Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 8, 1 August 2006 — Homesteaders finally get their day in court [ARTICLE]

Homesteaders finally get their day in court

State Supreme Court affirms beneficiaries' right to sue over Home Lands program mismanagement

By Sterling Kini Wnng Publicatinns Editnr For prospective Hawaiian homesteaders, the bureaucratic road to their land has often been a rocky one. Some Hawaiians remained on the Hawaiian Home Lands waiting list so long that they died before they were ever awarded a lot. For those lucky enough to receive lots, there was no guarantee that the property would be furnished with basic infrastructure, like water. Still others couldn't even get on the waiting list because of difficulties in proving that they were at least 50 percent Hawaiian, the principal requirement to obtain a Hawaiian Homestead lot.

All of this left many native Hawaiians wondering if they'd ever receive justice for more than 80 years of "broken promises" by the Hawaiian Home Lands program, whieh was created by federal statute in 1921 to give Hawaiians homesteading opportunities. On lune 30, however, the state Supreme Court revived their hopes when it unanimously ruled that more than 2,700 individuals have the right to sue the state for monetary damages in Circuit Court resulting from the state's management of the Hawaiian Home Lands program. Describing the day of the ruling as "historic," one claimant attorney, Thomas Grande, said, "Our clients

have waited over fifteen years for this day. Although this is only the first step in the process and there is a long way to go, this important first step gives our clients their day in court." Congress established the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust to help "rehabilitate" Hawaiians who were struggling to adjust to the dramatic changes sweeping across the islands. Although more than 200,000 acres of former crown and puhlie lands were allocated to the trust, mueh of the land was arid, inaccessible and virtually unusable for agriculture. Poor funding and mismanagement beset the program under the federal govermnent and also under the state, whieh assumed responsibility for the trust after entering the Union in 1959. The program has been roundly criticized for, among other things, the improper sale and use of homestead lands, and having a waiting list that numbered more than 20,000 at one point. In the early 1990s, only 17.5

percent of the trust's lands were being used for homesteads, while 62 percent were being used for various other purposes by nonnative Hawaiians, according to a report by the Hawai'i Advisory Committee to the U.S . Commission on Civil Rights. In 1991, the state Legislature and then-Gov. lohn Waihe'e established an administrative process to allow those who suffered from the state's bungling of the program to bring their claims before a review body. But in lune 1999, former Gov. Ben Cayetano vetoed a bill that would have allowed the panel to eonhnue its work. Cayetano's veto ended the process with the body having evaluated the cases of only half the claimants. A year later, a circuit court judge ruled that the claimants had the right to sue the state for breach of trust, a decision the state would eventually appeal. The high court's ruling in lune keeps the claimants' cases alive. The claimants seeking redress for individual damages,

such as construction problems, are now expected to request the lower court to appoint a "special master" to review their cases, while a class action may be used to settle the remaining claims. OHA employee Leona Kalima is one of the claimants. Starting in the 1970s, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands refused to allow her to plaee her name on the waiting list because she couldn't prove her ancestry. But by the time she acquired the records verifying her Hawaiian blood quantum in the early 1990s, the prime agricultural and residential lots she had her heart set on had all been distributed. Some of her criticisms of the department are that it provided very little assistance with her genealogy and that they kept her off the waiting list. It's been a long road for Kalima and other beneficiaries like her, and she aeknowledges that it's still far from over. "This is one win for us maka'āinana," she said. "Hopefully, we'll see more." S

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