Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 1223 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to develop and implement a Niihau oral history project.

Your Committee finds that Niihau is uniquely important among the inhabited islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. Its historical and cultural properties are, thus far, relatively undisturbed and the connection of the Niihau people to traditional practices and actual usage of specific sites remains intact and available for a present day ethnographic survey. In the near future, projects and development activities will most likely bring dramatic changes that may affect the traditional cultural properties and practices of the island and people of Niihau. Many of the most knowledgeable ethnographic resources are elderly and seriously at risk from diseases that have threatened Hawaiians since western contact.

Although your Committee understands the value of recording this information for historic purposes, your Committee is also cognizant of the personal rights of potential interviewees and the owners of the island of Niihau. Consequently, your Committee has amended the measure to require that the Department of Land and Natural Resources obtain prior consent of the potential interviewees and the landowner before the project is undertaken.

Your Committee believes that if the residents of Niihau and the owner of the island of Niihau consent, the indigenous knowledge of the Niihau kupuna should be recorded before these resources disappear.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1223, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1223, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.