Hawaii Homestead Land Distribution Picks Up : Acreage Being Allotted to Descendants of the Islands’ Original Inhabitants

Every spring Monday, Mack Poepoe plants two acres of seedlings in the red earth between the green waves of wild sugar cane on his farm on the island of Molokai.

On other days, his blue tractor and plow churn deep furrows as he prepares the rest of the 40 acres. For his 99-year homestead lease he pays the state what his mother, and his grandfather before her, paid: $1 a year.

That was the sum set out in 1920 by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which set aside 203,500 acres on five islands for native Hawaiian homesteaders like Poepoe--people who are at least 50% descended from the islands’ 18th-Century inhabitants.

The act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1921, was conceived as a breath of life for a dying race, a people whose numbers had dwindled to 22,600 from 142,650 in the preceding century. It aimed to give native Hawaiians a chance to be self-sufficient, by freeing them from city poverty and returning them to the land that had sustained them for centuries.

For Poepoe, a full-blooded Hawaiian, the plan has worked. He is a successful commercial farmer who has been able to double and triple production yearly to meet rising demand in Honolulu for his watermelons, peppers and tomatoes.

Example of Success

At the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which runs the homesteading program and manages its multibillion-dollar land trust, they point to Poepoe as the cream of a crop of energetic farmers who are finding success in a program plagued by problems for much of its 65 years.

Today the problems--such as lack of money, slow land distribution, strict inheritance rules and the fact that relatively few Hawaiians care to farm, are being tackled with creative solutions.

The first homesteads were awarded on Molokai, 10 miles wide and 37 miles long with 33,700 acres reserved as Hawaiian home lands. Now, as then, it is a wild piece of land cooling in a calm blue sea, its mass of gentle hills colored green by palms and yellow by fields of stiff, dry grass.

Frances Hill grew up on a homestead, the 13th of 21 children. She works as a cashier in the town health food co-op and talks of the value of her own 15-acre homestead to her four children.

“The land is very important to us because there will always be something for them,” Hill said, adding that she is 83% Hawaiian.

Husband Farms Land

Her husband, Tom, raises hogs and watermelons on the land. She explained that because he is Caucasian, their children are less than half Hawaiian and would have no inheritance rights under current homestead rules.

A resolution pending in Congress proposes reducing that requirement from 50% Hawaiian blood to 25%, a change that would allow Hill’s children to inherit the homestead.

“Some people don’t even care about the land. It’s just sitting there,” Hill said. “A lot of local people don’t like to farm, but it’s really valuable to us. It’s our whole life.”

Although the framers of the original act told Congress that it would return native Hawaiians to the “mode of living that their ancestors were accustomed to, and in that way rehabilitate them,” that goal was thwarted by two factors: sluggish distribution of the land and the clear desire of most homestead applicants for smaller, residential sites rather than farms.

Waiting lists for homesteads now contain 10,600 names; some who want lots in particular areas have been waiting more than 20 years. A commitment to awarding only land improved with paved roads, electricity, sewers and water has reduced distribution to a trickle: in the first 63 years, only 3,300 homesteads were granted on 14% of the available land.

Leases Speeded Up

That is changing. Last year, 1,000 homesteads were awarded, and the goal is 3,000 more in the next two years, department spokesman Ken Toguchi said. The difference is that the sites are barely improved. Most have only rough access roads and boundaries defined by stakes.

“We decided several years ago that if we only gave out improved land, we’d never really give out the land at all,” said Barbara Hanchett, the Hawaiian Homes commissioner for Molokai. “We’re committed to making sure the folks are able to use the land, but as far as we’re concerned, the first thing is to give it out.”

Homesteaders have three years to begin living on their land, and the department can extend that by two years if necessary. The department is optimistic that within that time it will be able to tap outside resources, such as the federal government and private institutions, to help the Hawaiians build homes.

The size of a homestead is determined by potential use, and applicants must specify whether they want ranch, farm or residential homesteads.

By the end of January, with 4,300 leases granted over 65 years, only 790 of them were for farming or pasture uses. Of those still awaiting leases, 7,800 want residential lots.

Residential Use Favored

‘It’s ended up being a housing program,” Tom Hill said as he walked through his hog pen, scattering the squealing animals. “They’ve pretty much dropped the idea that the homesteader is a commercial farmer. What they ended up with is a rural neighborhood.”

From the outset, the acres set aside for Hawaiians excluded some of the best agricultural lands, those already in sugar cane. A 1964 legislative study concluded that the hope of establishing hundreds of productive farms and ranches was dashed in the early years because of the lack of good land, water, roads and access to markets.

At first, pineapple was the answer. For several years, homesteaders sold their crops to fruit companies. In the Depression, the plantations took over and paid homesteaders annual rent and a production bonus.

That ended in the 1970s, when high shipping costs and cheap foreign competition forced the closing of plantations on Molokai. Suddenly, homesteaders who had never farmed were faced with 40 acres waiting for a farmer.

Some turned to subsistence farming. They grew just enough food for their families and swapped produce with neighbors. Some leased their acreage to the more industrious. A few plunged headfirst into professional farming.

Vegetables in Demand

In the last two years, Molokai has led the state in production of watermelons, sweet potatoes, green beans and bell peppers--all grown on homestead farms by Poepoe and his neighbors.

The main problem for the program remains ke kala --the money. The homestead department, smallest of the 17 state agencies, is supposed to support its operating budget by leasing some of its land to commercial enterprises, but much of the land remains undeveloped and undesirable for such purposes, and the income has not been enough.

“We don’t have the money. We’re between a rock and a rock--it isn’t even a hard place,” said Stewart Matsunaga, the department’s agricultural specialist. Toguchi said that it would take $720 million to develop enough land to satisfy all the lease applicants.

Because many farms lay fallow for decades, the homesteads awarded today are smaller--five to 10 acres instead of 35 to 40 acres--and proposed changes would make it possible for agricultural homesteaders to subdivide their land among their children.

Barbara Hanchett’s father, Richard Hanchett, is considering such a plan, and Barbara, her sister and her brother are interested.

“I was raised on a homestead, and my cultural identity has been kept intact,” she said. “I was provided an opportunity through my parents to experience the world and find my place in it. And having that kind of cultural identity has been of great benefit to me.

“That’s why I came back home: to contribute to the community that gave meaning to my life.”