In 1997, the Bishop Estate, a charitable trust established for the benefit of Kamehameha Schools, owned roughly 8 percent of all land in Hawai'i and oversaw investments estimated at $6 billion.
Established by the 1884 will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the trust ran the flagship Kamehameha Schools campus on Kapalama Heights for children of Hawaiian ancestry.
But it was often criticized for not providing enough money to educate Hawaiian students. In addition, the trustee positions had long been considered among the most lucrative and influential in the state, with politically connected members of the community often selected to sit on the board.
Discontent began to grow in 1997 with protests by Kamehameha Schools students and teachers fearing that their popular president would be ousted.
Parents and students began to speak openly about perceived problems on the board of trustees. The situation intensified when respected alumna and educator Nona Beamer wrote to the Hawai'i Supreme Court about the low morale that had beset the school as a result of the conflict. Soon after, the group Na Pua a ke Ali'i Pauahi organized a march on Bishop Estate headquarters.
The controversy was further fueled by a scathing essay, "Broken Trust," by respected leaders of the Hawaiian community and an investigation by Gov. Ben Cayetano's state attorney general. And it eventually led to the Hawai'i Supreme Court justices breaking more than 100 years of practice by declaring they would no longer pick the trustees of the charitable trust.
By 1999, the sweeping reforms for the state's largest private landowner and one of the wealthiest charitable trusts in the country included the removal or resignation of the five trustees under pressure from the Internal Revenue Service. The trust is now run by trustees named by a probate judge.
The reforms led to focusing trust resources on the education of Hawaiian children, and trustees now receive a fraction of the roughly $1-million-a-year salary each used to earn.
