“Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear….”
Lyrics by Stephen Stills, 1966.

Several people have asked me to comment on the dramatic confrontation playing out from the slopes of Mauna Kea to Hawaii’s State Capitol and beyond.

I’ll start by saying that, in many ways, the current uprising is similar to the movement that grew after the first public protest landing on Kahoolawe at the beginning of the American Bicentennial year of 1976 which aimed at stopping the U.S. Navy’s use of the island as a bombing range.

I found myself among the group of nine people who successfully made it onto shore on January 4, 1976 in a direct nonviolent challenge to the bombing. The protest had been launched by Maui resident Charles Maxwell, who put out a call to Hawaiians across the state to join him in the protest landing.

Dozens of people responded to his call. I described my experience in a column written to mark the 40th anniversary of that first landing (Civil Beat,” Kahoolawe 40 Years Later“).

Here’s an excerpt I feel is most relevant to the events unfolding today.

I recall people gathered at a community center in Waikapu as they arrived on Maui the afternoon before the planned protest. I think there were close to 50 people who spent the night there preparing for a pre-dawn departure to the harbor, and on to Kahoolawe.

Moving between small groups of people talking late into the night, I listened in on their discussions of the issues confronted in their own communities. Some were challenging the closing of traditional access to trails and beaches in the face of unchecked development and the greed of private developers. Many had been part of ongoing challenges to the long failure of the Hawaiian Homes Commission to fulfill its mission of returning Hawaiians to the land. Others organized at the community level against poverty, homelessness, lack of educational opportunities and adequate health care.

Through it all, a common thread, a profound sense that Hawaiians carried more than their fair share of the community’s social burdens, and that something had to be done.

And for that moment, thanks to Maxwell’s initiative, Kahoolawe became the shared symbol.

That initial civil disobedience was followed by a series of protest landings which led to arrests and criminal trials, all of which continued to focus growing public awareness not only of the issue of Kahoolawe, but the broader issues facing Hawaiians.

Just two years later, this public awareness contributed to several dramatic pro-Hawaiian constitutional amendments proposed by the Constitutional Convention of 1978 and approved by voters.

These constitutional amendments created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to manage and administer resources to be held in trust for the Hawaiian people, including a share of ceded land revenues to be set aside for the benefit of native Hawaiians. A separate provision recognized the inadequacy of funding for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and spelled out a directive that the legislature “shall make sufficient sums available” for the development of lots to be made available to qualified Hawaiian lessees, to carry out rehabilitations programs to raise the status of Hawaiians, and to fund “the administration and operating budget of the department of Hawaiian home lands…by appropriating the same in the manner provided by law.”

And a final amendment called for protection of customary and traditional rights “exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua’a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights.”

Today, after four decades have passed, these lofty goals have not been met, despite being enshrined in the State Constitution, and despite the millions of federal and state dollars invested in Native Hawaiian programs. The long list of qualified applicants waiting for Hawaiian Homes leases has not been eliminated, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has failed to provide the hoped for leadership in developing overall policies to raise the status of Hawaiians, and the state has fought a long-running legal battle to avoid providing those “sufficient sums” to operate the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands without the agency having to lease prime properties to private commercial interests simply in order to provide operating funds.

More generally, Hawaiians continue to trail other ethic groups in income and economic well being. A 2013 OHA study reported that Hawaiians have the lowest median family income of all major ethnic groups throughout the state, with all the problems that engenders. Hawaiians are are also overrepresented among our prison and jail population while face unique health challenges.

So while opposition to the TMT sparked the current demonstrations, the real issues are deeper and broader-based. Like Kahoolawe in the 1970s, Mauna Kea and the TMT have become the symbol of a generalized concern that Hawaiians are still carrying more than their fair share of the community’s social burdens, and that something must be done.

With that said, however, I’ll pull together some of what I’ve written about Mauna Kea and the exercise of Hawaiian rights. Watch for them in a separate post.