Native Hawaiian
By Trish Moore
family fights for
land on Kauai
Star-BulletinHANALEI, Kauai -- Growing up, Leiliwin Mahuiki-Denson watched one native Hawaiian family after another move away from Kauai's north shore to where the rent was affordable.
Now, she and her husband, David Denson, their three children, and their cousin, Robert Pa, have taken up residence on a kuleana lot in Hanalei. They have no intention of leaving, said Mahuiki-Denson, who is 22, full Hawaiian, and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Kalaimamahu, half-brother to Kamehameha I.
But the family may have to uproot because a prominent businessman has bought most of the shares from other heirs to the property, and has a court petition to have the land sold at auction.
Mike Ching said he wants to buy the land to clear up encroachment problems with his rental houses on adjacent property.
The family is fighting the action, saying the land, and not the money, is what's valuable to them.
"They just acting like it's a big illusion to us," said Robert Pa. "The dollar bill is an illusion. I'm gonna die on this property."
Pa's uncle, Ezera Pa, was born and raised on the one-acre lot and owns about 5 percent interest. On the property, next to the highway in Hanalei Town, sit two dilapidated houses which have been vacant for the last few years.
The family's interest in the land traces to 1886, when ancestor J.H. Kaheleiki conveyed it to his descendants as tenants in common.
One of those descendants, Sharon Segawa, held 11.2 percent interest and began the court action in September 1997 to partition the land and extrapolate her interest. A title search turned up 162 heirs.
Segawa sold her interest to Ching in October 1997, who then bought most of the shares from other heirs and took over the partition case. He now claims 76 percent ownership.
When Ezera Pa learned of the move to quiet the title and partition the site, he asked his nephew, Robert, and niece, Leiliwin Mahuiki-Denson, and her husband, David, to move onto the property.
The family has sent letters to other cousins who have not sold their shares to Ching, urging them to combine their separate interests in hopes of subdividing out a legal-size lot. So far, the Pas said, they have consolidated 17 percent of shares in the property, but need 25 percent for a legal-size lot.
Ching said he's been verbally harassed by the family and had to obtain a court order to have Pa and Denson remove a fence they had erected. "There's a sense of fair play that everybody has to go through," he said. "If I knew this was not right I would not have proceeded with the whole thing."
Robert Pa and Denson say the issue is part of the struggle for native Hawaiian sovereignty.
They plan to argue in court that the 1993 federal "Apology Bill," recognizing the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, supports their claim that the court has no jurisdiction to force native Hawaiians to sell their land.
If they lose in court, they plan to "defend our land with force, if necessary," Denson said.
