Part 3: It all begins with the Aina, Hawaii’s new land registry
The word Aina means land in Hawaiian. Prior to European contact, Hawaiians used a sophisticated land management system called Ahu’puaa. This system assigned use of the land to various people who had roles within the community. Resources were allocated and maintained through community governance. No one owned the land, rather everyone took care of the land to sustain themselves and future generations. This regenerative land use and governance system resulted in pre-contact Hawaii having one of the most robust, and most enjoyable standards of living in the entire world.
In the Apu’uhaa system decisions were made in a “bottom up” approach with each community and island having a council of elders to help guide policy. The modern form of governance that most closely resembles the Apu’uhaa governance system is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), led by a counsel.
In the 19th century, European advisors to the Hawaiian Monarchy convinced the King to toss out the Ahu’puaa in favor of a European form of governance which resulted in the Great Mahele of 1848. Unsurprisingly, the title-based land system was largely abused by European and US companies and individuals to acquire lands away from native Hawaiians who lacked any experience operating in this new economic model (and were dying of disease).
Eventually the facade of incrementalism in land acquisition was abandoned and all of the lands in Hawaii were taken en masse by the United States in 1893 as part of the overthrow of the Hawaiian government. A minor but significant part of this invasion was the United States taking over the Hawaiian land registry system, and using that power to modify land records to the benefit of the military, and other supporters of the conquest. According to the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, most of the land in Hawaii is controlled by the government, publicly held companies, or family trusts based in the United States.
Conceptually, all lands in Hawaii are similar to a car that was stolen and sent to a “chop shop”. At the shop the car is disassembled and its pieces sold separately or rebuilt into another car. If you buy a car part from the chop shop, it’s still stolen. And in nearly every country in the world, doing this results in you committing a crime — either knowingly or unknowingly. In the same way, Hawaiian lands have been repackaged in many different ways since 1893, with each subsequent transaction making it more complicated to seek recourse around the initial crime. Nonetheless every land transfer can be considered a crime.
That’s why the 1993 Apologies Law is so important to the Hawaiian community. It acknowledged the injustice and offered a pathway to restore the lands back to the Hawaiian people. The challenge has been figuring out exactly how to do that.
Thanks to advances in software and technology, and the creation of extensive real estate databases used to power institutions like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Zillow, the Nation has found a solution to unlocking the provenance of real estate. These advances release title records and transaction history. Now, everyone can access real time data which takes much of the mystery out of property transactions.
According to ATTOM Data, which provides the real time real estate data that supports this decentralized land registry, there are over 4.3 million properties in Hawaii. Restoring each of these properties back to Hawaii is a big project and going to take decades, maybe even centuries. But now the Hawaiians can start the process of restoring their country.
What is the benefit of this new system?
The primary benefits are trust and transparency. The current title system run by the State of Hawaii / United States can be manipulated by local governments (or county employees) and modified by those with enough money to submit persuasive arguments to the Hawaii and US justice system which has a long history of finding against the claims of indigenous people.
By contrast, a decentralized land registry prevents governments, or individuals, from tampering with records. Using this technology, title records become immutable (unchangeable) and are available for all to see in a public database. It becomes impossible for a government official to change a record, or a court to change a record without it being done in the public eye.
Operationally, the new land registry empowers the Nation of Hawaii to identify which parcels it should reclaim from the United States, which properties it should acquire from private owners, and which properties actually belong to Hawiian families and should be restored to them through other means. In all cases, when the Nation acquires a property, that land (or building or airspace) becomes a part of the Nation of Hawaii and is deposited back into the communal land ownership system and then leased to the existing (or new) tenant..
Think of a map of Hawaii like a checkerboard with squares being identified as US flags and Hawaiian flags. As properties are recovered by Hawaii, the squares on the board flip from a United States flag to a Hawaiian flag. They can then be leased back to the existing private owner (now a tenant). Over time, these properties will start linking together in a contiguous manner, and the Nation of Hawaii will resemble more a complete map of the Hawaiian archipelago instead of a checkerboard version of the islands.
As you can see, the land registry is core to the goal of reclaiming Hawaiian sovereignty in a way that is peaceful and based on individual choices. There are other tools required for this process. In the next article, we’ll explore the role of the central bank and its financial instruments, including the Hawaii Dollar, Hawaii Bonds, and the creation of the Hawaii Sovereign wealth fund.
