OHA committee approves working group to study transfer of Native Hawaiian burial duties from SHPD

The OHA Committee on Beneficiary Advocacy and Empowerment approved a resolution on March 5 to form a working group to examine transferring, or partially transferring, Native Hawaiian burial-site duties under Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 6E from the Department of Land and Natural Resources(DLNR) State Historic Preservation Division(SHPD) to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

The working group is intended to study the scope, staffing, costs and statutory changes that a transfer would require. "To have a bill just abruptly transfer the native Hawaiian burial component to OHA would be really disruptive," said Lena Alalei, OHA chief advocate, during the committee discussion. "There needs to be...full information from the agencies about the impacts, how this is gonna happen." The committee voted to adopt the resolution after agreed edits to remove several paragraphs that SHPD had…