Opinion ID: 2633532
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Hawaiian Home Lands Trust

Text: During the early 1900s, concern about the plight of the Hawaiian people who had been displaced from rural to urban areas began to emerge as a result of the serious disruption in their traditional way of life. Out of concern for the declining numbers of full-blooded Hawaiians and the recognition that all previous systems of land distribution were ineffective, Congress entertained various homesteading proposals designed to rehabilitate the native Hawaiian people. Eventually, Congress enacted the HHCA, creating a land trust from ceded crown and public lands that was intended to rehabilitate the native Hawaiian people by, inter alia, making them eligible to receive the benefits of homesteading through leased land and related programs from the trust. [6] The HHCA designated certain public lands on the five major Hawaiian islands as available lands. HHCA § 203 (1993). However, notwithstanding the efforts of various individuals, including Senator John Wise and Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana`ole, the available-land designation excluded some of the best agricultural lands of the territory, leaving the trust lands under the HHCA poorly suited to achieving the act's intended purposes. Title to the Hawaiian home lands vested in the United States until the Territory of Hawai`i became a state on August 1, 1959, at which time the newly formed State of Hawai`i entered into a compact with the United States to assume the management and disposition of the Hawaiian home lands. Hawai`i Admission Act of March 18, 1959, Pub.L. 86-3, §§ 4 & 5, 73 Stat. 4 (1959) (Hawai`i Admission Act or Admission Act). The HHCA, together with the Hawai`i Admission Act, impose upon the State the duties and obligations of trustee to oversee the operations carried out under the authority of the HHCA. Despite the HHCA's admirable goals, controversy plagued the trust from its inception in 1921 and continued after its transfer to the State in 1959. The problems were of such magnitude that, in 1983, a Federal-State Task Force on the HHCA was convened. The Task Force submitted a report to the State that identified several areas of concern and made recommendations for improvement. The areas included, inter alia: (1) problems with the HHCA program itself that affected the trust as a whole, involving (a) the lack of an inventory of the Hawaiian home lands, (b) the lack of useable lands, (c) the lack of proper funding sources, and (d) the improper use/sale/exchange of Hawaiian home lands by state and federal governments; and (2) administrative problems affecting individual beneficiaries, such as (a) delays related to the application and eligibility determination processes and (b) delays resulting from mismanagement of the long waiting lists. Commencing in 1988, the State began its efforts to resolve the issues relating to the trust as discussed below.