OHA Welcomes Trustee Kai Kahele!
Developing New Regulations to Protect Cultural Items
The Department of the Interior (DOI) is seeking input from Indian Tribes and the Native Hawaiian community on the development of regulations to implement the Safeguarding Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act. The regulations would help to prevent the export of cultural items prohibited from trafficking under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
The STOP Act directs the DOI to regulate the export of tribal archaeological resources and cultural items, facilitate voluntary repatriation of Native American tangible cultural heritage to Indian Tribes in America, and operate a program to issue export certificates, consult with Indian Tribes and the Native Hawaiian community, and collect fees and fines.
In 2023, the DOI held five consultation sessions and accepted written comments on the development of draft regulations for the STOP Act. The draft regulations reflect input received during the consultations. They are now gathering additional input. Comments will be accepted in writing until Dec. 24, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. EST.
For more info: https://on.doi.gov/4fWYjxG
Purdy Wins Falsetto Championship
Holt Takamine Honored with Gish Prize
Last month, the Gish Prize Trust in Chicago announced the selection Kumu Hula Vicky Holt Takamine as the recipient of its 31st Annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
The prize was established in 1994 through the will of Lillian Gish, an actress who made more than 100 movies in her 75-year career and became the first female film director in 1920.
The prize, valued at $450,000 is given annually to an individual who has “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” Previous recipients include director Ingmar Bergman, musician Bob Dylan, playwright Arthur Miller, novelist Chinua Achebe and social activist and filmmaker Spike Lee.
Holt Takamine graduated from Kamehameha Schools Kapālama and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in dance ethnology from UH Mānoa. She trained under renowned Kumu Hula Maiki Aiu Lake and completed her ʻūniki ceremony in 1975.
In 1977, she founded her own hālau hula, Pua Aliʻi ʻIlima (PAʻI). In addition to running her halau, Holt Takamine served as a lecturer at UH Mānoa, Leeward Community College, and University High School for more than 30 years.
She also served as president of ʻĪlioʻulaokalani, a coalition of traditional practitioners; president of KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance; co-founder and president of the Aloha ʻĀina political party, and now as chair of the Native Hawaiian Intellectual Property Cultural Working Group.
Green Names OHA Salary Commission
Gov. Josh Green announced the appointment of seven individuals to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) Salary Commission. Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes requires the governor to appoint an OHA Salary Commission every four years. The kuleana of the commission is to study and make recommendations for the salaries of the member of OHA’s Board of Trustees.
The appointees are: Ian Kealiʻi Custino, executive director of the Moanalua Gardens Foundation; Tyler Iokapa Gomes, chief administrator of Kilohana by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement; Kawehi Inaba, president of Kupaʻa Business Planners; Reyn Kaupiko, State of Hawaiʻi Veterans Advisory Board member; Anita Naone, retired EEO manager, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers; Dennis Rose; and Venus Rosete-Medeiros, president & CEO of Hale Kipa.
Six ʻŌiwi Receive PBN Power Leader Awards
Six Native Hawaiian women were among the 14 individuals receiving Pacific Business News’ 2025 Power Leaders awards. Tied into the annual Book of Lists, this award recognizes individuals for notable achievements in their career, industry and community — both in terms of what they have accomplished already and the potential they show for what they can accomplish in the future. These are outstanding leaders who will continue to have an impact on Hawaiʻi for years to come. Top row (l-r): Alexis Charpentier, CEO, Waikīkī Health; Stephanie Kalili, senior station manager, Amazon; Diane Paloma, president and CEO, Hawaiʻi Dental Service. Bottom row (l-r): Cayenne Peʻa, principal and co-founder, Alakaʻi Development; Kea Peters, founder, Kākou Collective; Keala Peters, executive vice president of education and workforce development, Chamber of Commerce Hawaiʻi.
DHHL Exerts Regulatory Power to Expedite Projects
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported in October that the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) has finally begun to exert its regulatory power to accelerate housing development projects for beneficiaries.
In late September, DHHL Director Kali Watson signed a building permit for DHHL to renovate a vacant studio apartment building in Kalaeloa for transitional housing for houseless people on DHHL’s waitlist. The building was formerly used by naval officers visiting Barbers Point Naval Air Station and is on a 20-acre parcel of land adjacent to Kalaeloa Airport.
The $6.3 million project is funded by the federal government. It is DHHL’s first self-issued building permit, but there will be more to come.
Building permits are typically issued by the City and County. However, under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, DHHL is not subject to state or county regulations over land use or development. By exerting its regulatory power, DHHL will be able to expedite homestead projects statewide and avoid backlogged county permitting departments with notoriously long processing times.
Watson was quoted as saying, “[This] not only accelerates our ability to construct houses but significantly changes the pace at which we can get our beneficiaries off our waitlists and into homes.”
Honu Return to Kahoʻolawe
The Kahoʻolawe Island Resrve Commission (KIRC) announced the first confirmed discovery, excavation and successful rescue and release of a Hawaiian green sea turtle (honu) nesting site on Kahoʻolawe. It is a historic milestone for conservation efforts for honu, which are a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act.
“The discovery of this nest is not only a win for Kahoʻolawe’s ecological restoration, but a symbol of hope for the recovery of the Hawaiian green sea turtle population and the island’s remarkable capacity for healing,” said KIRC Executive Director Michael Nahoʻopiʻi.
“We have long worked to restore the health of Kahoʻolawe, and witnessing this return of life to the island’s shores is a testament to the progress we’ve made.”
For the past 20 years, KIRC’s Ocean Program’s focus has been to remove invasive buffelgrass from the coastline with native ʻakiʻaki grass. This effort has made the island more suitable for nesting honu, as ʻakiʻaki grass grows more sparsely and honu can easily dig nest chambers in the sand, which are typically 20-40 inches deep. By contract, buffelgrass forms “mats” that are more difficult for honu to dig through.
“This discovery represents a breakthrough in understanding the ecological significance and success of KIRCʻs decades-long restoration efforts,” said Nahoʻopiʻi.
Andrade Named Catholic Charities CEO
Catholic Charities Hawaiʻi (CCH) recently announced the appointment of Tina Andrade as its new president and CEO. Andrade currently serves as the organization’s chief operating officer.
A former educator, Andrade has more than 20 years of experience with Catholic Charities, having joined the organization in 2003 as its vice president in mission integration.
Over the years, her work has helped the nonprofit secure $200 million to grow affordable housing and $150 million in federal rental assistance during the pandemic. In 2023, Andrade was named CCH’s chief operating officer.
Andrade, from Honolulu, is a graduate of Kamehameha Schools Kapālama. She has both a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and a master’s degree in pastoral theology from Chaminade University.
Papahānaumokuākea Cultural Working Group
Five ʻAlalā Released on Maui
Since 2002, the highly endangered ʻalalā (Hawaiian crow) has been extinct in the wild.
For more than two decades, ʻalalā have only survived in captivity at the Keauhou (Hawaiʻi Island) and Maui Bird Conservation Centers, both of which are managed by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Hawaiʻi Endangered Bird Conservation Program.
That changed in October when five ʻalalā from the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda were released to a transitional field aviary on the slopes of Haleakalā after a sendoff from the center that included protocol led by Kumu Kaponoʻai Molitau and his hālau, Nā Hanona Kūlike ʻo Piʻilani.
The five ʻalalā (two females and three males) were born in captivity and spent the last 10 months together in a social group. They will be monitored by conservationists for several weeks to ensure their successful adaptation into the wild, then relocated to the Kīpahulu Forest Reserve to hopefully establish a wild population.
The ʻalalā breeding program was established in 1993 in a stop gap effort to prevent their extinction. The ʻalalā population dropped sharply beginning in the 1960s and 70s. Like other native birds in Hawaiʻi, ʻalalā were the victims of habitat destruction, disease, and invasive predators.
This pilot release on Maui follows unsuccessful release efforts on Hawaiʻi Island in the Puʻu Makaʻala Natural Area Reserve between 2016-2019 due to predation by ʻio (the Hawaiian hawk) which killed many of the ʻalalā. The surviving ʻalalā were recaptured and returned to captivity.
ʻAlalā are the only native Hawaiian crow species to survive. Four other Hawaiian crow species are now extinct. When the breeding program began in 1993, there were fewer than 20 ʻalalā remaining. Today there are more than 110.
New Book Chronicles West Maui Concerns
Lahaina’s vulnerability to wildfire is one of the concerns chronicled in a new book titled Whose Future? Community Planning in West Maui. The book, authored by Lisa Huynh Eller, a regular contributor to Ka Wai Ola News, follows the conversations and people who shaped West Maui’s 2022 Community Plan.
The book offers a detailed look at the community’s perspectives during a unique time, as they faced the pandemic and climate change. It is a historical, meeting-by-meeting account of the process that took place over three years and 50 meetings.
Among the topics that led to the most testimony and conflict were whether to allow residential development in Olowalu, how to handle luxury development on agriculturally zoned lands, and how to tackle the need for homes that residents could afford.
“Too often the insights, ideas and concerns expressed during public meetings are lost to time,” said Eller. “I wrote this book through the lens of a journalist, hoping that it would be a readable and accurate resource for those involved in planning for West Maui, now and into the future. After the Lahaina fire, I realized the book might also help in the long-term recovery of the town.”
The book was published by the North Beach West Maui Benefit Fund and printed by the University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Artist/Poet Kalāhele Honored at New Exhibit
Poets, musicians and longtime friends of artist ʻImaikalani Kalāhele gathered at the Doris Duke Theater on November 10 to honor Kalāhele and celebrate his influential works.
Kalāhele, a 1966 graduate of McKinley High School, is a renowned poet, visual artist, musician and activist in the Native Hawaiian community. His art draws from both personal experiences and ancestral stories, offering a poignant commentary on Hawaiian identity, colonialism, and connection to the land.
The program honoring Kalāhele was a part of the Home of the Tigers: McKinley High and Modern Art exhibit at the Honolulu Museum of Art that explores the impact of a single high school on visual arts in Hawaiʻi.
It brings together work by seven artists who graduated from McKinley High School from the 1920s to the 1960s. In addition to Kalāhele, the other artists are Satoru Abe, Raymond Han, Ralph Iwamoto, Keichi Kimura, Robert Kobayashi and John Chin Young.
Also featured are works by three of the McKinley High School art teachers who inspired these students: Minnie Fujita, Charles Higa, and Shirley Russell.
The event featured readings by noted local poets Brandy Nālani McDougall, Kealoha, Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Travis T, Kalehua Fung, and Kathryn Takara and a special reunion performance by Mōkākī, a musical group that includes Kalāhele along with Chuck Souza, Peter Chamberlain, Sam Hendersen and Calvin Hoe.
Curated by Tyler Cann and Alejandra Rojas Silva, the exhibit is on display through Jan. 12, 2025.
Court Rejects Call to Revise KS Trustee Selection Process
In a follow-up hearing last month, the State of Hawaiʻi Probate Court rejected calls for a stakeholder-driven and managed Kamehameha Schools (KS) trustee selection process. The court affirmed the current system in place since January 2000, with some revisions related to transparency, based on a report by three appointed special court masters.
Since 2016, KS alumni Dr. Michael Chun, Jan Dill, and Julian Ako have pushed for reforms, calling the existing process “opaque and lacking self-governance.”
Following the decision, Chun, former KS Kapālama Campus headmaster said, “Our call for self-governance has once more been rebuffed. Kamehameha stakeholders are fully capable of making leadership decisions – like trustee selection – rather than allowing others to determine our future.”
“We are faced with a system that continues to marginalize the Hawaiian people. The struggle for ʻpono’ continues,” said Dill, founder of the Partners in Development Foundation.
“[In] 1997, the four State of Hawaiʻi Supreme Court justices who rejected their further involvement in trustee selection stated, ʻwe believe that the ultimate ownership of the trustee selection process should lie in the Indigenous Hawaiian community’ and ʻwe believe that the Bishop Estate ultimately belongs to the Hawaiian people,’” said Ako, a former high school principal at KS’ Kapālama Campus, noting that the justices’ sentiment was disregarded in the current selection process.
For more info go to: www.SwellTheEcho.com.
