Burial removals draw protesters to church

Nearly 40 demonstrators, some in skeleton costumes, protested the rising number of Native Hawaiian burial disinterments at Kawaiaha‘o Church on Wednesday outside the historic institution known as “the Westminster Abbey of the Pacific.”

The group, mostly University of Hawaii students, held signs and chanted in Hawaiian to voice their objections to the removal of iwi kupuna, or ancestral remains, being carried out by Honolulu’s oldest church to make way for a $17.5 million multipurpose building.

More than 238 burials have been removed from the site with state permission.

Most disinterments have occurred since November, rising the ire of Native Hawaiians who say cultural tradition calls for them to protect their ancestors’ remains from disturbance even if they were buried in a Christian cemetery at a church established in 1842.

A Star-Advertiser story disclosed on Monday the disinterment count through Jan. 21 reported to state officials by an archaeologist hired by the church. The church declines to disclose such figures. A more up-to-date count hasn’t been available from the State Historic Preservation Division, but 14 burials a week have been unearthed on average over the past few months.

Protesters displayed more than a dozen signs with names of families with burials at Kawaiaha‘o — Pilali, Ka‘ahea, Adams, Shaw, Kapena, Kakelaka, Kuaea, Kanaumu, Godfrey, Buckle — to raise awareness about who might have relatives being disturbed.

The group also carried signs urging the church to cease disinterments. “Stop Digging Kawaiaha‘o,” read one. “There’s life in the bones,” read another.

Some signs were more cutting, such as one in the shape of a coffin with the words “GRAVE RAIDERS” intersected on a cross.

“We are here to stand for who we are as a people,” said Zurishaddai “Z” ‘Aki, 25, one of several members of the UH student group Makawalu who donned skeleton masks to emphasize the connection to their cause.

“We came out today to show we’re not forgetting about our kupuna,” said Punahele Kealanahele-Querubin, 21, a senior in UH’s Hawaiian Studies program. “We still carry the values that we have had for hundreds of years. To give up those values is giving yourself up as a Hawaiian. It’s just hewa (wrong). Just hewa.”

Kahu Curt Kekuna, Kawaiaha‘o’s senior pastor, disagreed. He noted that Hawaiian remains, including royalty, have been moved in the past. He said he respects his Hawaiian culture but has a higher duty to his Christian faith that regards spirits of the buried as eternally being with God.

“I just pray for the iwi,” he said.

Kekuna said he doesn’t know how many more burials remain on the site, but that a new resting place on church grounds is being designed to honor the disinterred.