By Tijuana Brass via Wikimedia Creative Commons
Native Hawaiian remains found on a construction site in Waimanalo, Hawaii have become a source of conflict between developers and the local Native Hawaiian community, reports Daily Beast.
The development project, headed by Obama Foundation chair Marty Nesbitt, is set to become a luxury beachfront property.
Developers first unearthed the bones in January. According to Kamuela Kala’i, a member of the Waimanalo Native Hawaiian community, the bones were stored in a drawer of a filing cabinet for months and had grown black mildew.
Kala’i states that she urged consultants to rebury the bones where they had been found, according to ProPublica. The original burial site, however, lay on the location of a planned swimming pool.
Developers instead reburied the remains in a different location, just before Kala’i had planned to perform a prayer ceremony for them.
“All over the place, our kupuna, somehow it is OK to sacrifice them for the sake of buildings and cesspools and swimming pools,” Kala‘i said. “It’s not OK. It’s not OK. I will say that until the last breath in my body can say it.”
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