How did Hawaiian land redistribution, the Great Mahele, fail?

Factual Questions
1

Prior to land privatization, the Hawaiians observed a tradition of sharing and common use. The apparent reasons for the shift to private property were to enable the poorer classes to acquire land and to enable landowners to provide for their children and thus encourage population.

Hawaiian commoners, even though they comprised about 99% of the population, acquired a tiny fraction of the land compared to foreigners and Hawaiian chiefs.

How did the Hawaiian commoners end up with almost no land? Who was most responsible for the failure of Hawaiian land redistribution?

2

In order to get the land, you had to first, file a claim, and second, pay a surveying fee. Most Hawaiian commoners, first, didn’t know about the requirements, because while the government put out written notices about the Mahale, most people were illiterate, and second, among the people who did know about it, a lot of commoners couldn’t pay the fee.

The law said that a third of the land was to go to the crown, a third, to the alii, and a third to the commoners, but since most commoners never filed land claims, they ended up with about 1%.