Hawaiʻi lawmakers are considering a bill that would strengthen protections of Hawaiian burials or iwi along the islands’ coastlines.
However, the challenge is locating these sites before they are compromised by coastal erosion.
Senate Bill 734 would create a program within the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to locate and potentially move Hawaiian burial sites that could be impacted by coastal erosion.
Dawn Chang, the nominated director for DLNR, said Tuesday that the agency supports the measure.
"Hawaiians were known to bury along the shoreline. So it is inevitable that we’re going to find them," she said. "And so this bill is an attempt to be more proactive. Rather than disturb them, how do we protect them?"
For centuries, Native Hawaiians preserved and protected iwi, or bones, with the belief that they carry the mana or spiritual essence of a person.
These iwi were often hidden in caves or buried in secret. That makes it harder to proactively protect them from coastal erosion and climate change, said Alan Downer, director of DLNR’s State Historic Preservation Division.
"The reality is that on the North Shore on all of the islands, that’s where these washouts occur. In addition, extreme weather events can cause them anywhere in the islands," he said.
"It is something, we are forced to react to those. We have no capacity to get in front of it."
SB 734 was approved by the Senate Committees on Water and Land and Hawaiian Affairs Tuesday, and now awaits a hearing by the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
