The Buzzards in
Bishop Museum
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
September 14, 2009
Current situation 'unlike anything' in the past 25 years
By Suzanne Roig, Advertiser Staff Writer
As the economy limps along, Hawai'i's museums are finding it tougher to meet their financial needs. They've slashed budgets by cutting hours, closing collections and laying off staff.
They've slashed budgets by cutting hours, closing collections and laying off staff.
Museums in Hawai'i have weathered other such storms, including recession in the early 1980s and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But this time it's far worse than before, said George Ellis, director of the Academy of Arts for 21 years before retiring in 2003.
"The current situation is unlike anything that has come in the past 25 years," Ellis said. "There's never been anything of this severity when ... arts were so severely cut."
But as much as museums are suffering, they're still here, said Peter Rosegg, an O'ahu commissioner for the state Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
And they'll continue working to meet their missions, whether that means merging operations, as is being discussed between the Honolulu Academy of Arts and The Contemporary Museum, or closing down whole collections, as did the Bishop Museum when it shuttered its maritime museum in April.
The key to keeping the doors open is for museums to ensure they remain vital and useful to the community, Ellis said.
"Our business is perpetuity," said Tim Johns, Bishop Museum president, director and chief executive officer. "We'll always have some role in the community here; that's important to keep in mind when you weather these economic cycles and storms."...
In May, Bishop Museum closed the Hawai'i Maritime Center and began closing its main facility in Kalihi every Tuesday as a way to cope with the difficult economy. The museum also cut its staff....
The Honolulu Academy of Arts, which has more than 50,000 works of art, has seen its endowment sink 34 percent in value in 2008. To balance its operating budget, the Academy of Arts initiated a series of cost-cutting measures that included charging school groups an admission fee, closing its lending collection indefinitely, cutting library staff hours, canceling some traveling exhibits and curtailing staff travel. Even the hours and programming were cut at the Doris Duke Theatre.
Around the country the story is the same, Blanton said.
"Nonprofits are hurting because those that have endowments have seen them shrink, and funding from local governments has been slashed and philanthropic gifts have declined as well," he said. "The irony here is that museum attendance has never been higher."
In Hawai'i too, museums have seen burgeoning crowds at free family events at the Bishop Museum and the Academy of Arts.
"We've made changes to the operating model," the Bishop Museum's Johns said. "It's one of those situations where you keep your eye on the long-term role of the institution in the community.
"The Bishop Museum is a lot of things to a lot of people. At its core it allows people to be reminded of what is unique about Hawai'i."
Marilyn Cristofori, chief executive officer of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance, feels the same way about the keepers of the arts.
"Art museums are the essence of our identity," said Cristofori. "There's nothing that teaches creativity like the arts."
THE BISHOP MUSEUM 2008 ANNUAL REPORT
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/images/pdf/Annual_report.pdf
* * * * *
October 29, 2008
Thing Falls apart
Why did Bishop Museum do so little to preserve Falls of Clyde?
Good question.
Christopher Pala
Generations of island residents have come to consider the four-masted schooner Falls of Clyde as much a permanent part of the waterfront as Aloha Tower itself. The National Park Service seemed to agree, designating the ship a National Historic Monument in 1989. And so, while the Falls has struggled to find proper financing over the years, few were prepared for Bishop Museum’s dramatic announcement last year that plans were in the works for Falls of Clyde to be scuttled. Christopher Pala explores just how things went so wrong, and asks whether the museum ,as it has claimed, truly did everything it could to preserve a beloved local –and international–landmark.
_ . _ . _ . _
The management of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum has long claimed that it has bent over backward to maintain and repair the Falls of Clyde, the 266-foot square rigger that was once the flagship of Hawai’i’s merchant marine, spending far more money than it should have to preserve this last vestige of the island’s maritime glory, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989. As late as April 2007, a museum vice-president, Blair Collis, said in a press release, “With its history so closely linked to the history of Honolulu Harbor, it’s important that we protect and preserve the Falls of Clyde at Hawai’i Maritime Center for future generations of Hawai’i’s children.”
But an examination of documents and financial records connected to the Hawai’i Maritime Center, which the museum acquired in 1994, reveal a different picture, corroborated by sources inside the museum:
• For most of that period, the institution spent little more on the Falls than the few tens of thousands of dollars produced by a $500,000 endowment set up in 1994 by the late Robert J. Pfeiffer, then chairman of the Alexander & Baldwin holding company.
• The museum failed to perform minimal maintenance on the ship, such as installing zinc anodes that would have stopped hull corrosion at a cost of only a few thousand dollars a year.
• The work that was done did more damage than good to the ship, according to two ship surveyors, one hired to assist the museum in determining the ship’s fate.
• The museum consistently misrepresented the source of the first $300,000 grant as coming from the Save America’s Treasures Fund, when in fact it came from another, much laxer part of the National Park Service.
• The museum’s campaign to give the ship away raised eyebrows in the historical maritime community because it seemed designed to achieve just the opposite.
• From April of last year, the museum appeared intent on having the ship sunk off Honolulu and avoiding giving it to a group called the Friends of the Falls of Clyde, which wanted to save it and try to eventually raise enough money to restore it and keep her as a floating museum. The Friends were eventually able to buy the boat on September 25 for a symbolic $1, but not before the museum had destroyed the ship’s steel rigging, raising the future cost of restoration.
No hands on deck
In 1968, after Lani Booth, the heir to a family fortune, bequeathed the Bishop Museum $1 million, its director, Roland Force, persuaded a reluctant museum board of directors to acquire the Falls from a group called the Falls of Clyde Maritime Museum, headed by Honolulu Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss, and spend a quarter of the donation on it. The Falls had served as a floating fuel dock in Alaska from 1922 to 1958. In 1963, its owners decided to sink it and turn it into a breakwater in Canada. At the last minute, a group of enthusiasts in Hawai’i led by Krauss brought it back to Honolulu and, over the next two decades, had her restored, except that she never received sails.
In the early ’80s, the Bishop handed the Falls to the Hawai’i Maritime Museum, since re-named Hawai’i Maritime Center. But the center “never put in enough resources to make it viable,” said C. Dudley Pratt, then chairman of Hawaiian Electric Industries and a member of the boards of both the center and the museum. “And the state didn’t support us at all.”
The center board members contributed “very little money and a lot of talk,” Pratt said. When the center became unable to pay its mortgage, the museum for the second time acquired the center and the ship.
Pratt described the museum’s management as “strictly a stepchild operation” and resigned in protest from the Bishop board when the museum dissolved the Maritime Center board. “They get things and they don’t care for them, it’s appalling,” he said.
Robert Potter, a retired University of Hawai’i professor who started working as a volunteer on the ship in 1991, agreed with Platt’s assessment, saying “The museum was just ignoring it. I’m sure they could of found lots of volunteers if they’d looked for them in an organized way, but they never did.”
An examination of the center’s tax records over the past decade show that its average revenue was in the order of $700,000 a year, of which perhaps a third went to its employees, who on average numbered four. Several sources familiar with the budget said the museum usually spent only about $50,000 a year on the ship–much of it interest from a fund set up in 1994 by Pfeiffer, the former head of A&B, which owns Matson Navigation, according to Collis, the Bishop official. (It was Captain William Matson, a Swede, who in 1899 bought the Falls and based her in Honolulu, where she was turned into a tanker, carrying molasses to California and returning with kerosene until 1922.)
A quest for booty
In November 2001, the office of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye announced the fiscal year’s earmarks, which included $300,000 for the Falls of Clyde. “This appropriation for the Save America’s Treasures budget would be used by the Bishop Museum to preserve the Falls of Clyde,” a statement read. It was matched by a donation by Pfeiffer.
The grant earmarked by Inouye, in fact, went through another part of the Interior Department budget called the National Recreation and Preservation Account, which entails much looser supervision–from Honolulu, not Washington–of how the money is spent. Also, Save America’s Treasures grants entail an obligation to care for the object of the grant for at least 50 years, while the other fund does not, according to Hampton Tucker, Chief of the Historic Preservation Grants Division of the National Park Service, who administers the Save America’s Treasures grants.
Tucker said he had no idea why the museum had never sought help from his fund. “I would encourage the new owners to apply for a grant,” said Tucker. “They are for up to $700,000 and must be matched by private contributions.”
In 2002, the museum commissioned Dorian Travers, who had worked on the ship years earlier as a deckhand, to design a work plan around the grant. He presented it in March 2003 and a summary of it was forwarded to the National Park Service and accepted.
In early 2007, a group of fans of the Falls paid for the hiring of Joseph Lombardi, a Massachusetts ship surveyor experienced in historic ships, to examine the Falls and list what repairs it needed.
What he found, he said, was a ship that had degraded more in the previous 20 years than any he had ever surveyed. This led that group of fans, led by Clifford Laughton, to withdraw. In addition, he said, only part of the preservation plan had been carried out.
The plan called for spending $346,604 for sand-blasting the interior of the hull, and the rest, a total of $271,243, for repairing the rigging ($144,100), improving the mooring system ($13,673), fixing the leaking deck ($30,000) and buying a cathodic protection system–a more complex way than simple zinc anodes to stop corrosion of the hull through electrolysis ($4,070).
Lombardi and Travers, the author of the plan, agreed in interviews that in fact, the only part of the plan that was done was the sandblasting. There was no evidence that the $271,243 for the rest of the work was ever spent for the purpose for which is was sought — except for the anti-corrosion equipment, which was bought, never maintained and promptly stopped working, and routine maintenance and repair, which the grants were not supposed to pay for. Gary “Skip” Naftel, a Honolulu ship surveyor who became the vice president of the Friends of the Falls of Clyde, the ship’s new owners, concurred.
Lombardi called the sandblasting work “an abomination” and said it had done more damage than good. He had it stopped as soon as he soon as he arrived.
“Sandblasting of an iron hull should never be done!” wrote Olaf Engvig, author of Viking to Victorian, Exploring the Use of Iron in Shipbuilding, in an e-mail. “It will carry away the “soft” iron as well. Black spots of slag in a ships plate will be identified as rust and make any sandblaster continue until he has worked his way through the plate leaving a hole. He will conclude the plate was bad, when, in fact, it was not. To sandblast an iron built ship means ruining good material.”
Lombardi said he was unable to understand why at least part of the $600,000 grant was not spent on dry-docking it. “You normally dry-dock a ship like this every five years, and this one hadn’t been dry-docked in 20,” he said.
An examination of the Maritime Center’s tax records bear out Lombardi and Travers’ claim: the only item that appears is the sandblasting, for $345,732, paid to Consolidated Painting LLC, over three years ending in June 2007, at which point the museum wrote to the National Park Service and declared the work accomplished. Consolidated Painting’s owner, Joseph Ferrara, confirmed the amount but denied that his company’s work had damaged the hull.
The museum’s final report to the National Park Service mentions the preservation plan, but it details only the sandblasting and minor routine maintenance. It states that “other items that were repaired included the rigging and top and upper masts,” but gives no further details of a project that was to have cost $144,100.
The Honolulu staff of the National Park Service, which administered the grant, declined to comment. Holly Bundock, a spokeswoman in Washington, said that since there was no Park Service requirement that this grant be matched, the service was satisfied as long as its own $300,000 was spent as specified, even though the original budget submitted to the Park Service was for $600,000.
Mutiny
In an interview, Collis, now the Bishop’s chief operating officer, was asked why the museum didn’t spend the full amount of the grants and where the money was in fact spent. He strongly denied that all the money wasn’t spent, calling such a suggestion “laughable.”
At first he suggested that the government grant earmarked by Inouye “was a matching grant, so we put up our own money, it wasn’t like it paid for the sandblasting job.”
When it was pointed out that the museum’s own press releases said that the matching was done by Pfeiffer, not the museum, he denied that Pfeiffer had made that grant and said that the museum only had access to the interest from the 1994 endowment that Pfeiffer had made for the Falls. “That creates income of $30,000 a year, we can’t touch the principal,” he said.
Collis went on to assert that Ferrara, the owner of the company that did the sandblasting, “tells me he spent close to $1 million on that project, but we only paid him around $600,000.” Ferrara denied telling Collis this, saying that while he did lose some money on that job, it was because Collis took too long to make key decisions.
Collis insisted throughout the interview that the grant had gone through the Save America’s Treasures office, as does its own press releases, available online, although the cooperative agreement between the park service and the museum makes it clear the park service staff are in Honolulu, not Washington, where the Save America’s Treasures grant is located.
He said he had no explanation of why the corrosion control equipment was never maintained.
Requests for interviews with Elizabeth Tatar, which the National Park service lists as the museum’s person in charge of executing the grant, and with museum president Tim Johns were refused.
The museum also drew criticism for announcing this year that the ship would be sunk if a buyer willing to spend in excess of $30 million could not be found by this past summer.
“I was completely disgusted by this approach, and so was everyone I talked to,” said Peter Stanford, president emeritus of the National Maritime Historical Society and vice president and co-founder of the World Ship Trust, in a telephone interview from New York. “The $30 million was far above what would be needed to make her safe and able to take visitors,” he said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing happening like this. Normally it takes a couple of years to find an appropriate new owner.”
The Friends, led by Bruce McEwan, vice president of Young Brothers, and Naftel, the surveyor, coalesced after the museum announced its intention to scuttle the ship, trying to prevent the sinking while scrambling to raise money, incorporate as a non-profit and get insurance for the ship.
As late as September 25, the day the Bishop board voted to accept the Friends’ proposal to buy the Falls for a symbolic dollar, Collis, in an e-mail to McEwan, said the written commitment the Friends had obtained from the Marisco dry-dock in Wai’anae was insufficiently hard. “This has to be addressed immediately as per the requirement of the agreement or I suspect the board will not vote in favor of transferring the ship,” Collis wrote.
Still, that evening, the board voted to accept the offer, but the hostility between the two groups was palpable on the day of the handover ceremony.
After the signing of the papers, the handing over of a dollar bill and the launch of a “Million Quarters Campaign” modeled on Bob Krauss’ “Million Penny Campaign” for the Falls, Johns, the museum president, smilingly took the lectern to announce he was making a personal contribution to the campaign.
The amount? $100.
“It was an insult,” growled Naftel.
http://honoluluweekly.com/feature/2008/10/thing-falls-apart/
August 3, 2007
Timothy E. Johns Named
Bishop Museum President:
International Search Lands Damon Estate Exec
Honolulu, HI Bishop Museum has named Timothy E. Johns as President, Director and Chief Executive Officer, effective October 1, 2007 . The announcement was made today by the Chairman of the Board of Directors, David Hulihe‘e.
Johns succeeds Michael Chinaka who has been serving as Interim President since the departure of William Y. Brown in January 2007. Chinaka will resume his duties as Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Chief Financial Officer for Bishop Museum . (Brown left the Museum to take a position as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia , PA. )
“I am delighted to announce the appointment of Tim Johns as Bishop Museum ’s new President, Director and CEO,” said David Hulihe‘e, Chairman of Bishop Museum’s Board of Directors. “Tim has over two decades of leadership experience with environmental and cultural issues in Hawai‘i , which will serve well him as the leader of Hawai‘i ’s State museum of natural and cultural history. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Bishop Museum was founded in 1889. It maintains the world’s largest collection of Hawaiian and Pacific cultural and natural history objects and since its founding has as been a premier institution for research and public education. It is designated as Hawai‘i ’s State Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
Johns most recently served as Chief Operating Officer for the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon, a position he has held since 2000. Prior to that, he was the Chairperson of the State Department of Land and Natural Resources. He has also served as Vice-President and General Counsel for AMFAC Property Development Corporation. He has been a Lecturer in Business Law at the University of Hawai‘i and Windward Community College and has held the position of Director of Land Protection with the Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i.
An honors graduate of the University of California , Santa Barbara , Johns received a Bachelor’s degree in history and business economics. He also completed a Master’s degree in economics and Juris Doctor from the University of Southern California .
Johns is very active in environmental issues. His memberships include the State of Hawai‘i Board of Land and Natural Resources and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve Advisory Council. A Rotarian, Johns is a member of the Rotary Club of Honolulu.
“With Tim’s impressive background and experience, he will be able to provide critical links between scientists, resource managers and policymakers to advance important biodiversity conservation efforts that are the driving forces for many of our research programs,” says Allen Allison, Ph.D., Vice President of Bishop Museum’s world-renowned Science Department.
Johns serves on the Board of Directors for Grove Farm Company, Inc., Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., YMCA Honolulu, Hawai‘i Nature Center, St. Andrew’s Priory School , Child and Family Services, Helping Hands Hawai‘i, Diamond Head Theatre, and Hawai‘i Public Television Foundation. In June 2005, he was named a Trustee of Parker Ranch Foundation Trust.
“We are delighted the Board of Directors has chosen a candidate with a deep commitment to the preservation and perpetuation of Hawaiian culture and respectful sensitivity to cultural issues. He is well known in the community and is held in high regard, and this will surely be beneficial in many ways,” said Betty Lou Kam, Vice President of Cultural Resources for Bishop Museum .
Johns was selected after a seven-month executive search by the international search organization Morris & Berger from Glendale , California . Founded in 1984, Morris and Berger is a generalist executive search firm that has developed a specialty practice serving the nonprofit sector, including performing and visual arts and institutions of higher learning. The company was named to the list of “50 Leading Search Firms in North America ” in The Executive Recruiter News and also named Outstanding Executive Search Firm in John Lucht’s 1995 edition of Rites of Passage at $100,000+.
Members of the Executive Search Committee included Bishop Museum Trustee Dr. Charman J. Akina (Chairman), David C. Hulihe‘e, Isabella A. Abbott, Ph.D., Haunani Apoliona, H. Mitchell D’Olier, Russell K. Okata, Gulab Watumull, Walter A. Dods, Jr., Allen Allison, Ph.D., and Amy Miller Marvin....
Johns will assume the top leadership position for the largest museum in the State of Hawai‘i in the midst of an unprecedented era of renovation and revitalization. Bishop Museum is presently undertaking a $21 million renovation of its iconic Hawaiian Hall complex with the support of world-class museum designer Ralph Appelbaum and Associates of New York.
In 2005, Bishop Museum opened the Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center , an award-winning $17 million, 19,000-square-foot interactive science and cultural exploration center. Major traveling and cultural exhibitions are presented in the Castle Memorial Building year-round. Bishop Museum hosts nearly 400,000 visitors and students each year. Bishop Museum also administers the Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook, Hawai‘i and the Hawaii Maritime Center in Honolulu .
“I am thrilled and honored to be given the opportunity to join this wonderful institution. The Museum has long been one of Hawai‘i ’s most important and cherished treasures. It is blessed with a wonderful staff, great board of directors, and widespread support throughout our community. This is a dream job for me, “ says Timothy E. Johns, newly named President, Director and Chief Executive Officer of Bishop Museum.
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/media/2007/pr07081.html
May 21, 2007
Museum gets climate study grant
Bishop Museum is one of eight institutions worldwide to receive funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to study the impact of climate change on species and habitats.
The foundation awarded $290,000 to the museum over 18 months as part of a $5 million research program to help stem threats of global warming, according to a museum news release.
The grant will be used to assess the vulnerability of biodiversity and island ecosystems in Melanesia to climate change, said Allen Allison, museum vice president of science.
He said the data will be organized in an environmental information system for climate change in Melanesia and posted on the Internet for access to conservation groups worldwide.
The work will be done with the Pacific Regional Environmental Program in Apia, Samoa, and the Honolulu-based Pacific Science Association and Indo-Pacific Conservation Alliance.
Allison said, "The tropics offer some of the most biologically diverse environments in the world and are also among the most vulnerable to climate changes."...
Bishop Museum scientists have done field research in Melanesia for more than 50 years. In their work in recent years, Allison and Fred Kraus have discovered more than 130 new species of frogs, lizards and snakes.
Melanesia is important, the scientists said, because it is the gateway to Polynesia's colonization by plants, animals and people.
http://starbulletin.com/2007/05/21/news/briefs.html
July 14, 2005
Repatriation expert
sues museum
Guy Kaulukukui says that Bishop Museum
asked him to violate federal requirements
By Debra Barayuga, Star-Bulletin
A former Bishop Museum expert on repatriation says he was wrongfully terminated in January 2004 because he refused to violate federal requirements governing the protection and repatriation of sacred burial artifacts.
Guy Kaulukukui, a native Hawaiian educator, filed suit Tuesday in Circuit Court against William Brown, president and chief executive officer of Bishop Museum since 2001, and other unnamed defendants.
The complaint alleged that Brown failed to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or caused the board or museum staff to violate its spirit and intent on several occasions.
NAGPRA, passed by Congress in 1990, addresses the rights of lineal descendants, Indian tribes and native Hawaiian organizations to human remains and cultural objects.
The complaint also alleges the defendants violated Kaulukukui's rights under Hawaii's Whistleblower Protection Act, which protects employees who report suspected violations of law. Kaulukukui is seeking relief, including reinstatement to his former position and back wages.
Ruth Ann Becker, Bishop Museum spokeswoman, said they had not seen the complaint and could not comment on the allegations. Brown was out of town and not available for comment.
Kaulukukui served several positions since he joined the museum in 1997, including chairman of the Education Department, head of collections and head of cultural studies.
He also chaired the task force that rewrote the museum's NAGPRA policy, which later became nationally recognized by the Association of American Museums as an exemplary prototype, he said.
In 2000, a year before Brown took the helm at Bishop Museum, Kaulukukui was appointed to oversee all repatriation issues, becoming the museum's expert and representative on NAGPRA. Until he was fired, Kaulukukui said, he was involved in four repatriations here and outside Hawaii.
Since Brown took over at Bishop Museum and since Kaulukukui's firing, there have been no repatriations, and Brown has tried to undo two previous repatriations, he said.
"For some reason or another, the museum was moving into a direction toward repatriating as little as possible and interpreting federal law in such a way to protect its collection as much as possible," Kaulukukui said. That is in contravention to NAGPRA's intent to return to native peoples what was taken from them in the first place, he said.
Among the illegal actions Kaulukukui alleges Brown took were invalidating the repatriation of human remains and funerary objects associated with the Kawaihae Caves, relocating of sandstone blocks known as Kalaina Wawae on Molokai, and reneging on a promise to repatriate items removed from Iolani Palace in 1893.
When Brown decided he wanted to undertake a review of the museum's NAGPRA policies, effectively suspending ongoing repatriation efforts, Kaulukukui said he opposed it because it violated federal requirements on the timely processing of claims. He said he refused to sign a letter to the claimant in the ongoing repatriations that explained delays based on untruths and was fired because of it, he said.
A federal review committee found in May 2003 that the museum made a mistake in turning over sacred objects from the Kawaihae Caves to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei, one of 13 claimants who claimed they reburied them. Kaulukukui had defended the repatriation as proper and that they had faithfully complied with federal law.
Hui Malama's actions and its refusal to return the items sparked criticism not only from review committee members, but also from the remaining claimants, who said they never indicated they did not want the items reclaimed from the caves. Requests by the claimants to see the artifacts and verify that they are safe have been refused.
Critics have alleged that the loan was a secret deal between the museum and Hui Malama.
http://starbulletin.com/2005/07/14/news/story8.html
September 9, 2005
Group challenges court
order on artifacts
Hui Malama says the
federal ruling violates its
right to freedom of religion
By Sally Apgar, Star-Bulletin
A federal court order demanding the return of 83 artifacts reburied in a Big Island cave five years ago would violate Hui Malama I Na Kupuna 'O Hawaii Nei's constitutional right to freedom of religion, the native Hawaiian group argued yesterday.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge David Ezra gave Hui Malama, a group founded in 1989 to repatriate native Hawaiian remains and artifacts, until Sept. 23 to return the burial items, or "moepu." The group reburied the items in Kawaihae in 2000 to honor the wishes of kupuna (ancestors). Ezra ordered the return so that 14 competing native Hawaiian claimants can have equal say in the fate of the items.
Hui Malama filed an emergency appeal of the order with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco yesterday, arguing, "There is no safe manner by which to carry out the (U.S.) District Court's order as it would place ... members of Hui Malama in real physical and spiritual danger."
In a declaration filed yesterday supporting their argument, Edward Halealoha Ayau, a founding member of Hui Malama, said that complying with the court order "would inflict spiritual, emotional, religious and emotional injury upon me and members of Hui Malama."
"Specifically, it would be an extreme hewa (wrong) for me or any other Hui Malama member, if ordered, to take part in any effort to enter the Kawaihae burial cave, with two to three known caves, to remove the 83 moepu, as they belong to the kupuna buried therein," and that would harm "the integrity of the afterlife of these kupuna," he said.
It "amounts to stealing from the dead, an action that threatens severe spiritual consequences for anyone involved," Ayau added.
Ezra's order arises from a recent case filed by two other native Hawaiian groups against Hui Malama and the Bishop Museum demanding return of the items so that 14 federally recognized native Hawaiian claimants could be consulted in what to do with the items.
In 1905 three men, including David Forbes, whom Hui Malama refer to as grave robbers, opened the cave and gave the items to the Bishop Museum, an act that Hui Malama considers a desecration that they needed to right. In a controversial 2000 "loan," Hui Malama obtained possession of the items.
There is a sharp split in the claimants' groups over whether the items should be buried in the cave to honor kupuna and allowed to decay, or whether they should be preserved in a hermetically sealed environment for the eyes of future native Hawaiian generations.
The two native Hawaiian groups contesting Hui Malama's claim are represented by La'akea Suganuma, a practitioner of "lua," or "bone-breaking," an ancient form of Hawaiian martial arts, who is also president of the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts; and Na Lei Alii Kawananakoa, a group founded by Abigail Kawananakoa, a wealthy Campbell Estate heir and descendent of royal Hawaiian blood.
The 14 competing claimants, including Suganuma, Hui Malama and Kawananakoa, are recognized under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, which was passed into law in 1991 to govern the repatriation of native Hawaiian and American Indian remains and artifacts.
When Suganuma and Kawananakoa filed the suit, they asked for a preliminary injunction, demanding the return of the items, saying they were "improperly loaned" to Hui Malama and that they faced "imminent harm" in Kawaihae Caves because of environmental conditions, insect attack and possible theft. Ezra granted the injunction this week.
According to court documents, the 83 items were crated and handed over by museum staff to representatives of Hui Malama on a Saturday in February 2000 with a notation that it was a one-year "loan" until February 2001 and pending the outcome of an ongoing NAGPRA consultation.
Ezra wrote that the museum "breached its own policies in an apparent, but inexplicable, rush to deliver the items to Hui Malama."
In Ezra's order he noted the loan was based on Hui Malama's assurances that all four of the claimants who were recognized at the time agreed to the reburial. Ezra wrote "that premise was false ... because they (the four claimants) did not agree to Hui Malama's ultimate plans."
Aside from spiritual or religious beliefs, Hui Malama has said it does not want to return the items because it would be handing them over to the museum, which they say "acted as a fence for the original grave robbers."
http://starbulletin.com/2005/09/09/news/
August 13, 2004
EDITORIAL
(OUR OPINION)
Wide probe needed
to protect artifacts
FEDERAL investigation of alleged black market trafficking of valuable Hawaiian artifacts that were supposed to have been kept in a Big Island cave raises questions about an organization that has taken the lead in repatriating such artifacts. The government should be unrelenting in finding how the items passed into private hands, prosecuting the thieves to the fullest extent and turning its probe to other possible wayward movements of Hawaiian artifacts.
Artifacts that were taken from the cave in the mid-1800s by Joseph Swift Emerson, a missionary's son, and sold to the Bishop Museum were repatriated in 1997 to Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei. The group, which was formed in 1989 for the purpose of such repatriation, was supposed to have put the artifacts in the same burial cave in accordance with ancient protocol.
That activity preceded the 1999 enactment of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which was intended to protect burial remains and sacred objects by returning them to Native American and Hawaiian groups. In response to that law, Bishop Museum secretly "loaned" to Hui Malama 83 artifacts that were taken in 1905 from another Big Island cave by amateur archeologist David Forbes and sold to Bishop Museum two years later.
Hui Malama is headed by lawyer Edward Halealoha Ayau, who once worked at the museum and was former staff counsel to Sen. Daniel Inouye, ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that drafted the NAGPRA legislation. Ayau signed for the 83 Forbes artifacts in February 2000 and said they would be returned to a Big Island burial cave.
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs and other Hawaiian organizations protested being neglected in consideration for the loan. The controversy colored museum director Donald Duckworth's resignation months afterward. Bill Brown, a former Interior Department official who became the museum's director the following year, said the loan was a "mistake" in violation of NAGPRA guidelines.
In response to a complaint by the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, a National Park Service review committee concluded in May that transfer of the Forbes artifacts to Hui Malama was "flawed" and called for their return to the museum. The question is whether the museum will be allowed to keep them or must repatriate them using the current list of 13 qualifying Hawaiian organizations. Hui Malama has refused to return the artifacts.
Asked about concerns by museum officials and others about whether all 83 of the Forbes artifacts remain in the cave, Ayau told the Star-Bulletin's Sally Apgar, "All the evidence anyone will ever get is our word." The federal investigation, although pertaining only to the Emerson artifacts, indicates that is not enough.
The museum now maintains that it should be regarded as a Hawaiian organization, giving it equal footing with Hui Malama and other such groups to maintain possession of Hawaiian artifacts. The museum's deep Hawaiian roots -- founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop as a memorial to his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop -- warrant such recognition.
Bishop Museum has repatriated more than 2,500 items to Hui Malama and other Hawaiian organizations in the past 14 years. The museum has no intention to keep human remains, but some objects properly belong in a museum, protected against deterioration and theft.
August 11, 2004
MEDIA CONTACT: Caroline Witherspoon
Becker Communications
(808) 533-4165
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BISHOP MUSEUM APPOINTS NEW MEMBERS TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
HONOLULU – Bishop Museum has named five community and business leaders to its
Board of Directors.
Serving three-year terms, the new board members include: Danny Akaka Jr., Native Hawaiian tradition expert at Mauna Lani Resort on the Big Island; Richard Humphreys, who serves on the board of Cancer Research Center of Hawai‘i and the Board of Trustees of Hawai‘i Employees Retirement Systems; Mitch D’Olier, president and CEO of Kaneohe Ranch Company Ltd.; Richard Paglinawan, senior staff member of the Queen Emma Foundation; and Winona Kealamapuana Ellis Rubin, founding CEO of ALU LIKE.
Bishop Museum is a private, non-profit corporation that is owned and governed by a volunteer board of directors. Operating entities of the corporation are Bernice P. Bishop Museum, The State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, The Hawai‘i Maritime Center, and the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden.
A treasured resource of Hawaiian history and heritage, Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop as a tribute to his wife Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last descendant of the royal Kamehameha dynasty....
http://www.bishopmuseum.org//media/2004/pr04047.html
January 7, 2003
Museum wants
ancient bones removed
By Debra Barayuga, Star-Bulletin
Claimants of iwi, or remains of native Hawaiians, that were excavated at Mokapu on the Kaneohe Marine Corps Base during the 20th century are unhappy over the Bishop Museum's recent efforts to return the bones to them when reinterment plans are not yet final.
"I'm just very disappointed the Bishop Museum has chosen to do this and didn't allow us to work this out," said Linda Kawai'ono Delaney, of the Prince Kuhio Hawaiian Civic Club, one of 22 groups that have laid claim to the iwi based on cultural or family relations.
Bishop Museum filed a complaint in Circuit Court yesterday asking the court to authorize a party to receive the iwi, referred to as the "Mokapu collection," and that the museum be absolved from any liability related to the disposition of the collection.
The complaint said Bishop Museum cannot determine to which of the groups the collection belongs.
Ruth Ann Becker, Bishop Museum spokeswoman, said the remains were never in the possession of the museum, but belong to the 20-plus groups that claimed an interest in them under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The claimants had asked Bishop Museum -- and they entered into a loan agreement in August 1999 -- to store the bones until they decide on their final resting place. The agreement drawn by the claimants was for no longer than three years and expired January 2001, but was extended by the claimants.
Despite repeated requests, the claimants have not removed the collection from Bishop Museum. "We need for there to be a final decision on where they will go and move them out of here," Becker said.
The complaint is a "procedural thing to get it moving along so we can free up the space," and not a contentious move on Bishop Museum's part, she said.
But claimants say they have no place to put the bones at this time and are working with Marine Corps Base Hawaii officials to decide where and how they will be reinterred. Also, before the iwi are reinterred, cultural rituals need to take place.
Delaney said Bishop Museum began notifying them in May and August last year to take possession of the collection from Bishop Hall so that the building can be renovated.
"We're aware that they've been patient with us, but for almost 150 years, they've held those ancestors and always had space when they wanted to study them," she said, adding that this has been a very difficult repatriation.
Delaney said they recently sent letters to Marine Corps officials that they have agreed on a reinterment site and should be renewing meetings with them soon.
They have asked the Marine Corps for permission to move the bones to the base.
"Just be patient," Delaney told Bishop Museum. "This is something that has to be done. They have to be given a dignified reinterment."
http://starbulletin.com/2003/01/07/news/index11.html
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TO BE CONTINUED...
In the meantime, you can browse through the following as you’re having your breakfast birdseed and watching the sunrise over the golf course in Maunawili Valley:
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING KAMEHAMEHA’S COURT
CONFESSIONS OF A WHISTLEBLOWER
DIRTY MONEY, DIRTY POLITICS & BISHOP ESTATE
FARMER VS. HARMON - WITNESS: HILLARY CLINTON
FLYING HIGH IN HAWAII: THE SAGA OF RON REWALD
THE CONSUELO ZOBEL ALGER FOUNDATION
THE GRAND (and dirty) KO OLINA
CENSORED > THE HARMON ARBITRATION < CENSORED
THE HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
MARSH & MCLENNAN: THE MARSH BIRDS
OFFICE OF THE U.S. TRUSTEE vs. HARMON
THE SILENCE OF THE WHISTLEBLOWERS
THE VULTURES IN MAUNAWILI VALLEY
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MORE OF THE CATBIRD’S FAVORITE LINKS
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Last Update September 14, 2009, by The Catbird