Palikapu Dedman, activist and founder of Pele Defense Fund, dies at 80

News admin September 17, 2026 0 Comments

Palikapu Dedman, activist and founder of Pele Defense Fund, dies at 80

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Palikapu Dedman, Kānaka Maoli activist and founder of the Pele Defense Fund, died Aug. 22 at age 80.

As a cultural practitioner and mahiʻai (farmer), Dedman was known for his environmental activism. He advocated for the Wao Kele O Puna rainforest on Hawaiʻi Island and strongly opposed industrial geothermal development.

“Palikapu and the Pele Defense Fund, assisted by many others, led the fight against it,” said Jonathan Likeke Scheuer, a planning consultant and former state land use commissioner. “This effort included what I believe is still the largest civil disobedience arrests in the history of Hawaii, at the gates to Wao Kele.”

Dedman was the son of the Kānaka Maoli matriarch Pele Hanoa, co-founder and president of the Punalu‘u and Ka‘u Preservation societies.

He protested in the streets and fought in court. Through the Pele Defense Fund, he sued several major targets, including Puna Geothermal Venture, the James Campbell Estate, state agencies, and former top state officials.

“His Hawaii Supreme Court case, Pele Defense Fund v. Paty, helped recognize that constitutionally protected traditional and customary rights may extend beyond the ahupua‘a in which a practitioner resides,” said Maui attorney Lance Collins.

Beginning in 2019, Dedman worked with non-profit Malama Kakanilua and others to intervene in the proposed expansion of the Grand Wailea Resort, which threatened to (re)disturb iwi kupuna.”

As president of the Native Hawaiian group ‘Ohana Ho‘opakele, Dedman fought the reopening of Kulani Correctional Facility, advocating instead for a traditional wellness and healing center to address high incarceration rates among Hawaiians.

He was also an outspoken opponent of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Maunakea, once placing ancestral remains on an altar at the site to block development.

Throughout his life, Dedman remained an uncompromising advocate for Native Hawaiian gathering rights and cultural protections, continuing to speak out on local issues until his death.