WAILUKU, Hawaii — A judge has issued an arrest warrant for a University of Hawaii professor even though he was facing the judge in the courtroom at the time — because the professor refused to respond to the judge in English and spoke Hawaiian instead.
Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo was in court Wednesday facing a trial for charges connected to his participation in a 2017 protest against the construction of a telescope on top of Haleakala, a volcano on Maui, Hawaii, New Now reported .
When Judge Blaine Kobayshi asked Kaeo to confirm his identity, he repeatedly responded in Hawaiian instead of English.
Kobayshi said he couldn’t understand Kaeo and issued a warrant for Kaeo’s arrest, saying “the court is unable to get a definitive determination for the record that the defendant seated in court is Mr. Samuel Kaeo.”
Kaeo, an associate professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii Maui College, said he has appeared before the judge before and complained that “it was about the fact that I was speaking Hawaiian that he didn’t like.”
He faces misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and obstructing a sidewalk.
A request had been made for an interpreter in the courtroom but prosecutors had objected, saying it was an unnecessary expense that would have caused delays.
The Hawaii State Judiciary said in a statement that there is no legal requirement “to provide Hawaiian language interpreters to court participants who speak English but prefer to speak in Hawaiian” and that judges can grant or deny the requests.
The chief executive of the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Kamanaopono Crabben, called the event an example of “punishing Native Hawaiians for speaking our native language.”
He said it was reminiscent of Hawaii’s past when Hawaiian “was prohibited in schools, a form of cultural suppression that substantially contributed to the near extinction of the Hawaiian language.”