Sand Island Village: Empowering the Vulnerable through Community

• In Event: 2323 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 2. Housing and Immigration in a Global Context

Abstract

The emergence of homeless encampments across the U.S. have brought the plight of homelessness to the attention of policymakers and people. As the media attention in Hawaii has constructed Pu'uhonua o Wai'anae as the center of social discourse on rapid population growth, urban development, and new models of survival and protest, it is a significant, and familiar, story. In the 1970s, a Sand Island homeless encampment and cultural fishing village was erected under a similar model of maintaining an independent lifestyle that honored ancestral cultural ties. That community was evicted in 1980, and three decades later, Sand Island is the site of the Hale Mauliola “homeless village”. Utilizing qualitative secondary data such as videos and newspapers, this paper: (1) Investigates Sand Island as a site of power struggles within the context of Hawaiian sovereignty struggles against imperialist and capitalist expansion. (2) Analyzes policy responses to conditions of homelessness that are often not only ineffective, but detrimental to people and community, violations of individual rights, and frequently traumatic. (3) Reviews alternative solutions to homelessness such as “ohana zones” in Hawaii that have the potential to provide emotional support, community, and access to resources when implemented intentionally and thoughtfully. As this paper navigates the capitalist systems, neoliberal ideology, and penal and welfare policies that complicate the right to housing especially for Hawaiians, solutions and pathways towards permanent, sustainable, and dignified means of housing is a necessary pursuit, and perhaps even a revolutionary one.

Author

• Nikki Dutro