Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 1, Number 5, 1 June 1984 — Lanā Grab of 1984 [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Lanā Grab of 1984

By Hayden Burgess Trustee, O'ahu Land is more than a source of subsistence to native people. It is fundamental to their status and self esteem; it is an ingredient of their spirituality. History has shown that next to introducing disease or firing bullets into them, the way to destroy a native people is to take from them their land.

The native people of North America suffered all three methods of genocide. They were exposed to foreign disease and those that survived faced slaughter by arms. And while they struggled to survive these onslaughts, they were robbed of their lands by the Americans through a pattern of deceit, trickery and the manipulation of treaty interpretations. The Aborigines of Australia were simply chased off their lands or murdered. And while these native people struggled to survive these onslaughters, their land too was stolen. The Maoris of New Zealand saw slightly better treatment than outward extermination; but the deception behind the "Treaty of Waitangi" with Britain eompounded by the white instigated Maon wars, resulted in their land holdings being depleted to a minute fraction of what was held before.

Eaeh one of these native peoples are today the worse off in their own native lands. They are over-represented in the jails and on the government welfare rolls; they are the poorest educated; they suffer the worst health conditions and live in the poorest parts of their homelands. Too many are strangers in their own lands. This pattern of destruction taken against native people has been and is being used in Hawaii. We, the Po'e Hawaii (people of Hawaiian ancestry) have suffered the stroke of disease whieh eliminated as mueh as 80 percent of our race. We witnessed a land upheaval that found our people dispossessed of over 85 percent of our lands, and now we find another attempt to take from what little we have left by robbing from the trust created especially for us, the native people of Hawaii. We need to take a moment here to eonsider Hawaii's history in order to understand our present condition. At the time of the Western world's intrusion into Hawaii, land was under the ruling Alii of his (or her) district. He

have seen control of many of these lands pass into the hands of non-Hawaiians. However, we now have an opportunity to regain control of our lives and resources. OHA was created in 1978 with the intent of providing Hawaiians with a vehicle to become self-determining through an accountable process. The approximately 42,000 registered OHA voters make up the major part of that process. lt is these registered OHA voters who set the rules, and it is they, not the State, who should decide whether Walter Ritte remains as a trustee.

alloted the use of the lands to those below him. Although we may today consider the Alii to have had "title" to these lands, they were actually held in "trust" for the protection and management of a life concept. In Hawaii, there was no land "ownership" as we know it today. Land was one of the integral parts of the circle of life whieh included Air, Light, Winds, Waters and the Human Spirit. All of this was part of God. Being a part of God, none of these elements could "own" the other or be "owned" by another, thus, Man could not own Air, Light, Winds, Waters or Land.

Alii Bernice Pauahi Bishop obtained title to portions of Hawaii as a result of the Mahele of 1848. Realizing that less than one percent of the "title"to Hawaii's lands went to 99 percent of the native Hawaiians, she gave her lands whieh now make up the Bishop Estate to the native Hawaiians in a trust to assist her people in their struggle through changing times. Now, under the guise of "the public interest", a few people in predominantly rich areas of Hawaii want to rob from this native trust to elaim ownership to these lands. To those who have eome to Hawaii finding fee simple lands too scarce for their liking, I say to you what all native people should say to those who have tried to take their lands under one excuse or another, Aloha (meaning goodbye). To those who say that it is wrong for a single estate to own so mueh land in Hawaii, I say the real owners of these lands are 250,000 native people in Hawaii and elsewhere. This amounts to a little over one acre of their own homeland per person.

To those intent on breaking the Bishop Estate because of its highly paid trustees, or its land management practices, or its method of operating The Kamehameha Schools or for whatever other gripes one may have against the trust, I say this is a matter for us, the Po'e Hawaii to resolve, not for everybody else and their cousins and uncles to butt in with their criticisms and attempt to destroy what they have no right to. And to my fellow Po'e Hawaii 1 say, LET NOT ANOTHER SPECK OF D1RT BE TAKEN FROM US WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. Let us stop this forced dispossession of our lands.