Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 11, Number 3, 1 March 1994 — The pursuit of Hawaiian property [ARTICLE]

The pursuit of Hawaiian property

by Patrick Johnston The introduction of private property radically changed the political, social, and eeonomie landscape of Hawai'i. While established in part to maintain some of the traditional land system in the face of Western pressure to reform, privatization led instead to the widespread alienation of Hawaiians from their land. The first to receive private pIots of land in Hawai'i were the king and his chiefs after the 1848 Mahele. In 1850, the Kuleana Act awarded small plots of land to tenant farmers located on chief or govemment lands. In the same year non-Hawaiians were given the opportunity to purchase fee simple title to property. A major problem for native Hawaiians was that they were unfamiliar with Westem-style land ownership. They would sell property, fail to elaim land, or not clearly establish heirs, not realizing that their actions v ould forfeit their right or their children's rights to use the land. Also, chiefs and commoners would often go into debt to Westem businessmen and sell land to cover the debt. Compounding the problem were epidemics that were rapidly wiping out Hawaiians with legitimate claims. Kuleana escheat laws passed in the 1860s gave surrounding ahupua'a owners kūleana parcels if the owner died without an heir or will. This eventually made things worse for native Hawaiians because many ahupua'a were taken over by non-Hawaiian land owners. Onee in control of an ahupua'a they would use kuleana escheat laws to gain control of unclaimed kuleana through a legal process known as quiet title, a procedure used to clarify ownership of property.

Adverse possession laws were established in the 1870s and were also used in quiet title cases. Adverse possession is a practice in whieh a landowner claims title to land that he is using if the original title holder does not reclaim it within a certain period. Many of the large land estates in Hawai'i were built, in part, as a result of native Hawaiians not legally taking control of their lands. A non-Hawaiian purchased the entire island of Ni'ihau because loeal tenants did not fde claims. A large portion of what is now Moloka'i Ranch - land representing a third of Moloka'i - was acquired through adverse possession. Making things worse for native Hawaiians were ambitious Westem agriculturists and business people who saw it in their and Hawai'i's best interest to develop as mueh of the islands' potential as possible. By 1967, when the Hawai'i Land Reform Act was introduced, ownership of most of Hawai'i's land was concentrated in the hands of a small number of landowners. Seventy-two private owners held 47 percent of the land in Hawai'i with seven owning nearly 30 percent. Some of these landowners - such as Bishop Estate - were trusts set up by past Hawaiian royalty. Others were large non-Hawaiian agricultural operations.