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One year after the Hawaii Supreme Court's unanimous PASH decision affirming that traditional and customary native Hawaiian access rights survive on private land, four guests debate its practical consequences. Kenneth Kupchak, whose firm represents developers, argues that the ruling has created dangerous uncertainty: no local lender is extending development loans without a PASH exception on the title policy, and outside investors are walking away. Dana Naone Hall contends that PASH does not threaten ordinary homeowners and should in fact reduce conflict by requiring early accommodation of native rights in the permitting process. Isaac Hall disputes Kupchak's alarm, pointing to analogous native treaty-rights cases in Washington state as evidence that courts can manage these questions, and arguing that Hawaiians' traditional practices are observable and not impossibly vague. Peter L'Orange, the sole non-attorney panelist, sides with Kupchak on practical grounds, recounting how a HUD-funded low-income housing project in Kona was nearly blocked before PASH over an asserted native easement. A caller characterizes Kupchak's newspaper article as misinformed paranoia and argues that Hawaiian cultural protocol already governs how these rights are exercised. The surviving recording ends about 30 minutes in, mid-discussion.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.
Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
