‘4 — Friday, March 15, 1991 — North Shore News

Hawaiians facing native issue of their own

HONOLULU — The native land issue convulsed Hawaii a
ceniury and a halt ago. It convulsed Hawaii when I first
visited 25 Christmases ago. It still convulses Hawaii today.
It will convuise Hawaii as long as the sun shines and the

surf roars.

Sound familiar?

By a strange coincidence, the
very day that British Columbia
Chief Justice Allan McEuchern
brought down his (entirely wise)
judgment in the Gitksan-
Wet’suwet’en iand claims case, a
sharply divided Hawaii legislature
compromised on a bill with large
implications for the land held for
native Hawaiians.

In a sense the Hawaiian situa-
tion is inside-out of B.C.’s: the
native people aren’t claiming the
land in dispute. They already ef-
fectively own it. The issue is
whether they can hold it.

A fast skate over the conflict
begins with elements British Col-
umbians know well: Aboriginal
people. Nature scarcely spoiled. A
technologically vastly superior
people arrive. They take over.

But. in Hawaii's case, not quite.
In the 39th century, Hawaii’s roy-
alty gradually lost their lands. The
law — white man’s law, as Ha-
waiians naturally saw it — decided
that the monarchs’ property was
not personally owned but only a
form of government land.

The one speed bump on the
road to native Hawaiians being
almost totally relieved of their
ancestral lands was created in
1884 by the will of Bernice Pauahi
Bishop.

She was a Hawaiian princess.
She left her vast estate — more
than 400,000 acres — in trust for
the betterment of native Hawai-
ians, especially through support of
the so-called Kamehamea schools.

The Bishop Estate still lives. It
is far and away the state’s biggest
private fandholder. It is the lessor
of about three-quarters of al]

Trevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

Hawaii's land leases. It is loved
and reviled.

Hawaii’s astounding post war
development — when Roy and
Estelle Kelley arrived here in 1929
and began putting together the
state’s biggest hotel chain, the
7,500-room Outrigger, there were

Hydro to help plan undergrounding

WEST VANCOUVER Mayor
Mark Sager announced Monday
night that B.C. Hydro has agreed
to participate in the long-range
planning for the undergrounding
of power, telephone and cable
lines in West Vancouver.

By Maureen Curtis
Contributing Writer

_ ‘*We anticipate the striking of a
joint committee very soon,’’ Sager
said.

WEST VANCOUVER
DISTRICT COUNCIL

After power lines were placed
underground as part of the recent
Ambleside Revitalization Project,
several neighborhoods applied un-
successfully to remove unsightly
poles on their residential streets.

. ‘“tHydro’s willingess to par-
ticipate in serious, long-term
planning is very, very good
news,”’ said Sager.

It would, he said, be more ef-

fective to work the under-
grounding in with the municipali-
ty’s road repair program.

“We should be undergrounding
as we repave the roads,’’ Sager
said.

At a recent meeting with Hydro
representatives Sager received a
$92,000 cheque, refunded to the
municipality because the
Ambleside Revitalization work
had come in under budget.

“This was thanks to the joint
effons of Hydro and our own
civic workers who participated in
the project,’’ Sager added.

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22,000 visitors a year, in 1967 one
million, and now 6.5 million ---
has utterly transformed the place.

Development has put tremen-
dous pressure on lind use, on
land prices, on what is delicately
called land reform — an issue that
has bristled with political and
economic conflicts of interest that
make Fantasy Gardens look like a
trade wind in a teacup.

The old white and largely
Republican elite has faded. The
new elite is iargely Asian, both
local and offshore.

George Cooper and Gavan
Daws, in their book Land and
Power in Hawaii, describe a jaw-
dropping network of political,
economic, familial and labor
union ties that trailed through the
Democratic governorships of John
Burns and especially George
Ariyoshi.

In the 1980s the Bishop Estate
fought a long legal battle against
the new middle-class elite of
single-family lessees, who wanted
to convert their leases to fee sim-
ple (ownership of the land their
house stood on). The lessors,
Bishop and others, lost.

The issue divided even
neighbors: a Koko head resident
who took advantage of the
resulting conversion process,
which required a certain number
of leaseholders in a given tract to
vote to buy their property — the
rest continue with their leases
under a new landlord, the Hawai-
ian Housing Authority — told me
his next-door neighbor accused
him of taking a ‘‘free ride”’
because he didn’t take part in the
drive to attain the right to con-
vert.

Bad neighbor relations or not,

.the Koko Head man has done

well. He bought the land he had
leased at $6 a square foot in the

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mid-1980s — $60,000 for a lot
that today would be worth at least
six or seven times as much.

Now condominium dweliers are
demanding the same right. With
land values skyrocketing, their
ground rents will soar when
renegotiation of their (mostly 55-
year) leases come due.

Hawaii’s lieutenant-governor
claims that in the next 10 years
some, including many entering or
into retirement, will be hit by
lease increases of more than 1,300
per cent.

Sad tale? Not to those who
argue that the lessees want to win
both ways: they've enjoyed years
of Jow ground rents as land values
soared, and now demand the right
to legally force their landlords to
sell the land to them.

Oswald Stender, a Bishop
Estate trustee, bitterly wrote
recently in the Honolulu Star-
Bulletin & Advertiser: ‘‘The very
phrase — land reform — has
become a euphemism for a licence
to steal.”’

It’s ‘‘inherently directed at
divesting native Hawaiians of
ownership, control or benefits in
land, and seeks to redistribute
those rights to non-Hawaiians.

Last Friday, a compromise bill
was proposed that excludes so-
called ‘‘mom-and-pop”’ owners of
only one condominium from forc-
ed conversion by their tenant. Its
chances are still doubtful.

The dispute here reinforces my
gloomy belief that doesn't sit well
with B.C.’s Indians and their
white cheerleaders: in a modern
society you can’t create and sus-
tain two classes of landholders
and tenants by race. Ultimately
that means two classes of citizen-
ship in perpetuity. It’s been tried.
It was called apartheid.

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