Prince Kuhio Day eve event rallies support for Hawaiian Homes funding
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM 'Kuhio Kakou ' rally participants lined Beretania Street on Tuesday in support of a bill intended to provide $600 million to build homestead lots for state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries. The event was held on the eve of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day, a state holiday recognizing the father of the 1921 Hawaiian Homestead Act.
1 /2 GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM 'Kuhio Kakou ' rally participants lined Beretania Street on Tuesday in support of a bill intended to provide $600 million to build homestead lots for state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries. The event was held on the eve of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day, a state holiday recognizing the father of the 1921 Hawaiian Homestead Act.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM Bearing Hawaiian flags, Alfred Keaka Hiona Medeiros, left, and Clinton Kamealoha Burns high-fived at a rally Tuesday at the state Capitol rotunda to support the passage of HB 606.
2 /2 GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM Bearing Hawaiian flags, Alfred Keaka Hiona Medeiros, left, and Clinton Kamealoha Burns high-fived at a rally Tuesday at the state Capitol rotunda to support the passage of HB 606.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM 'Kuhio Kakou ' rally participants lined Beretania Street on Tuesday in support of a bill intended to provide $600 million to build homestead lots for state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands beneficiaries. The event was held on the eve of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day, a state holiday recognizing the father of the 1921 Hawaiian Homestead Act.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE @STARADVERTISER.COM Bearing Hawaiian flags, Alfred Keaka Hiona Medeiros, left, and Clinton Kamealoha Burns high-fived at a rally Tuesday at the state Capitol rotunda to support the passage of HB 606.
The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands held a unity rally Tuesday at the state Capitol to pay tribute to Prince Kuhio a day ahead of his birthday and to counteract recent resistance to homestead development funding at the Legislature.
Around 200 people participated in the 'Kuhio Kakou ' rally, which included music performances, hula, sign waving on Beretania Street, voter registration, speeches by elected officials and pleas to lawmakers on upper floors of the building to support a bill intended to provide $600 million to build homestead lots for DHHL beneficiaries.
Posters and T-shirts honoring Kuhio were printed to commemorate Tuesday's event on the eve of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day, a state holiday recognizing the father of the Hawaiian Homestead Act passed by Congress in 1921.
Yet a big purpose of the event, which lasted three hours, also was to rally support for a bill introduced in January to appropriate $600 million for DHHL mainly to develop more homestead lots three years after lawmakers appropriated $600 million for the same purpose in a historic move to reduce a waitlist of nearly 30, 000 homestead applicants.
'Let's put some pressure on our state legislators, ' kumu hula Vicky Holt Takamine said at the Capitol rotunda shortly after the rally began at 9 a.m. 'Let's figure out how we can influence our legislators to make the right decisions. … Every two years is an election.'
The funding legislation, House Bill 606, is a top priority of the 13-member bipartisan House Native Hawaiian Affairs Caucus, and passed the full House of Representatives in a 48-1 vote on March 4 after an initial House committee changed the appropriation amount to an unspecified sum, as is common for many appropriation bills early in the legislative session.
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HB 606 ran into resistance last week when two Senate committees advanced the bill further but also requested in a side note that the next Senate committee in line to review the measure consider inserting $50 million for the appropriation sum.
The Senate committees on Housing and Hawaiian Affairs made the request in committee reports as part of advancing HB 606 on March 18 after a contentious March 11 public hearing.
During the hearing, a few DHHL beneficiaries and a former Hawaiian Homes Commission member opposed the funding bill over what they characterized as deficient use or accounting of the $600 million appropriation made in 2022 via Act 279.
'Where is our money going ?' Patty Kahanamoku-Teruya, a former com missioner, asked at the hearing.
Sen. Samantha DeCorte, a Senate Hawaiian Affairs Committee member, questioned whether DHHL was making good use of the 2022 appropriation based on a shifting and wide-ranging number of beneficiaries who DHHL estimates will receive lot leases due to Act 279.
'The department has not proven themselves to be fiscally responsible to do the job of Act 279, ' DeCorte (R, Nanakuli-Waianae-Makaha ) said during the hearing.
Sen. Troy Hashimoto, Senate Housing Committee vice chair, said it's been hard to track DHHL's use of Act 279 funding because of repeated changes to an initial strategic plan approved by the commission.
'Things aren't adding up, ' Hashimoto (D, Wailuku-Kahului-Waihee ) said during the hearing.
Sen. Kurt Fevella, a Housing Committee member who supports $600 million in added funding, said during the hearing that it pained his heart to see Hawaiians opposing Hawaiians over HB 606.
'The only people that are losing right now is the Hawaiians, ' said Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Ocean Pointe-Iroquois Point ).
During Tuesday's rally Fevella gave two impassioned speeches urging more Hawaiians to vote and to unite behind giving DHHL another $600 million to produce more homesteads.
'We need to make our people strong, and we need to get back to the aina (land ), ' he said. 'We got to stop tearing each other down in committee hearings.'
Later, Fevella added, 'We need to rally my colleagues in the House and the Senate to do what is right.'
Rep. Daniel Holt, co-chair of the House Native Hawaiian Affairs Caucus, said DHHL has shown that it can dramatically expand homestead lot development, and told rally attendees to keep up pressure on the Legislature to pass HB 606 with a $600 million appropriation by submitting testimony on the bill.
'This bill is very important, ' said Holt (D, Sand Island-Iwilei-Chinatown ).
Val Kekawa, a DHHL beneficiary on the agency's waitlist since 1973, said more support for HB 606 from Hawaiians is needed to obtain land that is owed to them.
Kekawa suggested that lawmakers need to know what rally participants want.
'I need to make this very loud and clear, ' she said, gesturing to the upper floors of the Capitol overlooking the rotunda. 'What's up there needs to come down, and what's down here needs to go up.'
The homestead program, administered by the state since 1959, aims to return Native Hawaiians to their ancestral lands after the U.S. annexed the islands. The program offers residential, agricultural or pastoral land leases to DHHL beneficiaries, who must be at least 50 % Hawaiian. Lot leases cost $1 a year, and beneficiaries must pay for or build their own homes.
Over the past century, about 10, 000 homesteads have been created, or 100 per year on average, largely due to meager funding and a large land base not well suited for residential development. At least 2, 100 DHHL beneficiaries have died while on the agency's waitlist, which recently reached 29, 543 applicants.
DHHL Director Kali Watson said the agency has 29 projects progressing under the 2022 appropriation that should result in more than 3, 000 homestead leases but that it will take $6 billion to provide homesteads for everyone on the waitlist.
'The need is very, very great, ' he said at the rally. 'When you talk about $600 million, it's a step in the right direction, but it is not enough.'
Rep. Mahina Poepoe, lead introducer of HB 606, said a second $600 million appropriation represents an obligation that has been too long delayed.
'This funding is not a gift, ' said Poepoe (D, Molokai-Lanai-Hana ). 'It's a payment on a long-overdue debt.'
Kuhio Lewis, CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, said a rally to support DHHL funding shouldn't be necessary.
'The state is not fulfilling its constitutional obligation to Native Hawaiians, ' he said. 'That's the bottom line. … I'm tired of coming over here and asking for what we should already be given, what is due to us as Native Hawaiians.'
The rally also had a mix of entertainment and advocacy that included veteran radio personalities Lina Girl and Davey D serving as emcees. Jonathan Osorio, dean of the Hawai 'inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii, sang two songs, including 'Ka Hulina Au, ' about a turning time that could apply to the present.
HB 606 is referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which has yet to schedule the bill for consideration and possible advancement to the full Senate.
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The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. My late grandmother's 10 acres of wild rainforest land, off a dirt road near Hāna, Maui, were part of a larger land grant given to our family more than 175 years ago by King Kamehameha III. When I learned recently that we might lose that land, I panicked—both about the idea of losing it and about something far less tangible and harder to explain. Generation after generation, the story of our family's land had followed the story of Hawai'i: Ancient lands gave way to sugar plantations, then to ranchers, then to wealthy foreigners. All that time, my family held on to ours. When it was our turn to confront change—this time in the form of a letter from the county of Maui saying, without explanation, that our property taxes had suddenly gone up by 500 percent—my father, aunties, uncles, siblings, and I were determined to save the land that so many before us had protected. It was not just the promise we had made to Grandma, which she had asked for, but it was also the promise her mother had made to her grandfather, and so on, one generation linked to the next and to the next. This was our family's kuleana, our sacred duty. We knew we must remain stewards of our land, and of a nearby 16th-century heiau, or Native Hawaiian temple, which still stands next to my ancestors' graves. Our family was figuring out several pathways to resolve the property-tax problem. But as we did so, an unwelcome thought materialized: Even if we saved it, so what? What about the next generation? Although I'm part Native Hawaiian, I grew up in Southern California—not Hawai'i—and had moved myself farther and farther east while pursuing a career in journalism. Hawai'i always felt so familiar and I always promised myself to get 'back' there, where I felt a deep connection. But there was always another job, another story to chase, in the other direction. [Read: The Hawaiians who want their nation back] Now I felt even farther away, settled with my family in Washington, D.C. I felt urgently that I needed to try something new—something that would connect me to my roots, and something that would teach my children about their heritage, too. What I found, in the suburbs of the nation's capital, of all places, was hula. Hula would not solve our tax problem. But maybe it could help us build some connection to Hawai'i when we couldn't physically be there. That's how I found myself in a community recreation center in Silver Spring, Maryland, with my two youngest children in tow, forming a circle with a group of strangers wearing matching red skirts and T-shirts. That first afternoon, the kids and I mostly sat along the side of the room and watched as a group of musicians picked up ukuleles and slack-key guitars to play familiar Hawaiian songs. I loved to see the women's red pāʻū, or skirts, sway with the swish of their hips. The men stepped proudly, with hands on their hips. Step together, step right; step together, step left. I felt like I was a kid again, watching my aunties dance at a family wedding, or my great-uncle performing the 'Maui Waltz' at the community center in Hāna. Part of me wanted to join in at that moment, retracing the movements that my aunties had taught me when we gathered for Christmas and Thanksgiving in California. Only once, at my grandparents' 50th-wedding-anniversary party, did I attempt to dance with my sisters as we performed a very basic version of 'Lahaina Luna.' I look back at that moment now and cringe. I didn't really know what I was doing. But I longed to learn. As far back as I can remember, the hula has mesmerized me. I couldn't get enough of seeing my aunties and, on rare occasions, my grandma dance. They would be encouraged, mostly at weddings, to take a turn on the dance floor, and I'd fixate on their beautiful hands, the way their fingers gracefully curved and moved, gold and jade bracelets dangling from their wrists. I also loved watching my uncles dance hula. And I loved that there were so many types of hula: traditional, fast-moving hula with no music but the beating of the gourd and chanting of dancers' voices; sweet, slow-moving, graceful hula that told a story about love or the beauty of a woman or a place; and even fun, campier hula, too. [Read: The hula movement] Back at the rec center, a woman with long white hair and a deep voice approached me and encouraged me to join the back row, just to practice. Nervous, I declined. Give it a try, she urged. 'Oh, no, no, no, no. I can't dance. I'm just here to watch this first visit,' I said. Members of the hālau, or hula school, lined up in rows facing the kumu hula, our teacher. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. The women and men began to move in unison. Actually, it doesn't look that hard, I thought. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. 'Do it, Mom!' my kids encouraged me. I smiled. The beat drew me in. I put the skirt on, over my shorts. I walked over to the group and found a place in line, in the back. The linoleum floor felt like ice under my bare feet. A woman dancing next to me smiled and nodded. I would try to follow what she did with my feet and arms at the same time. I looked back at the kids. Their eyes were eager, as if to say, Way to go, Mom! My 11-year-old son, Silas, gave me a thumbs-up. I turned my attention forward. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. I bent my knees. I stepped to the right, remembering to keep my shoulders steady, not moving, so that my hips would sway. I kept my head level. One important secret to dancing hula is that you must dance with bent knees to get that hip movement. When you bend your knees halfway, it forces your hips to move from side to side when you step, making it look like you're swinging your hips when you're really stepping. But as I sank into my hips, I could feel them creak. 'Kā holo right!' the kumu called, referring to the basic step-together-step move of hula. 'Kā holo, 'ae,' the group answered him affirmatively. I smiled and looked over at the kids, who were smiling, too. I thought of how often I had pushed them to do some awkward, uncomfortable thing—such as joining a new baseball or soccer team, or a Brownie troop. Joining a new group of people—of strangers—was hard. I had forgotten what that felt like until this moment. But here I was. After a few times, bending my knees and swaying my hips, the movement felt more familiar. I remembered my aunties teaching me as a little girl the different steps in hula, how to softly roll my hands. Dancing hula was stirring these memories inside me. As I danced, I thought of Grandma. It all felt so right inside my bones. Yes, I thought, this is it. This is what I've been missing. Suddenly, a switch inside me flipped. I went from being self-conscious to in the zone. The simple act of dancing these steps connected me with something I had been yearning for. I knew at that moment that this hālau and hula would become a much bigger part of my life. Even before the tax problem surfaced, it dawned on me that keeping the land in the family was not so much about financial means but about connection. It was the cultural responsibility, the stewardship, the kuleana that kept it alive, handed across generations. What did that next passing of the baton look like when it would inevitably get passed to me? Would my children pick it up when they were raised so far away from Hawai'i? I wondered, at times, as I watched my children grow up in their circle of mostly white friends, whether they would ever identify as Hawaiian. Genetically, they were less Native Hawaiian than I was. Culturally, would that be true, too? Would they feel any connection to the place beyond it being a beautiful vacation spot where we happened to have family living? Confronting these questions was uncomfortable. I had learned, through years of visiting my family in Hawai'i, about the land and our lineage. I was determined that my generation would not be the one that lost the land, or sold it, after 175 years of family history. But I felt so lost about how to guide them. I thought about how many hours I'd spent as a young parent reading books to tell me so many other things about how to raise my children the 'right' way. 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I loved learning how the hula is broken down into basic steps, each intended so that your body's motion mirrors something observed in nature. I could close my eyes, even in the dead of winter in Washington, D.C., and my body could make the motion of the waves on the sand or the raindrops from the sky. The hula, with every step, transported me to Hawai'i. [Read: Hawaii: Images of the aloha state ] It wasn't always easy. Our kumu made it clear when he was unhappy that our group hadn't memorized a chant properly or practiced our hula between classes. 'You should all know this chant by now. There are no excuses,' he would say. Or: 'This is a hula about love. I do not see any love in your faces.' As a newcomer, I struggled to dedicate four hours on a weekend to attend the class. As a working mother with kids, I did not have a lot of time to spend perfecting my chant pronunciation, and often I was so stressed about doing the dances correctly—with proper foot and arm placement—that I knew I was one of the people not smiling. Yet this weekly class also became a source of immense joy. It was an escape. At hālau, I enjoyed being a hula student and not having to manage anything. It felt good to be learning something, even if at first I wasn't very skilled at it. The kids and I quickly went from being the new family in the group to regulars. I got to know different people. Most people had moved to the area from Hawai'i. We had researchers who worked at the Smithsonian, workers at different federal agencies, members of the military, teachers, and retirees. For some, their reason for being at hālau was that they'd recently moved to D.C. and were homesick. Others, like our kumu, grew up in Hawai'i but had settled in the D.C. area years ago. And a few others didn't have Native Hawaiian ancestry, but they had fallen in love with the culture. For all of us, hālau was healing in some way. The origin of the hula is not universally settled. But there's a story in Hawaiian oral tradition about the Native Hawaiian goddess Pele, who rules over the volcanoes of the islands. The story goes that the goddess begged her sisters to dance and sing, but they demurred, saying they did not know how. But the youngest sister, Hi'iaka, surprised everyone by dancing on the sands of the beaches as she improvised, having secretly learned from her friend Hopoe. The American historian Nathaniel B. Emerson wrote one of the first comprehensive books about the practice of hula in 1909. He observed that the Hawaiian people were 'superstitiously religious' and also 'poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.' In ancient times, hula was practiced not by all Hawaiians but by a select few, and practitioners had to follow a strict set of rituals. The hula was forever changed with the arrival of foreigners, and in particular the arrival of Christian missionaries, whose influence led to a brief ban of public performances in the 1830s. Hawaiian culture faced another crisis with the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, which led to a decades-long period in which Hawaiians were discouraged from partaking in many traditions or even speaking their language. But a hula revival came in the 1960s—along with a wave of tourists eager to consume Hawaiian culture and also because of activists who began to fight to preserve almost-forgotten customs. Today, the most famous hula event in the world is the Merrie Monarch Festival, a competition that takes place each year on the Big Island and is often called the 'Olympics of Hula.' When I attended in April, what struck me most of all was how Merrie Monarch showcases hula as both a tribute to the ancient tradition and a nod to its evolution. On the first night, dozens of women and men from across the Hawaiian islands and California chanted into the night as their feet hit the floor to the beat of drums. Their voices rang out into the open-air auditorium in Hawaiian, speaking the same chants that their ancestors had spoken for centuries. I am not a natural performer. I have a hard time faking a smile. And although I am comfortable being on a stage, I'm not necessarily the gal to ham it up. So I was a little nervous for our hālau's first big hula performance in Washington, D.C. When I heard that we were going to perform at a public-high-school auditorium that seated 600 people, I thought: Dear God. [Read: I wanna dance with somebody] It was one thing to be confident in moving my body correctly, to feel and tell a story through hula. It was quite another to do it in front of hundreds of people. Then, just a few weeks before the big day, my kumu called me aside and announced that he wanted to add one more hula to the performance: a special mother-son dance. Would Silas and I like to be part of it? It was an easy hula, he explained. Yes, of course, I told him. Silas and I would wear matching red-and-black Hawaiian-print outfits, as would four other mother-son pairs. Week by week, I was mentally preparing myself. What had I gotten us into? On one hand, I told myself it was just a high-school auditorium. But on the other, this could be really bad if I botched it. On the day of our performance, the kids and I were all excited and nervous. As we got ready backstage with our hālau, the room was electric. Our kumu gathered the entire hālau onto the stage with the thick curtains drawn. The room was quiet, and he began to chant. The chant was one that we'd said together at the beginning of every gathering of our hālau as a way to enter the space and be seen by our ancestors. As our voices joined together, I felt myself grounded in that generational line again, sharing the stories of those who'd come before and holding my children's hands on either side of me. Once the performance began, everything went by fast. With each song, our hālau got into a groove. I danced to 'Kipona Aloha' with a group of wahine beginner dancers. Once the music started, somehow my body just relaxed. Next, it was time for me to dance with Silas. We walked onstage together, in mother-son units. We danced to 'E Huli Makou,' a call-and-response modern hula. At the end, the boys all gave their moms a big hug. We could hear the crowd go, 'Awww!' My smile couldn't have been bigger. I realized in that moment that there was nothing performative about what I was doing onstage. I was where I belonged, learning the stories of my ancestors alongside my children and sharing them with the world. What could be more Hawaiian than that? After the show was over, my dad stood waiting for me, ready for a hug, with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. 'Wow, you're a natural,' he said. I felt the emotion begin to gather in my throat. 'Your grandma would be so proud, Sara.' I nodded because I knew he was going to say it before he even said it. I'd felt her presence there with me, as I was dancing barefoot on that stage. Somehow, I also knew, we'd figure out a way to hold on to the land. It was as if, in middle age, I was finally in my own skin. I'd found my kuleana. This article was adapted from Sara Kehaulani Goo's forthcoming book, Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i. Article originally published at The Atlantic
