What are the permit requirements for restoring and operating a loko iʻa?
By Sharla Manley, NHLC Of Counsel Attorney Loko iʻa (fishponds) are integral to watershed management, environmental remediation, and food sovereignty. Restoring them is a critically important matter across the pae ʻāina. For decades, loko iʻa advocates have fought for reasonable permitting processes for restoration. Sadly, these processes have historically been difficult, resource intensive, and lengthy with requirements at the county, state, and federal level. Meaningful reforms in the last 20 years foster hope, but the permit process continues to be complicated depending on numerous factors that differ from site to site. In 1995, the state enacted Act 177 that created ...
I lost my home in the August wildfires, and I haven’t been able to pay the mortgage since then. Could I lose my property to foreclosure?
By Sharla Manley, Of Counsel Attorney, Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) started as an anti-eviction law firm aimed at addressing the crisis of Native Hawaiians increasingly being evicted from rural areas to make way for residential and industrial developments. Originally named the “Hawaiian Coalition of Native Claims,” the organization fought against a then-new wave of dispossession from the land to make way for a boom in urban development. The disaster resulting from the August 2023 wildfires threatens to dispossess Native Hawaiians again in a place that was once the capital of the Hawaiian nation. This spring ...
The legacy of Clarabal v. the Department of Education
Six years ago this month, the first Hawaiian language rights case was heard by the Hawai‘i Supreme Court, Clarabal v. Department of Education. The oral argument was conducted in early February 2018, a month in which ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i is honored and celebrated. At the heart of the case were two schoolchildren on Lāna‘i who were prohibited from communicating in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i in the classroom. The Hawai‘i Supreme Court was asked by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) to decide that the State had a constitutional duty to provide reasonable and equal access to a Hawaiian language medium education to these ...
ICA Rules KUA & NHLC Can Continue Fight for Limu
Decision Honors Uncle Henry Chang’s Last Wishes To Protect Marine Resources in ‘Ewa In 2012, Uncle Henry Chang Wo, a recognized loea limu (limu expert), and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) began a long—and still pending—legal battle against permitting to increase stormwater runoff from the Kaloʻi Gulch onto an ‘Ewa shoreline. Permit proponents, including the City and County of Honolulu, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and the University of Hawaii, want the permit, so that polluted storm water can be discharged from urban development. Uncle Henry argued that the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) needed to more ...
