When Native-Hawaiians tried to battle the changes taking place in the use of the resources, the Supreme Court deemed ancient Hawaiian water and land customs as an ineffective and unreliable way of distribution, preferring instead more definite terms of ownership, land rights, and resource management. These “unreliable” ancient Hawaiian land practices were known as ‘prescriptive rights’ and disregarded in legal contexts. These sentiments still exist in contemporary Hawai’i, as water rights have turned from indigenous to industrial through the explosion of sugar cane production. As Antonio Perry writes of past land customs, “The desire for wealth, as the term is used today, did not exist. If each had a sufficiency for his simple needs, he was content”(Perry 1914). Industrial greed has driven Native Hawaiians off of the land that they’ve been cultivating for centuries, and has commoditized their precious resource of life, wai ola.