Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 10, 1 October 2008 — Judge rules for more manaʻo in Kauaʻi iwi case [ARTICLE]

Judge rules for more manaʻo in Kauaʻi iwi case

By Lisa Asatū Public lnformatinn Specialist

Naue, on Kaua'i's North Shore, is historically known as a plaee of healing for women. Locals also know the area as a burial ground. "The reason why nobody built on the heaeh, we knew there were bones everywhere," said Ka'iulani Edens-Huff, a loeal disc jockey who spent 16 weeks camping at a beachfront property to fight construction of a home where at least 30 sets of iwi, or ancestral bones, were found. A popular surf spot there even earned the niekname Graveyard, she said. On Sept. 15, five months after the Kaua'i-Ni'ihau Island Burial Council voted to preserve the bones in plaee and two months after eonstruction began - Fifth Circuit Iudge Kathleen Watanabe ruled the State Historic Preservation Division did not satisfy consultation requirements before approving a burial treatment plan. Watanabe instructed the agency to consult with the Kaua'i-Ni'ihau Island Burial Council, lineal descendants, landowner Ioseph Brescia and Native Hawaiian organizations. Her ruling didn't stop construction, where concrete jackets already cover seven burials, but said that work could proceed at its own risk - and be subject to later findings. Kai Markell, 0HA's director of Native Rights, Land and Culture, who testified at the hearing, said he was "pleasantly surprised." "While we certainly would have preferred to enjoin any further work on the burial ground, the judge was very fair in her ruling," Markell said. "The big question is where do we proceed from here?" with implementing the injunction and further deliberations by the burial eouneil. 0HA plans to monitor SHPD's eomplianee with the ruling and to

ensure that the process "doesn't get derailed again" with other cases, he said. SHPD said it "believes that it complied with the law in this matter," but will abide by the judge's ruling. "SHPD intends to take the revised burial treatment plan back to the eouneil at its next meeting in October," it said in a statement. "At that time, the eouneil ean make recoimnendations about the burial sites for SHPD's consideration." Wakon Hong, Brescia's attorney, said that Brescia told the eouneil in April that he wanted to relocate seven iwi, but was denied. "He's trying to do the right thing," Hong said. "He felt by moving it away from the foundation and reinterring, that was the right thing to do." Meanwhile, the nonprofit group Mālama Kaua'i is trying to raise money to buy the lot and has secured a $75,000 pledge, according to news reports. Hong said Brescia won't stop construction but is willing to sell the property for an amount equal to what he's put into it. "My guess is we're looking at a neighborhood of $2 million," Hong said. Hanalei Fergerstrom, a religious and cultural practitioner from Puna on Hawai'i Island, said he traveled to the Naue property four times to stop the desecration of iwi, whieh is prohibited by state law. Seeing construction taking plaee on the site was "like having your heart pulled out," he said, adding that high screens around the site required him to elimh a tree to see inside. Fergerstrom is pleased that Watanabe's ruling allows for access to the site. He said that 40 or 50 people would gather at the site daily, and that about eight had been charged with trespass. Their court date is Oct. 8. "We're not trespassers," he said. "I'm a religious practitioner with the Temple of Lono, so this is right in my kuleana." S

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