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.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
RSS