Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kānaka Maoli

SHARON POMROY

Over 500 acres of our stolen Hawaiian Homelands was given to the US military for bombing runs and practices during World War II. Today, they have almost 2,000 acres of stolen ceded trust lands [to] launch their missiles. They've turned Hawaiian Homelands into a hazardous materials and munitions storage area. The Federal government pays one dollar rent for a lease for sixty-year lease. They paid the Philippine government billions of dollars. They paid the Japanese government billions of dollars to put their bases on their soil. Yet, for our land, which they claim as American, protecting American people, they will not even pay us a fair market value for rent. The Navy still wants to launch these Polaris missiles down range into Kwajalein, which is about 2,400 miles south of us, in the middle of the lagoon. The military says the missiles land in a designated area which is safe; nobody gets hurt, there's no injuries. They’ve forcibly relocated almost the entire race of the Marshall Islands – over 12,000 people – to a little island about a half mile long, two hundred yards wide, and six feet high. We are Pacific Island people who live together in harmony, but we are now dropping missiles on each other. As a native Pacific person, I strenuously object to the military coming in here and doing this, forcing us to dump it on our own cousins. That's totally wrong. For me, the bottom line is independence. No military, no Federal government, just Kānaka Maoli making decisions for ourselves on our own land.

 

SONDRA FIELD GRACE

We have consistently argued that these are stolen lands, the State does not have title. My husband [as] an indigenous Hawaiian has interest in these lands, inalienable and inherent interest. Genocide “subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause physical destruction of the group in whole or in part.” That applies to our situation here. We've been thrown in jail nearly a dozen times. We've had our homes destroyed. We have warrants out for us. We never know if they're gonna arrest us or not. They're trying to get a permanent injunction to keep us off this land. And we tell them every time, “No matter what you do to us, we're coming back.” As an international tribunal, we call on you to help us make these powers stand under their obligations to respect our self-determination.

 

MICHAEL GRACE

The State and the United States has no jurisdiction over us. We keep asking the judges, “Do you have the jurisdiction?” They say no. They stole the land [but] the land is not stolen. You cannot lift up the land and take them away. The land is here. But we gotta use and exercise our rights to these lands. Stay on them and use them.

 

Hilo, Big Island, August 18

 

GINGER KAHAPEA

Adverse possession and quiet title action appear daily in the newspapers. The blatant misuse of the legal system completes quiet title actions against Native Hawaiians, the true genealogical heirs of these lands. Who speaks out for the Native Hawaiian? Where are the agencies in the State to protect these claims? Where is OHA and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation? Various trusts such as these are strangely silent. Nobody really cares. Let sugar repay its moral debt to Native Hawaiians. Give Hāmākua lands to those Native Hawaiians that need it for taro, culture and lifestyles. The Native Hawaiian who now go to the mountains or the ocean to gather food, or practice their religion and culture are finding the fences are up. The security guards roam these lands and the “No Trespassing” signs stop them. It is not Native Hawaiians’ intention to destroy these lands, but to be allowed to continue to cross these lands for subsistence and cultural purposes.

 

SKIPPY KEU'IKANAKA'OLE IOANE

The carriers of the Bible took the Hawaiian people into a house of prayer and then came out and raped the land. They made Hawaiians feel like it was a mistake to get wet from the rain, that being with nature is not good. We don't call Hawaiians homeless because we, the Hawaiian people, are home. We are just houseless. So we changed that. What you see out here [tents and tarps] is affordable housing. I charge the Church, the Department of Education, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands with abetting in a crime. I charge them with conspiracy to keep the Hawaiian people afraid of rain. Nature is not our enemy. Nature is our mother.

 

MICHAEL TRASK

As far as Native Hawaiian fishing rights are concerned there’s a very bad bias to monopolize fishing permits through amendment 7. This will effectively bar new participation of Hawaiian fishermen in long line, cross seamount fisheries. To me, these actions further degrade and penalize Hawaiians both economically and culturally because of the loss of our near-shore and off-shore resources, which have sustained our people from the beginning.

 

LARRY KAUANOE LINDSEY KIMURA

(Translation from ʻōlelo makuahine.) When our independent Hawaiian government was wrongfully overthrown, the door was opened to those who would destroy one of the few remaining aspects of our way of life that had remained strong since the beginning of time. It was opened to those who would snatch Hawai‘i's native language from the mouths of Hawaiian children, to ensure that the language of our people would be the same as that of the plunderers, who were establishing their new government. If Hawaiian thinking were to change, such change would be hastened in government schools where minds were molded, and where the cord of language attaching the child to his own people would be severed, so that his entire way of thinking would reflect that found in English, thereby completely destroying the life, wholeness, and sovereignty of the Hawaiian people.

 

MELISSA MONIZ

Anything was Hawaiian was forbidden. I was taught that, in order to get anywhere in this world, I had to behave as a white. My Hawaiianess would always be second. Most of my life I was ashamed to be Hawaiian.

 

Ka Lae & Kona, August 19

 

ABEL SIMEONA LUI

I got arrested twenty-three times for simple trespassing on my tutu man’s ʻāan’. Twenty-two times I went before the court and I was found not guilty … They send a DLNR down there to tear down my house. One night I wen go fishing. I came home three o’clock in the morning and I had no house ... Over 80 percent of the people in prison is Kānaka Maoli. I did 18 years over there. We got to stop all this.

 

PELE HANOA

My culture is a living culture that depends upon the land and ocean base. We need to educate the world of the injustice and encroachment of the US upon our fertile and viable land base, of and for our people. We need to stop the desecration of historic sites, the theft of the sacred land. The rip-off by the US is endless. The time has come. We must stand together and fight for our rights as Kānaka Maoli. Injustice must stop. We must determine our destiny, we must be self-determined and self-governing for sovereignty.

 

KEOLANI HANOA

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 set aside 11,000 acres of Kamā‘oa Pu‘ueo in Ka‘ū to be awarded to Native Hawaiians for residential, pastoral, and agricultural use. It has been 73 years and only 25 lots have been awarded. No infrastructure, only water for a few homesteads. We are angered and frustrated because DHHL ignores our basic needs and rights as beneficiaries.

 

WALTER PAULO

When I got into the service in 1944, in basic training, we were all classed as blacks. They used the term “nigger.” It hurts. In 1980, Brother Puhipau, Brother Bobby, and I were arrested on Sand Island for, they claim, “squatting.” I went to court and pled “not guilty.” I denounced my American citizenship. We all did. I like to die as a Hawaiian. No way as an American.

 

PALIKAPU DEDMAN

Our religion starts from the top of the mountain to the sea, not around a church. The resources and the elements that surround these islands are our gods. Our purpose is to be Hawaiian, not any other race, or Westerners. The forest and all its species are related to us. Certain deities surround us, that’s been there for thousands of years. [It is] our responsibility to carry on for thousands more years to come. Industrial development cannot be in these islands. It will be the end of everything. Geothermal, rockets, ocean mining, radiation plants. They don’t fit here. Let’s set our priorities. We have to destine our own future. We have to run our own government. We have to take care of our resources. We have to limit people that rape our resources, that use our religious shrines for prostitution activities so tourists can go there and use it as they see fit, but we have to pay to use our religious shrines. Crimes that we see everyday. Pilau ships with toxics to dump. Over-commercialization of fishing to foreign people to rip us off way inside the two 200-mile limit. We Hawaiians should not be regulated on how we use our resources, to license, to sell fish, to type of nets. We should not be limited at all. We don’t have to believe in anything but ourselves and our traditions. The gross neglect of Hawaiian Homes still falls in the hands of the Feds and the State. The crimes are daily crimes. We have to tell the world of these crimes. The hardest thing to be in Hawai‘i is one Hawaiian. Hanging on to the remains of our fragile island ecosystem however we can, we are indeed a most endangered human species. We will continue to do whatever we can do as Hawaiians to bring world awareness to our position as a distinct people with a unique and valuable culture to be appreciated, nurtured and perpetuated.

 

MAHEALANI PAI

The Pai ʻohana greeted Tribunal members at Honokohau, where they have been living for generations and are presently fighting eviction by the National Park Service. “Here on the Pai land, every act has a meaning. Normally the family sits down to welcome guests. Today we remain standing to show you that we are committed. We stand before you. Send our message around the world.” At the beach and later in testimony, Al Kalokekoa explained the Pai ʻohana land: “We have four kapu on the land: no drinking, no swearing, no drugs, no weapons. We recently started a cultural learning center to teach kids about the land and sea.” Mahealani Pai testified: “In 1988, the Greenwell family came and told us to sign a palapala for them to sell the land to the Federal government for a national park. We had a verbal agreement that we would remain here to practice our cultural heritage. Today, we are threatened by the National Park Service. We are struggling. This is our plight.”

 

SONNY KANIHO

For 72 years the Hawaiian Homes Commission have do[ne] their best to kill Hawaiians on the waiting list. They lose your application and tell you you were not on file. They deny applicants because their children cannot qualify. They dispute your blood quantum just to get you off the list.

 

HANK FERGERSTROM

The destruction of the religious system, the destruction of the native language, the illegal taking of land and alienation from that land, the claiming of mineral rights, and the imposing of laws and a judicial system that ensures dominance over the Indigenous People of these islands. These acts are genocidal in intent and purpose. Flour costs $1.97 for five pounds. Rice costs $1.99. A five-pound bag of poi costs $13.68. The reason why it costs so much more is because to grow taro from which poi is made, it takes a considerable land, which Hawaiians no longer own. It takes water. The State illegally controls this mineral right, the water. The State has determined that better use for this water is for indoor plumbing, for resorts, for public fountains and golf courses, and for waste industry, such as sugar cane. The wastewater and all the other pollutants are then pumped into our oceans, destroying our other major source of food for Hawaiians, the reef fish.

 

CLARENCE MEDEIROS

Our State government misuses our State lands. While our people is on the beach, homeless, some in jail, some jobless, there are thousands of acres in Kona which they have put in reserve for the birds and the plants. I say that's okay. But the Hawaiians are also endangered species and they should be allowed to use some of those lands.

 

LEHUA LOPEZ

Cultural appropriation and cultural cannibalism may be defined as the buying, the selling and the consuming of other peoples' cultural artifacts, images, values and beliefs as well as sacred sites without permission of the culture being used. Cultural cannibalism is an insidious and hideous part of colonialism as it is part of the process of assimilation, what I would call a deliberate attempt to eradicate those beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors, language, religion and practices of a culture that are in contradiction or in conflict with the dominant ????