Larry Ellison, Lanai’s new billionaire owner, has received an acerbic welcome from local resident, Sally Kaye. 

In a piece published in Civil Beat Monday, she laments what she calls the feudal-serf system that has existed on Lanai since the 1850s. 

You have to understand that since the 1850’s and Walter Murray Gibson and all those Mormons, this island has been owned and exploited by one really rich guy or another. There are generations here who don’t know any other way to live but under some sort of feudal-serf system. I know this is bizarre, that such a medieval lord-of-the-manor system of control could still be functioning in the Land of the Free, but there you have it.

She also takes the local union to task, offers some departing criticism for David Murdock and criticizes media coverage of the sale. 

Read her commentary and weigh in on the conversation here.