Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 20, Number 05, 1 May 2003 — 'Watchdogs' of the 'āina [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

'Watchdogs' of the 'āina

Kia'i 'Aina Ceded Land lnventory Project:

By Naomi Sodetani The sounds of searching — pages tuming, pens scribbling, microfilm maehine whirring — dominate the hushed Bureau of Conveyances research room. Two young men with a laptop confer over a book full of maps. Donovan Preza, a Poli Sci major at the University of Hawai'i, taps on his laptop muttering, "What happened? It looks like this parcel got larger." Nearby, a young woman wearing a white hoodie, Kalei Lum Ho, pores over mammoth leather bound volumes filled with yellowed pages of flowery script. Preza and Lum Ho are among a small group of college students who have spent countless hours examining documents more than 150 years old. The Students are locating all ceded land parcels in Hawai'i, following the palapala (paper) trail across many generations from the Māhele to the present. Lum Ho, a University of Hawai'i at Hilo anthropology and geography graduate student calls the laborious process "exciting, kinda like being a detective."

The Kia'i 'Āina (guardians of the land) Ceded Lands lnventory Project seeks to create a definitive culture-based inventory of ceded lands, says Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies Director Lilikalā Kame'eleihiwa, pnneipal investigator for the project. The center, Ka Lāhui Hawai'i and Pono Kaulike organized the project in response to the state and federal governments' failure to comprehensively identify ceded lands. Project Director April Drexel, assistant professor with the center, says the project also emerged from eoneem that a land claims settlement would be negotiated between the Office of Hawaiian Affairs

and the state "without knowing exactly what we have and what it's worth" — and without involving the Native Hawaiian community. "We need to find a way to live in peaee and harmony, and we can't have that until we have justice. And we can't have that until we know where the lands are," Kame'eleihiwa says. The project is funded with grants from OHA, the Administration for Native Americans and University of Hawai'i.

Last April, OHA trustees approved a substantial $1.525 million in funding over five years to the center to staff the ceded lands inventory effort and to increase cultural courses at the center . Since last February, under Drexel's guidance, 12 student researchers, plus students enrolled in her Māhele and Ceded Lands courses, have been investigating existing state, federal and county See KIA'I 'ĀINA on page 7

College students are on a mission to map, guard ancestral lands ■

Land 'detecttves' Donovan Pre'a (on lapLp) and lokona Baker lnvestlgate Nu'uanu land parcels and lnputthe lnformatlon, creatlng a GIS (geographic lnformatlon system) system. Nearby, fellow researcher Mary Correa pages through the Buke Mōhele that recorded prtvate land transactions.from 1848. photo Noomi sodetom

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KIA'I 'ĀINA from page 1 inventories of ceded lands. Core team members are: Lum Ho, Preza, Mary Correa, Iokona Baker, Pua Ka'aihue, Lu'ukia Archer, Keoni Bunag, Miehael Puleloa, Kawika Baker, U'i Keli'ikuli, Kalewa Correa, and Lehuanui Watanabe. Project managers are Lehua Kinilau and Sharon Lum Ho, and Project Assistant Malia Kaaihue. 'A shell game' Researchers are tracking down ceded lands through a maze of exisnng surveys held by OHA, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Kamehameha Schools, Department of Land and Natural Re<;ources (DLNR) and other state agencies, federal government occupying lands for military and park use, and the counties. A 2001 report issued by the state auditor's had red-flagged the haphazard accounting, discrepencies between existing records of ceded lands, and non-digitized databases. For example, the DLNR inventory notes 4,861 acres of ceded acres in Wailuku ahupua'a. But 0HA's inventory of the same area cites 769.375 acres while DHHL counts 69.692 acres, and the military 10.93 acres. "We are seeing transfers of lands from state to county, and the hiding of lands in other agencies like the Board of Water Supply, Department of Transportation," Kame'eleihiwa

says. "It's a shell game: lands don't just disappear, but where are they?" Identification of ceded lands is also obscured with the state's ongoing practice of selling and swapping of lands to private landowners or assigning leases for eheap or free — even for lucrative use by large agribusinesses, golf courses or luxury resorts. "It's like solving a puzzle when the pieces are all scattered," Lum Ho sighs. So students go first to the source, to the Buke Mahele, whieh recorded land awards to private individuals for the first time in 1848, then trace ownership forward. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) computer software, they map where the lands are, matching the ahupua'a name with tax map key (TMK) numbers. "Because if we know the ahupua'a name, we ean see it in our mind," Kame'eleihiwa says. Besides geographic, legal and market data, researchers are also collecting cultural information from communities — legends, practices,

mele, historic sites, genealogies and kupuna oral histories — and integrating these cultural layers into GIS maps of eaeh ahupua'a. Land is a sacred ancestor "This work releases our anger and uses it productively, to go out and right the wrongs that have been done to us," Kame'eleihiwa says. "These young people are the next generation of warriors guarding our lands, whieh are our sacred ancestor." In presentations held statewide February through April, findings from the first year were shared throughout the islands. Project staff also translated the Buke Māhele ffom Hawaiian into English. Kia'i 'Āina is disseminating CD-ROMs free to make the information more accessible to all. Lehua Kinilau says the project's goal is to train and empower students and the Hawaiian community so that they will be ready to manage natural resources of their nation. Not just to identify where lands are. or decipher how they were "lost" — but to make sure that the knowledge never gets lost again. "People keep throwing up dollar figures to the land," Kinilau says. "But to us Hawaiians, these places hold cultural values that money can't ever buy." Despite the tug of myriad obligations - coursework, other jobs - the students embrace the project as a critical step in self-determination. "Right now, we don't know where our 'āina is," Preza says. "First, we have to know where our lands are. What is a nation without land?" To help organize future presentations, share research, obtain a free CD-ROM of an English-translated Buke Māhele, or to make a donation, eall Kia'i 'Āina at 945-1403, email kiaiaina@hotmail.com or go to www.kiaiaina.org. ■

Kla'l 'Āina Ceded Lands Pro)ect Dlrector Aprll Drexel (I) glves student researcher Pua Ka'aihue tlps on traclng land transactions.

i.: mai m ■ wli ■ ■■ i ■_«■■■ n»i "lt's like solving a puzzle when the pieces are all scattered." — Kalei Lum Ho

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