The Waiāhole-Waikāne Struggle was an influential anti-
eviction
Eviction is the removal of a Tenement (law), tenant from leasehold estate, rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosure, foreclosed by a mortgagee (often ...
movement in the U.S. state of
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
during the 1970s.
Background
After the
overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom
The Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in a ''coup d'état'' against Queen Liliʻuokalani that took place on January 17, 1893, on the island of Oahu. The coup was led by the Committee of Safety, composed of seven foreign residents (five Americ ...
in 1893,
Lincoln Loy McCandless acquired two hundred acres of land, including the Waiāhole and
Waikāne valleys. He began building the Waiāhole Ditch in 1913. When it was completed in 1917, it siphoned water from Oahu's rainy windward side to the dry leeward plains, where many
sugar plantations
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tobac ...
were. This limited
kalo cultivation by
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 ...
and farming by other ethnic groups living in the valleys. Many lived and farmed on land leased from McCandless in a system similar to
sharecropping
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement in which a landowner allows a tenant (sharecropper) to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping is not to be conflated with tenant farming, providing the tenant a ...
. After McCandless's death, ownership passed to his daughter, Elizabeth Marks.
Struggle
After
Hawaii became a state in 1959, Marks decided to partner with developer Joe Pao to develop the valleys as suburbs. After the Land Use Commission denied their request for the valleys to be redesignated from the State Agricultural District to the State Urban District in 1974, Marks and Pao chose to continue with development without the correct land use designation. They evicted nine families to make space for new construction and raised rents on many other families living and farming in the valley. The Waiāhole-Waikāne Community Association (WWCA) then got a lawyer to collectively negotiate everyone's leases.
The WWCA also protested while fighting the rent increases and evictions in the courts. A notable protest was in front of Marks' house in
Nuuanu on April 21, 1976. However, the most well-known anti-eviction protest was on January 4, 1977, when residents of the valley blocked the road past the valley. After the protest, the Hawaii Housing Authority bought 600 acres of land from Marks and leased them to the farmers living in the valley.
The struggle for the land and its usage continued in the courts as kalo farmers in the valley sued for rights to the water that was being diverted away by the Waiāhole Ditch, culminating in 2000 when the
Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the water should remain in the valley.
Further reading
*
See also
*
Native Hawaiian activism
References
{{Reflist
External links
Photographs of the protests taken by Ed GreevyPhotographs from the Waiahole-Waikane Community Association I - Ed Greevy
Protests in the United States
Native Hawaiian history
Land rights movements
1977 in Hawaii
Nonviolent resistance movements