Hawaiʻi’s Ocean Policy Center Risks Replicating Colonial Legal Frameworks Over Indigenous Ocean Governance
Original framing: “UH Mānoa Pairs Scientists With Lawyers in New Center for Ocean Policy” — bing news
The center ignores *hōʻā* (ocean rights) enshrined in Hawaiian law, such as the *1980 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act*, which guarantees Native access to coastal resources. *Kānāwai* (customary law) systems like those of the *Ahupuaʻa* (land/ocean watersheds) have governed marine ecosystems for over 1,000 years, yet are absent from the policy framework. The omission reflects a broader erasure of Indigenous legal pluralism in favor of state-centric models that prioritize extractive industries over Native sovereignty.
The UH Mānoa Center for Ocean Policy exemplifies a systemic failure to decolonize marine governance, where Western legal and scientific expertise are deployed to manage ocean resources without addressing the root causes of their degradation: colonial dispossession and the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty.
Historical precedents—from the *1893 overthrow* to the *2020 QPA*—demonstrate that legal collaborations without Native leadership perpetuate cycles of exclusion, while cross-cultural models like *Māori kaitiakitanga* prove that Indigenous systems achieve superior ecological outcomes. The center’s omission of *kānāwai*, *mātauranga*, and *kūpuna* voices reflects a broader pattern where institutions prioritize technical solutions over justice, obscuring the fact that Hawaiʻi’s ocean governance is already structured by centuries of Native law. To rectify this, policy must be *trickster*-driven—disrupting solemnity with irony to expose power imbalances—while centering *mālama ʻāina* as the foundation for all ocean management.