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There was no formal proclamation, but influential Hawaii lawmakers on Wednesday more or less proclaimed 2022 as the year of unprecedented Native Hawaiian redress from state government.
About 40 lawmakers participated in a news conference at the state Capitol one day before the end of this year’s legislative session to reflect on a team effort that delivered over $1 billion in historic funding along with numerous smaller, yet still especially meaningful, accomplishments benefiting Hawaiian causes.
“We are on the precipice of celebrating the most consequential legislative session in 100 years in my opinion,” Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, co-chair of the Legislature’s Native Hawaiian Caucus, said at the gathering attended by other caucus members, leaders at the Legislature and several dozen or so representatives of organizations that included Iolani Palace, Bishop Museum and Kamehameha Schools.
Noting that the Legislature’s contributions come on the heels of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act’s 100-year anniversary, Tyler Iokepa Gomes, deputy director of the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, said he was hopeful that they can be sustained at a high level going forward.
“This is a signal for a changing tide for what is to come for Native Hawaiians not only in housing, but also in education and health and other areas,” he said.
The single-biggest uplifting measure for Hawaiians produced at this year’s session was a record $600 million appropriation to help DHHL develop roughly 2,900 homestead lots for beneficiaries and provide mortgage and rent assistance for perhaps an additional 1,100 or so beneficiaries.
About 28,700 DHHL beneficiaries have applied for homestead lots, which cost $1 a year, and are on a waitlist. Some have been waiting for decades, and many have died while waiting.
The bill to appropriate the sum to DHHL is scheduled for a final vote today, and is expected to pass with overwhelming if not unanimous approval, followed by the signature of Gov. David Ige.
Another high-value measure appropriates $328 million to fund a recently reached settlement in a 23-year-old lawsuit over DHHL homestead award delays affecting about 2,700 Hawaiian plaintiffs, including about 900 who died since the litigation was filed.
The third-biggest financial contribution from the Legislature benefiting Hawaiians increases the annual payment to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs from state ceded land income by $6.4 million while also giving OHA $64 million to offset low payments going back to 2012.
“This has been an unprecedented legislative session for the Native Hawaiian people,” Carmen “Hulu” Lindsey, OHA board chair, said at Wednesday’s event.
Rep. Daniel Holt, another co-chair of the legislative Hawaiian caucus, said four of the five initiatives in this year’s bill package from the caucus were achieved either by way of introduced legislation or in the state budget.
One of the four efforts, House Bill 1768, exempts traditional taro farming from the government process for allocating stream water rights, and was transmitted to Ige on Wednesday.
The other three provide funds to combat rapid ohia death, improve care at state parks and pay for a $10 million capital improvement project at Bishop Museum.
Lawmakers also took up and passed other measures taking up Hawaiian issues not introduced by the caucus. These included a bill permitting traditional Hawaiian burial practices using new technology; $2 million to support Iolani Palace; $38 million to bolster Hawaiian language immersion education in public schools; and a House-Senate resolution apologizing to the Hawaiian population for an effective prohibition on speaking the Hawaiian language in Hawaii schools from 1896 to 1986.
For the most part, there was relatively little to no controversy involving aforementioned measures. That wasn’t the case for one approved bill that restructures management of Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest peak.
HB 2024 would replace the University of Hawaii as manager of the summit in favor of a new authority that includes a representative of UH, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaii island’s mayor and Mauna Kea observatories, along with five citizens including two Hawaiian cultural practitioners.
Much of UH’s focus is to support existing and future astronomy atop the mountain, which conflicts with the wishes of many Hawaiians, some of whom physically blocked construction from starting on the planned $2.7 billion Thirty Meter Telescope in 2019.
Lawmakers don’t agree on whether the new stewardship arrangement, to be phased in over five years, will resolve the conflict. But some who oppose the presence of scientific observatories on Mauna Kea’s summit appreciate the bill’s passage.
Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, a TMT opponent who helped lawmakers conceive alternative mountaintop management concepts as part of a working group, said a new paradigm has been created to consider commercial and recreational uses atop the mountain within a context of protecting Mauna Kea. “It is indeed a new day that has arrived on the mountain,” she said at the news conference.
To wrap up Wednesday’s event, participants joined hands and sang the song “Hawaii Aloha.”
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