Well you just knew this was coming.
For some Native Hawaiians, surfing’s Olympic debut is both a celebration of a cultural touchstone invented by their ancestors, and an extension of the racial indignities seared into the history of the game and their homeland
abcnews.go.com
A complete load of utter ethnocentric rubbish.
As has been stated many times, surfing probably did not originate in Hawaii, or even in Polynesia. We will never know, but many people from many cultures worldwide have been riding waves on boards for centuries. Anyone with deep travel experience in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, São Tomé, Madagascar, Peru and other places will know - they have seen the modern version of what people in these places have been doing for millennia.
What is certain is the first
recorded observation of surfing by educated Europeans was described by Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks - in text and illustrations. Incidents of surfing in many other places before this had never been recorded as most seamen were illiterate and did not have an interested audience - Cook and Banks were both literate and did have an interested audience, being commissioned by the Royal Navy to record the transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1769 along with and any and all interesting natural and human history in the Pacific - like natives riding waves on surfing boards.
I have some sympathy for the Kahanamoku family not controlling their surname trademark, but the rules for trademark registration are the same for everyone regardless of ethnicity. If you can't manage it yourself, find a lawyer who can do it for you.
Business doesn't run on sentiment and if the Kahanamoku name has value in the marketplace, no one is going to give the family money for their dead ancestors legacy -
The business acumen of the Quiksilver people certainly made a lot of money in partnership with the Aikau family, maybe another company can do the same for the Kahanamoku clan.