A Native Hawaiian advocacy group is considering a lawsuit of its own against a Chicago restaurant chain that trademarked the name "Aloha Poke" and sent cease-and-desist letters to local and mainland companies with similar names.
The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is exploring legal action against Aloha Poke Co. for its "exploitation of Native Hawaiian language and using legal threats against Native Hawaiian business owners" who sell the popular seasoned raw fish dish.
"No one has the right to disenfranchise a culture and a people, as well as dictate what constitutes pono (proper) business practices," said Kuhio Lewis, the nonprofit's CEO, in a news release. "Hawaiian culture is not meant to be a commodity and the continued exploitation of it, our language and kanaka is absolutely unacceptable."
Aloha Poke Co. ignited a social media firestorm this week and calls for a boycott after its lawyer sent letters obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and posted on social media that demanded businesses in Hawaii and elsewhere immediately stop using the words "Aloha" and "Aloha Poke" "due to the similarity of the marks … the goods and services and a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace."
One small business in Alaska run by Native Hawaiians, Aloha Poke Shop in Anchorage, re-branded to Lei's Poke Stop a week ago due to the threat of litigation.
That sparked outrage among keyboard warriors who then began flooding Yelp.com and other social networking sites, bad-mouthing the mainland fast-food chain for cultural appropriation and its version of poke. An online petition was started calling for a boycott of the restaurant chain "until they remove aloha and poke from their name." More than 121,000 signed the petition as of press deadline Thursday.