The Mākua Valley Struggle is an ongoing land rights dispute between Native Hawaiians and the U.S. military.
Background
The U.S. military has occupied parts of Mākua Valley since the early 1940s.
Struggle
The struggle was triggered by numerous evictions in the Mākua Valley on the island of
Oʻahu
Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...
, and was followed by dozens of more threats, with the main targets being
Native Hawaiians
Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians; , , , and ) are the Indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands.
Hawaiʻi was settled at least 800 years ago by Polynesian ...
who had lived there for fifty years or longer. The evictions began in 1983, which led to numerous sit-ins and camp-ins, and the eventual arrest of 16 protestors after the third eviction in June 1996. Much of this action was started in the 60's, but the two major events happened with the mass arrests and disturbance that occurred on January 20, 1983, and the mass eviction in January 1996. This mass eviction is particularly notable, because the Governor at the time,
Ben Cayetano, kept the media from reporting, and even went as far as threatening to arrest and suppress the press should they try to report on the event.
First settlement in 1999 when the U.S. Army halted military testing until the Environmental Impact Statement could be completed.
The Environmental Assessment was issued in 2000.
In early 2020, a bill was introduced to clean up and return the land to Hawaii.
[{{cite web , last=Galzote , first=Ray Anne , title=Kahele introduces bill to return land in Mākua Valley to Hawaii , website=KHON2 , date=March 17, 2022 , url=https://www.khon2.com/local-news/rep-kahele-to-announce-bill-related-to-makua-valley/ , access-date=April 5, 2022]
References
External links
Photographs of the struggle taken by Ed Greevy*
Protests in the United States
Native Hawaiian history
Land rights movements
Nonviolent resistance movements
Indigenous land rights in Hawaii