I received an email a few minutes ago with news of Sonny Kaniho’s death.

Aloha,

My name is Monique Batchelder. I am the grand-niece of Sonny Kaniho. I grew up next to him in Waimea living between him and my Grandfather (Kenneth Kaniho Sr.) He was battling alzheimers and lost this morning. He passed on to a place where all the land is his.

Sonny Kaniho was one of the giants in the modern Hawaiian rights movement who gained fame by quietly, and then not-so-quietly, protesting the failures of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to make land available to Native Hawaiians.

Here’s the introduction I wrote several years ago to photos of Sonny’s most famous protest, a symbolic occupation of a DHHL pasture in 1974.

May 1974. Two years before the first protest landing on Kahoolawe. George Ariyoshi was serving as governor but would not face election until later in the year. Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians were becoming increasing restive and politically active, with long-term problems of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands becoming key issues for many.

And then there was Sonny Kaniho, veteran and retired Pearl Harbor shipyard worker. Kaniho had been on the Hawaiian Homes waiting list for nearly two decades without being awarded any land, while watching large parcels being leased to some of the state’s largest landowners.

Perhaps an unlikely activist, Kaniho began a campaign of civil disobedience. In April 1974, Kaniho issued a public statement claiming land that had been leased to Parker Ranch. That lease had lapsed, and Kaniho stepped up to oppose and used direct action to block its extension.

Those photos of the 1974 protest, and the subsequent trial, are available online and hopefully, in a small way, can help keep Sonny a part of our history.