OHA awards $1.52M to UH group
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
A formal partnership between the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the University of Hawai'i's Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies was launched yesterday with a grant of $1.52 million from OHA dedicated to increasing cultural courses and surveying all of the state's ceded lands.
The money, granted over a five-year period, will be used to hire 12 to 15 additional people, offer more courses in medicinal herbs, taro cultivation and fishpond management, and train students to manage natural resources and inventory approximately 2 million acres of ceded lands.
"Thanks to OHA, the University of Hawai'i is now poised to dramatically increase our knowledge about traditional medicine and horticulture — through the scholars and resources of both the Center for Hawaiian Studies and the John A. Burns School of Medicine," said UH President Evan Dobelle.
"We are poised to dramatically increase what we know about the status, location and inventory of ceded lands."
Ceded lands are former crown or Hawaiian government lands that were ceded to the United States upon annexation and back to Hawai'i at statehood to be held in trust. Native Hawaiians are one of the listed beneficiaries of ceded land income.
There is a major discrepancy between what the state calls ceded land and what OHA considers ceded land.
Haunani Apoliona, chairwoman of OHA's board of trustees, said the state has refused to pay OHA its share of lease rent from ceded lands since July 2001, and this survey will establish "true and factual" information about the legacy of ceded lands.
Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, director of Hawaiian studies at UH, said a generation of students trained in these areas will begin to make a difference in the fair distribution of proceeds from ceded lands.
"We need to find a way to live together in peace, and we can't do that until there is justice," she said. "And we can't have that until we know where the lands are."
Ka Lahui Hawai'i, the self-proclaimed nation of Hawai'i, is also involved in the project.
