Hawaii fights for the right to ‘aloha’

Last year, much of Hawaii was shocked to learn a Chicago restaurant chain owner had trademarked the name “Aloha Poke” and wrote to cubed fish shops around the U.S. demanding that they stop using the Hawaiian language moniker for their own eateries. The cease-and-desist letters targeted a downtown Honolulu restaurant and a native Hawaiian-operated restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska, among others.

Now, Hawaii politicians are considering adopting a resolution calling for the creation of legal protections for Native Hawaiian cultural intellectual property. The effort predates Aloha Poke, but that episode is lending a sense of urgency to a long-festering concern not unfamiliar to native cultures in other parts of the world.

“I was frustrated at the audacity of people from outside of our community using these legal mechanisms to basically bully people from our local community out of utilizing symbols and words that are important to our culture,” Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole said.

The incident echoes past disputes, like when a non-Hawaiian photographer claimed copyright over an image of a woman dancing hula and Disney copyrighted a version of a Hawaiian chant in a movie.

Chicago’s Aloha Poke Co. chose as its battleground the word “aloha” — a term meaning love, compassion, kindness as well as hello and goodbye. It’s a term central to how native Hawaiians treat others and how many in Hawaii — native or not — try to live.

“It’s traumatic when things like this happen to us — when people try to take, modify or steal what’s been in our people’s world view for generations,” said Healani Sonoda-Pale, chair of the Ka Lahui Hawaii political action committee, who testified in support of the resolution.

Aloha Poke CEO Chris Birkinshaw didn’t return messages seeking comment.