When we think of large landowners in Hawaiʻi, names like Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg may come to mind. But the Robinson family owns a total of 100,000 acres of land — more than both Ellison and Zuckerberg.
This includes the entire island of Niʻihau, where a handful of residents live and work under secretive conditions.
Guthrie Scrimgeour is a freelance investigative reporter who covers wealth and power. He recently wrote about Niʻihau and interviewed Keith Robinson for an article in Business Insider. HPR spoke to Scrimgeour about his story.
Interview Highlights
On how he went about sourcing people for his article
GUTHRIE SCRIMGEOUR: I came across this op-ed that Keith Robinson, one of the owners of Niʻihau wrote in 1998 — where he describes living on the island as a kind of deal where, like Niʻihauans, can live there, rent free, but in return, they're required to live what he describes as a "reasonably moral lifestyle," and they also can't do or say anything that could negatively affect the Robinsons. Getting people to break what is basically an informal NDA was very hard. I did manage to speak to a few former Niʻihauans, and a lot of the piece did come from finding Keith Robinson, who I was able to go up into the woods with him and do a long-form interview and spend a day with him.
On how many people live on Niʻihau and what they do there
SCRIMGEOUR: It's hard to say exactly how many people live on Niʻihau. It's very shrouded in mystery. It seems to have been getting smaller. So I looked at the voting totals for the island over the past decade or so. There were, I believe, about 100 registered voters in 2012, and now there were only 47 in 2024. So it does seem like it's getting smaller. In a lot of ways, it is like a relic of a previous time where there's no Wi-Fi, electricity, except for solar panels. There's no running water. Natives there, a lot of them now work for the military base, which operates two stations. They do assistance with PMRF (Pacific Missile Range Facility) activities across the channel. Many of them also do Niʻihau shell lei crafting. But there's a lot of back and forth, too. So folks that live on Niʻihau, they often travel back and live for a few months on Kauaʻi, and go back and forth between the two islands.
On the agreements between the Navy and the Robinson family
SCRIMGEOUR: It seems like the military is a primary source of funding for the Robinson family. So between 2000 and today, I found records of at least $25 million in military contracts between the Navy and Niʻihau ranch. Those contracts are really interesting because there are some pretty heavy restrictions on what military personnel can do there. One thing in the contract is that military officers on island, they aren't allowed to carry firearms, drink, do drugs, or do or say anything that could be construed as adversely affecting the Robinsons. There was also a clause in the contract that said the Robinsons can forbid people from entering the island if they perceive that they might violate some of these terms. So I found that very interesting, that even the military are bound by a lot of restrictions that the Robinsons can place on them.
This story aired on The Conversation on Sept. 3, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Tori DeJournett adapted this interview for the web.
