One family’s attempt to subdivide a 5.29-acre parcel off Kuakini Highway has escalated into a battle with longtime Native Hawaiian inhabitants of the area.
The landowners, Jeannie Averill Clement, Kellie Mersberg, Yolanda K. Kahalewai and Iris J. Falcam, recently inherited undivided interests in the property that was once part of a 3,078 grant to their ancestors from King Kamehameha III when land was distributed during the Great Mahele. A court has ordered the family to subdivide it into three parcels to be distributed to the heirs, or failing that, to sell it at auction and divide the proceeds.
No one currently lives on the property, but family members say they want to move back. Family members talked about how important living on the land is to their elders such as Clement, a daughter of Charles Kuakini.
“We’re not developers; my family has been on the property for 250 years,” Thomas Clement told the Leeward Planning Commission on Thursday. “I’m trying to get our kupuna to their lands, the very little we have left. We don’t have a whole lot.”
Clement, choking up during a meeting where emotions ran high on both sides, added, “this wasn’t a fight I thought I would have to fight in my generation.”
Those opposing the rezoning from agriculture 5 acres to family agriculture 1 acre — a prerequisite for subdividing — said family descendants have been selling off parcels for years. Lots in the ahupuaa have sold for millions of dollars, including to developers, said Simmy McMichael, describing herself as a kanaka maoli who’s owned land connected to the lots for 40 years.
“I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes but … the family ag is great, but there are no rules to say it can’t be sold off individually once it’s done,” McMichael said. “And hewa is if its sold to an outsider who doesn’t care about our sacred sites.”
The commission was sympathetic to the applicants. The current situation is a “case in point” as to why Hawaiian families are losing their homes and can’t afford to live on the island, said commission Chairman Michael Vitousek.
Vitousek described the alternatives i the court-order agreement.
“So, partition in kind in this case allows for the original descendants of the ahupuaa to keep their lands,” Vitousek said. “On the contrary, if this application is opposed and is eliminated, then we are forcing a sale of land that’s been owned by a Hawaiian family for centuries, against their will.”
Planning consultant John Pippin, representing the family, said he was saddened by what he called, “an organized copy-paste campaign.”
“It’s shocking.. … It’s kind of hurtful, honestly,” Pippin said. “We don’t see a lot of aloha coming in these comments and it affects all of us.”
The planning commission advanced the rezoning request on a 5-0 vote to the County Council.
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.
