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We founded Mālama Kakanilua, a nonprofit organization based on Maui, to protect and preserve our traditions, customs, and especially our special places.

For nearly two decades, we have spent most of our time fighting inappropriate development that displaces us, our cultural sites, and our iwi kupuna, which Mary Kawena Pukui called our most cherished possession.

We are working people but have made time to testify, participate in contested cases, and file lawsuit upon lawsuit to protect the places and people that is our obligation, as Kanaka Maoli, to defend.

Not a few of the developments we have challenged required environmental assessments, used state or county land, or received exemptions from special management area permitting requirements. Gov. Josh Green’s emergency proclamation takes away the few tools we have to protect iwi kupuna.

We had to go to court against an environmental assessment for a luxury housing project to protect iwi we know exist in Makena, but the developer’s consultant refused to listen to us. We sued the developer based on an inadequate environmental assessment, but the EP could’ve taken this option away from us because it suspends our right to sue under Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 343.

We saw another developer mining the sand dunes in Maui Lani subdivision development to make way for another market rate housing project. They went more than 45 feet below grade. We followed the many, many trucks loaded with sand and the iwi of our kupuna to the Ameron site and the loading docks, where the sand and our iwi were shipped away on huge cargo ships.

We stopped the unmonitored heavy machines based on our right to an injunction for violations of HRS Chapter 6E. The EP suspends this law and our ability to use it. 

We also took the issue to the county council, who passed a sand mining moratorium. The current proclamation could have suspended the county’s powers to do this for “the construction … and occupancy of housing” by the developer.

HRS Chapter 6E regulates archaeological consultants across the state. Maui’s Environmental Court agreed that we were entitled to a contested case against Archaeological Services Hawaii LLC’s archaeological permit application. ASH was required to have a principal archaeologist on staff, but they admitted he only worked 30-50 hours per year.

Meanwhile, ASH’s office manager was signing off on reports that allowed developers to unearth and desecrate our iwi. We could not have brought that case now because of the EP’s suspension of historic properties laws. 

The governor keeps pointing to a truncated historic properties and environmental review process in his proclamation. But the lead housing officer can exempt certain projects from that truncated process.

These are very weak protections. They take away the rights of private working citizens like us to enforce protections of our cultural heritage.

Our iwi kupuna are not a cause of the shortage of safe and affordable housing in Maui or across Hawaii. It is developer greed and global demand for luxury forms of housing.