Dispossession and defiance : Kalaupapa patients, Hale Mohalu, and Hawaiian resistance

Abstract

This dissertation examines the Hale Mohalu struggle of 1978-1983, while placing it in the larger context of more than a century of Hawaiian resistance against injustice. Native Hawaiians defied the colonial, paternalistic attitude of the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health in a standoff for self-determination at Hale Mohalu, the residential leprosy facility in Pearl City, Honolulu. This resistance played an important role in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and the ramifications from that conflict resonate today in questions over the future use of the Kalaupapa Settlement as well as the controversial issue of land development in Hawaiʻi. Although the State had shut off their water, food, and medicine, Bernard Punikaiʻa, Chairman of the Kalaupapa Patients Council, refused to allow State authorities to run roughshod over patients' civil rights at Hale Mohalu. The patient resistance Punikaiʻa led against the State's power marked a turning point in both public and patient consciousness. This dissertation gives voice to the patients in their compelling fight. It is a remarkable story not only for its broad base of community support and for the length of time it lasted, but also because it is part of a much larger history of struggle against Native Hawaiian injustice that reaches back over a hundred years into the 19th century and resonates into the late 20th and 21st century with the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.