historical erasure occurs in moments like this, where, because of our desire to be aloha with those with whom we come into contact in that moment, we pretend we have not been colonized.

That is because the recitation of that history, and the truth-telling of our present, brutal reality makes us feel uncomfortable and puts us at odds with people who are our friends and relations – those who are simply trying to survive in a Hawaiʻi which they feel powerless to change.

Being pono and having moral clarity calls upon us to speak up when our internal dialogue urges us to remain silent. Being pono means listening to those across the aisle, and across the table from us, even – and especially – when it makes us think about and feel aspects of our identity that we may have buried.

It is a false binary to believe that we must choose to either recall our true history or to soldier on in the present reality and simply “make the best of” the situation.

Rather, we are asked now to uplift a plurality – one where we work shoulder to shoulder together in the present with aloha for all whom we encounter – and stand upon the shoulders of our kūpuna by speaking up and by speaking our truth.

“Mai hilahila” means “donʻt be shame.”

Colin Kippen
https://www.oha.org
Colin Kippen is OHA’s Interim Chief Executive Officer (Ka Pouhana Kūikawā). Prior to being appointed to the position on July 1, 2023, Kippen served as the chief of staff to the OHA Board of Trustees and formerly served the agency as deputy administrator of the Hawaiian Rights Division.

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/10/ke-aupuni-update-october-2023-struggle.html
Free Hawaii blog Saturday October 14, 2023
Ke Aupuni Update

The Struggle to Recover

I am in awe of the people of Lāhainā and West Maui. I have great admiration, respect and aloha for them standing strong with kapu aloha in the face of such great adversity. Videos of them young and old, speaking at hearings and rallies, and social media are both heartbreaking and inspiring.

The people of Maui are amazing. Not only are they dealing with the tragic loss of loved ones and the devastation of the fire, physically and emotionally, but for the past two months, having to cope with finding basic needs like food and shelter in order for their families to survive. Not to mention insane government bureaucracy, insensitivity and incompetence.

But the most frustrating is the callousness and deafness of those in government and business to the appeals of the people to provide adequate time and adequate resources to recover from the tragedy, before reopening for business.

While giving lip service to the concerns voiced so plainly and honestly by the people, the state and county officials, nevertheless, have chosen to ignore the peopleʻs pleas and reopened West Maui to tourists. Cha-ching! Once again the elected and un-elected officials in the “State of Hawaii” show where their real priorities lie. The ATMs of tourism and development.

Once again, our experience in Hawaii under the American system, shows us their main priority is always: money over the people. Yeah, we’re sorry for your loss and suffering, but get over it and move on... we’re losing too much money as it is…

The pursuit of money and power has been Americaʻs prime objectives and modus operandi in Hawaii. Even if it means sacrificing and harming the people of Hawaiʻi.

From the American militaryʻs backing of greedy, white sugar barons and businessmen, who stole our nation and gave it to the U.S... to the systematic denationalization and looting of our country by the sugar and pineapple industries during the “territorial” days... to the “Fake State” that released the real assault on Hawaii — real estate development, speculation, and mega-tourism — the people of Hawaii are either decoration or collateral damage.

Then there is the use of Hawaii as the forward base for Americaʻs wars in the Pacific: the Spanish American War, the Philippine American War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War... a huge military presence that makes Hawaii a certain target for nuclear annihilation in the next “big one.”

This is why we are in such bad shape. There needs to be a fundamental shift in agenda and priorities for our nation. For that to happen, we have to free ourselves of the American money-power driven system.

This is why Hawaiʻi urgently needs to be restored an independent country, run by Hawaiians true to our values of putting people and the care of our lands, before greed and money. Like the brave and firmly grounded people of West Maui, that we have come to know... and many just like them spread throughout Hawaiʻi nei. Hawaiians that are true to the principles of Aloha ʻĀina, Kapu Aloha, Mālama Pono.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

For the latest news and developments about our progress at the United Nations in both New York and Geneva, tune in to Free Hawaii News at 6 PM the first Friday of each month on ʻŌlelo Television, Channel 53. And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media.

PLEASE KŌKUA
Your kōkua, large or small, is vital to this effort
To contribute, go to:
• GoFundMe – CAMPAIGN TO FREE HAWAII
• PayPal – use account email: info@HawaiianKingdom.net
• Other – To contribute in other ways (airline miles, travel vouchers, volunteer services, etc...) email us at: info@HawaiianKingdom.net
“FREE HAWAII” T-SHIRTS - etc.
Check out the great FREE HAWAII products you can purchase at
http://www.robkajiwara.com/store/c8/free_hawaii_products
All proceeds are used to help the cause. MAHALO!

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/10/ke-aupuni-update-october-2023.html
Free Hawaii blog Saturday October 28, 2023

Reconnecting with the Pacific

One of the greatest tragedies of being under the rule of the United States has been the loss of connection to the larger ʻohana of Moana Nui, our Pacific family. Yes, we have connections through our language, culture, customs, genealogies, canoe traditions, and we have people to people relations. But, what about nation-to-nation relations? What about the issues we face as nations of this vast ocean?

While the rest of the nations of Moana Nui interact and work with each other on crucial matters through organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum, the Polynesian Leaders Group, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, the UN Pacific SIDS, and so forth, sadly, Hawaiʻi is glaringly absent from the picture.

Yes, some of our people engage as experts and contributors to the discourse on Pacific Islands issues. But, because Hawaiʻi is regarded as a ʻstateʻ of the United States, and not an independent nation, Hawaiʻi has no significant voice, and certainly no decision-making role in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the one that presumes to speak for us in international matters (as well as domestic policy) is the United States — and we know how clueless they are about what’s in our best interest and the nature of our island ways.

Over the years, as I have attended Pacific regional meetings and conversed with heads of states, diplomats and parliamentarians, they invariably mention they would be very happy if Hawaiʻi (as the Hawaiian nation, not the U.S. ‘state’) was to become an active member of the Pacific family of nations to help with the critical issues facing our islands.

It was the intent of several of our Kings, especially Kalākaua, to bring together our ʻohana of Moana Nui to work for the betterment of our peoples and nations. This great vision was rudely dashed by the assault and abduction of our nation by the United States. Fortunately, we are on the verge of overturning that wrongful taking and restoring the Hawaiian Islands as a sovereign, independent nation.

The irony is that Hawai’i, which was recognized as a sovereign nation long before anyone else in the Pacific, will be among the last to reclaim our place in this extraordinary family of nations and join the voyage, as our wayfinding ancestors did, to navigate the path for our future.

We believe as we recall and become grounded and anchored in the Pacific Way — the ways of our ancestors... mālama ʻāina, kapu aloha, kūleana — and with the significant practical experience we have as a modern economic, geo-political and cultural hub, we Hawaiians have much to contribute to advance aloha ʻāina to better the lives the people of Pacific and the Planet.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/11/ke-aupuni-update-november-2023-when.html
Ke Aupuni update Tuesday November 14, 2023

When Lāhainā Was the Capital

After his victory at the Battle of Nuʻuanu in 1795, the archipelago (except for Kauaʻi and Niʻihau) came under the singular rule of Kamehameha the Great, King of the island of Hawaiʻi. Thus, was born what eventually became known as the Hawaiian Kingdom.

In an absolute monarchy, the King is the government. Wherever the King is, thatʻs where the government is. This means wherever the king lived, that was the capital. To make sure Oʻahu was firmly under control, after the Battle of Nuʻuanu, King Kamehameha remained on Oʻahu for a year (1795-1796). Because he lived in Waīkikī, the seat of government, the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was Waīkikī.

When King Kamehameha relocated from Waīkikī to Hilo in 1796, Hilo became the capital.

In 1802 Kamehameha moved to Lāhainā, and that became the capital until 1812 when Kamehameha set up his home at Kamakahonu in Kailua-Kona (where the Kailua Pier, Ahuʻena Heiau and the King Kamehameha Hotel are now located) making Kailua-Kona the capital. There, in May of 1819 King Kamehameha the Great joined his ancestors, and his son, Liholiho, ascended the throne as Kamehameha II. The next year, after welcoming the first party of missionaries from America at Kamakahonu, King Kamehameha II relocated to Mokuʻula in Lāhainā and Lāhainā again became the capital.

After the death of Liholiho in 1824, King Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli) and the royal family continued to live in and rule from Lāhainā as the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Thus, Lāhainā was the nation’s capital during the crucial, formative years of the Hawaiian Kingdom. King Kamehameha III oversaw the transformation of his domain, the Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands, into an independent, highly enlightened, literate, progressive sovereign country.

Literacy and education was a high priority and hundreds of schools sprang up all over the islands. The first high school “west of the Mississippi River” was Lahainaluna High School, overlooking Lāhainā. The first Hawaiian scholars (in the western sense) like historians David Malo and Samuel Kamakau and Kamehameha III’s closest friend and consummate diplomat, Timoteo Haʻalilio, were graduates of Lahainaluna School.

During those years at Lāhainā Kamehameha III issued the Hawaiian Declaration of Rights (1839); promulgated the first Constitution for the Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands (1840); converted His government from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy; dispatched the envoys Haʻalilio, Richards and Simpson to Europe to petition for recognition of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign nation; weathered the “Paulet Affair” which ended peacefully with Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea, Sovereignty Restoration Day.

It was while the Kingdom’s capital was in Lahaina that King Kamehameha III received the news that his envoys were successful in securing the recognition of Hawaii’s sovereignty through the Joint Proclamation by the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of France (followed by the USA, Belgium, and so forth).

The day became known as Lā Kuʻokoʻa (Independence Day), and later this month, on November 28th, Hawaiians and friends in Hawaiʻi and around the world will be celebrating the 180th anniversary of our independence. Eo!

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

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Ken Conklin posts new webpage providing protest sent to PBS-Hawaii CEO Ron Mizutani re 150-minute double-feature propaganda prime-time broadcast of a panel discussion and film pushing for Hawaiian independence by trashing the overthrow of monarchy (1893) and annexation (1898).

On Friday November 10, 2023 PBS-Hawaii President/CEO Ron Mizutani sent out his weekly newsletter advertising upcoming TV programs for the following week. As usual, he ended it with personal comments expressing his views on one or more topics in those programs. His entire focus in the November 10 newsletter was the 150-minute anti-America anti-White double-feature scheduled for broadcast on Thursday night November 16 from 7:30 to 10:00 PM. The first feature was a 60-minute "Insights" panel discussion about the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the 1898 annexation of Hawaii into the United States, where the panelists are two University of Hawaii Professors and a filmmaker who are all political activists claiming that the overthrow and annexation were illegal, immoral, contrary to international law, and should be reversed by the U.S. withdrawing from Hawaii to make Hawaii once again an independent nation, with reparations for 130 years of colonial oppression under belligerent military occupation. The second feature was a special 90-minute version of the film "Nation Within: The Story of America’s Annexation of Hawai‘i" by Tom Coffman, released in 1998, which had been shown and re-shown numerous times on PBS-Hawaii and other venues nationwide.

Ken Conklin wrote a protest letter to Ron Mizutani, and posted it on a Facebook page. He also submitted a short one-paragraph comment for the "Insights" panel discussion. Both the protest letter and comment have also been posted in numerous other places. The comment summarizes important facts refuting what the panelists were likely to say or which their diatribes usually ignore. The protest message to Mr. Mizutani agrees with two of Mizutani's main points about the importance of history and cites them as reasons why the propaganda televised on November 16 foments divisiveness and damages Hawaii -- just like the damage caused by professors who teach twisted versions of the history of Israel and Palestine which have caused thousands of naive university students throughout mainland USA to stage anti-Zionist rallies calling for the destruction of Israel and defending the tactics of anti-Semitic Hamas terrorists who butchered more than a thousand peaceful Jews at a music festival.

See Conklin's webpage including protest message to Mizutani and comment for the "Insights" TV panel discussion at
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/PBSHAW111623.html

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https://nativehawaiianlegalcorp.org/services/iptkanddata/
Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation

Cultural Intellectual Property, Traditional Knowledge, & Data Sovereignty
Empowering Cultural Stewards and Knowledge Keepers

As indigenous people, Native Hawaiian protection of culture, knowledge, and data is within the scope of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The Native Hawaiian community has asserted its needs and concerns regarding stewardship, protection, and abuses of Native Hawaiian cultural intellectual property, traditional knowledge, and data sovereignty, including with the historic adoption of the Paoakalani Declaration in 2003. The community spoke again in a strong voice on these issues through a historic coalition of kumu hula in the Huamakahikina Declaration in 2021, which NHLC was proud to assist with as legal advisors.

As a result of steadfast, multi-year Hawaiian advocacy, the Hawaii State Legislature passed a joint resolution in 2023 calling on the Governor to stand up a Native Hawaiian Intellectual Property Working Group to “create and develop solutions to prevent Native Hawaiian intellectual property from being incorrectly appropriated” in a report to the legislature prior to its 2025 session. Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation was included among the Native Hawaiian organizations to nominate members to the working group.

Cultural practitioners and traditional knowledge stewards, including Native Hawaiian serving organizations, can request NHLC’s assistance with intellectual property concerns regarding protection or abuse by contacting NHLC’s office at (808) 521-2302 or contact us using our Contact Form.

News + Insights

Published On: November 21, 2023
NHLC Executive Director contributes to NaHHA’s Ka Huina 2023 Intellectual and Cultural Property Panel Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation’s Executive Director, Makalika Naholowaʻa, was a part of the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association’s (NaHHA) fifth annual Ka Huina convention as a panelist on cultural intellectual property. Moderated by Hawaii ...
Read more
https://nativehawaiianlegalcorp.org/nhlc-executive-director-contributes-to-nahhas-ka-huina-2023-intellectual-and-cultural-property-panel/

Published On: November 8, 2023
Ask NHLC: How do courts decide what words in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i mean?
Interpreting the meaning of language is central to the work of all courts in all parts of the world. Whether it be words used by governments in laws, orders, and rules; words used ...
Read more
https://nativehawaiianlegalcorp.org/ka-wai-ola-article-regarding-legal-olelo-hawaii-interpretations/

Published On: November 8, 2023
Ask NHLC: What are the legal rules for using Hawaiian names in business?
What are the legal rules for using Hawaiian names in business? Can businesses that are not Hawaiian own Hawaiian names? Can businesses that use Hawaiian names stop Hawaiians from using those Hawaiian ...
Read more
https://nativehawaiianlegalcorp.org/ka-wai-ola-article-regarding-intellectual-property-of-olelo-hawaii/

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*** Ken Conklin's note: I have several webpages on this topic, because it is one aspect of sovereignty. See
"Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights -- The General Theory, and Why It Does Not Apply in Hawaii"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/indigenousintellproprts.html
and
"Hawaii Bioprospecting -- Hearings by the Temporary Advisory Committee on Bioprospecting (late 2007), and testimony by Ken Conklin"
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/big60/bioprospecting2007.html

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/11/ke-aupuni-update-november-2023-180.html
Ke Aupuni Update Friday November 24, 2023

180 Years of Independence

This year, 2023, is the 180th anniversary of an historic moment for Hawaii. November 28, 1843 was the day the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and the Kingdom of France jointly proclaimed their recognition of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign nation — equal in status with the dominant powers of the world.

Immediately following this recognition, King Kamehameha III declared November 28 as Lā Kuʻokoʻa, Hawaiʻi Independence Day, a national holiday to be celebrated throughout the Hawaiian Kingdom. For 50 years, Lā Kuʻokoʻa and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) were enthusiasticaly celebrated as the principle national holidays of the Kingdom.

But in 1893, an infamous coup d’etat supported by U.S. armed forces, usurped the Hawaiian Kingdom. The next year, the self-proclaimed “Republic of Hawaii” replaced Lā Kuʻokoʻa with the celebration of the American Thanksgiving Day. This was a subversive tactic of the fake Republic (and, after 1898, the fake Territory of Hawaii) to denationalize Hawaiians — erasing the people’s identity and loyalty to the Hawaiian Kingdom — and replacing it with identity and loyalty to America. After 70 years of unrelenting indoctrination and coercion, most Hawaiians became staunch Americans.

However, in the 1970s, Hawaiians being evicted from their lands began to bravely stand and fight back. Major confrontations in the 70s were: Kalama Valley (1971), Kahoolawe (1976), Waiahole-Waikane (1977), Hilo Airport (1978), Sand Island (1979)… These major acts of resistance and many more skirmishes raised serious questions about the legality of the United States’ claim of sovereignty over the Hawaiian Islands.

Then on January 17, 1993, a huge, three-day event, Onipaʻa, was held at Iolani Palace in protest of the criminal acts committed against Hawaiians over the hundred years since the US armed forces and a handful of insurgents seized control of our sovereign, independent, peaceful country.

Prompted by the growing unrest and this huge public outcry of Onipaʻa, on November 23, 1993, US President Bill Clinton signed a Joint Resolution by the US Congress (USPL 103-150) apologizing for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In the Apology the United States admitted that it did not lawfully gain possession of the Hawaiian Islands and that the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom was never extinguished.

The US Apology boosted the “Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement” into high gear and Hawaiians and their supporters began to work in earnest to restore the Hawaiian Kingdom as a sovereign, independent nation. To undo the years of American indoctrination and awaken the national consciousness of the Hawaiian people, Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell, Poka Laenui, Butch Kekahu and many more Hawaiʻi patriots began to make us aware of our history by reactivating our important celebrations and other sacred times and places.

Today, the holidays, Lā Kuʻokoʻa and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea are proudly celebrated throughout Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina... and in other places around the world where Hawaiians live.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

PLEASE KŌKUA
Your kōkua, large or small, is vital to this effort. To contribute, go to:
• GoFundMe – CAMPAIGN TO FREE HAWAII
• PayPal – use account email: info@HawaiianKingdom.net
• Other – To contribute in other ways (airline miles, travel vouchers, volunteer services, etc...) email us at: info@HawaiianKingdom.net

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

** Ken Conklin's note: See my short! webpage
(In)Significance of Hawaiian Kingdom Independence Day vs. Republic of Hawaii International Recognition
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/LaKuOKoaInsignif.html

In 1893, after the monarchy had been overthrown, the temporary revolutionary Provisional Government of Hawaii was given de facto (temporary) recognition within two days by the local consuls of all the nations which had consulates in Honolulu, until such time as a permanent government of Hawaii could be created and could then receive de jure (full-fledged) recognition from their home governments. When the permanent Republic of Hawaii was created through a Constitutional Convention and election of President and Legislature, then during the next several months letters in 11 languages were received in Honolulu, directly addressed to President Sanford Dole, personally signed by Emperors, Kings, Queens, and Presidents of at least 19 nations on 4 continents officially recognizing the Republic as the rightful successor government of the still-independent nation of Hawaii. Photos of those letters, and some accompanying English translations of them and accompanying diplomatic letters and envelopes, are at
https://tinyurl.com/gmdtgmy

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https://ictnews.org/news/tribal-sovereignty-still-a-fight-in-maine
Indian Country Today November 28, 2023

Tribal sovereignty still a fight in Maine
The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act undermines tribal sovereignty and treats Wabanaki Nations as municipalities that are subject to state law. The nations often have to work with the state government to implement federal Indian policies

PAULY DENETCLAW

WASHINGTON — In early November, Maine voters headed to the polls to decide whether or not it was important to require the state to print the entirety of its constitution. This included treaty obligations for the Wabanaki Nations along with other titles.

The question on the ballot was number six. It read: “QUESTION 6: RESOLUTION, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of Maine to Require All Provisions in the Constitution to Be Included in the Official Printing. Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to require that all of the provisions of the Constitution be included in the official printed copies of the Constitution prepared by the Secretary of State?”

More than 70 percent of voters supported the constitutional amendment that would require the state to print the full state constitution, which includes the treaty obligations for the Wabanaki Nations that was removed in 1875. This symbolic gesture would hopefully further tribal sovereignty. This was important for tribal nations because the state has drastically limited tribal sovereignty and the right to self-determination for federally-recognized tribes in the state.

Despite decades of federal Indian law and policy that maintain federally-recognized tribes as sovereign nations, the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980 and other policies enacted by Congress and the state have curtailed these federal laws and policies.

Wabanaki Nations are subject to state law and treated much like municipalities, not as sovereign nations that predate Maine and the United States. There are six federally-recognized tribes in Maine: Mi'kmaq Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, Passamaquoddy Tribe - Indian Township, Passamaquoddy Tribe - Pleasant Point, Penobscot Nation, and Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. Federal Indian laws enacted by Congress after 1980 that would affect the application of state law do now apply in Maine unless specifically mandated by Congress.

“The state of Maine and the Wabanaki Nations have a long, very tense, complicated relationship,” said Maulian Bryant, Penobscot Nation ambassador. “So I think this is a great step forward in some restoration of history and hopefully heading in the right direction towards improving that relationship and restoring some recognition of our tribal sovereignty.”

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who is the former state attorney general, has been opposed to this language restoration. Her office claims restoring the language would confuse citizens since tribal relations are now governed by the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act.

“Because this legislation would not solve any real-world problem, but would instead create new confusion, the Office of the Governor urges that you vote ought-not-to-pass,” said Gerald Reidtold, the chief legal counsel to Mills, during the legislature’s Judiciary Committee meeting earlier this year.

The relationship between the state and tribal nations has been strained over the last few years. In June, Mills vetoed a bill that would have restored some tribal sovereignty for the nations. The other 570 federally recognized tribes are able to exert tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

The Maine legislature tried to overturn the veto but after pressure from Mills, some of the state legislators stepped back their support. Ultimately, it failed to meet the two-thirds vote, the final tally being 84-57 in the House.

How it affects gaming and VAWA

In 2022, a more substantial version of the tribal sovereignty bill, as it became known, wasn’t even brought up for a vote after Mills said she would veto it and the legislature didn’t have the votes to override a veto. The Wabanaki Nations had recently secured mobile sports gambling and were unwilling to jeopardize that by pushing the tribal sovereignty bill.

“We have very restricted gaming,” Bryant said. “We haven't had access to (the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act) because it's one of those acts after 1980, and the state made it very clear from the get-go that state jurisdiction would control all gaming. We've tried a bunch of different ways to get some Class III gaming. We've had high stakes bingo and efforts like that, but we haven't been able to break into casino gaming.”

Another issue was the implementation of the tribal provisions included in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The reauthorization allowed tribal courts to prosecute non-Native offenders in cases of domestic violence, dating violence or violating protection orders.

“The Penobscot Nation assumed that we could start having these cases in our tribal court,” Bryant said. “We were picked for a pilot program nationwide to start implementing these. And current governor Janet Mills was Attorney General at the time and she stepped in and said the Violence Against Women Act would impact Maine jurisdiction. There were concerns about getting a fair trial for these offenders in tribal courts… They effectively blocked Penobscot Nation from having access to VAWA and all the other tribes.”

This was eventually resolved six years later when the Wabanaki Nations worked with Mills as governor to allow the tribal provisions in VAWA to be implemented.

The governor’s office has tried to minimize the issues around the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act by saying the sovereign nations in the state don’t have access to only four or five federal Indian laws passed by Congress.

The first recommendation, in a 2015 report, made by the state’s own and historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, states, “ Respect tribal sovereignty.”

“The only exception is a very few number of laws that might conflict directly with Maine laws, just a handful,” Mills said in a statement. “But instead of specifically addressing the very few Federal laws that do not now apply to the Wabanaki Nations, LD 2004 (the tribal sovereignty bill) attempted to upend the 1980 agreement wholesale.”

“(The bill) would repeal a broad swath of unnamed, unidentified State laws on Tribal Territory, lands that they now hold or might later acquire anywhere in the State of Maine – laws that could regulate things like fish and game, water quality and land use, fire safety and building standards, education requirements, labor and employment laws. This would create a situation where people would not know what laws are in effect in any particular place in Maine. The only way to solve those questions would be by very contentious and lengthy lawsuits.”

Meanwhile there are 570 nations, in 34 states, that are able to exert tribal sovereignty and implement federal Indian laws.

Nonetheless the Wabanaki Nations have continued to push for tribal sovereignty at the state legislature and with the governor’s office. “We're heading into a new legislative session, so we'll be looking once again at amending that 1980 agreement, or trying to,” Bryant said.

The Maine legislature convenes January 3, 2024 and adjourns on April 17, 2024.

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http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/12/ke-aupuni-update-december-2023-another.html
Free Hawaii blog Friday December 8, 2023; Ke Aupuni Update

Another Pearl Harbor?

Yesterday, December 7, was the 82nd anniversary of Japanʻs devastating attack on the US military bases on Oʻahu. Remember, it was not an attack on Hawaiʻi or the Hawaiian people. It was an attack on the US military bases.

The attack plunged America into World War II and Hawaiʻi served as the forward staging platform for the military operations of US and its allies throughout the Pacific and Asia — fighting WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia War and the Cold War. Hawaiʻi is America’s sugar-coated fortress; the HQ for the Indo-Pacific Command projecting US might and will over half the globe.

The US militarization of Hawaiʻi started in the late 1800s with the US Department of War greedily eyeing Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) for a US naval base to expand American enterprise and power in the Pacific. But the Hawaiian Kingdom was a sovereign, neutral country, and King Kalākaua refused to let a foreign navy operate a base at Puʻuloa. Queen Liliʻuokalani likewise refused.

A Conspiracy

On January 16, 1893, a company of fully armed US troops landed in Honolulu to support 13 greedy, disgruntled, white businessmen, to overthrow Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian Kingdom government. For its pivotal role as the muscle in the coup, the US Navy got the use of Pearl Harbor.

Then, three years later, under cover of the Spanish-American war, and claiming “military necessity” (but driven by Manifest Destiny, a.k.a. US white supremacy), the conspirators execute a quasi-annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, the US takes possession, then launches a sixty-year pro-America indoctrination campaign, culminating in 1959 with Hawaiʻi becoming the the 50th State of the United States.

The Awakening

Hawaiʻi’s cultural revival of the 1960s gave rise in the 1970s to serious questions concerning the US military’s presence in Hawaiʻi: Why was so much of our ancestral lands controlled by the US military, and off-limits to Hawaiians? Why were they still bombing, shelling and strafing Kahoʻolawe? Why were they still conducting live-fire training on our ʻāina? Why is the US military allowed to destroy, contaminate and poison our land and water, stockpile vast amounts of weapons of mass destruction and occupy some of our best lands with impunity?

Because it could. Very few questioned or opposed the United States’ presence in Hawaiʻi, including its military presence. After all, the US was here to protect us.

This allowed America to do what it wanted to do, regardless of the harm it caused to the people and the lands. The US militaryʻs obligatory “public notices”, “briefings”, “community input” and “consultations” were a complete sham.

The Biggest Threat

Today, because of the US militaryʻs reckless presence in our islands, our very lives are in danger. Fortunately, the most urgent, immediate threat — the contamination of Oʻahuʻs drinking water by the US Navy’s giant leaking fuel tanks in Kapukaki (Red Hill) — due to public outcry and massive political pressure — is being remedied. Itʻs a good start.

But, the other far more serious threat is another “Pearl Harbor”. Only this time, it would entail nuclear missile attacks on all the US military installations spread across the island. The devastation from such an attack will make all of Oʻahu look like Pearl Harbor on December 8th. Or like Lāhainā after the fire, but with almost no one of the nearly million people who live on Oahu surviving.

The US Military in Hawaii does not make us safe, it puts us in harm’s way, at risk of annihilation. To the US, Hawaii and its people are expendable collateral damage. This is why it is urgent to do all we can to Free Hawaii and remove this clear and present danger before it is too late.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

For the latest news and developments about our progress at the United Nations in both New York and Geneva, tune in to Free Hawaii News at 6 PM the first Friday of each month on ʻŌlelo Television, Channel 53. "And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

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https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/native-hawaiian-environmental-activists-and-greenpeace-usa-protest-for-ban-on-deep-sea-mining/
Greenpeace.org, Thursday December 14, 2023

Native Hawaiian Environmental Activists and Greenpeace USA Protest for Ban on Deep Sea Mining

Today, Kānaka ’Ōiwi (Native Hawaiians) and Greenpeace USA peacefully protested Hidden Gem, a massive deep-sea mining vessel entering Hawaiian waters. The ocean-protectors “strongly oppose #DeepSeaMining and call to recognize the importance of preserving the deep sea.”

Sand Island, Hawaii (December 14, 2023)– Today, Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiians) and Greenpeace USA peacefully protested against the arrival of Hidden Gem, one of the world’s largest deep-sea mining vessels, as it entered Hawaiian waters off of Honolulu. Operated by Allseas and commissioned by Canadian miner The Metals Company (TMC), the ship is believed to be carrying over 3,000 tons of potentially radioactive polymetallic nodules extracted during a deep sea mining trial operation conducted in waters southeast of Hawaiʻi between September and November 2022.

The activists, who were in traditional Hawaiian outrigger canoes and other small vessels, raised banners bearing the slogan “A’Ole (No) Deep Sea Mining,” while others on shore at Sand Island voiced their resolute opposition to the blind destruction of fragile, pristine deep sea environments and the broader, interconnected ocean systems. The rally was organized by Andre Perez, a long-time advocate for environmental protection in Hawaiʻi, and the Hawaiʻi Unity and Liberation Institute (HULI).

Solomon “Uncle Sol” Pili Kahoʻohalahala, a native Hawaiian Elder of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument Advisory Council and Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group, said: “The overthrow of the sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom has removed our Native Hawaiian voices from the international arena in which key decisions about our planet are being made, including decisions about deep sea mining, which we adamantly oppose. With the proximity of Hawaii to the proposed mining zones, it would be foolhardy to be concerned with only what exists on our side of the boundary.”

Deep sea mining involves extracting metals and minerals from the deep seabed. The International Seabed Authority oversees the regulation of this industry and is responsible for protecting the deep sea as the common heritage of humanity. The Authority has granted 31 deep sea mining exploration contracts so far, covering a total of over 1.5 million km2 of the world’s seabed-an area four times the size of Germany. Seventeen of these contracts cover exploration in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which lies between Hawaii and Mexico, placing many Pacific Island communities at the forefront of this harmful industry.

Scientists have warned of the devastating effects of deep sea mining on the environment. If it is allowed to start, vast areas of the ocean floor will be stripped bare, which will destroy habitats and damage unique ecosystems beyond repair. The process could also disrupt carbon cycles, and the associated noise and pollution, including toxic particles dumped in shallower waters, could adversely affect marine life throughout the water column. This includes tuna fisheries, which are an essential source of food for many communities.

Kahoʻohalahala continued: “Our Moananuiākua, the broad seas that embrace our islands, hold deep cultural significance to Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians). The ocean is our place of origin, our source of life, and the body form of our god, Kanaloa. It feeds us both physically and spiritually. We have a kuleana (responsibility and purview) to care for its well-being and the well-being of all the life it holds. We strongly oppose any form of deep-sea mining in these waters and call on the decision-makers to recognize the importance of preserving the deep sea and to consider the long-term consequences of their actions.”

In March, Kahoʻohalahala, who now sits on the ISA’s working group on cultural heritage, and fellow Indigenous activist Hinano Murphy delivered a petition to the ISA with over 1,000 signatories from 34 countries and 56 Indigenous groups calling for a total ban on the industry.

In a letter to Pieter Heerema, the Chief Executive Officer of Allseas, and Gerard Barron, Executive Chairman and CEO of TMC, Kahoʻohalahala said: “We do not welcome the industry you represent or the technology you carry that presents such a clear and present danger to our values and way of life. We cannot communicate a clearer message to you – Deep sea mining is not welcomed in Hawai’i.”

TMC, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI), used an obscure and controversial legal loophole to set an ultimatum for governments to allow deep-sea mining to start by July 9 this year. Their gambit failed. Support for a moratorium, pause, or ban on the industry continues to grow and now includes 24 countries, including Mexico and several Pacific Island Nations, Pacific Indigenous communities, over 800 scientists, civil society, the fishing industry, over 37 financial institutions, technology and auto manufacturers, and numerous NGOs. In spite of this opposition, the company has announced its plans to apply for an exploitation license in 2024.

Arlo Hemphill, Greenpeace USA’s Deep Sea Mining Campaign lead, said: “The reckless pursuit of deep-sea mining by companies like The Metals Company poses an imminent threat to our planet’s last untouched frontier. Ignoring scientific warnings, global opposition, and documented concerns about radiation exposure and health hazards from the nodules it is transporting, The Metals Company is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, misleadingly presenting deep-sea mining as a clean energy venture. Deep-sea mining is not a solution; it is a false promise that could irreversibly damage both our climate and communities. We must resist this misleading narrative and instead encourage innovation in the kinds of battery technology that have already rendered such destructive practices unnecessary.”

The Metals Company intends to be the first commercial deep sea mining operation in 2024. TMC has been actively courting US investment for its deep sea mining ventures and opportunities to use US infrastructure, such as ports, in its production chain.

In July, U.S. Congressman Ed Case (HI-01) introduced two measures calling for a moratorium on deep seabed mining unless and until its consequences are fully understood and an appropriate protective regulatory regime is established. The American Seabed Protection Act would put a moratorium on deep-sea mining activities in American waters or by American companies on the high seas. It would direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Academies of Science to assess how mining activities could affect ocean species, carbon sequestration processes, and communities that depend on the framework to guarantee protection for these unique ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. Finally, it would require the United States to oppose international and other national seabed mining efforts until the President certifies that the ISA has adopted a suitable regulatory framework to guarantee protection for these unique ecosystems and the communities who rely on them.

Deep sea mining is being addressed at the state level through legislation championed by Hawaiian Senator Chris Lee, which allows the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation to delay or deny port of entry approval to vessels engaged in deep sea mining activity not permitted or licensed by the state. Representative Nicole Lowen’s House resolution also calls on the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) to prohibit seabed mining in state waters.

###
Notes to the editor:

Images and videos are available here.
Solomon “Uncle Sol” Pili Kahoʻohalahala: is a seventh-generation native Hawaiian descendant, kupaʻāina, from the small Hawaiian island of Lānaʻi. He is the current native Hawaiian Elder of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument Advisory Council and Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group. He is the current Chair of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary and is a Cultural Community Member of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. He is a member of the indigenous peoples NGO Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA).
The United States, which has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is not a voting member of the ISA. It participates from the sidelines as an observer but wields considerable political power in the multilateral forum, where it is helping to craft the rules that will govern the industry. The U.S. government has expressed aspirations to benefit from the controversial practice should it move forward.
Contact: Tanya Brooks, Senior Communications Specialist at Greenpeace USA
(+1) 703-342-9226, tbrooks@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace USA is part of a global network of independent campaigning organizations that use peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace USA is committed to transforming the country’s unjust social, environmental, and economic systems from the ground up to address the climate crisis, advance racial justice, and build an economy that puts people first. Learn more at www.greenpeace.org/usa.

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https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/12/randy-roth-public-corruption-in-the-land-of-aloha/
Honolulu Civil Beat Sunday December 24, 2023

Public Corruption In The Land Of Aloha
The Broken Trust and Mailbox Conspiracy scandals are now history, but valuable lessons remain unlearned.

By Randall Roth

About the Author
Randall Roth is professor emeritus at the William S. Richardson School of Law where for many years he taught professional responsibility, trusts and estates, tax law, and nonprofit organizations. Along with U.S. District Court Judge Samuel P. King, Roth wrote the “Broken Trust” book and assigned all royalties to local charities.
Editor’s note: This article was published in the December 2023 issue of the Hawaii Bar Journal. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.

The Hawaii Legislature created a Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct in 2022, shortly after federal agents caught two legislators taking bribes. In its report to the 2023 Legislature, the commission described corruption in Hawaii as glaring, embarrassing, deep-rooted and systemic, and public trust as lost. Former officials in prison or awaiting trial included not just legislators, but prosecutors, police officers, planning-and-permitting workers, a chief building inspector, environmental-management director, affordable-housing official, wastewater-maintenance supervisor, police chief, councilman, county managing director, county corporation counsel, and police commission chairperson.

All these crimes were investigated and prosecuted by federal agencies, with virtually no help from local law enforcement, local watchdog agencies, or whistleblowers from within the directly affected government offices. This suggests the added presence of a non-criminal form of corruption, often described as willful blindness or intentional ignorance. Rather than get personally involved and perhaps step on the wrong toes, people deliberately chose to go along to get along.

A tendency to go along to get along is not limited to Hawaii, but it is particularly strong and prevalent here. Reasons include the state’s remote location, overlapping social networks, highly regulated business sector, disproportionate reliance on government jobs, bureaucratic governance structures, union leaders with power to make or break an individual political campaign or business activity, and, perhaps most importantly, longtime dominance of a single political party.

Though seldom an indictable crime, conscious acts of willful blindness can violate civil or ethical duties — for example, when the willfully blind individual is serving on an official watchdog commission, board, or agency. Examples of these include the Police Commission, Board of Water Supply, Commission on Water Resource Management, Commission on Judicial Conduct, Ethics Commission, and Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board, but there are many more.

The individuals appointed to such groups tend to be intelligent, impressively accomplished and widely respected, but they also tend to be establishment insiders, not known as boat rockers. The occasional exception does not last long. For example, a new appointee to the HART board was essentially removed soon after promoting increased transparency and accountability for the rail project.

Meanwhile, establishment insiders perceived as model team players sometimes find their oversight services in high demand. One of the individuals now awaiting trial for an alleged crime previously served on the Judicial Selection Commission, Board of Water Supply, Legislative Salary Commission, Honolulu Police Commission, Judiciary Salary Commission, and Honolulu Apportionment Commission.

Information like this helps explain why Hawaii’s watchdog agencies, boards, and commissions have consistently missed seeing (or pretended not to have seen) public corruption now described as glaring, embarrassing, deep-rooted, and systemic. The following brutally honest look at the essential role of willful blindness in two of Hawaii’s most notorious public corruption scandals is also instructive.

The older of these scandals implicated numerous lawyers, all three branches of state government, and every judicial watchdog group. The complete backstory appears in “Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement & Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust” (University of Hawaii Press, 2006) with electronic and audio versions now Open Access (i.e., free to users) thanks to grants from Kamehameha Schools.
https://randallroth.com/broken-trust/
The underlying news events were widely reported during the 1990s, not just locally, but by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, National Public Radio, and hundreds of other national and international news organizations.

This article focuses on the conduct of Hawaii’s Supreme Court justices, and apparent willful blindness of its judicial watchdog agencies and legal community. The justices had put themselves at the center of the Broken Trust scandal by selecting trustees of the charitable trust then known as Bishop Estate (now Kamehameha Schools), despite lacking the necessary jurisdiction. Acknowledging they could not select trustees while acting officially as justices, they claimed to be doing it unofficially, as private citizens.

Nothing like this existed in any other territory or state, but it was law in Hawaii because justices, acting officially as justices, ruled it so.

One obvious problem was that justices acting unofficially can be subject to fiduciary duties of care and loyalty, and not protected by judicial immunity. Accordingly, Hawaii’s justices could theoretically find themselves personally liable for harm done by trustees they selected negligently or for a purpose other than to benefit the trust.

By the mid-1990s, Bishop Estate trustees were openly ignoring mandatory provisions in the trust’s governing instrument, paying themselves grossly excessive fees, improperly delegating authority among themselves, and paying millions to establishment insiders in the form of salaries, retainers, commissions, and fees for ill-defined services. As described years later in a CBS News “60 Minutes” retrospective report, the justices’ “handpicked” trustees had turned the world’s largest charitable trust (at the time) into “a candy store for the state’s political establishment.”

The trustees appeared to be doing all this with impunity. Indeed, a 1995 Wall Street Journal (April 25) front page story described the trustees as having “so much clout no one stops them.” And, as later summarized in a book review about the Broken Trust book in the Hawaii Bar Journal (July 2006), “Despite corruption, greed, lack of transparency, and serious breaches of trust by the powerful, arrogant, and often abusive trustees, no attorney general, court-appointed master, probate judge, justice of the supreme court, or trust counsel did anything about the abuse and culture of fear perpetuated by the trustees.”

Indeed, no government official, community leader, or group of lawyers publicly addressed the apparent impropriety of the five justices selecting trustees while acting unofficially as private citizens, much less that their selection decisions appeared incompetent at best, self-serving at worst: To be appointed to the Supreme Court a person’s name first had to appear on a short list created by the Judicial Selection Commission; seven of the Commission’s nine members had been chosen by a Senate President, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, or Governor; and Bishop Estate trustees in the 1990s included a former Senate President, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, and Governor’s confidant who also chaired the Judicial Selection Commission.

On August 9, 1997, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published a critique of Bishop Estate trustees and the justices who selected them, under the headline “Broken Trust.” Its authors provided specific examples of trustee misconduct and placed much of the blame at the feet of the justices. For example:

“Acknowledging the obvious impropriety of making trustee selections in their official capacity, the justices tell us they are acting as individual citizens when they select Bishop Estate trustees. … The reality is that Bishop Estate trustees are selected by five individuals who through no coincidence are also justices of the state Supreme Court. A further reality is that these same five individuals are virtually certain to be called upon to decide cases involving the trustees they select. The estate has been before the Supreme Court at least 18 times in the last 13 years. Some people wonder why the justices would stretch logic and judicial ethics to the breaking point just to do something they clearly don’t have to do, and then do it poorly.”

One week later, the Honolulu Advertiser (Aug. 17, 1997) published the justices’ long response, in which they described the Broken Trust essay as “factually inaccurate, distorted, and irresponsible,” and claimed it had “impliedly impugned the integrity, honesty, ethics, intelligence, qualifications, competence and professionalism not only of the five members of the Hawaii Supreme Court as individuals, but also of the court as an institution.”

Days after that, the Governor instructed the Attorney General to investigate the Broken Trust authors’ accusations, including those regarding the justices’ role in trustee selection. The justices agreed to be interviewed only in each other’s presence. Informed the Attorney General was prepared to subpoena them individually, if necessary, to hear their individual responses to her questions, one of the justices responded that although he and the others had acted unofficially when selecting trustees, they were still justices; no one could force justices to cooperate in an attorney general’s investigation; the integrity of the judiciary was at stake; and case law said so, according to this justice. As described by the Attorney General years later, the justices’ position seemed to be, “We’ll just see whether your subpoena power goes so far. If we’re the ones to decide it (which we probably will be), we don’t think so.” The Attorney General filed a motion to disqualify, which the justices sat on for months. Eventually they stepped aside, citing “overheated circumstances” without mentioning their ex parte discussion of the issue to be decided, or their refusal to cooperate with the state’s top law enforcement official’s investigation of a matter in which they claimed to have participated as private citizens.

Meanwhile, the trustees were spending millions in trust funds resisting five on-going investigations. Four courtrooms stayed busy with a flurry of motions and cross-motions, but judges appeared reluctant to remove the trustees, even temporarily. By comparison, a federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service, quickly concluded that these trustees had violated every condition of tax-exempt status and were putting their personal interests ahead of their fiduciary duties. To the IRS, it made little sense to communicate with seriously conflicted trustees.

Although the IRS saw a need to replace the trustees, it lacked the power to do so itself. Nor could it simply order a local court to do so. It accomplished this outcome indirectly, however, by getting word to the probate court that it stood ready to revoke the charity’s tax exemption retroactively — a move that immediately would cost Bishop Estate nearly one billion dollars — if that court did not replace all five trustees. The trustees and their lawyers called this extortion, and they had a point. The IRS’s position was unprecedented and remarkably heavy-handed. But with the tax exemption of Princess Pauahi’s charitable trust at stake and the public watching closely, the probate judge had no real choice but to remove the trustees.

The ousted trustees started the process of suing their former lawyers, on whose advice they would claim to have relied, and justices and other government officials might be implicated. Such possibilities ended suddenly, however, when the probate court approved a global settlement that essentially wiped everyone’s slate clean. The public supposedly wanted closure and healing.

Experts outside Hawaii saw this as a dodge and harshly criticized not just the trustees, but the justices who had selected them and the lawyers who saw but said nothing about the impropriety of justices picking trustees, much less incompetent ones. For example, The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Law Journal (Summer 2007) criticized “political backscratching in the Hawaii Supreme Court’s appointment of trustees.” The International Civil Society Law Journal (July 2007) marveled at the justices’ conflicts of interest and failure to exercise due care when selecting trustees. Trusts and Estates Review expressed amazement that a rigged selection system could continue for many years: “Unfortunately and almost unbelievably (especially for any member of the legal profession), … the [justices] virtually never made an objective, considered selection.”
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~rroth/Trusts%20&%20Estates%20Review%20of%20Broken%20Trust%20July%202006.pdf

In sharp contrast, Hawaii’s judicial oversight groups neither said nor did anything remotely critical of the justices. Hawaii’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is supposed to investigate indications of serious judicial misconduct, did nothing and never explained why. This was not as surprising as it might sound to the uninitiated. All seven members of that commission had been appointed by the justices.

Another group, the Judicial Selection Commission, is supposed to investigate credible allegations of judicial misconduct when it performs 10-year retention reviews. To make sure that happened when the first of the Broken Trust justices came up for review, three Broken Trust authors sought an opportunity to testify. Informed that only written testimony would be considered, the three prepared a 10-page, single-spaced, footnoted document detailing how the justices had damaged the public’s trust in the justice system. As instructed, the authors submitted ten copies — one for each commission member and one for the commission’s staff member. Eventually the commission announced that its members had voted to give this justice another 10-year term. Later, when one of the Broken Trust authors mentioned to a commission member the authors’ disappointment with that decision, the commission member said it had been a particularly difficult decision and the outcome had been decided by a single vote. When the Broken Trust author responded that he did not see how any intelligent, well-intentioned person could read the Broken Trust authors’ testimony and vote to give that justice another 10 years, the commission member claimed not to have been told about or given a copy of that testimony.

Four years later, when the local chapter of the American Judicature Society formed a Committee on Judicial Independence and Accountability, one of the Broken Trust authors appeared before the assembled committee, and began his presentation by noting, “Something is wrong with the system of judicial independence and accountability when serious questions can be raised about the conduct of a state’s entire Supreme Court without an official body either coming to the defense of those justices or taking steps to hold those justices accountable. Given the seriousness and specificity of the allegations in the Broken Trust essay and book, one would expect some kind of response. Thus far, the silence has been deafening.”

He then answered their questions and suggested questions for them to ask the justices, such as this one: “Critics have suggested the Commission on Judicial Conduct’s failure to investigate the many allegations of misconduct by the justices was connected to the fact all seven of the Commission’s members had been appointed by the justices. If you do not agree with that suggestion, please explain why you think your appointees chose not to investigate any of the many allegations of misconduct.”

The Committee on Judicial Independence and Accountability subsequently met with the chief justice, ostensibly to ask him questions like that, but the chief justice flatly refused to respond to questions related to the Broken Trust authors’ allegations. Because that was many years ago, it would not be productive to comment now, he explained. As for the Commission on Judicial Conduct, they do a good job, according to the chief justice.

When the Committee on Judicial Independence and Accountability issued a report
https://americanjudicaturesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/9-Report-of-the-Special-Committee-on-Judicial-Independence-and-Accountability-2008.pdf
several years later, it included the following comments about the Broken Trust essay but said nothing about the chief justice’s refusal to address any of the Broken Trust authors’ allegations: “The Hawaii Supreme Court’s (discontinued) involvement in the appointment of Bishop Estate trustees was the genesis of considerable criticism in the wake of the Broken Trust essay, which was published by the Star-Bulletin in 1997, and the subject of further public debate after the Broken Trust book was published in 2006. …The sub rosa contentions in the Broken Trust discussion, that the Supreme Court’s trustee appointments were essentially political payoffs, rather than based on merit, and that the settlement of the legal actions involving the former trustees was improperly permitted by the judiciary, may have cast lingering shadows on the public’s view of the judiciary. …This Committee is not qualified or inclined to pass judgment on anyone’s conduct in the matter. The Committee does not find, however, that the system is inherently flawed.”

In sum, there was minimal accountability for trustees who enriched themselves and others at the expense of charitable-trust beneficiaries; no accountability for the succession of attorneys general, probate judges, court-appointed masters, and watchdog commission members who for years failed to see problems that were obvious; and no accountability for justices whose hand-picked trustees turned the state’s largest and most historically and culturally significant trust into a candy store for the state’s political establishment.

The absence of accountability in the Broken Trust era set the stage for future corruption scandals, including the one described in “The Mailbox Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Greatest Corruption Case in Hawaii History” (Watermark Press 2021), a book written by former federal public defender Alexander Silvert.

Its core story began with efforts by Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his deputy prosecutor spouse, Katherine Kealoha, to frame Katherine’s uncle for crimes he never committed, which was related to Katherine’s attempts to defraud various family members, including that uncle. Because family dysfunction was at the core of “The Mailbox Conspiracy” story, casual observers might mistakenly assume this scandal says little about systemic criminal and non-criminal corruption in Hawaii.

Federal District Court Judge Michael Seabright did not make that mistake, as evidenced by his remarks when sentencing the Kealohas. After describing their conspiracy as “staggering in its breadth, its scope, and its audacity,” Seabright suggested anyone who cares about Hawaii should be asking, “How was it this went on so long undetected?”
https://www.khon2.com/local-%20news/judge-corruption-was-allowed-to-flourish/

Indeed, it seems unlikely that a police chief, deputy prosecutor, and other law-enforcement officers could frame a totally innocent man — and destroy extensive physical evidence of their crime — without others in the police department or prosecutors’ office suspecting something was amiss. These offices are filled with professionals trained and experienced in spotting wrongdoing, and the wrongdoing in this case had been staggering in its breach, scope, and audacity. Yet there were exactly zero whistle-blowers from these offices.

At times there appeared to be more than willful blindness at work. According to Silvert, various personnel within the police department resisted turning over exculpatory evidence and then improperly redacted records they turned over. But at least they eventually responded. By comparison, the Prosecutor, the city’s chief law enforcement officer who was specifically empowered to uphold the law and, as an attorney, ethically required to do so, flatly refused to cooperate in any way with the federal investigation.

Various watchdog agencies also fell spectacularly short. The Honolulu Ethics Commission was one of them, according to its former executive director, Chuck Totto. He started investigating the Kealohas in 2014, which was before any federal investigation, but Totto’s investigation ended abruptly in 2015 when he resigned under pressure and funding needed to continue the investigation was terminated. Years later, when the commission’s chairperson publicly defended the commission’s actions and described Totto’s resignation as voluntary, he responded, “The ethics commission did not carry out its duty to the public to properly investigate the Kealohas. We’ve heard some reasons as to why that was, but I don’t buy those reasons.”
https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/07/defiant-ethics-commission-defends-decisions-on-kealohas/

Another example of a possibly ineffective watchdog agency: When Chief Kealoha intentionally caused a mistrial, apparently to avoid public revelation of the criminal conspiracy, the Police Commission chairman told reporters,
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/27657456/hpd-chief-appears-before-police-commission/
“I think the chief has acknowledged that he’s made a mistake, he’s apologized, he deeply regrets it, and we need to move on.”

Years later, a different chairman acknowledged that the police department was still under a dark cloud
https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/02/indictment-puts-spotlight-on-one-of-the-most-connected-men-in-honolulu/#:~:text=Indictment%20Puts%20Spotlight%20On%20One%20Of%20The%20Most%20Connected%20Men%20In%20Honolulu,-25&text=Max%20Sword%2C%20a%20former%20tourism,officials%20facing%20federal%20conspiracy%20charges.
because of the ongoing federal investigation, but said the police department needed to “move on.” In 2020, the newly appointed Commission Chairperson said the commission needed more aloha,
https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/01/sheehan-out-as-honolulu-police-commission-chair/#:~:text=Sheehan%2C%20an%20attorney%20and%20former,retired%20Hawaii%20Supreme%20Court%20justice.
and added, “I don’t want to dwell on the past.” Immediately following the Kealohas’ conviction in federal court, the mayor who had appointed every member of the Police Commission told reporters, it’s time for the Police Department, the City, and the public to “move on.”
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/06/29/hawaii-news/mayor-caldwell-defends-his-move-on-comments/

The framed uncle in The Mailbox Conspiracy had submitted a detailed complaint to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, but, as best he could tell, that agency did not investigate his specific allegations. He first heard from that office years later after Katherine had been convicted of serious crimes and voluntarily relinquished her law license. It is not as though Katherine’s corrupt behavior had been subtle. In addition to stealing from her grandmother and uncle, she had defrauded banks, stolen the life savings of orphans, talked those orphans into lying to the grand jury, created a fictitious notary, and misused her position of deputy prosecutor to protect her brother and others from criminal prosecutions. As described in court, she had been “a walking crime spree.”

As Silvert has pointed out, when a bridge collapses the affected community tries to understand why. People do not simply “move on.” Public trust in our government has collapsed, largely because of public corruption detailed in Broken Trust and Mailbox Conspiracy, yet oversight groups that may have engaged in willful blindness, or chosen not to seek accountability for clearcut wrong-doing, apparently expect simply to “move on.”

Willful blindness is particularly troubling when done by someone with a special responsibility for the quality of justice. According to the Hawaii Rules of Professional Conduct, that includes every lawyer. If lawyers find excuses not to point out apparent corruption, or fail to call for accountability when members of official watchdogs appear to engage in willful blindness, who is left to do so?

The Broken Trust and Mailbox Conspiracy scandals are now history, but valuable lessons remain unlearned. The learning process will require more public discussion than just this article, and such discussion, if candid, will make many establishment insiders uncomfortable. But if enough lawyers express themselves candidly and forcefully, meaningful change is possible. Otherwise, history will repeat itself in one form or another, and public corruption will continue to be glaring, embarrassing, deep-rooted, and systemic in the land of aloha.

----------------

https://icmglt.org/the-us-promised-to-return-stolen-lands-to-native-hawaiians-a-century-ago-most-are-still-waiting/

ICMGLT [INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR THE STUDY, PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF MULTIGENERATIONAL LEGACIES OF TRAUMA INC.]

** Ken Conklin's note: Read the name of that organization again. Astonishing championship-level celebration of victimhood.

Tuesday December 26, 2023

The US promised to return stolen lands to Native Hawaiians a century ago. Most are still waiting
The Maui wildfires illuminated the ongoing failures of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act

On a one-acre farm at the foot of Maui’s dormant Haleakalā volcano, Kekoa Enomoto grows dragonfruit, pineapples, yuzu, avocado, kabocha squash and chilli peppers. She tends to a laying chicken, two honeybee hives and an aquaponics system that spawns Mexican oregano, lemongrass and tilapia.

As a beneficiary of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, a century-old program to return Native Hawaiians to their ancestral lands, Enomoto, 77, pays just $600 a month in mortgage fees for the farm and three-bedroom house where she’s lived for the past two decades. The average mortgage payment in Hawaii exceeds $2,500, the second-highest among all US states.

“I am an example of what can happen and what should happen,” said Enomoto, who is of Native Hawaiian and Filipino descent.

Yet her experience cultivating, raising a family and growing old on land that is her birthright has been far from the norm for Native Hawaiians, who experience the highest rate of homelessness in one of the most expensive places on the planet. Despite accounting for only 20% of the state’s overall population, Native Hawaiians make up 50% of the unhoused population.

The August wildfires that devastated Lahaina, killing 100 people and displacing more than 10,000, have exposed the island’s escalating housing shortage. For Native Hawaiians – the Kānaka Maoli – who have borne the brunt of this crisis, the tragedy also highlighted failures of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, whose promise many say is going unfulfilled.

The department of Hawaiian home lands (DHHL), the state agency charged with distributing homesteads, has awarded lots to 10,000 beneficiaries. But nearly 29,000 people remain on the waitlist, and more than 2,000 have died waiting, according to an investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica.

“The state has failed miserably as a trustee for these Native Hawaiian beneficiaries,” said Carl Varady, a Honolulu-based attorney who represented homesteaders in a landmark case against the state.

How homesteaders like Enomoto live today is much like how Native Hawaiians did for more than a millennium, before Christian missionaries, traders and whalers arrived on the islands in the 19th century. Like other Indigenous peoples in the US, the Kānaka Maoli lived sustainably and took only what they needed from the land, growing kalo and breadfruit to feed entire villages. In 1893, when American colonists overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy to control the islands’ sugar-based economy, Native Hawaiians disenfranchised from their lands were forced into crowded urban tenements where diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis spread rapidly.

The Native Hawaiian population plunged from hundreds of thousands in the late 18th century, before western contact, to fewer than 24,000 by 1920. Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, a territorial delegate to the US Congress, proposed a homesteads program to rehabilitate the Native Hawaiian population through land ownership. In 1921, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which placed 200,000 acres of land that belonged to the Hawaiian Kingdom into a trust. Anyone 18 years or older with at least 50% Native Hawaiian lineage would be eligible to obtain a 99-year land lease for $1 a year. (The leases, which are still available, can be extended by another 100 years.)

“It’s really important, not just for our generation, but the generations after us so that we don’t lose our culture and our values and what it’s like to be Kānaka,” said Sherry Kupua, who owns a four-bedroom homestead property in central Maui.

Kupua and her husband, both born and raised in Maui, spent most of their adult lives working two jobs each to keep up with rising rent and the costs of raising seven children. In 2017, they bought a homestead for less than $250,000, a fraction of Maui’s median home price, which now exceeds $1.2m.

Since becoming a homeowner, Kupua, 45, has earned a master’s in social work and secured a job as the chief programs director at Family Life Center, a homeless services organization. Her husband is now running his own waste-management business. “That’s the success of having your own home, investing in your dream and being able to make room for other things to come through,” she said.

Her experience also points to the failures of the program. Kupua says she was able to get her property only by bypassing the waitlist after a close friend from church sold it to her directly. Before then, her husband had been on the waitlist for 20 years. “If we waited on the list, we would have been waiting for a very long time,” she said.

Since its inception, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act has been riddled with problems. The trust lands had been leased to sugar plantations, and only a limited portion were suitable for residential or agricultural use. A quarter of the allotted acres, in fact, were barren lava fields with limited water access that “a goat couldn’t live on”, the territorial representative William Jarrett said in 1921.

Vast portions of homestead lands also have been developed for purposes other than homesteading. For decades, public agencies have leased thousands of acres of trust lands, for little or even no compensation, to develop schools, parks, airports, military bases and other facilities. In 1995, the state legislature passed a reparations bill, Act 14, that authorized land exchanges and $600m to settle public use controversies. But the department has continued to invest in commercial leasing projects with non-Hawaiian entities to make up for revenue shortfalls, including a stalled plan to build a casino resort in Oahu.

In October, the state finalized a $328m settlement agreement with 2,500 waitlisted beneficiaries who had brought a class-action lawsuit against DHHL for mismanaging the public lands trust. The Kalima lawsuit, filed in the late 1990s, alleged that the department leased homestead lands to non-Hawaiian entities and mishandled thousands of homestead applications. More than 1,100 plaintiffs have died in the 23 years the case was fought in court.

Varady, a co-counsel in the Kalima case, said that many of the older plaintiffs he represented lived in derelict conditions as the wait stretched on. Some were unhoused and slept on the beach. Others lived in cramped, multigenerational housing without electricity or running water.

“They were all deprived of the benefits of homesteading because of the state’s breaches of trust,” Varady said.

Another problem, experts say, is that the program has veered away from its goal of affordable home ownership. Residential homestead awards take several forms, including rent-to-own properties and vacant lots on which families can build their own homes. But the most sought-after option among homesteaders is buying prebuilt single-family homes on trust lands. While these turnkey houses cost about half the price of comparable homes elsewhere on the islands, they’re still prohibitively expensive for working-class Kānaka families.

A 2014 DHHL study found that only about a quarter of waitlisted beneficiaries said they could afford the 10% down payment on a mortgage for a $150,000 property. As a result, many beneficiaries who were called off the waitlist ended up turning down home-ownership opportunities.

Turnkey awards have “turned the program on its head because they serve the middle class and not the poorest Native Hawaiians who are most in need of housing”, said Thomas Grande, a co-counsel in the Kalima lawsuit. “A very substantial number of Native Hawaiians can’t possibly afford to pool together several hundred thousand dollars in mortgage.”

In Maui, there are roughly 1,400 homesteads and more than 3,800 applicants on the waitlist, including many people who were displaced by the fire. (Locals in Lahaina say it felt like a miracle that the Leialiʻi homestead community, which is close to the burn zone and houses more than 100 Native Hawaiians, was left mostly unscathed.)

In September, Enomoto presented to DHHL an emergency proposal to build 300 solar-powered homes on a Lahaina homestead community for displaced waitlist beneficiaries. But the department’s response was lukewarm, she said, because officials weren’t accustomed to beneficiary-driven initiatives. “They’re a gatekeeper and they’re obstructive,” she said, noting that the commission had accepted many proposals from non-Hawaiian beneficiaries.

Kali Watson, the director of DHHL, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Watson told Hawaii Public Radio in October that the department was working with 1,400 Maui homesteaders to build accessory dwelling units(ADUs) as temporary housing for displaced family members. The department is also developing 230 new homestead lots in west Maui and has approved construction on another homestead project for next April.

Meanwhile, beneficiaries say they’re often left to advocate for themselves. Enomoto teaches financial literacy to homesteaders through the non-profit she co-founded, Pā’upena Community Development Corporation. Over the past six months, she’s been working with Native Hawaiians on the mainland US on getting their savings and credit in line and obtaining mortgage pre-qualification letters so they’re financially prepared when they come off the waitlist.

Like many other homelands advocates, she’s also looking at alternative approaches to developing homes people can’t afford. Her organization has pushed for the Kuhio Awards program, which would immediately distribute the remaining 100,000 acres of trust lands among all waitlisted beneficiaries, who would then build and maintain homes by their own means.

“Kuleana is the word for ‘responsibility’ and it allows us to figure out ourselves how to develop and live on the land, how to create funding for the infrastructure,” she said. “That’s what sovereignty is about. That’s what Prince Kuhio envisioned.”

This is part of a series on the aftermath of the Maui wildfires.

Read the first story, on the mental health crisis among children, here.
https://apple.news/A2r-wurOtQy-o4vrbXWB1jg

Read the second story, on the survivors who are facing repeated displacement, here.
https://apple.news/Ax6ptQG4zTOGDmJvnRxwPbw

And read the third, on the fires exacerbating the housing crisis, here.
https://apple.news/AKGdSc2uQTgWd-GRvUjaRSg

-------------------

http://freehawaii.blogspot.com/2023/12/ke-aupuni-update-december-2023-quick.html
Ke Aupuni Update December 29, 2023

Quick Review of Our Situation

Contrary to what most people think, the Hawaiian Islands is not part of the United States… and never was. The United States never lawfully acquired the Hawaiian Islands.

Most people, in Hawaii and around the world, blindly believe the false narrative that the Hawaiian Islands is part of the United States. It is not. Most people believe the false narrative that Hawaiian Kingdom no longer exists. But, it does.

The Kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands, is a pre-existing sovereign nation, but one that is being unlawfully suppressed, occupied, and callously ruled by the United States. The trut

h is, the United States never lawfully acquired the Hawaiian Islands. The U.S. officially admitted in 1893 (Cleveland), and again in 1993 (Clinton) that they wrongly usurped the Hawaiian Kingdom government.

That also means Hawaii’s sovereignty was never lawfully extinguished, and the so-called “State of Hawaii” is a fabricated entity to make the U.S. presence in Hawaii appear to be legitimate and permanent.

Even with these disclosures of the truth, the U.S. persists in ruling over the Hawaiian Islands using lies, deceit, and propaganda-induced historical amnesia, backed by its military bully power.

The United States says the people of Hawaii are “Americans” (U.S. citizens) and that Hawaiian citizens (subjects, nationals) do not exist.

However, Hawaiians patriots (subjects, nationals) have been pushing back, asserting Hawaii is not America, and never was. And that the continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom, means the continuity of its people (Hawaiian subjects or nationals) as the lawful inhabitants and body politic of the Hawaiian Islands.

The United States citizens (Americans) living in Hawaii are actually foreigners, collaborating with their U.S. government to perpetuate its long-standing fraud.

Hawaiian nationals have been exposing the fraud and, by doing so, are making significant headway toward liberating Hawaii from U.S. occupation.

Hawaiians, knowing their country, the Hawaiian Kingdom, still lawfully exists, are repatriating to their country and working diligently to free their homeland from the U.S. occupation.

Hawaiians nationals have reclaimed their kuleana (responsibility, obligation) and legal right (backed by international law and best practices), to reclaim and restore their own nation, to make things pono (right, proper order).

Abroad, members of the international community are awakening to the Hawaii situation and preparing to urge the United States to voluntarily end its illegal, 125-year occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom and cooperate in its restoration.

At home, we need to prepare ourselves for “the huli” the turnover.

“Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station.” — Queen Liliʻuokalani

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. The sovereignty of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.

"And remember, for the latest updates and information about the Hawaiian Kingdom check out the twice-a-month Ke Aupuni Updates published online on Facebook and other social media."

Malama Pono, Leon Siu, Hawaiian National

==================

Send comments or questions to:
Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

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