The US is giving Native Hawaiians surplus land as compensation for hectares that were meant for homesteading, but used instead by the federal government.
The land transfer also attempts to help right wrongs against Aborigines of Hawaii, officials said on Monday.
The 32 hectares in Ewa Beach — formerly used for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center — are eventually to provide up to 400 homes, while helping fulfill terms of a settlement authorized by the US Congress in 1995 to compensate Native Hawaiians for 607 hectares that were set aside for homelands, but subsequently acquired and used by the federal government for other purposes, officials said.
Photo: AP
US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s voice choked with emotion while making the announcement on Monday.
“Yes, it’s a happy day, but it’s also a sad day because we remember the tragedy that befell the Native Hawaiians throughout their tumultuous history,” said Haaland, the first Native American woman to lead a US Cabinet agency. “Since that time, our country has learned a great deal. And now we are in an era where we recognize the importance of healing the generational traumas that caused pain and heartache.”
The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 was meant to provide economic self-sufficiency to Hawaiians by allowing those with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood could apply for a 99-year lease for US$1 per year.
The transfer of land to the Hawaiian Department of Hawaiian Home Lands is a step in the right direction, but there is a long way to go, said US Representative Kaiali’i Kahele, adding that about 11,000 are waiting for residential homes on Oahu.
Statewide, there are 28,788 on a waitlist for land, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands said.
It is exciting to see Haaland leading the agency, said Kahele, who is a Native Hawaiian.
“You hear the passion in her voice,” he said. “She understands the generational trauma that has been caused to Indigenous peoples in this country by the federal government over the last 100 to 200 years.”
The transfer “helps to right the wrongs of past policy,” US Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS