Buy it back from a billionaire

This Hawaiian land became a ghost town. Residents want to buy it back from a billionaire.

Molokai is organizing to return Hawaiian lands to Hawaiian hands

By Christine Hitt

For generations, Native Hawaiians have been displaced from ancestral lands, and on the island of Molokai, where one-third of the island is owned by Hong Kong-headquartered billionaire investment firm Guoco Group, that physical separation is abundantly clear.

On the island’s west end, barbed wire fences and “no trespassing” signs keep people out of Molokai Ranch, spanning over 55,000 acres, as it sits abandoned almost like a ghost town. Not just a ranch, it’s scattered with the deteriorating remains of capitalists’ dreams — a high-end lodge, a glamping resort, a restaurant, a golf course — left behind by the wealthy businesspeople who bought and sold the ranch through the years.

The current owner, Guoco Group, bought Molokai Ranch in 2005 with plans to build 200 luxury homes, but it shut down operations in 2008 after the Molokai community opposed the development. The company put the ranch up for sale in 2017 at an asking price of $260 million. Ever since, the land has been sitting in limbo, and the foreign billionaire owner has been absent for more than a decade.

Following years of the ranch’s neglect by the landowner, the Molokai Heritage Trust formed with the goal to return Hawaiian lands to Hawaiian hands. The group is done waiting for a benevolent buyer to purchase Molokai Ranch in hopes that things will be different. Instead, the community is taking an offensive approach, coming together peacefully with the collective goal to buy back the land to take care of, protect and steward.

“Returning land to Indigenous communities is this global thing that’s happening all around the world, but we also know that it hasn’t happened at the scale that Molokai wants it to happen ever before; it hasn’t happened in Hawaii ever before,” Molokai Heritage Trust general manager Kawaipuna “Puna” Kalipi, who was born and raised on Molokai, told SFGATE. “So we knew that in addition to having this deep, deep-seated desire to make this awesome impact, we also had a lot to learn.”

To residents, action is necessary, given how much the string of landowners has affected them. The issue with Molokai Ranch isn’t just about land. “They also own the critical infrastructure, like the water system and affordable housing,” Kalipi said. “For the Maunaloa community, it’s personal. They have housing that’s falling apart, that nobody cares to repair, that’s molding.”

Land mismanagement causes other problems as well. Red dirt sediment from West Molokai’s eroded slopes runs into the ocean after a heavy rain, turning the water red with pollution that can kill coral reefs and clog fishponds. 

The lack of management threatens Molokai residents’ subsistence way of life.

“If our reef dies, we lose that as a source of food,” Kalipi said. She’s also concerned about how the land’s neglect is affecting deer populations, as they are leaving the west side in search of food elsewhere and “damaging the entire island’s ecosystem.”

“The keiki of Molokai, the people who live and love and care for this land, are also the best stewards for this land,” Kalipi said. “It makes the most sense then for us to also be the large landowners of these parcels that have been melting into the ocean year after year.”

It’s a huge undertaking. If successful, it would be one of the largest land purchases in Hawaii, behind Larry Ellison’s nearly 90,000-acre acquisition on the island of Lanai. Only this time, the land would be returning to its people. With the purchase, the group’s goal is to return the land back to aina momona (an abundant land) by restoring the island’s health.

The land is chief

When Molokai Ranch went up for sale in 2017, Molokai residents held a unity march to heal past wounds that were dividing the island’s people. Decades of landowners pushing for more development resulted in conflict, sometimes against each other.

Zhantell Lindo, a generational descendant of Molokai who is on the trust’s board of directors, described the community now as a “healed people.” They have “risen past all the hate and anger and injustices and formulated a new aloha-based approach that is powerful,” she said. “It’s not that we have forgotten about all of the injustices and really harmful things that have happened, but rather that we rise above them.”

For Native Hawaiians, the connection to land is profound. Land is aina, or that which feeds. It’s an unbreakable relationship that when physically severed is felt painfully deep. “Our Hawaiian people are so inherently tied to the place they were born and this place,” Lindo said. Without it, there’s “a disconnect,” she continued. “It’s like being an orphan from each other.”

That deep connection is captured in the Hawaiian proverb, “He alii ka aina, he kauwa ke kanaka,” which means “The land is the chief; man is its servant.” It speaks to the kuleana (responsibility) that Hawaiians have to take care of the land, not in the Western sense as a piece of property but as something that is revered and sacred. It also speaks to the reciprocal nature of the relationship, as the land will take care of the people as long as the people take care of the land.

“What MHT is trying to do is make sure that we reset that and we take that back to the value of the land being simply part of who we are, as a fellow creation, and looking at it as an extension of our very livelihood and life, not what we put on it to make money,” Lindo said.

Rising like a wave

The Molokai Heritage Trust is moving forward thoughtfully in its endeavor, dedicating years for discussion and research and obtaining its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status last year.

The organization still has big questions to answer. For example, how is it going to raise $260 million? “We looked into carbon credits like blue carbon, to partnerships with the state, to partnerships with philanthropy,” Kalipi said. Maui County also passed a resolution this year in support of the Molokai Heritage Trust’s “efforts to restore community ownership of ancestral lands on Molokai,” which could potentially bring millions of dollars to the cause.

The trust consulted with the community to create bylaws, values and a mission statement, and it is trying to determine how the organization is going to sustain itself to take care of the land once it is acquired so as not to repeat past harms by letting it sit in disrepair.

So the trust is taking its time. Although the ranch is still on the market and the potential for another buyer to snap it up is always a possibility, Kalipi said the group is “not letting outside pressures drive us.” If that were to happen, the group is confident it can stop whatever comes.

The trust has not started a public campaign for land acquisition yet, as it is still in the planning stages to become investment ready. Currently, it’s holding active discussions with the community about what restoration looks like and how to achieve that, such as reforestation and stopping the erosion, as well as creating permanent affordable housing. It’s meeting with experts and holding focus groups.

Recurring donations are still encouraged through the website, as it “keeps what we’re doing alive and growing,” Lindo said. She said asking people for money is difficult because it’s “against our nature as people from Molokai” but recognizes it as a necessary step, especially when the group will need to be asking for millions down the line. 

When the time is right and the community is ready with it, the trust will proceed, confident in its relationships and its ability to reach its goal of purchasing the land outright.

“For those who think acquiring Molokai Ranch is impossible, we remind them that Molokai has never accepted ‘impossible’ when it comes to aina. Time and again, this island has protected itself and lands across Hawaii,” Kalipi told SFGATE in an email. “Our kupuna [elders] passed down Pakui’s Prophecy: ‘Haule ka lani, haule ka niaupio, hoale ka lepo popolo.’ The heavens will fall, the high-born will fall, and the dark earth  — the common people  — will rise like a wave. 

“Today, that prophecy lives with us. The makaainana, the workers of the land, are rising once again. This is our moment to move from defense to action, to fulfill that prophecy, to reclaim Molokai for our kupuna, past and present, and for future generations.”