Streaming Away from Silence: Amplifying Native Hawaiian Voices in Conservation

Carving a habitable valley from what was once a mountain on the island of Oahu, the Kalihi Stream flows uninterrupted from mauka to makai (mountain to sea). Its headwaters originate from the Ko’olau Mountain’s fluted ridges; the gentle spring widens into a rushing stream as it passes my neighborhood on its way to the Kalihi Kai lowlands. The waterway eventually meets with the ocean at Keehi Lagoon. Unaltered and undivereged, the stream runs a cumulative 11.2 miles of natural rock and dirt (Parham, 364). In pre-contact Hawaii, similar natural streams populated the island terrain in abundance. Today, however, the Kalihi Stream remains as one of Oahu’s last. Almost 100% are now “lined, straightened, or otherwise channelized” (Schuler, “Uncovering the Potential”). The unmodified stream has all but disappeared from our state.

This development is largely owed to plantations; from culture to water rights, the system’s legacy has persisted in Hawaii. Starting with a series of related decisions in the 1860s, Hawaii’s Supreme Court began privatizing “surface water”, effectively enabling Western agricultural corporations exclusive access to the once Native and communally-managed resource of water (Maclennan, 500). By 1920, American businessmen had managed to establish an extensive canal and tunnel system, redirecting nearly “800 million gallons a day from streams and mountains to the canefield and their mills” (Wilcox, 35). Although Hawaii’s last plantation ceased operations in 2016, and to the outrage of Native people (who culturally prioritize natural streams), “an estimated 90 percent of Hawaii’s streams are still being diverted” (Kozacek, “Hawaii River Restorations”). While this channelized water no longer serves a “productive” economic purpose, the resource continues to feed defunct and abandoned agricultural areas.

This wasted water disproportionately impacts Hawaii’s local fauna. Our islands’ ten native stream species, nine of which are “found nowhere else on earth” (Higashi, “Native Animals”), are uniquely sensitive to diversion. Their amphidromous lifecycles necessitate “unimpeded access to and from the ocean” (Brasher, 1054). As larvae, these species commute to oceanside estuaries, returning to their original upstream grounds as juveniles to breed and perpetuate the next generation (Brasher, 1054). Inadequate research means many of these species have not yet received threatened or endangered status. However, seeing as diversion inhibits reproduction, the issue directly threatens endemic fish. Studies conducted across the archipelago revealed diversion had “significant impacts on species diversity and densities”, with native species being entirely absent from cement-lined channels (1058). Restoring original flow shows promise in protecting local populations. For example, while repairing a damaged hydropower weir on Kaui, contractors inadvertently restored the original flow to one spring. Native biomass subsequently “reached non-diverted levels in just eight weeks”, falling rapidly again once diversion resumed (1059). Related restoration projects across the state yielded similar results. Thus, removing stream diversion could allow native animals to return to waterways they formerly populated.

If you don’t sympathize with the stream dwellers’ plight, diversion also bears a human cost. Streams perpetuate the water cycle; they both enable water to “seep deep into the underground” (thus “recharging the watershed and underground aquifers”), and deliver water to its cycle starting-place in the sea (Jacob, “From Waterfalls to Walls”). Any alteration to this process impedes aquifer recovery. For Hawaii’s 1.5 million human residents, who rely entirely on this natural system for their freshwater, the status quo of diversion ensures water insecurity in the not-so-distant future (Kobayashi, “What is the Current State”). Optimistic predictions show Hawaii’s “decreasing aquifer levels’’ equates to drinking-water shortages within the next 100 years (Kobayashi). Diversion means streams can’t properly perform their irreplaceable role within Hawaii’s island ecosystem.

From fauna to fresh drinking water, the current state of Hawaii’s streams precipitates a flurry of ecological problems. Frustratingly, this issue has a seemingly simple solution: remove diversions, and return water from enduring plantation canals to original stream pathways. A landmark 1973 court case makes this solution all the more obvious. In it, the Hawaii Supreme Court acknowledged that “water is a community interest to be controlled by the government”, effectively ceding private entities’ monopoly over water (Maclennan, 500). Crucially, however, the ruling’s resulting constitutional amendments still allow for “liberal” interpretation of the public trust doctrine; when arbitrating water rights, local governments still must grant permits for the “maximum beneficial use of the waters of the State for purposes such as domestic uses… power development, and commercial and industrial uses” (Papacostas, 190). The government’s vested interest in non-local water usage remains. Thus, stream restoration progress is agonizingly slow, and in some cases, overturned in favor of corporate interests.

A recent petition on behalf of the Native subsistence group, Molokaʻi Nō Ka Heke, crystallizes much of the local and legal frustration with stream diversion. While Earthjustice filed their lawsuit against Molokai Ranch (a recipient of plantation-era stream divisions) just two years ago, Molokaʻi Nō Ka Heke has battled the corporate-owned property over water rights for over four decades (Richardson, “Activists Demand”). The diversion degrades the area’s health, both in terms of native animal populations and watershed recovery. It additionally disables local groups’ ability to perpetuate cultural agricultural practices. In an outrageous yet unsurprising twist, the ranch has almost entirely ceased its operations while continuing to drain water in “amounts close to what it used during its heyday” (“Citizens Demand Restoration”). With no clear victory in sight, frustration after frustration in similarly contested restoration projects has left many residents unsatisfied with the public trust doctrine.

In response to local upset, some activists support re-establishing a Native Hawaiian government, akin to the United States’ federal recognition of sovereign Native tribes on the mainland. This “government-to-government” relationship grants Native Hawaiian people the same “ability to negotiate for land, resources, and independent jurisdiction” as other tribal entities within the United States, thus enabling Hawaiians to better represent Indigenous interests on a variety of issues, including stream diversions (“Hawaiian Native Rights’’). Proponents of formally re-establishing a Hawaiian government substantiate their claims with mainland groups’ water rights successes, most notably the example of the Elwha River dam in 2011. This case similarly involves Native interests and amphidromous species conservation. In “the world’s largest dam removal and restoration project to date”, the federally-recognized Lower Elwha Klallam tribe wielded their sovereign rights to remove the Elwha Dam. For centuries, the blockage had obstructed salmon migration, “devastating their populations as well as the human and ecological communities that depended on them”, mirroring the situation in Hawaii (Lohan, “The Elwha’s Living Laboratory”). While declaring salmon populations as recovered may be premature given the project’s recency, initial results have been promising (Lohan). Capitalizing on the government-to-government relationship shared with the United States, the Tribe has additionally managed to secure over “$3 million in funding… to pay for the restoration work” (VanSomeren, “Indigenous Tribes”). As the Elwha River restoration demonstrates, securing federal recognition grants better bartering power with the United States, in addition to increased agency over land and water usage. Gaining federal recognition could empower Native Hawaiians to secure water, with the crucial word in that clause, however, being “could”.

While Native Hawaiians and Native Americans similarly struggle to regain sovereignty and share ideologically similar subsistence relationships with the land, the solution that has found moderate water-rights successes on the mainland ultimately does not translate well to the isles. Re-establishing a federally-recognized government only perpetuates the disconnect between Native Hawaiian interests and government action — a conflict extending beyond the issue of stream diversion. The majority of Native Hawaiians vehemently oppose federal recognition, with one study quantifying opposition at “more than 95%” of Native Hawaiians (Maile, “The US Government’’). Arguing that the sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom never stopped existing following Queen Liliuokalani’s illegal annexation, Native Hawaiian groups view federal recognition as the United States’ cover-up of their original crime (Hilleary, “Native Hawaiians Divided”). It relegates Native Hawaiians to a “nation within a nation”, in which they must bargain with the United States for land and waters that should still be theirs to manage — just as mainland tribes do (“Hawaiian Native Rights”). Federal recognition hasn’t exactly been a decisive solution for Native tribes either, with progress still slowed across mainland restoration projects. Thus, many Hawaiians do not “want equivalent legal and political status” as Native Americans (“Hawaiian Native Rights”).

Consequently, while establishing a Hawaiian government treads the tricky area of sovereignty, community research and outreach problems could facilitate better Native Hawaiian representation in stream management without requiring federal recognition. Such programs even Western and Indigenous knowledge as “equal participants in the ‘coproduction’ of regulatory [conservation] data’’, thus producing a hybrid water-management system that bridges discrepancies between government action and Native Hawaiian land interests (Watson, 1085). The Commonwealth of Australia’s Collaborative Water Planning Project, for example, integrates community with water diversion management. Their “tailored evaluation criteria”, the Collaborative Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, demands “public participation beyond current expectations of water planning” (Ayre and Mackenzie, 755). In one specific evaluation of the Ord River in Western Australia, 36 interviews conducted among Indigenous community members led to the integration of a fishway into the river’s main diversion dam (759). These provisions enabled Indigenous communities to perpetuate fishing practices and sustain native animal populations, while also allowing corporations to continue commercial activities on the river (780). Related projects across Australia have similarly navigated a medium between supporting both Native interests and industrial development. If Hawaii’s local government established such consultation practices in Hawaii, Native Hawaiians could potentially achieve similar outcomes for the state’s streams.

Admittedly, only integrating Native people into the consultation process of water management doesn’t fully remedy the issue of colonized land management. It still relegates Native Hawaiian people as secondary sources and citizens of their lands — which is precisely why many Hawaiians oppose federal recognition. However, much like the land’s flowing waters themselves, this paper reveals that stream restoration is multifaceted. Seven pages’ worth of discussion is insufficient to fully define or implement one solution — especially when opinion is divided along Native and Western lines. While a clear ethical victor may emerge in the debate of who owns and manages the ‘aina (land), implementing feasible practical solutions towards that end is difficult (if not entirely impossible) given the extent to which the United States government has disenfranchised Native groups and colonized land usage. Reconciling two such drastically different land philosophies — the Western one being largely that of parasitism, and the Hawaiian one being that of reciprocity — becomes difficult as well. Do solutions that attempt to integrate both into one management system (ie community outreach programs) redress a history of Western land misuse? Is that compromise morally okay? Above all, in this world of globalization (which is arguably Westernization), how do we integrate minority voices into land and governance systems built for the majority? How do we navigate a developing globalized society on Native land? There may be no right answer in this quandary of rights, wrongs, and trying to right said wrongs.

Works Cited

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Kobayashi, Larry. “What is the Current State of Fresh Water Supplies in Honolulu and Oahu: Will We Have Enough Water for the Future?” Hawaii First Water, 12 Sept. 2014, https://hawaiifirstwater.org/what-is-the-current-state-of-fresh-water-supplies-in-honolulu-and-oahu-will-we-have-enough-water-for-the-future-2/. Accessed 18 November 2021.

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Watson, Annette. “Misunderstanding the “Nature” of Co-Management: A Geography of Regulatory Science and Indigenous Knowledges (IK).” Environmental Management, vol. 52, no. 2, 2013, pp 1085–1102. https://doi-org.libproxy2.usc.edu/10.1007/s00267-013-0111-z. Accessed 02 December 2021.

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