Perhaps that headline is a bit too strong. Perhaps not meant as fake news, but clearly this photo is an example of a very creative, fictional recreation of a past event. The photo is real. The story is not.
This photo surfaced on Facebook yesterday in a post apparently aimed at “protectors” of Mauna Kea.
The caption tells a tale.
PROTECTORS FROM 1974 NEAR MAUNA KEA ROAD GOING UP WAIKI’I ROAD – one of the first stand off’s regarding the telescopes.
Uncle Sonny Kaniho, Uncle Andrew Akau along with almost all the Parker Ranch workers & there families, this is one of my first memories of my daddy standing to stop the trucks from bringing up the stuff for build the telescopes.
It does seem to have struck a chord. By early this morning, it had drawn 100 comments and had been shared over 1,000 times.
It is indeed a photo of Sonny Kaniho and Andrew Akau in 1974. No offense meant, but the caption is fiction. The photo has absolutely nothing to do with any telescopes, or stopping trucks from going up the road. That’s definitely a false narrative.
How do I know that it’s a fake story? It’s my photo. It contains my digital watermark. I took the photo back in 1974, during a protest high up on the Big Island’s Parker Ranch.
Kaniho was protesting policies of the Hawaiian Homes Commission and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands that resulted in land being leased to private interests while thousands of Hawaiians sat on waiting lists for years, even decades, for homestead leases on some of the same lands.
Kaniho’s protest involved removing a gate to a Parker Ranch pasture which was held under a lease from DHHL, entering the area, and symbolically claiming it for himself and other Hawaiians who were waiting endlessly for land.
I was among a group of supporters who accompanied Kaniho and were cited for trespassing.
The case was heard later in 1974 at the courthouse in Waimea. During the trial, it was disclosed that the lease on that parcel had expired and that it technically was now public land, not Parker Ranch land. Trespass charges were dismissed.
A small but important event in the history of Hawaiian activism. But it had nothing at all to do with telescopes or protecting Mauna Kea. That story was a work of creative fiction, or perhaps just memory being recreated for modern times.
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BUSTED!
Hawaiian sovereignty activists have a long history of successfully perpetrating fake news for political purposes. Here are 3 heavily documented examples, significant because of the widespread and apparently authoritative (ab)use of the falsehoods:
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The myth of the shredded Hawaiian flag — a false claim that the Hawaiian flag removed from Iolani Palace on annexation day August 12, 1898 was cut up into pieces distributed to the annexationists as souvenirs of their victory over the Hawaiian people
Why the false story of the shredded hawaiian flag is important; how the story got started, what it says, and evidence that it is widespread (including senator Akaka telling the falsehood on the floor of the Senate in 1990 and senator Inouye telling the falsehood on the floor of the Senate in 1993); Evidence that the story is false; proof that some activists choose to perpetuate this story, knowing it is false, just to stir up anger over alleged historical grievances (actual dialogue among sovereignty activists during the annexation’s centennial commemoration in 1998). Webpage at
https://tinyurl.com/oj7n4m
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Twisting History — Reverend Kaleo Patterson used a Grover Cleveland proclamation from 1894 which he knew was fake, cited it as fact, and used it as the basis for a media blitz in 2006 in Hawaii and on the mainland calling for a national day of prayer for restoration of Native Hawaiians and repentance for the overthrow of the monarchy. He repeated his local and mainland propaganda campaign in 2007 and pushed a resolution through the Hawaii legislature citing the joke proclamation as real. In 2008 the Honolulu Star-Bulletin published a story describing the Cleveland proclamation as a fact and refused to publish a correction. In 2010 Patterson made a trip to Caldwell N.J. (tomb of Grover Cleveland) in furtherance of his hoax, where the town council gave him a check for $2920 to defray his expenses.
https://tinyurl.com/k38tm
4-page flyer poking fun at the legislature for passing Patterson’s fake-news resolution, including proof that Grover Cleveland’s alleged proclamation was a Republican newspaper’s sarcasm against Cleveland rather than a tue proclamation:
https://tinyurl.com/2tj5jl
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The O’ahu weekly newspaper “Midweek” published a major article in 2 parts over a 2 week period asserting that Mauna Ala (Royal Mausoleum) was exempted from the Organic Act and remains the sovereign land of the Kingdom of Hawaii where the laws of the U.S. and State of Hawaii do not apply. The article is copied in full to show that the claim is asserted as serious fact, and then that claim is debunked with strong evidence.
https://tinyurl.com/5rtmy
Glad you called it out. Spreading disinformation to further one’s cause is simply vile.
Isn’t insisting that Mauna Kea is somehow sacred kind of like naming everything after Daniel K. Inouye? Say it enough times and people believe it. Until they don’t. Because they never did, not really.
TMT Access Road occupation is a one issue telescope stoppage. Yet the larger picture of Hawaiian sovereignty and Hawaiian Homelands not involved. TMT is one common ground issue, no division by blood quantum required. Effectively stopping a mere single new project. But, what is totally missing is a grand plan for moving beyond this symbolic victory. Leaving completely unresolved, all primary broken trust issues.
Maybe a Gandhi history directory would help, if this effort fails to move toward more meaningful delivery of injustice it risks being counter productive. A symbolic victory. But with 69% current polling statewide supporting TMT, this victory by protection blockade remains a misunderstood entirely minority issue.
Three issues are being conflated, 1) TMT itself, 2) the illegal annexation of Hawaii and 3) the failure of UH to meet contract requirements. Yes, they overlap but I believe no solution is possible until they are addressed separately.
I don’t see how alienating 69% of the population helps the cause.
What is “The Cause” exactly?
Thank you Ian!!!! Hopefully this got posted on the original FB post as well.
Quite a load of irony and absurdity seems to be lost on many of the blockaders, social media bandwagoneers, T-shirt peddlers and enthusiasts, opportunist politicians, and celebrity clowns buzzing around The Mauna.
But they all get their pictures taken.
Anyone with Hawaiian ancestry is labeled a Native Hawaiian, and so the number of Native Hawaiians is increasing through intermarriage. People with very little Hawaiian ancestry have access to Hawaiian resources like Kam Schools, and this is a sore point. The “problem” is that these people who are barely Hawaiian succeed academically, move into positions of leadership, see themselves as completely Hawaiian after years of politicization, and push aside typical Hawaiians. On the other hand, they are organized and challenge the State more effectively, and the TMT protests are organized like never before perhaps thanks to them. The protest reconciles the regular Hawaiians with these “new” Hawaiians, but despite this unexpected success, the harmony achieved on Mauna Kea might not last. For the typical Hawaiian, new Hawaiians are an invasive species, and over time, organized people give up on disorganized people.
The distinction between “barely Hawaiian” and “typical Hawaiian” seems bizarre and the imputation that those with less Hawaiian ancestry “succeed academically, move into positions of leadership . . . and push aside typical Hawaiians”, seems to imply that blood quantum is somehow tied to academic achievement. We all have the same blood. We differ in cultural backgrounds and awareness, but one’s ancestry does not preclude mastery of each other’s cultures. There are Hawaiian masters of world cultures–including scientific astronomy–, and there are haole who are saturated in Hawaiian language and traditions.
what an interesting turn of events. really enjoyed reading this piece and get clarity as to what the photo represented. mahalo
I keep wondering where you stand on this, Ian, since it keeps getting compared to Kaho’olawe.
Fake news is the new norm.
Aloha e Ian. I had a feeling it was your work. I can understand why you do not support some sovereignty nonsense.
This show has now jumped the shark.
Many years ago, on the local community-access cable channels, there would be a program in which two or three Hawaiian professors would be talking about all the money that Hawaiians would soon be getting thanks to protesters like themselves. They would talk about how in just a few years Hawaiians would get all the federal and state lands and get money from geothermal energy and so on and so forth. They would become emotional, but at the end of the day it was all about money, jobs and land. It seems like you don’t hear that kind of talk any more. With the TMT protest, the objective is not to secure resources, but to deprive the rest of society. But how does the rest of society feel about that?
There are predictions that the TMT won’t get built because the protesters have the momentum. But remember that protesting over there is expensive (travel, food) and Mauna Kea gets cold outside of summertime, so the pendulum might swing back the other way in a couple of months. Also, public opinion has turned against Ige’s high-handedness, not against the telescope, and Ige’s over-reaction will eventually be forgotten. It’s a fascinating time. Good comments on your site, too.
Well, it turns out that a passionate minority can hold sway over a lukewarm, fragmented majority.
Like the protest against the new baseball field in Waimanalo, there might be a trend now to protest development projects that not so long ago everyone wanted. This might be a consequence of the rail.
“This might be a consequence of the rail.”
LOLOLOL
Using Ian’s photo for propaganda is probably yet another example of eroding norms. There is probably no loss of clout for the leaders who use these tactics. A question that probably won’t be answered anytime soon is whether people are going to demand accountability, honesty and integrity from whoever it is they choose to follow.
“Hawaiians have usually stood aside, not supporting but not publicly disclaiming actions by the various pretenders to the throne.”
See Ian’s blog entry on 1/30/2019 – Critical reporting needed on self proclaimed sovereigns