Kahuku Plantation residents plan to protest today over what they call the insensitive handling of a human skull that has been kept in a locked, metal storage container on a construction site since its discovery in July.
"It just angers us," said Margaret Primacio, vice president of the Kahuku Plantation Residents Association, which is opposed to construction in the area. "The goal is to take care of the kupuna. Whose grandparents would want to be treated that way?"
Lex Smith, a lawyer representing property owner Continental Pacific LLC, said the company is handling the two partial pieces of human skull in accordance with directions from the State Historic Preservation Division.
But State Sen. Clayton Hee (D, Kahuku-Kaneohe) said ancient remains — or iwi kupuna — need to be particularly treated with sensitivity following August’s unanimous ruling by the Hawaii Supreme Court that the SHPD violated its own rules by approving the city’s rail project before an archaeological survey was completed.
The case was filed by Paulette Kaanohiokalani Kaleikini, whose victory sends the issue back to Circuit Court.
"With the recent ruling in the Kaleikini case, it would, in my opinion, send a strong message to government — regardless of whether it’s city, state or otherwise — that when the iwi kupuna are discovered, they should take a proactive position and try to reconcile that as soon as possible."
Hee wrote to SHPD about his concerns over the storage of the human skull and said he was "a little disappointed" with the response he received.
"I understand and have been familiar with the (staff) shortages at SHPD," Hee said. "But I would characterize the response as, not a response that they were right on it and would get right to it. I’m a little disappointed and it’s a little disappointing that they did not respond in a more proactive way."
As a consequence, Hee said, "it causes the community to be proactive."
Today’s planned protest follows previous demonstrations over plans to relocate residents of Kahuku Village 5 (new camp).
"It’s been many insults on top of another," Primacio said. "All of the other stuff going on, like evictions, is all part of it. You’re desecrating a burial site, you’re desecrating the lives of people that have lived there all along."
The area, especially sandy dunes near Turtle Bay, are known to contain ancient remains.
In June, residents were concerned about the discovery of bones that turned out to be pig remains, Smith said.
Officials who responded then recommended that Continential Pacific hire an on-site archaeologist, who discovered the first skull fragment partially buried in a nonconstruction area in what appeared to be sandy material, Smith said. It was near St. Roch Church on Kamehameha Highway.
"In the second half of July, he was out there walking around in an area where no work was being done, and he found like part of a skull and went back and found the rest of the skull," Smith said. "He marked it all appropriately and reported it to SHPD. They went through their process, and eventually they came back and told him, ‘Go ahead and dig it up and then store it someplace,’ and they eventually agreed to store it in a shipping container."
In a statement, state Department of Land and Natural Resources spokeswoman Deborah Ward said the skull was initially discovered on the side of the road during vegetation clearing for the construction of a road.
SHPD staff initially reburied the remains and marked them. Then someone — perhaps intentionally — disturbed the remains "because a barrier was removed," Ward said in an email.
"When SHPD realized that the burial had been disturbed the second time, they determined that relocation would provide better protection for the burial and asked the cultural monitor to remove it and store it in their curation trailer," Ward wrote.
"The preference is to keep finds on site, which may require safekeeping in a storage area or trailer for a period of time while the process to determine a final location is worked out," she wrote.
