Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 8, Number 5, 1 May 1991 — A national park for Oʻahu? Don't take Hawaiian land [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A national park for Oʻahu? Don't take Hawaiian land

by Thomas K. Kaulukukui, Sr. Trustee-at-large

Recently, it was announced that the Nahonal Park Service has been invited to eome to Hawai'i to review and assess the possibility of a nahonal park on O'ahu. The park would include portions of the wind-

ward coast from Hanauma Bay to Bellows Field, Mount Olomana, Maunawili Valley and Kawainui Marsh. From an environmental standpoint, there is some merit in this idea. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, however, opposes, the plan. Not many outside the Native Hawaiian community understand why this plan is harmful to Native Hawaiians and why we object to turning thousands of acres of Hawaiian land over to the federal government. Proponents of the plan argue that the area is environmentally vulnerable and uniquely valuable as open space. They criticize loeal government for doing too little to protect and preserve this area. While the criticism may be accurate, the environmental concerns are not the only issue involved. Equally vulnerable and unprotected are Native Hawaiian concerns. A large portion of the property suggested for federal acquisition for the park is either owned by Hawaiian interests or is part of federal/state trusts established to benefit and protect the Native Hawaiian community. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands holds large portions of the Waimanalo coastline, Bellows Field is ceded land with responsibilities to the Native Hawaiian community and mueh of the Ka Iwi shoreline is owned by Bishop Estate. The impact to the Native Hawaiian community by the loss of these lands for a national park cannot be overstated. The erosion of Hawaiian participation in land ownership has been constant and continuous since the idea of private property rights was introduced to Hawai'i in 1850. Immediately and swiftly, Hawaiians lost their land through a laek of understanding of private property rights, inheritance rights, adverse possession and public works policies. Time after time Hawaiian lands

have been taken for some superceding interest. Waimanalo Beach Fark, Sea Life Park and Blanche Pope Elementary School are built on Hawaiian Homes Land. The entire island of Kaho'olawe, ceded land, was taken by the federal government for a training ground. Bishop Estate, Lunalilo Trust, and the Queen Emma Foundation, whieh all support public purposes, are in a continuous fight to protect their land holdings. These are only a few of the instances in whieh Hawaiian lands have been taken for some other purposes. Our land base in Hawai'i is small. We cannot continue to justify the evolution of land ownership and trust responsibilities away from the Native Hawaiian community by saying that there is a greater need to be addressed. We must honestly acknowledge that these land policies harm the Native Hawaiian community. We must not continue to diminish the Native Hawaiian presence in our own land. Equally important to understand is that Hawai'i has had a long and often bitter involvement with the federal government over Hawaiian lands. The Hawaiian monarchy was lost, in part, by the participation of the United States military. The Hawaiian Homes trust was created in a controversial compromise between Hawaiian sugar planters and the U.S. Congress. For almost 50 years the entire island of Kaho'olawe was used for target practice by the military. On O'ahu alone the federal government holds more than 50,000 acres of land. Mueh of this land is ceded land, land that belonged to the Hawaiian monarchy, land that the federal government kept when Hawai'i became a state and land that the federal government promised to return to the people of Hawai'i when it was no longer needed. Instead, the federal government is now suggesting that the State of Hawai'i buy back its own land. The price being quoted for Bellows Field alone is between $300-500 million. Federal management policies that appear to be designed to protect military interests rather than Hawaiian interests have raised a profound distrust of federal stewardship in the Native Hawaiian community. In the early 1950's Kaneohe Manne Corps Air Station excavated the remains of more than 1 ,000 Native Ha waiians in order to build a golf course. Today, almost 40 years later, these remains are still in boxes at Bishop Museum

awaiting a federal decision on a "suitable" plaee for reinterment. The problems of the Hawaiian Homes Trust, a federal trust, are infamous. The trust was endowed with the poorest land in order to assure sugar planters that the productive land would be available for sugar cultivation. No money was put into the trust to support home building or farming enterprises. Lands were then taken out of the trust for military purposes. Lualualei Naval Ammunihon Depot on O'ahu is built on Hawaiian Homes land, the buffer zone around the Pacific Missile Range at Barking Sands, Kaua'i is Hawaiian Homes land. The 1983 Task Force report on the Hawaiian Homes Trust and Volume II of the 1983 Study Commission on Native Hawaiians detail 60 years of mismanagement. The facts of the mismanagement are incredible enough by themselves but what is most compelling about the reports is an understanding of the humiliahon early Hawaiian Homes lesses experienced at being treated as outcasts in their own homeland. These controversies, born nearly 100 years ago, are just now being resolved. We have spent a full century trying to overcome the consequences of federal stewardship. It is ironic that just as we have begun to make progress towards correcting these injustices, that a new effort is underway to give the federal government control of additional Hawaiian land. This sort of "tunnel vision" protection is not what Hawai'i needs. True protection ean only occur when all concems have been addressed. We cannot continue to sacrifice Native Hawaiian resources for quick answers to our community concerns.