Dept. of Interior transfers federal land to Hawaiian land trust

Secretary of the Interior De Haaland

Eighty acres of federal property on the island of Oahu is being transferred to the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust that could provide homestead property for 200 to 400 Native Hawaiian families.

As action is part of the President Biden's administration’s commitment to honor relationships with Indigenous communities and uphold trust responsibilities, according to an announcement by Biden's Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves.

“The Native Hawaiian Community has waited more than 20 years for the federal government to address a $16.9 million credit owed by the United States to the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust,” said Secretary Haaland., the first Native American to head the Department of Interior.

“Today’s action is an important step in our commitment to resolving the Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act settlement. We thank the Department of Commerce, General Services Administration, State of Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiian Community members who provided their input during consultation on this transfer.”

The surplus federal property is located at the former NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on O‘ahu.

The lands are being transferred to the state of Hawaii’s Department of Hawaiian Home Lands for inclusion in the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust. The transfer will help fulfill the terms of a settlement agreement authorized by Congress in 1995 to compensate Native Hawaiians for the lost use of 1,500 acres of lands set aside as potential homelands but subsequently acquired and used by the U.S. Government for other purposes. 

The federal government owns and manages about 20% of the land in Hawaii, most of the land is reserved for recreational or military uses and only a small portion of the lands is developable.

“Residential lots on Oʻahu are of the highest demand from applicants on the waiting list. This land transfer is an opportunity for beneficiaries that is truly in line with the spirit of the Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act,” said William J. Aila, Jr., Chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission.

In 1998, the Interior Department and the state of Hawai‘i identified a site for transfer under the HHLRA. In 2000, that site became unavailable, leaving a credit of $16.9 million owed to the Trust by the United States.

The General Services Administration notified the state of Hawai‘i of the availability of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center site in 2020. The former Pacific Tsunami Warning Center land represents the best available property offered to the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust by the United States, suitable for residential development, under the HHLRA. 

After an appraisal, environmental review, and consultation with the Native Hawaiian Community, the Interior Department notified the General Services Administration that the site is suitable and approved the conveyance to the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust to satisfy $10 million of the $16.9 million credit.

The state's Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, a state agency charged with facilitating the return of lands seized from Native Hawaiians in 1893 by a U.S.-backed group of sugar and pineapple plantation owners. The businessmen and their U.S. military co-conspirators deposed Queen Liliuokalani and lobbied the president for U.S. annexation of Hawaii, which occurred. In 1898, when the U.S. annexed the island chain, it took possession of 1.8 million uncompensated acres of former kingdom land.

Thousands of low-income Native Hawaiians, unable to afford property at the market rate, are on wait lists for homesteads as promised. A 2020 investigation by the Star Advertiser and Pro-Publica revealed that some of the federal lands had been sold by the U.S. Navy to private parties for development, bypassing the land trust. 

The so-called "workarounds" were approved by lawmakers, including the late Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka and current Senators Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz. Hirono and Schatz claim they were unaware of the workarounds but the practice must stop going forward.

On paper, the 203,000-acres in the land trust contains 7,800 acres on the Oahu, the most populated island in the Hawaii chain. However, much of the land is "defined by two large mountain ranges that create towering ridges, steep slopes, forests, beaches and sea cliffs. But in reality, just a fifth of that land is considered suitable for residential development. A full third of DHHL’s Oahu holdings are on terrain so rugged that it has been marked purely for conservation, including 1,400 acres of steep mountainside in the Hawaiian community of Waimanalo," writes the investigative articles.

“We are pleased that Native Hawaiians will now have access to the 80 acres in Ewa Beach where the NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center once resided,” said Deputy Secretary Don Graves. “With this overdue transfer, this parcel of land will soon be called home for hundreds of Native Hawaiians."

The long-delayed action by the Interior Department holds the promise that it could be the first of such land transfers under the Biden administration, which couldn't come soon enough.

"About 11,000 Hawaiians are now seeking residential homesteads on Oahu," according to the report by Pro Publica and the Star Advertiser.  "The trust has only enough land to accommodate less than a third of those homestead-seekers in single-family homes, although it is moving to develop more multi-family housing. Many waitlisters are homeless, and thousands have died without getting a homestead lease."