• NHLC's Community Advocate Of The Year (2011)

    Dana Naone Hall 

    NHLC is especially pleased and honored to present the 2011 Community Advocate Of The Year, Dana Naone Hall. 

    Dana is one of the founding members of Hui Ala Nui O Makena, an organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of historical, cultural and native Hawaiian rights.  Her more than thirty years of advocacy has produced impressive results that we all have benefitted from. She successfully fought the closure of that part of the alanui fronting Seibu's Maui Prince Hotel and, in the process, protected the area’s rich coastal resources. She was also instrumental in efforts to relocate the Ritz Carlton Hotel away from the shoreline dunes at Honokahua.  Her work in that case led to significant protections for iwi kupuna.  She also successfully opposed a private golf course development slated for the Waihe'e shoreline, an area rich with archeological and cultural sites.  Because of her dedication, that important cultural landscape will be preserved in perpetuity.  Dana has also served with distinction as a member of the Maui-Lanai-Molokai Islands Burial Council.  As a member, vice-chair, and chair, she established an impressive record of resolving very contentious matters involving development projects and native Hawaiian burials. 

    Dana has no need for official recognition of her more than three decades of tireless and very effective advocacy on behalf of Native Hawaiians.  Dana continues to step up because of her sense of justice and unflinching courage under fire.  She is an inspiration to us, she holds a very special place in Hawai‘i’s history, and our recognition and acknowledgement of that is long overdue.

     

  • NHLC’s Community Advocates Of The Year (2010)

    In 2010, NHLC presented its Community Advocate of the Year Award to two cousins from Honopou, island of Maui, Hawai`i - Beatrice Kekahuna and Marjorie Wallett (posthumous). Honopou is one of the few remaining natural areas of Hawai`i that directly supported the ancient traditions and customs of Hawaiians. Beatrice and Marjorie were the stalwarts of Hawaiian traditional and customary use of Honopou Stream. They were raised in Honopou, helping their families survive on the bounty that the stream provided in supporting taro growing, native stream life, and the fresh water interface with the ocean so vital to the gathering and fishing traditions of the coastline.

    Beatrice Pualani (Kepani) Kekahuna, also known as (Aunty) Nani, was born on June 3, 1932 to Juliana (Koko) and Lokana Kepani in Huelo, Maui, Hawaii. She was the second youngest in a family of 12 children. She had a humble upbringing on the east side of Maui. As children, she and her siblings would explore the valleys near their home, following the fresh water streams to the ocean. Taking care of taro patches was a way of life for them. In turn, the taro provided food for such a large family. These waters also fed the opa`e, hihiwai and o`opu on which she was raised. They also nurtured the fisheries on the East Maui coast which provided her ohana an important source of food. Her early life in East Maui gave her an intense appreciation for how water sustains life.  She was brought up to believe if you took care of the land, the land will take care of you.

    To this day, she is still cultivating taro as well, yet many things have changed from her childhood days.  The diversion of our natural streams by giant agribusiness interests has made it difficult to maintain the taro patches that used to flourish during her childhood. Without enough water, the taro will not grow properly. Without access to home-grown taro or the fish, o`opu, opa`e and hihiwai she once regularly gathered, she sees tradition slipping away. This is why Beatrice is also active in the pursuit of water rights for taro farmers and gathering/fishing rights for subsistence gatherers. 

    No small part of NHLC’s ability to sustain its representation of East Maui residents is dependent on people like Aunty Beatrice and her recently departed cousin Marjorie Wallett. They stepped forward when they saw their streams dying from diversions meant to grow sugar. Aunty Beatrice’s warmth, patience, and persistence has been undiminished against the economic forces of the 12th largest landowner in the state and state government officials who are too often influenced by powerful political and economic forces. Her dedication to this cause has been inspiring, effective, and we express our deepest and sincere appreciation to her. Mahalo Aunty Beatrice!

    Aunty Marjorie Wallett was born on March 28, 1932 in Honokohau, Maui.  When she was about ten years old, the family moved to Honopou where they learned to work in the kalo lo'i. This area on Maui is the land base for one of the few remaining vestiges of Native Hawaiian culture and tradition. It is under assault from the economic and political forces that threaten to disrupt the practices that have sustained our way of life for centuries. When Aunty Marjorie moved back to Honopou after working on the mainland for 30 years, taro farming appeared to be dying off – the victim of diminishing water in the streams due to diversions by HC&S and A&B. 

    So when the concern for protecting our water rights arose, she didn’t hesitate to defend the rights of kalo farming on Honopou Stream and the streams of East Maui. In 2001, she was one of NHLC’s clients, who stepped up to launch the first formal challenge to water permits then being regularly issued by BLNR each year, as well as to demand the restoration of stream flow by the CWRM. During all of the many hearings and meetings held since then, her quiet nature belied the gentle ferocity with which she persisted in demonstrating her resolve.

    Aunty Marjorie died on April 3, 2010 after a short illness. While she lived to see the CWRM take action to partially restore Honopou, today, her work to implement that decision -- to give it meaning -- continues through her daughter Lyn Scott.  Attorneys at NHLC have rededicated their efforts to making stream restoration a reality in her memory. 

     

     

  • Testimonials

    Jimmy Medrios, who as a member of Protect Keopuka Ohana, challenged a development that threatened Native Hawaiian burials and natural resources:

    “It has been a total blessing for us to be involved with NHLC. It takes a lot to tangle with a one and half billion dollar corporation that can buy all the best lawyers money can have.  So they have been a god-send for us.”


    Ed Wendt, of Na Moku Aupuni o Koolau, explains the impact that NHLC had on assisting his community in East Maui to address the fact that a corporation, East Maui Irrigation, diverts 60 billion gallons of water out of East Maui streams for development. Taking water from the streams has impeded the community’s kalo culitivation, stream life and marine life that Native Hawaiians depend on for cultural and subsistence purposes.

    “For Hawaiian people, we need to have kalo, we need to have the oopu, we need to have the opai, the fish. It is our diet. To deny us, generation after generation, to eliminate communities like ours throughout the state of Hawai’i by taking water, it really has affected the Hawaiian people, and the way of life. Colloborating with Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation we finally got a just decision in court.