The path of protecting land rights, ocean rights and self-determination has plagued Hawaii since the time of the “overthrow” of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. By the time Hawaii became a state in 1959, many Kānaka Maoli had lost their family lands. Others were struggling to survive in a new land system that required the payment of state taxes, by a people who Kānaka Maoli did not recognize as the state or the legal government. What proceeded was a succession of court cases where families were unjustifiably denied their lands and homes, in favor of rich Haole who came in and quietly claimed their lands. The result was a growing anger and resentment among the Hawaiian people, “the broken spirit battens on shattered dreams, illlusion and despair combine to make bitterness attractive.”[157] Year after year, the frustration grew as families lost their lands to the courts in favor of the interests of big business, while watching “inferior developments and acres of asphalt and dozens of concrete towers,” invade their lands.[158] What followed was a progression of land protests including Makua Valley (1968), Kalama Valley (1971), Sandy Beach (1970s), and Kahoʻolawe (1976), and many more since. The issue of land, land loss and the birth of the Hawaiian Rights movement, are closely interlinked. Through acts of non-violent protest, the fight has been on-going since the 1970s.
A Call to Action
The years to follow would see the proud Kānaka Maoli become a defeated displaced peoples. In 1964, John Dominis Holt wrote an essay “On Being Hawaiian,” which highlighted the dispair and disillusionment that many Native Hawaiians were now plagued with in their daily lives. In his essay, Holt remarked how:
“many floundered at the edges of life….bewildered…poor…cynical… too many of us, haole culture was a farce, a mess, its values questionable, its goals silly and not worth fighting for….times change..people change…there has been a vast awakening among us Hawaiians of the importance of knowing in some depth about our heritage, our roots.”[192]
With entrance of Statehood, Kānaka Maoli gained new citizenship rights; no longer were they prevented from voting, instead they were deemed “equal” citizens of the United States. However, this did not break down the systemic institutions and legislation that had been put in place by the Republic and Territory. Dispossession of Kānaka Maoli lands excellerated around the islands. From 1959 on, American and Japanese business investment changed the landscapes of Hawaii. Historic loko (fishponds) where sea life was abundant and Kānaka fed their families, were filled in for the construction of hotel resorts at Kaʻanapali, Maui. Swamps that had been the home to endangered turtle, birds and plants were covered to make way for hotels and condominiums in Waikiki and Kahuluʻu on Oahu. Kānaka Maoli burial grounds were dug up and desicrated to build shopping malls. Erosion from the bull-dozing of land filled the oceans with mud killing reefs and displacing fish and ocean life.[193] The desire for profits further displaced Kānaka Maoli and destroyed their gathering sites, burial sites, and sacred places.
“The destruction of our land and the prostitution of our culture is planned and executed by multi-national corporations (both foreign-based and Hawaii-based), by huge landowners, and by collaborationist state and county governments. The ideological gloss that claims tourism to be our economic savior and the “natural” result of Hawaiian culture is manufactured by ad agencies and tour companies and spewed out to the public through complicitous cultural engines like film, television, and radio, and the daily newspapers. As for labor union, both rank and file and management clamor for more tourists while the construction industry lobbies incessantly for larger resorts.”[194]
As a result, more Kānaka Maoli families found themselves homeless, hungry and disconnected from their culture. Television exposed disheartened Kānaka to the growing independence and civil rights movements around the world and on the American mainland. Using the templates of civil disobedience, Hawaiian leaders within the community started to organize around the need to become educated in Hawaiian rights, in order to prevent evictions, reclaim lands and protect Hawaiian access rights of the lands and waters. A new rising of consciousness began to give hope to the poʻe o Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian people).
Molokaʻi: First Spark of Protest
The modern sovereignty movement arguably began in the mid-1960s in an unlikely place – the small island of Molokaʻi, where Kānaka Maoli families, like the Ritte family, practiced subsistence agriculture or gathered their meals from the mountains or the ocean. Walter Ritte, a graduate of Kamehameha Schools in 1963, returned home to Molokaʻi only after a year at the University of Hawaii:
“I had nuff da concrete jungle, I just wanted fo hunt da mountains fo deer, goats or pig; gather fish, limu (seaweed) and ʻopihi (limpets) from da oceans. Dere had always been rock walls and gates to keep da cattle in da boundaries of Molokaʻi Ranch, but da community always passed through da property to reach da ocean or mountain. Native Hawaiian gathering rights, yeh! But when I come back from Oahu, da Ranchʻs owners when decided fo put up barbed wire, lock access, display kapu (no trespass) signs and start to prosecute what they when call trespassers. But I when go anyways, no barbed wire was goinʻ to keep me out of where my ʻohana (family/ancestors) always wen go.” Walter Ritte, 2020.
Walter Ritte started on his path of protest and was arrested for trespass. In reaction, Ritte organized a group of friends into what became known as Hui Ala Loa (Unite the Long Path) to fight for access rights. From a small group of protestors, Hui Ala Loa grew to over two hundred community members seeking to hike the kingʻs path along the shoreline of the island as an act of cultural civil disobedience.
“When we first wen reach da fence blocked our access, so we wen take down da fence, but da kūpuna (elders) told us ʻyou gotta put the fence back up, by n by da cattle from Hawaiian Homes goin’ mix with our cattle, so after we wen put back da fence.”[195]
Ritte remembers television cameras, news reporters and police officers watching the group from the hill as they traveled along the shoreline, but no one was arrested.[196] It took several years of protest marches and acts of civil disobedience, writing letters to legislators, organizing, signing petitions, and networking between islands for Hui Ala Loa finally to win their goals. As a participant of the Constitutional Convention of 1978, Ritte was not only able to codify Hawaiian access rights, he and others helped to create the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, return the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi to its rightful place as an official language of Hawaii, authorize the instruction of Hawaiian history and culture in the public schools, and require the state to recognize Hawaiian place names.[197] This would be the first steps towards revitalizing the Hawaiian culture.
Kalama Valley: Resisting Displacement:
The 1970s brought more corporate investment to Hawaii, which in turn encouraged large landholders and government officials to reap the profits tourism, resorts, golf courses, and housing developments would bring to Hawaii. Bishop Estates, the trust that was dedicated to supporting education for Kānaka Maoli children, was the largest landowner, owning eight percent of the land in Hawaiʻi. Shortly after the death of Charles Reed Bishop in 1921, the Estate trustees began seeking avenues to enrich themselves and build the trust’s assets, first by building the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1927. As Oahu’s population multiplied after Statehood, Bishop Estates started the process of developing their lands into upper-income subdivisions, condominium projects and hotels while levying lucrative leases on their lands. The consequence of this, families who had originally lived on Princess Pauahiʻs Royal Patents under the caveat, “the rights of the Kānaka Maoli shall be preserved,” began to be systematically evicted from their ancestral homes leaving them with no where to go. When Bishop Estates planned to transform the Kalama Valley into the new city of Hawaii Kai, including an elite subdivision, hotel, golf course and marina, one such community of Kānaka refused to be evicted from their homes. A conflict of wills arose in the hills of Kalama Valley when the Estate chairman of the board called in the police to begin to evict the one hundred and fifty families who had lived their for generations. Some had already relocated numerous times as Bishop Estates had pursued various development projects in other parts of Oahu. Andrew Richards’family, for example, had moved to Kalama “after being evicted by Bishop Estates from Koko Head.”[198] For many, it was the last straw, the result would be the first organized Hawaiian land protest in Hawaii.
Some families responded to the eviction notices, rather than fighting, by moving into “crowded high-rises or in makeshift beach villages,” while others stood strong refusing to move.[199] Those that remained included vegetable farmers, pig farmers, one junk yard and some construction workers. Moose Lui had lived in Kalama for twenty-two years, raising eight children; with his large family he virtually had no hope of finding another place to live, other than the beach, due to the high cost of living that had gripped Hawaii. What the chairman of Bishop Estates, Richard Lyman, “called a ‘rural slum’ was to Valley people one of the last places left on O’ahu where local people could enjoy a way of life” that was based on traditional values.[200]
Kalani Ohelo, whom activist and author Haunani Kay Trask called one of “Kalama’s early leaders,” was radicalized at the Youth Congress of 1970.[201] At the Congress, students were encouraged to look at social movements, the anti-war movements and were trained to organize and protest in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Spring of 1970, newly graduated Larry Kamakawiwoʻole, Pete Thompson, Soli Thompson and Kalani Ohelo organized together to become the Kōkua Kalama Committee to help the residents of Kalama. In an interview with Haunani Kay Trask the Summer of 1983, Kalani Ohelo shared why he got started in the movement:
“Bishop Estate… said they had rights to evict the family and to smash everything in their house… he had spinal surgery. He had nine children. He had just gotten home… from the hospital. And he was still hurting…All the kids were crying and you could see the helpless look in their eyes. …they felt hopeless…the Bishop Estate agents, who had a very cold heart, they told the bulldozer driver to go ahead and smash the house. That’s when my friends and I became physically involved with the Bishop Estate. We started throwing rocks at the bulldozer…It was the kind of experience that anybody with a little humanity in them would do the same thing.”[202]
Kōkua Kalama organizing protesters to block the bulldozing. Three students entered one of the homes to prevent the destruction, while others climbed on roofs. When off-duty police started arresting protesters in July 1970, the Kōkua Kalama Committee began setting up camps in the valley. By 1971, they had renamed themselves Kōkua Hawaii and had increased their numbers substantially. Kōkua Hawaii was struggling with bad press which focused on “pig farmers,” “junk yards” and “hippies.” Initially, several Haole activists were involved, however since many had “focus on class lines with Marxist ideals and didn’t address the strongly felt need to be self-reliant and self-determined.”[203] It was decided as a group that the Hāʻole supporters should step back so that their movement could be seen in the media as a totally Hawaiian movement. Then the newspapers tried to claim that they were racist. Reverend Larry Jones, special columnist for the Sunday Star Bulletin and Advertiser, defended the group, insisting in a public letter that the “entire question of racial and ethnic identity was out of perspective. Kōkua Hawaii was not racist, they were struggling very hard to express a strong sense of non-haole identity.”[204] In response to negative press, focus turned to promoting their image during protests as being authentic grass-roots Kānaka activists. Ed Michael, the executive responsible for serving the evictions, told reporters that, “in today’s modern world, the Hawaiian lifestyle should be illegal.”[205]This enraged many Hawaiian readers. Despite the bad press, their movement grew. In March of 1971, three thousand supporters rallied at the capital in Honolulu.
The fight in Kalama ended just two months later, with bulldozers and police arriving early in the morning of May 11, 1971. In an effort to stop the evictions, several protesting residents, made a last stand by climbing on the roof of the last home standing, pulling up the ladder and remaining there all day. Just before nightfall, police with the aid of a fire truck forcibly removed them and arrested thirty-two activists, before the bull dozers laid waste to the area.[206]
Kalama Valley had been lost, but it had lit a new movement akin to the American Indian Movement (AIM) on the U.S. continent. Soon residents and allies in other threatened communities began to organize and resist displacement: Sandy Beach, Makua Valley, Makapuʻu Beach, Sand Island, Waimanalo, and so many more. As Pierre Bowman so eloquently expressed the deep-seated frustration that energized these protests: “I sought and found, there was a simultaneous rage at the way stupid, greedy people, year after year, had exploited Hawaii with inferior developments and acres of asphalt and dozens of concrete towers.”[207]
Kahoʻolawe: Taking on the United States Military
The United States military had been using Kahoʻolawe, an island off the coast of Maui, Molokaʻi and Lanaʻi for target practice since the 1920s. There militaristic activity accelerated after the start of World War II, as Naval bombers barraged the island daily. The bombs could be felt as far away as Oahu. The homes in Maui nui (Maui, Molokaʻi and Lanaʻi) shook from the man-made earthquakes, property was damaged, students were disrupted during their classwork, and nights were interrupted with incessant flashes of light and shockwaves of explosions. Two events in the second half of the 1960s sparked a more assertive and organized campaign to evict the military from the island. In 1965, the US Navy used five hundred tons of TNT to “simulate an atomic blast and observe its effects on ships offshore”[208]and in 1969, the “discovery of an unexploded five hundred pound bomb in a West Maui cane field” [209] alarmed local political officials. The Maui County Council passed a resolution requesting that the US Navy halt bombing, a call echoed by Hawaii US congresswoman Patsy Mink, a Maui native. In response, military officials doubled down, insisting that “there is no room for compromise compared to combat readiness, [therefore] all other considerations must remain secondary in the interest of national security.” [210] The US military refused would not return the island, leaving Maui County officials without was without any recourse. Various groups representing anti-war, environmental and Hawaiian cultural interests kept voicing their concerns, but little action was taken.
The Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana (PKO) refused to step away from the fight, unlike their political leaders. PKO members shared a common view. As Maxine Kahualelio recalled, “We didnʻt know what was the Hawaiian way. All I knew is we gotta stop that sucking bombing, we have to stop that bombing.”[211] In 1976, after suffering a defeat in a US federal court for lawsuit which PKO filed against the US military in an effort to stop the bombing, the members of Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana believed that they needed to take a strong force of action to end the bombing. Charlie Maxwell, a former police officer and leader of PKO, began to organize an occupation of the island, in order “to draw national attention to historic injustices suffered by Native Hawaiians.”[212] To build alliances, PKO joined with three leaders of the Hui Ala Loa, the Molokaʻi group who had gained Hawaiian access rights: George Helm, Walter Ritte and Dr. Emmett Aluli. These men would become known as the leading force behind the reclamation movement to protect Kahoʻolawe, through their organizing expertise, their communication skills, George Helm’s falsetto voice, and their unwavering commitment to the cause.
PKO and Hui Ala Loaʻs plan was to travel by boat, anchor just off Hakioawa (the opposite side of the island from the military base of opperations) landing activists and cultural experts on Kahoʻolawe in a effort to quell the bombing. PKO asked Walter Ritte to come serve as the occupiers’ designated hunter. On January 5, 1976, the first landing resulted in several military helicopters hovering over their boats warning them to turn back or their boats would be confiscated, which caused the boat owners to get nervous. PKO members, nonetheless, landed their boats on the Northeast side of the island when the helicopters went back to their base encampment. With a protective lei of ti leaf, Walter Ritte and Dr. Aluli quickly took off into the hills to explore the island and look for goats. The other members remained on the beach, with the purpose of conducting culturally religious protocols (chants, prayers). However, the coast guard returned, arresting all the participants. Ritte and Dr. Aluli, conversely, hid in the grass-covered crevices as helicopters searched the hills for them. They hid for several hours, Ritte recalled, “we was over there looking for the Mana (spiritual power)…looking for all these kinds of things..like you see in the movies eh. We never know that mana comes from the ground, that it slowly goes into you..not like in the movies.”[213] When they finally returned to the beach, they knew they needed to return with others.
News of the courageous Kahoʻolawe landing and the arrests that followed spread through the media and the ʻōhana network (by word of mouth). PKO began a process to publisize their cause and purpose throughout the Hawaiian islands. The poetic musician with the falsetto voice, George Helm, became PKOʻs new leader and spokesmen. For Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana it was important to spread the spiritual meaning of Kahoʻolawe to the students of Hawaiiʻs schools, so they began visiting any classroom that would welcome them. Helm persuasively shared their message, Kahoʻolawe has:
“More meaning that just a rock, Hawaiians saw it as very sacred. Cannot use our American mental telescope and look at the old Hawaiians,… but let our mental telescope look at things that the history books do not record, such as the place must have been very sacred. But whose gonna tell us that, not the scholars..the older Hawaiians? For Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana we want to leave that island alone, we can give mother nature back to the island. But we gotta go fight the military,the politicians and different kinda ways of thinking.”[214]
In this way George Helm was able to inspire both the youth of Hawaii, and the broader community.
In the Spring of 1967, Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana also met with Vice Admiral Coogan of the Pacific fleet and other representatives of the United States Navy in the hopes of helping them to understand why the island was so important to the Kanaka Maoli. Questioning the officers and admiral, Loretta Ritte asked, why war? :
“One thing I have learned from my kupuna as a Hawaiian is the great respect for the ʻaina, for the ʻaina is the giver of life…and if we do not respect the land..then where would we be…how do we take care of Papa, our earth…by filling her pores with concrete, her beauty so she cannot breathe, by digging into her, drilling into her, by bombing her to leave wounds and scars on this earth…is that how we take care of our land? And why the stress on war? Why is it so important that we practice to kill? Huh? Why canʻt we practice peace?”[215]
The Vice Admiral’s abrupt answer reflected Cold War paranoia, and the imperatives of the Vietnam war:
“There is a very real requirement for the Kahoʻolawe island target complex the past and projected utilization fully sustantiates the militaryʻs need for this complex. Training facilities afforded at Kahoʻolawe for all services cannot be duplicated at any of the existing training areas in the Hawaii area… permitting the training necessary for the military forces to effectively coordinate the deployment of all available supporting arms.”[216]
Even with numerous meetings with the upper brace of the military in the Pacific and letters to Washington, the President and the Pentagon, the activists failed to convince the military leaders to cease using the island for weapons testing.
A year after the first landing, PKO tried again, this time bringing a larger group, as well as kūpuna (elders) to bless their landing with chants. Walter Ritte and Richard Sawyer, equipped with their protective ti leaf lei, some ammunition, and water, disappeared into the hills before the coast guard could arrest them. The others returned to Maui, evading capture. Ritte and Sawyer eluded capture for thirty-five days, hiding among the hills and crevices. They scoured the coastline, using ʻopihi (limpets) for bait, and subsisted on fish, crustaceans, and limu (seaweed). When the water they brought ran out, they drank coconut water or caught rain water. They hunted the hills and rounded up some fifteen baby goats.[217] Their perserverance won a thirty-five-day ceasefire on the island.
Back on Maui, the PKO continued their work to stop the bombing by meeting with military representatives, holding educational concerts, instructing students, and cultivating journalists to win positive media coverage. They sent five members to meet with President Jimmy Carter: Pae Galdiera, Martial Kaanoi, Rev. Charles Hopkins, George Helm, and Francis Kauhane. The families of the men still on the island began to worry for their safety and well-being. At the urging of Hawaiiʻs Senator Daniel Inouye, and Representatives Cec Heftel and Daniel Akaka, the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet finally agreed to allow the PKO, accompanied by Navy personnel, to search the island for Ritte and Sawyer. Even Inouye, Heftel and Akaka participated in the search. The men were no where to be found. The military ended the search.
Knowing that the bombing was going to resume, another landing was planned in hopes of finding Ritte and Sawyer. However, since the military had increased surveillance, George Helm, Adolf Helm, Kimo Mitchell, and William Mitchell, departed Maui in the dark, slipped off the boat a mile off of the island on their surfboards and planned to paddle in. This was before rip-cords had been invented, and the water was rough with a heavy current. Adolph Helm was lost jumping off the boat, his board broken. Walter Mitchell managed to paddle to the island, and was picked up by the Navy. Mitchell reported that the last time he had seen Kimo Mitchell and George Helm they were near the Ala-a-Kahiki channel, “George was suffering from a cut on his head; he and Mitchell were last seen clinging to a surfboard, near Molokini”[218] Yet, Adolph miraculously made it to shore, he remembers, “two akule (fish) swam by me, as if dey was showing me the island. Dey nevah leave my side. I always thought while I was swimming it was both George and Kimo taking care of me.”[219]
The men’s family had to seek help from the Navy again, in hopes of staving off the bombing and needing helicopters and the coast guard to help search. In a meeting with Governor Ariyoshi, the Naval command, Hawaii state legislatures and Melanie Helm, mother to George and Adolf, agreed to allow the family to do an extensive search of the island for another two days; they searched for three. Family came from Hāna, Molokaʻi and central Maui to help search, as did explosives disposal experts. They too could not be found. A “television cameraman had filmed two men swimming off of Kahoʻolawe on Wednesday,” so the family remained hopeful, knowing that both men were skilled swimmers.[220] George Helm and Kimo Mitchell were never to be seen again. Their fate remains a mystery. Some conspiracy theorists believe they lost their lives because the military wanted to end their activist behavior. The family believes that Kanaloa, the god of the sea, called them home.[221]
After the search the public officials and the Navy decided that the men must have found some way off of the island or were lost at sea, and determined that target practice could resume. While the families were grieving their loss, Ritte and Sawyer, still hiding on the island, believed that as long as they “[were] on the island they wonʻt bomb da island. But dey went ahead and started bombing. Da bombs came so close to where we was camping. We decided, we gotta turn ourselves in.”[222] Both Ritte and Sawyer were arrested and sentenced in Federal court for trespassing on Federal military land. They were fined $500 and six months in Halawa High Security Prison.
The disappearance of the Helm and Mitchell only fortified PKO members’ determination; they now saw their cause as a way to honor the memories of their fallen ʻohana.
Through PKO’s persistence, their negotiations with the Navy and governmental officials, eventually won their cause Hawaiian cultural access rights once a month. In 1980, PKOʻs first access to Kahoʻolawe, over one hundred members, cultural experts and kūpuna visited Kahoʻolawe to practice their cultural heritage. They chanted their prayers, baked a pig, surveyed the island, and created a memorial for the men they had lost men. Their deaths too, woke up the Hawaiian community’s need to gain their rights. Growing support came from the ranks of a new generation of College educated Hawaiians, Hawaiian cultural practitioners, environmental activists, and anti-war activists. In 1990, President Bush issued a memorandum ending the bombing on Kahoʻolawe and the military requirement to clean up the island of ordinances.
Conclusion
Finding their voices in non-violent acts of protest. The rising tide of what was to become known as the “Hawaiian Renaissance” had started as increasing development began to displace more and more Kānaka Maoli from their ancestral homes. Today, although the decolonization process is far from complete, the groundwork is being laid. The prevalence of inter-racial relationships within the local community, Kānaka Maoli are beginning to redefine what it is to be a Hawaiian, rejecting blood quantum concepts, and accepting all who link their ancestry to Papa and Wakea (the original parents). While the scars of the colonial process still are reflected in the racialization of Hawaii, its class stratification, and within many of Hawaii’s governmental institutions, there is an increasing number of Kānaka Maoli who are gaining political influence and recognition as leaders.
The struggle to regain Kānaka Maoli rights has been a long painful one. Over a hundred years have passed since the Hawaiian Kingdom was stolen. A time of displacement, homelessness, and oppression. However, through the efforts of these early activists the path was laid for the Kānaka Maoli to regain some of what they had lost. Much of the lands that had been taken still have not been returned, nor has their been any reparations, but there has been a few victories. The struggle in the Waiahole-Waikane Valley to maintain their rights to grow taro did succeed. Keeaumoku Kapu’s family’s court battle against Dole Pineapple proving that the land that Dole had stolen was indeed theres and forced them to return all the lands. Kahoʻolawe too, in November of 1993, was returned to the State of Hawaii “to hold the island in trust for the Hawaiian sovereign government.”[223] Today the island has been cleared of munitions, and is being utilized as an environmental, cultural, and spiritual educational island. Management of the island is held in the hands of Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana on the East side of the island and the Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission on the West side. Both groups work with volunteer student programs who spend a week at a time on the island, learning soil conservation practices, planting native plants, eradicating invasive species, and their culture. Kānaka Maoli, through the 1978 Hawaii Constitutional convention, were able to end the ban on the Hawaiian language and recognize it as one of Hawaii’s official languages and regain Native access rights to both the land and the mountains, thereby preventing the privatization of beaches. Hawaiian cultural education is now returning statewide. Hawaiian language too has been reborn through the implementation of Hawaiian immersion programs island wide encompassing all grade levels. Although the scars of the colonial exploitation of the oligarchal powers have remained, through the voices of determined activists, Kānaka Maoli are slowly reclaiming some of their cultural rights, their Hawaiian traditional lifestyle, and their spiritual connection to the land. “We need to understand who we were to know who we are. That is what it means to de-nationalize and erase the harm of the colonial oligarchy, sovereignty is next,” Walter Ritte, 2002.[224]