The challenge

Native Hawaiians are keepers of a culture that existed a full 2,000 years before the islands appeared on any European map. This culture developed complex laws to protect the land and people and kept ancient genealogies that were passed down orally for generations. Yet today, Native Hawaiians suffer the state’s highest rates of incarceration and unemployment, the worst levels of education and health, and the poorest housing conditions. Many are jobless and homeless.

At times government has stepped in: The U.S. Congressional Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 set aside about 203,000 acres to establish permanent homelands for Native Hawaiians. Yet less than 20 percent of that acreage has actually been homesteaded, while 20,000 Native Hawaiians are on the waiting list. Some have been on the list for 40 years. And much of the land set aside for them is being leased to non-Hawaiians, including commercial ranchers and the U.S. military. Barriers to Native Hawaiians establishing homesteads include bureaucratic red tape, family debt, mortgage qualifications, and misunderstandings about how the system works. Native Hawaiians not only lack integration into the larger society but also lack the nation status mainland Native Americans have.


Seeds of commitment

Kehaulani Filimoe`atu and Blossom Feiteira are Native Hawaiians. In 1991, Feiteira was homeless for six months, living with her husband and four children in a tent on a beach. Later, the family moved to a shelter. But Feiteira’s life turned around; two months after moving to the shelter, her career in social services began when the facility hired her. Filimoe`atu, meanwhile, was influenced by childhood experiences of prejudice and led a statewide push for Native Hawaiian sovereignty while working for the Maui Police Department. The two women are bound by the discrimination their people have suffered, by a pride in their heritage, and by a commitment to social justice and an expectation of rightful land ownership for Native Hawaiian families—including their own.


Accomplishments

When Filimoe`atu and Feiteira took on the housing issue in 2001, the state Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL) that Congress had created upon Hawaii’s 1959 statehood, was not fulfilling its
mandate. The activists were not deterred. The organization they founded, Hawaiian Community Assets (HCA), aims to increase the success rate of its clients in achieving and sustaining home ownership.

Through HCA and other organizations they have helped create and nurture, Filimoe`atu and Feiteira have addressed the barriers of debt, mortgage qualifications, and misunderstanding of the system. Their efforts have paid off. In some areas of the state, the number of homesteads awarded to Native Hawaiians has dramatically increased. The two women have worked with DHHL to accelerate the leasing process for homesteads; obtain prioritization for elderly Native Hawaiians; and present workshops on Native Hawaiian issues to over 8,000 Native Hawaiians. Over time, Filimoe`atu and Feiteira have organized a statewide coalition that has challenged federal banking regulators, resulting in the largest-ever lending commitment by a commercial bank to Native Hawaiians.

HCA’s lending program, Hawai`i Community Lending, began providing loans in 2002 for construction and mortgages for purchase, rehabilitation, and refinance purposes, both on Hawaiian Home Lands and in the community at large. In its first seven months of lending, HCA originated five construction and 15 permanent loans totaling $3.2 million. Nearly half were for homes on Hawaiian Home Lands. HCA is also the lead lender and partner in the development team of Waiehu Kou Phase 3, a 113-home Hawaiian Home Lands development. HCA pre-qualifies applicants and provides on-going counseling and education to ensure that they secure their mortgage loans.


Their Leadership style

Filimoe`atu and Feiteira call themselves “stealth leaders.” Instead of offering quick fixes, they offer information, education, ideas, and training that help individuals and groups find their own solutions. The two women say they like to help build Native Hawaiian organizations, then step out of the spotlight and move on to other problems. They also say that they are only effective when they work together.

“Many Hawaiians are suspicious of people who talk big and make promises and never end up doing anything,” Filimoe`atu and Feiteira wrote recently. “Our elders always said you would be judged by actions and not your words. But if you show the Hawaiian people success, when they see that it can work for them, then they step up to the plate. That’s why we have the strategy we do; we don’t try to act like ‘leaders’… We believe in building up our people with the ‘do’ not the ‘say.’”


The future

Filimoe`atu and Feiteira hope to broaden their commitment beyond home ownership to employment, education, child care, and economic development. They also want to open a bank. Both women have been on the Hawaiian Home Lands waiting list for 17 years. Within five years, they envision living on homesteads with their families–and joining the many families they have helped.


More about Filimoe`atu and Feiteira

“I’ve known them for a lifetime, and know other members of their families. We know their parents, their children, their ups, their downs, their old cars… They come with no papers, but they speak with absolute clarity to help the people understand what ought to be done and how to do it.”
— John Tomoso, Maui Commissioner, Hawaiian Homes Commission

“Hundreds of people on the State’s Home Lands waiting list have been ‘lost’ by the state over the years…most had given up hope of ever getting a home…but Blossom and Kehau ‘find’ many of them by spending hours on the telephone, walking door to door, and even tracking down homeless families living on the beach. They provide a message of hope and a strategy for success.”
— James Wagele, Executive Director, Hawaiian Community Assets, Inc., Maui, Hawaii