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Hawaii Legislature 2022 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty and Racial Entitlement Programs. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Webpage published February 7, 2022 and then updated until end of session in May, whenever a new bill or resolution relevant to Hawaiian sovereignty was introduced and got a committee hearing.

Here is an internal search engine allowing you to find all pages on this website which discuss the topic you're interested in.

BACKGROUND ON HAWAIIAN RACIAL ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE, AND EFFORTS TO PROTECT THEM BY CREATING A FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED HAWAIIAN TRIBE THROUGH AN ACT OF CONGRESS (THE AKAKA BILL 2000-2012) OR A REGULATION ENACTED BY PROCLAMATION OF OBAMA'S U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR (43CFR50, developed 2013-2016 but available for implementation at any time)

The Hawaii legislature is dominated by Democrats, most of whom are far to the left on the political spectrum. Legislation focusing on ethnic Hawaiians is often explicitly and shockingly favorable to racial supremacy, racial separatism in the tribal concept, and/or restoration of Hawaii as an independent nation. That's because ethnic Hawaiians as a group are the state pet: see "NATIVE HAWAIIANS AS THE STATE PET OR MASCOT: A Psychological Analysis of Why the People of Hawaii Tolerate and Irrationally Support Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawnsasmascots.html

Hawaii has hundreds of racial entitlement programs. See webpage "For Hawaiians Only. Webpages identifying and describing government funded racial entitlement programs providing benefits exclusively to Native Hawaiians using taxpayer dollars from the U.S. and State of Hawaii." at
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/ForHawaiiansOnly.html

These programs provide financial benefits or governmental authority (such as advisory councils or fishing rights) exclusively to people who have at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood. People without a drop of the magic blood cannot receive benefits or serve on these special commissions. Racial entitlement programs are stepping stones to political sovereignty. The Akaka bill in Congress was pushed hard but unsuccessfully during the period 2000-2012. After that a four-year process within the U.S. Department of Interior created a new pathway for federal recognition for a Hawaiian tribe through a regulation 43CFR50 proclaimed in the Federal Register on October 14, 2016. One of the primary purposes of that 16 year effort has been to provide a legal defense against lawsuits to abolish racial entitlement programs on the grounds that they violate the 14th Amendment clause requiring that government must treat all people equally under the law regardless of race. Federally recognized tribes are allowed to discriminate, including tax-supported racial entitlement programs; but federal, state, and local governments are not. During the four years from 2017 through 2020 there was no significant activity to create a Hawaiian tribe either in Congress or through the Department of Interior regulation, probably because everyone realized that President Trump, along with the Republican-controlled Senate, would block any such effort. During 2021 and 2022 the Biden administration, and his Native American Secretary of Interior, are causing expectations to rise that somehow a Hawaiian tribe will be created; and that expectation is heightened by the fact that Hawaii Senator Schatz is chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee and Hawaii Congressman Kai Kahele is ethnic Hawaiian.

Legislation in Hawaii for racial entitlement programs or race-based political power is usually passed unanimously, showing no difference between Democrats and Republicans, most of whom might be called RINOs (Republicans in name only). In previous years there might be an occasional "Nay" vote by the lone Republican Senator Sam Slom, who is politically conservative. As the only Republican in the Senate he was automatically a member of every committee but therefore was physically unable to attend most committee hearings. However, Senator Slom suffered major health issues in 2016 and was defeated for re-election. The Hawaii state Senate during 2017-2018 was the only state legislative body in the U.S. where all members belong to a single political party. For 2019-2022 there is one alleged Republican in the Senate (Kurt Fevella), but he is ethnic Hawaiian, engages in political activism favoring Hawaiian racial entitlement programs, and leans left and votes the same way as the Democrats on nearly every item. In the state House which has 51 Representatives only 4 are Republicans; and their longtime leader Gene Ward was a strong pusher of the Akaka bill and remains a strong supporter of racial entitlement programs.

The bills and resolutions covered in this webpage are troubling. The public should study them to get a grasp of how real are the dangers of racial separatism and ethnic nationalism in Hawaii. Citizens should phone or write to their legislators to express outrage when a legislator sponsors or votes in favor of bills and resolutions like these, which are both dangerous and ridiculous.

HOW THIS WEBPAGE TRACKS HAWAII LEGISLATION DURING 2022

Each bill or resolution has its own webpage on the legislature's website. On that webpage there are links to full text of the bill or resolution, list of all the committee hearings including a record of how each legislator voted, a pdf file containing all the written testimony, and the official committee report for each committee. If a bill or resolution is introduced in either the House or Senate and also has a duplicate companion introduced in the other chamber, links are provided to the webpages for both of them. Full text is also provided of the testimony of Ken Conklin on behalf of the Center for Hawaiian Sovereignty Studies. Conklin's testimony was provided to each committee, usually as a formatted pdf file on letterhead, or occasionally as unformatted shorter comment. Conklin's testimony can be seen in each committee's file of all testimony; but is also provided here on this webpage in simple text to save bandwidth. Some bills appropriate millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions of dollars!) while other non-monetary bills or resolutions are focused on culture or language; and are generally listed in order of the date when the first hearing for a bill or resolution is scheduled, or its clone companion is scheduled in the other chamber.

This webpage was created on February 13, 2022 after numerous different bills (not counting cloned companions) had already had hearings held or scheduled in either the House or Senate, or both, for which Ken Conklin had submitted testimony. Items are listed approximately in chronological order according to the date of their first hearing. More items were added to this webpage through the end of the legislative session in May, as new items got introduced and had committee hearings and Ken Conklin submitted testimony. However, ordinarily only Conklin's testimony on the first version of a bill or resolution was posted here. Amended versions of bills or resolutions and new testimony can be tracked through the legislature's webpage for that item as listed below.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: List of bills and resolutions on which Conklin testified, in the order they appear below, for the 2021 Hawaii Legislature. Scroll down to find the one that interests you. They are in chronological order of when each item had its first committee hearing, not necessarily in the order of their importance.

SB2021
RELATING TO INCREASING THE PAYMENT AMOUNT FOR THE OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS' PRO RATA SHARE OF THE PUBLIC LAND TRUST.
Requires agencies that collect receipts for any disposition of the public land trust to each fiscal quarter transfer to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs twenty per cent of each receipt from the disposition. Returns to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs certain moneys previously claimed as public land trust overpayments to the office. Establishes a public land trust revenues negotiating committee exempted from part I of chapter 92, Hawaii Revised Statutes.

SB2122
RELATING TO INCREASING THE OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS' PRO RATA SHARE OF THE PUBLIC LAND TRUST.
Establishes the Office of Hawaiian Affairs' pro rata share of the moneys derived from the public land trust. Transfers moneys to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for income and proceeds due from the use of the public land trust lands between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2022, that was misallocated, underreported, or underpaid to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

SB2594
RELATING TO PUBLIC LAND TRUST FUNDS
Requires agencies that collect receipts for any disposition of the public land trust shall each fiscal quarter transfer to the department of Hawaiian home lands or the office of Hawaiian affairs twenty per cent of each receipt from the disposition. Returns certain moneys previously claimed as public land trust overpayments to the office of Hawaiian affairs. Establishes a public land trust revenues negotiating committee.

SB3359
RELATING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS.
Establishes the Hawaiian home lands special fund. Appropriates funds into and out of the special fund for DHHL to enable beneficiaries of the Hawaiian home lands trust to acquire a residence and to enable the department to fulfill its fiduciary duties to beneficiaries.
[There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $600,000,000 ...]

SB3101
RELATING TO TAX EXEMPTION.
Exempts any homestead development for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands from general excise taxes.

SB3104
RELATING TO INTERIM ADMINISTRATIVE RULES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS.
Allows the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands after beneficiary consultation and upon approval by the Hawaiian Homes Commission to issue interim rules that shall be exempt from the public notice, public hearing, and gubernatorial approval requirements of chapter 91, Hawaii Revised Statutes. The interim rules shall be effective for not more than eighteen months.

SB2035
RELATING TO REGENERATIVE TOURISM.
Incorporates a regenerative framework into the State Planning Act by expanding objectives and policies for the visitor industry.

HB2491
RELATING TO THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE.
Requires all letterheads, documents, state highway signs, symbols, and emblems of the State and other political subdivisions that include Hawaiian names or words to include consistent Hawaiian names, spelling, and punctuation, including the use of kahako and �okina. Establishes references for consistent Hawaiian names and words, including consistent Hawaiian spelling and punctuation. Requires the governor, lieutenant governor, state legislators, and heads of principal departments to prominently display a Hawaiian language translation of the name of their respective office or department at least once on the main page of their official website and in the letterhead of their stationery. Clarifies that the full text of bills and other official documents are not required to be written in Hawaiian and that inconsistently spelled or punctuated Hawaiian words and names shall not invalidate the documents or render them unenforceable and no cause of action shall arise accordingly.

HB1449
RELATING TO JUNETEENTH DAY.
Makes Juneteenth Day a state holiday.
AND
HB2475
RELATING TO STATE HOLIDAYS.
Removes election days as designated state holidays. Establishes July 31 as La Hoihoi Ea.
** Also includes very different amended HB2475 HD1which makes no mention of abolishing election day as state holiday and also changes proposed La Ho'iho'i Ea to merely a "special day of observance rather than a state holiday" [and therefore no day off with pay for government employees]

SB2770 and HB2311
RELATING TO NATIVE HAWAIIAN REHABILITATION PROGRAMS.
  Appropriates funds to the Department of Public Safety to collaborate with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs the creation of a Native Hawaiian rehabilitation program for prison inmates, which puts an emphasis on Native Hawaiian values and cultural practices.

SB879
RELATING TO COUNTIES.
Gives counties jurisdiction over the infrastructure of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands housing developments in their boundaries under specific conditions. Requires counties, under specific conditions, to commence maintenance on that certain infrastructure within sixty days.

SB3357 and HB2499
RELATING TO NATIVE HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS.
Requires certain departments and agencies to provide grants to tax-exempt non-profit organizations that have experience and expertise in supporting and advancing Native Hawaiian communities.

SB2828 and HB1894
RELATING TO HUMAN REMAINS.
 Includes the use of traditional native Hawaiian burial practices in the treatment and disposal of human remains, including the use of water cremation or alkaline hydrolysis.

SB2734 and HB1870
RELATING TO THE JUDICIARY'S �OLELO HAWAI�I INITIATIVES.
 Appropriates funds for staff positions and various services to support the �Olelo Hawai�i Initiatives.

SB 3218
RELATING TO HAWAIIAN RECOGNITION DAY.
 Designates November 28 of each year as La Kuokoa, Hawaiian Recognition Day, to celebrate the historical recognition of the independence of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

SB 3013
RELATING TO THE KAHO�OLAWE ISLAND RESERVE COMMISSION.
 Appropriates funds for the Kaho�olawe island reserve commission and to fund two full-time equivalent permanent positions for the Kaho�olawe island reserve commission.

HB 2024
RELATING TO MAUNA KEA.
 Establishes the Mauna Kea stewardship authority as the sole authority for management of state-managed lands on Mauna Kea. Requires the authority to develop a single plan that dictates the management of land uses; human activities, uses, and access; stewardship, education; research, disposition; and overall operations. Requires the authority to develop a framework to limit astronomy development on Mauna Kea. Prohibits certain commercial use and activities on Mauna Kea. Requires an application and fee for all recreational users of Mauna Kea. Establishes Mauna Kea management special fund. Repeals Mauna Kea lands management special fund. Appropriates funds.

** On March 22-23, 2022 the Senate Committee on Higher Education made a large number of amendments, basically creating a new bill with very different provisions. The new version of the bill was then forwarded to its final regular committee (Ways and Means) in the Senate and then, if the full Senate passes it, the bill will go back to the House to seek agreement with the Senate version or else will then go to a joint House/Senate committee which will try to reach a compromise which both chambers might agree to. Accordingly, Ken Conklin completely rewrote his testimony for the Ways and Means Committee, while retaining important objections from his original testimony.

HCR27
REQUESTING THE UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU TO RE- DESIGNATE THE CENSUS-DESIGNATED PLACE KNOWN AS CAPTAIN COOK ON THE ISLAND OF HAWAII AS KA�AWALOA AND REQUESTING HAWAII COUNTY TO REMOVE ALL REFERENCES TO CAPTAIN COOK AS A PLACE NAME ON THE ISLAND OF HAWAII.

HCR15/HR14
RECOGNIZING MARCH 17 AS ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN HONOR OF SAINT PATRICK AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE LONGSTANDING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IRELAND AND THE UNITED STATES AND THE NOTEWORTHY CONTRIBUTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF IRISH- AMERICANS TO OUR NATION.

HCR104/HR100
and
SCR119/SR106
URGING THE BOARD OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES TO RENAME THE RUSSIAN FORT ELISABETH STATE HISTORICAL PARK IN WAIMEA, KAUA�I, AS "PA�ULA�ULA"

SCR125/SR110
REQUESTING THE DEPARTMENT OF HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS TO ESTABLISH A WORKING GROUP TO RETURN CROWN LANDS TO NATIVE HAWAIIANS.

HCR130/HR130
APOLOGIZING TO THE NATIVE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE FOR THE EFFECTIVE PROHIBITION IN HAWAII SCHOOLS OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL USE OF THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE FROM 1896 TO 1986.

HCR26/HR24
URGING THE BOARD OF EDUCATION AND DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO CHANGE THE NAME OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL BACK TO HONOLULU HIGH SCHOOL AND REMOVE THE STATUE OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY FROM THE SCHOOL PREMISES.

SCR159, SD1
URGING THE OFFICE OF PLANNING AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TO DEVELOP A PLAN TO INCLUDE A SPECIFIC ROLE FOR THE NATIVE HAWAIIAN COMMUNITY IN THE COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT PLAN.

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FULL TEXT OF KEN CONKLIN'S TESTIMONY ON EACH BILL OR RESOLUTION, AND LINKS TO LEGISLATURE'S WEBSITE WHERE THE PROGRESS OF EACH ITEM IS TRACKED AND FILE OF ALL TESTIMONY IS PROVIDED

The first three bills shown here all have the same basic theme. The bill numbers and descriptions and links are provided for all three. Ken Conklin's testimony was basically the same for each of them and therefore is provided only once.
Background:
In 2022 the State government had a huge stash of unspent money received from the federal government's COVID relief bill passed in 2021; so politicians were eager to figure out how to grab as much as possible for their favorite projects. OHA (Office of Hawaiian Affairs) and DHHL (Department of Hawaiian Homelands) launched major publicity campaigns to get megabucks exclusively for ethnic Hawaiians. House Speaker Saiki announced he will seek $600 Million as a gift to DHHL to shorten a lease waitlist of 28,000 eligible individuals (>= 50% native blood). OHA lobbyists were successful in getting several bills introduced on the first day of the session demanding $638 Million in alleged arrears of ceded land revenues during the last 10 years, and setting $79 Million as the interim amount to be paid every year until an accurate accounting can be completed, and requiring amounts to be calculated and paid quarterly from every department.

** First of 3 bills:
SB2021
RELATING TO INCREASING THE PAYMENT AMOUNT FOR THE OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS' PRO RATA SHARE OF THE PUBLIC LAND TRUST.
Requires agencies that collect receipts for any disposition of the public land trust to each fiscal quarter transfer to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs twenty per cent of each receipt from the disposition. Returns to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs certain moneys previously claimed as public land trust overpayments to the office. Establishes a public land trust revenues negotiating committee exempted from part I of chapter 92, Hawaii Revised Statutes.

** Second of 3 bills: SB2122
RELATING TO INCREASING THE OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS' PRO RATA SHARE OF THE PUBLIC LAND TRUST.
Establishes the Office of Hawaiian Affairs' pro rata share of the moneys derived from the public land trust. Transfers moneys to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for income and proceeds due from the use of the public land trust lands between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2022, that was misallocated, underreported, or underpaid to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

** Third of 3 bills: SB2594
RELATING TO PUBLIC LAND TRUST FUNDS
Requires agencies that collect receipts for any disposition of the public land trust shall each fiscal quarter transfer to the department of Hawaiian home lands or the office of Hawaiian affairs twenty per cent of each receipt from the disposition. Returns certain moneys previously claimed as public land trust overpayments to the office of Hawaiian affairs. Establishes a public land trust revenues negotiating committee.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION to all three bills:

Noting outrageous demand for $638 Million in arrears plus $79 Million per year in future for OHA from ceded land revenues, exclusively for "betterment of Native Hawaiians" who comprise 20% of Hawaii's people, with no set-aside of 4 times those amounts exclusively for the other 80% of Hawaii's people who lack a drop of Hawaiian blood..

SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS:

1. The legislature always has the power to amend or rescind any statute law. Act 273 (1980) requiring payment of 20% of ceded land revenue to OHA has created 40 years of bitter controversy and litigation. Act 273 (1980) should be rescinded. OHA should be funded the same way as other departments of the State government, through ordinary budget appropriations. Put an end to OHA's incessant lawsuits over the 20% rule.

2. If the legislature chooses to maintain the 20% rule, the base for calculating 20% should be net income after expenses, not gross revenue. Taxpayers pay for all capital investments and operating expenses whereby the ceded lands are enabled to produce revenue, so it is illegal and immoral for OHA to siphon off gross revenue while the other 80% of the land trust beneficiaries, lacking a drop of Hawaiian blood, pay all the costs and receive none of the revenue.

3. The Ceded Lands Trust costs the State many times more annually for operating expense than the 1.2 million acres bring in. A previous state Director of finance and a Land Information Systems Manager acknowledged in a formal court declaration that this disparity between trust expenses and trust receipts has occurred in every year since statehood. Thus there is no net income from the ceded lands to be distributed to OHA or any of the other ceded land trust beneficiaries named in Section 5(f) of the Statehood Admissions Act -- the ceded lands money distributed to OHA is actually tax dollars in disguise.

4. Section 5(f) of the statehood Admissions Act identifies 5 purposes for which ceded land revenues can be used. So what about the remaining 4 purposes in addition to "betterment of native Hawaiians"? If OHA gets a dedicated 20% of ceded land revenue to fulfill one of the 5 purposes, then the public school system should also be getting its own dedicated 20% portion; the development of low-income housing should be getting its 20% portion; the Department of Land and Natural Resources (especially the Parks Department) should be getting its 20% portion; etc.

5. For the first 20 years of statehood, 100% of ceded land revenue was given to the public schools, where 26% of the children are Native Hawaiians. Thus 26% of ceded land revenues went for the betterment of Native Hawaiians, without any need for race-specific earmarking. Remove racial entitlements, which are both unconstitutional and immoral.

6. As a condition for receiving budget appropriations or ceded land revenues, OHA should be required to fulfill whatever obligation the State may have to fund the operation of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands -- especially the huge amount of alleged arrears which a court decision ordered the legislature to pay. The legislature often raids special funds such as the Highway fund or Hurricane Relief fund to balance the budget or transfer to other departments, so why should OHA be treated any differently?

7. The dollar amount specified in this bill for future annual payments is unsupportable by facts. The dollar amount for makeup of alleged arrears is both unsupportable by facts and would violate previous agreements negotiated in good faith. Both amounts are outrageous drains on State finances and violations of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause.

SOME DETAILS ABOUT THOSE POINTS

1. There is a long history of contentious negotiation, legislation, and litigation over the amount of money owed to OHA under the rule specifying 20% of ceded land revenue. The first half of this bill reviews some of the elements of that history. The requirement to pay OHA 20% of ceded land revenue is statutory law enacted as Act 273, Session laws of 1980. It is not in the Statehood Admissions Act nor in the State Constitution. Therefore, this law can be amended by the legislature at any time to reduce the percentage; or the law can be rescinded entirely.

Act 273, Session laws of 1980 should be rescinded. OHA should be funded in the same manner as any other branch of the State government; i.e., by an appropriation included in the annual or biennial State budget, including a line-item listing of the purposes for which the money is to be spent. Then there would be no further conflict or litigation over how to calculate the 20%. This bill proposes yet another in a long history of complicated formulas for calculating the number of dollars required by the 20% rule. Over the years these recalculations have come to resemble a Rube Goldberg device where a long series of tracks, levers, springs, bells, and whistles eventually propel a ball to its final destination. Let's get rid of that nonsense.

Repeal the 20% rule and fund OHA by ordinary budget appropriations in the same way as any other department of the State government.

Act 273 (1980) says "twenty per cent of all funds derived from the public land trust ... shall be expended by the office of Hawaiian affairs ... for the purposes of this chapter." Act 273 does not say the funds may be invested in an investment portfolio, it says the funds SHALL BE EXPENDED to provide services. Yet OHA seems to think it can grab tens of millions of dollars every year which it then invests or uses for political purposes such as lobbying for the Akaka bill or building a racial registry for "nationbuilding", but OHA fails to provide more than sporadic and inadequate funding for purposes which OHA should be supporting.

According to its 2020 Annual Report, OHA has $666 Million in assets. No other agency of the state government is allowed to squirrel away huge amounts of wealth as a permanent cash stash. At its current level of expenditures OHA has enough money in its slush fund to meet all its budget needs for more than a decade. Stop feeding this beast.

2. If the legislature unwisely chooses to keep the requirement of a specific percentage of ceded land revenue to be paid to OHA, then the legislature should write into law that the percentage must be calculated on the base of NET INCOME AFTER EXPENSES rather than gross revenue. It costs a lot of money to construct roads and buildings, supply water and electricity, and pay salaries of staff who operate or maintain the facilities that generate revenue from the ceded lands. Those capital expenditures and operating expenses should be deducted from gross revenue to determine the net income to be used when applying the percentage to calculate how much money to pay to OHA. In many if not most cases, government lands and infrastructure operate at a loss because their purpose is to provide services rather than to make a profit. That's why government imposes taxes in order to provide funding for its operations. Taxpayers pay for all capital investments and operating expenses whereby the ceded lands are enabled to produce revenue, so it is illegal and immoral for OHA to siphon off gross revenue while other land trust beneficiaries pay all the costs and receive none of the revenue.

3. In 2008 Georgina K. Kawamura, Director of Finance of the State of Hawaii, and Arthur J. Buto, State Land Information Systems Manager, stated in a formal court declaration that the Ceded Lands Trust costs the State many times more annually than the 1.2 million acres bring in. They also acknowledged that this disparity between trust expenses and trust receipts has occurred in every year since statehood. Thus there is no net income from the ceded lands to be distributed to OHA or any of the other ceded land trust beneficiaries named in Section 5(f) of the Statehood Admissions Act -- the ceded lands money already distributed to OHA is actually tax dollars in disguise. As attorney H. William Burgess said in 2002, "This can be fairly characterized as a confession of guilt to systematic and massive misappropriation of trust funds over the last three decades." From July 1, 1990 to June 30, 2002 OHA and DHHL together cost the State treasury more than a Billion dollars, and in 2002 the estimated cost for the following 10 years from July 1, 2004 through June 2014 was projected to be an additional two Billion dollars, for a total of three Billion dollars. See documentation of these figures, including spreadsheets filed in Arakaki v. Lingle, at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/ ohadhhlburdenstatetreasury.html

4. Here is the relevant language from section 5(f) of the statehood Admissions Act identifying the 5 purposes for the use of ceded land revenues: "... for the support of the public schools and other public educational institutions, for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, as defined in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, as amended, for the development of farm and home ownership on as widespread a basis as possible for the making of public improvements, and for the provision of lands for public use." So what about the remaining 4 purposes in addition to betterment of native Hawaiians? If OHA gets a dedicated 20% of ceded land revenue to fulfill one of the 5 purposes, then the public school system plus UH should also be getting its own dedicated 20% portion; the development of low-income housing should be getting its 20% portion; the Department of Land and Natural Resources (especially the Parks Department) and the Highway Department should be getting its 20% portion; etc. Furthermore, each of those departments should be getting its money quarterly as the bill requires for OHA, and in the same dollar amount. Really?

A valuable webpage providing information about 856 government funded racial entitlement programs for the exclusive benefit of "Native Hawaiians" was disrupted but has now been partially restored. Several other webpages on the same topic are also available. All these programs, valued into the Billions of dollars, are paid for by tax dollars from the governments of the United States and the State of Hawaii. It is likely that these programs are unconstitutional. Some have been challenged in state and federal courts. Thus far the lawsuits to dismantle them have been dismissed on technical procedural issues including "standing" and the "political question" doctrine. However, those dismissals never reached the merits of these cases. Thus all these programs remain available as targets for future civil rights lawsuits based on the 14th Amendment equal protection clause and other arguments. Keep in mind that this compilation pertains only to government programs funded by taxpayers, and does not include enormous privately funded programs such as Kamehameha Schools (Bishop Estate) which alone is worth $10-15 Billion, Lili'uokalani Childrens Trust, and many others. More recently, the U.S. Department of Interior, Office of Native Hawaiian Relations, has published a 217- page list of federal programs and grants for ethnic Hawaiians. See details on the webpage "For Hawaiians Only" at
http://tinyurl.com/zrfuy8k

6. As a condition for receiving budget appropriations or ceded land revenues, OHA should be required to fulfill whatever obligation the State may have to fund the operation of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands -- especially the huge amount of alleged arrears which a court decision ordered the legislature to pay. Let the Office of HAWAIIAN affairs support the Department of HAWAIIAN homelands -- that's the real reason why Section 5(f) of the 1959 Admissions Act specified that one purpose for which ceded land revenues can be spent is "for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians AS DEFINED IN THE HAWAIIAN HOMES COMMISSION ACT, 1920."

According to its annual report for 2020, OHA currently has over $666 Million in assets. No other agency of the state government is allowed to squirrel away huge amounts of wealth as a permanent cash stash. At its current level of expenditures OHA has enough money in its slush fund to meet all its budget needs for more than a decade. Enough already! Stop feeding this beast. No wonder the State is having budget problems!

7. The $79 Million specified in this bill for future annual payments is unsupportable by facts. The $638 Million for makeup of alleged arrears is both unsupportable by facts and would violate previous agreements negotiated in good faith. Both amounts are outrageous drains on State finances and violations of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause.

In year 2019 the first draft of HB402, a bill comparable to this one, would establish $35,000,000 as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs� annual share of the income and proceeds of the public land trust beginning in the next fiscal year. Furthermore that bill would transfer to the Office of Hawaiian affairs a sum of $139,000,000 to pay OHA amounts received from the use of the public land trust that were allegedly underpaid between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2019.

Those dollar amounts were unsupportable by facts. There is no inventory of the ceded lands, which is why the state Supreme Court several years ago dismissed OHA's lawsuit as non-justiciable -- there was no way for the court to calculate dollar amounts of ceded land revenues produced from lands for which there was no inventory list.

The dollar amounts now specified in 2022 are absurd and outrageous increases when compared with the dollar amounts in HB402 of 2019 covering years 2012 to 2019. Furthermore, if these figures are based on 20% of ceded lands revenue because Section 5(f) of the 1959 Admissions Act identifies 5 purposes, then the same amounts must be given to each of the other 4 purposes for ceded lands revenue.

The U.S. Constitution requires that government must treat all persons equally under the law regardless of race. Whatever sums are specified exclusively for ethnic Hawaiians, who comprise about 20% of population, then where are quadruple those amounts for exclusive use for the remaining 80% who have no Hawaiian blood?

OHA previously reached a settlement with the State, enacted into law by the legislature, regarding annual payments in lieu of indeterminable ceded land revenues. State land in Kaka'ako valued by mutual agreement at $200,000,000 was transferred to OHA. Comes now OHA crying that the agreed-upon dollar amount was too low. Boo-hoo! How much is enough? Political pressure to pass this bill, along with propaganda film broadcast repeatedly on TV, are evidence that no amount would ever be enough to satisfy the monster that is devouring Hawaii. Enough already! Stop feeding this beast.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION:

$600 Million for houses for the 28,000 families on the DHHL waitlist. Also another bill already approved by this committee calls for $638 Million in arrears plus $79 Million per year in future for OHA from ceded land revenues, exclusively for "betterment of Native Hawaiians" who comprise 20% of Hawaii's people; with no set-aside of 4 times those amounts exclusively for the other 80% of Hawaii's people who lack a drop of Hawaiian blood. What about money for DHHL: Department of Haole Homelands? And don't forget another bill before this committee that will force each county government to pay the construction costs and maintenance of water, roads, and other infrastructure on the DHHL lands it hosts.

$600 Million + $638 Million = $1.238 BILLION just this year alone! Exclusively for "Native Hawaiians" even while they also continue to benefit from all the remaining government programs that benefit all our people. As the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois might say: A Billion here, a Billion there -- pretty soon you'll be talking about real money!

Hmm ... Checking my math. $600 Million to help 28,000 waitlisters. That's $21,429 per house. In our Hawaii realestate market that might be enough for a 2-hole outhouse like my grandparents had in rural Michigan. But will the money simply be handed over to the waitlisters? Of course not. It must be filtered through a huge bureaucracy and given to construction contractors to build roads and water lines on the racially segregated ghettos where houses can only be "owned" in leasehold. How much more money will be demanded every year forever for DHHL?

Here's a better idea. According to OHA's latest annual report, on June 30, 2021 OHA had assets of $764,820,000. So let OHA pay the $600 Million, and they'll still have $165 Million to play with. Then the $600 Million which the legislature wants to squander on DHHL can be used to provide tax reductions for our hard-pressed taxpayers, or books and toiletpaper for our schools. Why should OHA be expected to pay the $600 Million to DHHL? Because they can! And because within the last 24 hours OHA has send out an email or text message to everyone on its roster asking for testimony to support this bill. Clearly OHA favors the bill. Clearly OHA believes it is part of OHA's kuleana to use government money to engage in political lobbying for bills providing benefits exclusively to people of its highly favored race. So let OHA put its money where its mouth is. You legislators have the power to "raid" money from any special fund or any department of the state government, as you have often done with the Hurricane Relief Fund or the money controlled by the Highway Department. It's time for you to exercise that power to rein in OHA and save the rest of Hawaii's people from the monster that threatens to devour the State.

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SB3101
RELATING TO TAX EXEMPTION.
Exempts any homestead development for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands from general excise taxes.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION:

This bill proposes to exempt from Hawaii's general excise tax any homestead development on DHHL lands, including not only new construction but also rehabilitation or renovation of existing houses or rental apartments.

As the bill points out, "The legislature finds that lands utilized by the department of Hawaiian home lands to provide homesteads for native Hawaiians are offered at affordable rates when compared to similar development available in Hawaii." Actually the land itself is offered for lease rent of one dollar per year for 99 years. The counties further subsidize the residents by providing zero or extremely low property tax while nevertheless giving the same services provided to fully-taxed homes including water, sewage, trash pickup, police protection, etc.

And why do the residents receive land and services at far lower expense that their neighbors across the street? It's only because an individual leaseholder in a possibly large family has at least 50% native blood, or perhaps has inherited the lease with only 1/4 native blood, or under a new law enacted last year need have as little as 1/32.

Meanwhile the 80% of Hawaii's people lacking native blood must pay the full amount of excise tax not only on housing but also on the bare necessities of life including food, medical care, clothing, etc. And Speaker Saiki proposes to suddenly throw $600 Million to DHHL while most legislators seem reluctant to support Governor Ige's proposal of a meager $100 refund of excessive income tax.

Race-based government handouts are both illegal and immoral. Stop it!

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION:

This bill, if enacted, would strike a blow against openness and transparency at DHHL, which is an agency of the state government. It's nice that DHHL management would consult with DHHL beneficiaries during the rulemaking process, and would require the resulting rules to be rubber-stamped by the Hawaiian Homes Commission before they could be implemented. But there's no good reason why DHHL should be allowed to block the general public, or news reporters, from observing what's happening. This bill says rulemaking and the resulting rules "shall be exempt from the public notice, public hearing, and gubernatorial approval requirements" of HRS Chapter 91. What sort of nepotism, favoritism, or corruption are they trying to hide? Last year DHHL leadership was trying to rush through a proposal for gambling casinos on DHHL lands. This year Speaker Saiki has announced he wants to throw $600 Million into DHHL. The timing of this proposal for an exemption from public scrutiny adds an extra layer of stink to what would already have a bad smell. DHHL is not a private company, and not (yet) an agency inside one of Jack Abramov's corrupt tribal governments. The 18-month limit on the exemption allows plenty of time for the slime under the rock to grow virulent. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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SB2035
RELATING TO REGENERATIVE TOURISM.
Incorporates a regenerative framework into the State Planning Act by expanding objectives and policies for the visitor industry.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION:

Everything in this bill is worthy of strong support, except that Section 1(b)(9) ["Form community partnerships to ensure Native Hawaiian cultural integrity"] needs to be either deleted in its entirety or else reworded to ensure that the concerns of all racial/cultural groups are given equal prominence and equal support. If rewording is the option chosen to repair this bill, then that rewording must ensure that vagueness, or words with ambiguous meanings, will not provide a trojan horse for racial entitlement programs, race-based political power, or ethnically disproportionate favoritism in the management of land or cultural resources or in the way such resources are described to kama'aina (Hawaii residents) or malihini (tourists).

For example, should visitors (both residents and tourists) to certain special places be required to undergo an "orientation" program, video, lecture, or escorted tour? There is a good orientation program at Hanauma Bay, where all visitors are told how to snorkel responsibly and must not stand on the coral because that kills it -- this orientation program is racially/culturally neutral and free from divisive propaganda. There is a bad situation at Iolani Palace which has fallen under the control of Hawaiian sovereignty zealots, who focus on the "imprisonment room" and the beautiful songs and quilt created by the wonderful Lili'uokalani who was "illegally overthrown" by the USA [false], without explaining how she demanded the beheading of the local men who overthrew her, why she was imprisoned for conspiracy in a violent counterrevolution, and that she abdicated and swore allegiance to the Republic, and was fully pardoned by her magnanimous friend President Dole. The focus is on the ten years when the Palace was the Capitol of the Kingdom, but no mention of the 5 years when it was Capitol of the Republic and 70 years when it was Capitol of the Territory of Hawaii proudly flying the U.S. flag on the highest center pole. Iolani Palace is owned by the Department of Parks within DLNR, on behalf of all Hawaii's people. But is has become a propaganda factory miseducating kama'aina and malihini, leading them to believe it remains the Capitol of a still-living Kingdom of Hawaii where the spirit of Lili'uokalani still lives.

Items 1(b)(9)(C and D) are especially open to mischievous interpretation regarding "kapu" and "environmentally sensitive" places. Should the summit of Mauna Kea, and the Pu'ukohola Heiau, be regarded as off-limits except to ethnic Hawaiians or perhaps also to a very few specially invited guests escorted by "minders" who perform inspirational protocol designed to "wow" the visitors, accompanied with lectures on the beauty of the ancient religion (not mentioning the ugliness of human sacrifice and expulsion of women from their homes for several days of monthly sequestration)?

Item 1(b)(9)(F) is particularly troubling with its requirement for "protecting Hawaiian cultural intellectual property, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions." For many years Hawaiian hula teachers including a group known as 'Ilioulokalani" have tried to organize a monopoly on who should be recognized as kumu hula and allowed to create hula halau.

In 2004 there were companion bills in the legislature (SB 643 and HB 2034) following up the work of a special legislative commission, including public hearings, seeking to mandate strict control and licensing of "bioprospecting", which is the collection of small samples of plants in the forest or scum from ponds that might be used for discovery of chemicals to develop disease-curing drugs. There was a huge publicity campaign to persuade the public that such activity should be rigorously licensed by our state government and by OHA, to ensure that Native Hawaiians could control the research methods (because of their genealogical relationship as siblings to the 'aina) and make lots of money from any products developed as a result of bioprospecting. The propaganda warned that we are under threat because outsiders will come to Hawaii, scoop some scum from a pond, take it to the lab, and create a drug to cure cancer and make zillions of dollars without paying Native Hawaiians. The concept was that all products from the 'aina, and even newly discovered uses for them, rightfully belong to ethnic Hawaiians as their cultural heritage and intellectual property. The bills proposed a special agency of the state government to regulate bioprospecting -- and specified how the agency's members must be chosen in a way that guaranteed a majority of ethnic Hawaiians. See my webpage
"Hawaii Bioprospecting Bill -- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (a bill to regulate biological research on public lands is a trojan horse for racial supremacy in land use policy)" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/bioprospecting.html

This bill, in its present form, would bestow ethnic-Hawaiian control over the visitor industry, disrespecting and violating the rights of all other racial/ethnic/cultural groups, opening the door to such nonsense as the proposals of the hula masters and bioprospecting agitators. Consider the tens of thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Portuguese, Puerto Ricans, and others who worked on the sugar plantations and whose descendants and their cultures are integral components of what makes Hawaii special. Should Native Hawaiians be designated to control the Plantation Village in Waipahu? What about the East-West Center? Celebrations of Chinese New Year? Kualoa Ranch?

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT:

The Center for Hawaiian Sovereignty Studies is delighted to support both the intent and the actual contents of this bill, which is a vast improvement over previous bills regarding Hawaiian language that were active during numerous recent years.

Hawaiian language is a great treasure for the people of Hawaii and for all the world. It deserves not only to survive but to thrive. It needs to be "normalized" meaning that people should see it written and hear it spoken in the context of everyday life, even if they themselves do not routinely write or speak it themselves. Hopefully people will casually, informally, and gradually "pick up" the vocabulary, sentence patterns, cadence, and metaphors from hearing fluent speakers in the same way as tourists or immigrants acquire the language of the place where they sojourn or take up permanent residence.

This bill correctly states "[D]ue to a myriad of political, economic, and social pressures, the Hawaiian language was materially marginalized, leading to its atrophy and eventual formal and practical exclusion from public and civic spaces."

Previous bills have stated or implied the racially inflammatory falsehood that Hawaiian language was made illegal as a method whereby the evil haoles who overthrew the beloved Queen oppressed the native people and destroyed their culture. This idea is even found in three places in a short subpage on the Department of Education's website, which the administrators refused to correct despite strong evidence disproving it. See
"Was Hawaiian Language Illegal?" https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangillegal.html
"Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned."
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html
"Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangpublvictclaims.html
"Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon"
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/HawLangPolitWeapon.html

For more than a century, from about 1850 to about 1980, Hawaiian language continuously declined as a language of everyday usage. The decline accelerated as King Kalakaua vigorously recruited tens of thousands of Japanese and Chinese to work on the sugar plantations, while the economy and culture (and hence revenues for the government) were increasingly dominated by English-speaking businessmen. Immigrants who chose to make Hawaii their permanent home nearly always chose to learn English rather than Hawaiian for everyday use, because English was far more practical; and native Hawaiian parents began demanding that their children speak English even at home so they could thrive in their own homeland. Two UH "liberal" scholars confirmed that by 1892, while the monarchy still held power, 95% of all the government schools were using English as the language of instruction because that's what parents and government leaders demanded [John Reinecke dissertation 1935 and UH Press book 1969; Albert Schutz, "Voices of Eden", 1994]. Even Queen Lili'uokalani chose English as the language for her speech on opening day of the legislature. Starting around 1980 there has been a growing effort to revive Hawaiian language and pride in Hawaiian culture, including large levels of funding from the federal and state governments. I was a beneficiary of one such program as I spent three years immediately upon immigrating to Hawaii from Boston, taking Hawaiian language courses free of charge at Windward School for Adults night school at Kalaheo High School, 1992-1995 under Kumu Allison Ledward, and continued occasionally thereafter through community, TV and internet programs.

Some sovereignty activists have chosen language revival as one of their major weapons, as illustrated by the hostile, vindictive tone of bills offered in recent years at the Legislature. This present bill, by contrast, displays aloha, reconciliation, cooperation, and practical methods of implementation. Congratulations and appreciation to the author(s)!

This bill generously proposes a very practical way of normalizing Hawaiian language. "Additionally, the intent of this Act is not to require that legislative bills and other official documents be written in Hawaiian as well as English; rather, if documents and letterheads prepared by or for state or county agencies or officials contain Hawaiian names and words, this Act only requires that the Hawaiian names and words be written in a consistent manner." By contrast, bills in previous years demanded that every official document be written in Hawaiian; and that if both languages were used then Hawaiian must come ahead of English.

Versions of this bill in previous years demanded that if a law or bill was written in both Hawaiian and English, then any dispute or disagreement over what the bill means must be resolved in favor of the Hawaiian version -- despite the fact that very few legislators know Hawaiian well enough to comprehend the meaning of the Hawaiian version which they are officially voting upon as taking precedence over the English version which they are basing their vote upon. Such an absurd rule of interpretation would allow all sorts of mischief by bill-authors who could include either straightforward concepts or kaona (double meanings) in the Hawaiian version which would escape the awareness of a legislator relying on the English version. By contrast, this bill explicitly and strongly declares that the English version is the official one: "Whenever there is found to exist any radical and irreconcilable difference between the English and Hawaiian version of any of the laws of the State, the English version shall be held binding. Hawaiian shall not be required for public acts and transactions"

Previous bills also demanded that UH academic-style 'okinas and kahakos must be used, whereas this bill generously resolves the internal dispute between academic Ali'i vs. maka'ainana styles by saying "The legislature recognizes that Hawaiian language practitioners generally employ two written orthographies, namely unmarked language and marked language. The unmarked orthography was the first writing system of Hawaiian language. The marked orthography, which includes the kahakō and �okina, was created as a means to help learners of Hawaiian language determine when to elongate a vowel or where to insert a glottal stop. The intent of this measure is not to claim the superiority of one version of orthography over the other, or to invalidate communities with an unbroken lineage of Hawaiian speakers who do not follow contemporary Hawaiian writing or structures, as communities such as these are vital to Native Hawaiian culture and the State as a whole." Also, "This measure further clarifies that Hawaiian spelling not in conformance with the standards established by this measure will not invalidate an official document, nor will it allow a cause of action to arise."

Once again, thanks to the author(s) of this bill. Please pass it as written. Imua!

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HB1449
RELATING TO JUNETEENTH DAY.
Makes Juneteenth Day a state holiday.
Bill text (including all amended versions), history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=1449&year=2022
AND
HB2475
RELATING TO STATE HOLIDAYS.
Removes election days as designated state holidays. Establishes July 31 as La Hoihoi Ea.
** Also includes very different drastically amended HB2475 HD1which makes no mention of abolishing election day as state holiday and also changes proposed La Ho'iho'i Ea to merely a "special day of observance rather than a state holiday" [and therefore no day off with pay for government employees; and also therefore a completely new testimony in opposition by Ken Conklin, which is provided below.].
Bill text (including all amended versions), history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=2475&year=2022

Ken Conklin's initial TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION to the pair of bills

Together these two bills propose to take away one state holiday (election day) while creating two new ones (Juneteenth, and Ka La Ho'iho'i Ea). Presumably these holidays would give time off with pay to all state and county government employees. But the bureaucracy is already slow and inefficient, while governments do not normally have the budget surplus we apparently have this year.

It's generally a bad idea to turn ethnic holidays into official government holidays. Columbus Day [ethnic Italian] was converted to non-ethnic Presidents Day many years ago, but is now threatened to be converted to Indigenous Peoples Day [ethnic]

We already have the holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; comes now the proposed Juneteenth holiday. Choose one, not both. It can be argued that Dr. King's achievements in working for racial desegregation and harmony make him a hero for all Americans regardless of race, so his holiday is not merely an ethnic one. Juneteenth, however, emerged into prominence during the last couple of years because recognizing it officially was regarded on the mainland as a way to calm the racial violence ignited by the highly publicized murders of several Black men. Most people in Hawaii never heard of Juneteenth; and even today, after some publicity about it, very few can tell what was the historic event which it commemorates.

Hawaii already has two ethnic Hawaiian holidays, and HB2475 proposes to create a third. If Presidents Day gets converted to ethnic Indigenous Peoples Day, that would be ethnic Hawaiian #4. Choose one and abandon the others. Between Kamehameha and Kuhio, it's clear that Kamehameha was the GOAT (Greatest [native Hawaiian] Of All Time). Kuhio had very few accomplishments except for successfully pushing the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, which is what makes him a hero to OHA and DHHL. People also forget that Kuhio abandoned his homeland during the period leading up to annexation, in order to fight on behalf of one colonial power (Britain) against another colonial power (the Boers: Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers) to determine which one would dominate the indigenous people of South Africa; and he also tried to have Lili'uokalani declared mentally incompetent so he could steal her Waikiki house which she had willed to her Childrens Trust.

HB2475 Correctly describes the history of the Kingdom of Hawaii holiday Ka La Ho'iho'i Ea. Very few people today know why it was a Kingdom holiday. The people who want to make it a state holiday believe that there is no State of Hawaii. They believe the overthrow of the monarchy was illegal, Annexation was illegal, and the Statehood Act was illegal. They believe Hawaii is under a belligerent military invasion and occupation by the USA, and are working at the United Nations to solicit help from America's enemies to pass resolutions to undo the removal of Hawaii from the U.N. list of non-self-governing territories and to demand the withdrawal of USA from Hawaii. They love the concept of "Sovereignty Restoration Day" which is the meaning of the holiday's name and the goal they seek to achieve. Any legislators who favor secession should favor establishing this holiday and resign from the legislature of the "Fake State."

Please hold or vote down both HB1449 and HB2475. Or you could amend HB2475 to delete everything regarding Ka La Ho'iho'i Ea and retain only the portion that abolishes the election day holiday. After all, now that we are doing voting by mail, or by drive-by dropoff, the politicians no longer need a holiday so that government employees can bang on doors and wave signs and give rides to the polls on election day while being paid with tax dollars.

** Ken Conklin's completely new TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION to the entirely rewritten bill HD2475 HD1

There are two terms in this bill which are intentionally deceptive: "Ea" and "Hawaiian." The bill should be defeated because its hidden agenda is to make it appear that our people wish for Hawaii to secede from the United States. But if the legislature chooses to acquiesce in that agenda, then the bill should certainly be amended to clarify these terms.

"Ea" is deceptive because it is the most important word in the actual name of the historic holiday but is totally missing from the English version of the name of the proposed holiday. That tiny 2-letter word focuses on the huge political impact of what happened in 1843 and especially the even more huge political purpose in the motives of this bill's authors. That word means "sovereignty."

"Hawaiian" is deceptive as used in the text describing the bill's rationale. Casual readers think it refers to the name of our archipelago or to our entire population; but in fact the sovereignty activists today adamantly insist it designates their highly favored racial group and cannot -- must not -- should not be used as the name of a place or the entire population which lives in that place. The Hawaiian Kingdom whose government was restored in 1843 had multiracial land ownership and voting rights for Asians and Caucasians who were either native-born or naturalized. Throughout the next 50 years many cabinet ministers, most department heads, and sometimes as many as 1/3 of the legislators were Caucasians. Back then the word "Hawaiian" designated citizenship or residence regardless of race; unlike today when "Hawaiian designates race regardless of citizenship or residence.

The name of the holiday proclaimed in 1843 is correctly stated in Hawaiian language as "Ka La Ho'iho'i Ea" But do you see that little third word "Ea"? That's the most important word in the hioliday's name, and it's totally missing from the English version of the proposed holiday's name "Restoration Day." Why do the bill's authors suppress the presence of that word, and its meaning? Because they know how scary it is. "Ea" can mean "life" as in the usual but deceptive translation of the King's famous one-liner: The life of the land is preserved in righteousness. But "Ea" actually means "sovereignty", and that meaning is clearly what was intended in the context of the events of 1843 when sovereignty was restored to the King after British Lord Paulet's illegal takeover by gunboat. In the historical context of what happened, the King was not speaking about dirt, or agriculture or curing the disease of some plants -- "The life of the land" is a strange locution -- it clearly refers to political status -- to sovereignty. The correct translation of the holiday's name "La Ho'iho'i Ea" is "Sovereignty Restoration Day." And that is the reason why the activists pushing this bill do not want to mention it, for fear you will realize that the intent of this bill is to support the concept that what should be restored nowadays is the sovereignty of an independent Hawaiian nation. The vast majority of Hawaii's people do not want to rip the 50th star off Old Glory. We are glad to be Americans. We do not want to restore the long-gone sovereign independence of a nation of Hawaii. We do not want to smuggle a wolf -- a radical, treasonous political viewpoint -- in the sheep's clothing of a mere remembrance of a long-forgotten historical event.

Elders suffering dementia sometimes unfortunately fall victim to con artists. A few of those victims get victimized repeatedly. This committee is in exactly that same position.

Perhaps the most flagrant example of malfeasance and historical malpractice by this committee and the legislature happened in 2007 when a permanent annual Hawaiian Restoration Day holiday was established for April 30 and enacted into law. Here's what happened. Reverend Kaleo Patterson knowingly used a fake Grover Cleveland proclamation from 1894, cited it as fact, and used it as the basis for a media blitz in 2006 in Hawaii and on the mainland calling for a national day of prayer for restoration of Native Hawaiians and repentance for the overthrow of the monarchy. He repeated his local and mainland propaganda campaign in 2007 and pushed a resolution HCR82 through the Hawaii legislature citing the joke proclamation as real and "proclaiming April 30 of every year as Hawaiian Restoration Day." That holiday remains on the books today. How will you celebrate it?

Perhaps as a result of that resolution, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Wednesday April 23 2008, page 2, published a story describing the Cleveland proclamation as a fact. The newspaper refused to publish a correction despite nine of its editors and officers immediately being given proof of falsehood.

In 2010 Patterson repeated a trip to Grover Cleveland's tomb in Caldwell N.J. (the town where Orson Welles' Martians landed on Oct. 30, 1938) in furtherance of his hoax, where the town council honored him and gave him a check for $2920 to defray his expenses.

For a detailed analysis of the fake Grover Cleveland proclamation; proof that it was a joke and not true; how it came to be accepted as true by Hawaiian sovereignty activists who should have known it was false; how the lie was widely disseminated; how it became the core of a terrible legislative resolution which passed overwhelmingly; proof that Kaleo Patterson was aware of the lie upon which his resolution was based; text of the 2007 legislative resolution and committee report and list of the representatives who disgraced themselves by voting "aye"; text and citation of the New Jersey newspaper article reporting Patterson's 2010 trip and $2920 grant; see
http://tinyurl.com/k38tm

On April Fools Day 2008 a 4-page flyer was published, poking fun at the Hawaii Legislature for passing the resolution in 2007 which assumed that an April Fools joke from 1894 was actually true. The joke was actually an editorial poking sarcastic fun at Grover Cleveland. It was published in a New York newspaper the day after the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs published its 808-page "Morgan Report" of the facts about the Hawaiian revolution of 1893.

But in 2007 the joke was on this Hawaiian Affairs committee and this state legislature for being fooled by Kaleo Patterson into thinking the "Cleveland Proclamation" was real. The 4-page flyer includes photos of the two sarcastic editorials against Grover Cleveland, taken from the newspaper's archives. See
http://tinyurl.com/2tj5jl
Will this committee now set in motion another ridiculous resolution, once again making the legislature a laughing-stock?

WHO IS "HAWAIIAN"? WHO ARE THE "UPSTANDING MEMBERS OF THE HAWAIIAN COMMUNITY"?

Section 1 of this bill says, at the end of paragraph 5, "Today, La Hoihoi Ea Honolulu works in partnership with the Honolulu mayor's office on culture and the arts to plan events throughout the month of July to share the importance of this day and honor upstanding members of the Hawaiian community." Later, the closing sentence in section 1 ends with the same phrase: "the purpose of this Act is to ... and honor upstanding members of the Hawaiian community." The phrase "and honor upstanding members of the Hawaiian community." should be deleted in both places. That phrase is racist because of the way the word "Hawaiian" is racialized today. It fails to acknowledge the multiracial character of the Kingdom, and also the fact that many people today who want to honor the history of the holiday actually have no Hawaiian native ancestry. That phrase also uses the word "upstanding" in a way that demeans and insults everyone else who are apparently lazy, busy with other things, or uncaring -- it brings to mind Hillary Clinton's labeling of her opponents as the "deplorables."

This bill correctly notes that Rev. William Richards (a Caucasian with no Hawaiian blood) held coequal rank with Timoteo Ha'alilio as diplomatic envoys to England to seek the removal of Paulet's illegal regime. Would the authors of this bill, and readers of it, consider Rev. Richards to be an "upstanding member of the Hawaiian community"?

The Hawaiian Kingdom whose government was restored in 1843 had multiracial land ownership and voting rights for Asians and Caucasians who were either native-born or naturalized. Throughout the next 50 years many cabinet ministers, most department heads, and sometimes as many as 1/3 of the legislators were Caucasians. Would the authors of this bill, and readers of it, consider them to be "upstanding members of the Hawaiian community"? Back then the word "Hawaiian" designated citizenship or residence regardless of race; unlike today when "Hawaiian designates race regardless of citizenship or residence. According to the Kingdom census of 1890, only 45% of the population had any percentage of Hawaiian blood.

There is one Caucasian not mentioned in this bill who was not only an upstanding Hawaiian but was actually the HERO whose courage, at risk of his life, was primarily responsible for putting into motion the events which led to restoration of the Kingdom in 1843. That man was Rev. Dr. Gerrit Judd. When Lord Paulet forced the King to cede sovereignty to Britain, the King, suffering personal problems and a deep depression worsened by alcoholism, was unable to take action. Dr. Judd, close friend of the King who held many cabinet positions over the years, wrote the appeal to the British government that persuaded Britain to send Admiral Thomas to Honolulu to restore sovereignty. Dr. Judd, risking his life, worked secretly at night by candlelight in the Royal Mausoleum (which was then on the grounds of 'Iolani Palace), using the coffin of Queen Ka'ahumanu as his writing desk. He persuaded the King to sign the document, and recruited an American merchant to take it to Europe. When Admiral Thomas later arrived in Honolulu with the proclamation restoring sovereignty, it was Gerrit Judd who stood side by side with the King on the steps of Kawaiaha'o Church. Dr. Judd, fluent in Hawaiian, took the English-language proclamation and read it loudly in Hawaiian, whereupon the King made his famous one-sentence reply that is now our state motto: "Ua mau ke ea o ka 'aina i ka pono."

Today's Hawaiian sovereignty ethnic nationalists conveniently forget the heroic role of Rev. Dr. Gerrit Judd in restoring the sovereignty of the Kingdom. The activists celebrating at Thomas Square on July 31 never mention Dr. Judd (in modern parlance: they have "cancelled" him because he was haole and they don't want any haoles taking credit for a "Hawaiian" triumph). If Gerrit Judd had not taken strong action, the Kingdom would almost certainly have been lost in 1843. The independence activists say sovereignty is about nationhood and not race. But if that is true, then Gerrit Judd should be remembered on this day as a great hero of the Hawaiian people (nation, not race).

Let us remember that the Kingdom of Hawai'i was multiracial, multiethnic, with full partnership, full voting rights, and full property rights; for non-natives who were either naturalized or born in the Kingdom. Thousands of their descendants still live here today. Let us remember that there were many patriotic non-native subjects of the Kingdom, such as Dr. Judd. Let's stop the ethnic cleansing of Hawaiian historic holidays. Let us respect the equality and unity of all Hawai'i's people today.

Here is a quote about Gerrit Judd from the Hawaiian history book by Gavan Daws, titled "Shoal of Time", p128

"Of all the white men in the Hawaiian government no one did more for the chiefs than Gerrit Judd. In formal procession at Honolulu he always marched closest to the king, and no matter how much this upset the other cabinet ministers the chiefs never begrudged him his place of honor. He had their unreserved confidence. He spoke their language fluently, looked after them when they were ill, translated state papers for them, and defended with all his considerable strength the right of the Hawaiian kingdom to be recognized as a sovereign nation."

In the events of 1843 leading up to ka La Ho'iho'i Ea, Rev. Dr. Gerrit Judd was the most upstanding Hawaiian of them all.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION:

The whole purpose of this bill is to mandate "The department of public safety, in collaboration with the office of Hawaiian affairs, shall create a rehabilitation program for Native Hawaiian prison inmates with an emphasis on preserving Native Hawaiian values and cultural practices."

Is that really a good idea?

For several decades ethnic Hawaiian activists have been working hard to strengthen government and private institutions or programs that require members or beneficiaries to prove they have "Native Hawaiian" ancestry, even if the percentage of blood quantum is low. DHHL, OHA, Kamehameha Schools, Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, Queen Lili'uokalani Childrens Center... the list is endless. Apparently there is something so powerful in even a single drop of the magic blood that many people who have it feel compelled to associate predominantly or even exclusively with anyone else who has it. Racial "preference" turns out to be racial segregation and separatism. The beautiful Hawaiian creation legend "Kumulipo" says all humans are children of the gods and siblings to the 'aina; but today's activists twist it as describing only ethnic Hawaiians, relegating everyone else to an inferior status of "other."
See webpage "Hawaiian religious fascism. A twisted version of a beautiful creation legend provides the theological basis for a claim that ethnic Hawaiians are entitled to racial supremacy in the governance and cultural life of the Hawaiian islands."
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/HawnReligFascism.html
See book "Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State"
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/BookPromo.html

How often have we heard it said that Native Hawaiians have the worst rate among all Hawaii's ethnic groups for drug abuse, spouse abuse, child abuse, arrests, incarceration, and other social dysfunction. Clearly there is something troubling about "Hawaiian values" and "Hawaiian cultural practices" -- the exact terms which this bill touts as the core of "rehabilitation programs" which prisons must be required to foist upon Native Hawaiian inmates, at taxpayer expense. Either "Hawaiian values" and "Hawaiian cultural practices" are purely aspirational labels and not descriptive of actual behavior in the community, or else they are damaging to the ability of Native Hawaiians to participate successfully in the larger society where they find themselves whether they like it or not.

A prison program designed to inculcate Native Hawaiian inmates with "Hawaiian values" and "Hawaiian cultural practices" closely resembles school curriculum in the Hawaiian-focus charter schools. It is designed to brainwash people with a political viewpoint leading them to become activists for race-based political power and, ultimately, sovereignty. Here are quotes from a foundational document where Ku Kahakalau unashamedly explained the purpose of her "Kanu O Ka 'Aina" Hawaiian- focus tax-funded public charter school:

"Kanu is tailored towards the distinctive cultural wants and needs of Hawai'i's indigenous student population. Utilizing our natives values handed down to us in thousands of proverbs as a philosophical basis ... The long-term goal of Kanu is to create a native designed and controlled system of Hawaiian education that will empower native communities throughout the archipelago to achieve political, cultural and economic self-determination. ... Kanu wants to actively prepare native students to participate in - and perhaps even lead - Hawai'i's indigenous sovereignty movement. Initially I was sort of hesitant to claim that Kanu represents a liberatory pedagogy. However, the more I reflected on the true purpose of my model the more I realized that my model is definitely designed to liberate. Specifically, Kanu wants to encourage Hawaiian students to become politically conscious, and individually and collectively tackle the problem of Hawaiian oppression by the United States and our subjugation to American law and a Western way of life. In that vein, Kanu has the potential of significantly contributing to the Hawaiian sovereignty effort."

Well, that is certainly not what most taxpayers want our government tax-funded schools to be doing with their students, and not what we want our government tax-funded prisons to be doing with their inmates.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

In 2017 OHA cajoled the legislature into passing a law that forced heads of specified state and county departments to take a training course whose content and instructors are dictated by OHA. In 2018 OHA expanded its empire by requiring more government employees of additional departments to endure the OHA training. In 2021 OHA cajoled the legislature to pass a Gestapo-like bill to fire any government employees of certain departments who refused or negligently failed to submit themselves to OHA's propaganda training program.

This year OHA/DHHL seeks to further expand its empire by reaching into every county government to force them to take jurisdiction over major components of infrastructure on DHHL lands and to pay for construction and maintenance of that infrastructure. The bill says "infrastructure" includes waterlines and appurtenances; storm drainage, including catch basins, sewer lines, and appurtenances; waste disposal and waste treatment systems; and roadway improvements, including pavement, gutters, curbing, sidewalks, street trees, and street lighting that connect to county infrastructure."

Wow! OHA is already an octopus sticking its tentacles into numerous boards and agencies of the state government, participating in their decision-making and sucking money out of them every 90 days. Now OHA wants to force the counties to knuckle under too! All legislators are elected by the people of their counties. Stand up for your local governments. Fight back against the monster who's trying to devour the counties of Honolulu, Maui, Kaua'i, and Hawaii Island. Don't let the bully eat your lunch.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

This bill seeks to appropriate $15,700,000.00 to be distributed in specified amounts among 4 departments. Each department must then spend specific dollar amounts of its windfall for some projects exclusively for the benefit of "Native Hawaiians" [for example, repatriation and reburial of bones], and for some broader projects generally regarded as focused on areas that are primarily the kuleana of Native Hawaiians [for example, Iolani Palace].

A paragraph in Section 1 makes the racism explicitly clear: "The grants shall be tailored toward improving Native Hawaiian communities and culture through various assistance programs, including but not limited to programs that offer food sustainability; development of renewable infrastructure; Native Hawaiian historic preservation; development of a mill to process ulu and taro [remember the failed mill OHA ran on Kaua'i?]; business training, entrepreneurship, and mentoring; farming; education; cultural training; and environmental management." Activities and products that could plausibly have multiethnic participation actually have a thinly-disguised ethnic focus such as loko i'a [fishponds], kalo [taro], ulu [sweet potato]; culture training programs with military personnel; software needs of the Hawaiian trades academy; Iolani Palace operations [twisted-history narratives by tour guides], maintenance, and repairs.

The main objection to this bill is that the State of Hawaii should not be singling out a punahele [favorite] race for largess of multimillions of taxpayer dollars while not providing corresponding EQUITY to any other races or ethnicities. Whatever happened to the latest liberal themesong DEI (diversity, equity, inclusiveness)?

Another major objection is that we already have an entire branch of the state government, OHA, whose primary purpose is "the betterment of Native Hawaiians." According to OHA's latest annual report, on June 30, 2021 OHA had assets of $764,820,000.00. So let OHA pay the $15.7 Million for these projects. Why do we have OHA anyway? If these projects are sufficiently worthy to be asking the legislature for a special appropriation to pay for them, then why did OHA not already recognize their worthiness and provide OHA's money for them?

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Bill text for SB2828 (including all amended versions), history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SB&billnumber=2828&year=2022
and
Bill text for HB1894 (including all amended versions), history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=1894&year=2022

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT

I write this testimony as an individual knowledgeable about pre-contact native Hawaiian burial practices, and having my own plans for disposition of my remains after death. I maintain a large webpage describing the NAGPRA law in general and its applications in Hawaii, including compilations of news reports and commentaries with subpages for each year from 2003 to now. Some topics are: Mokapu, Honokahua, Bishop Museum ka'ai; Providence Museum spear rest; Kawaihae (Forbes Cave) artifacts; the Hui Malama organization; Emerson Collection at Kanupa Cave; bones uncovered during construction at Ward Center; planning for Honolulu rail project; protests against Kawaiaha'o Church for unearthing and moving cemetery burials during demolition of a meeting hall to prepare for construction of a new one.
https://tinyurl.com/yt7se

I have great respect for many elements of the pre-contact culture, and believe that individuals today should have the right to choose whatever method of body disposal they prefer for themselves and their families, provided it does no harm to public health and minimal harm to the environment. I have a large webpage created in 2007 which led to a 1300 word summary published in "West Hawaii Today" and drew telephoned praise from Herb Kane:
"Hawaiian Bones -- The 3 Rs -- Rites For the Dead, Rights Of the Living, and Respect for All"
https://tinyurl.com/4xcuc5sr

This bill is extremely clear, well-written, detailed, and magnanimous to all ethnicities. Congratulations to its author(s). I strongly support this bill and find nothing to cause misgivings.

Here are some of the most important aspects that elicit my support:

This bill draws upon pre-contact native Hawaiian burial customs, and tries to convince ethnic Hawaiians that alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation) is consistent with the ancient practice of placing a corpse into an imu to cause the long-bones to be cleaned of flesh so they could be enclosed in a basket for burial.

But what makes this bill especially attractive is that there is no hint of racial separatism or exclusion. What it proposes is available to all people regardless of race.

The technique of alkaline hydrolysis is also useful as an example of how the fundamental concept in an ancient custom (bone cleaning in imu) can be updated to modern technology (alkaline hydrolysis with high heat), so that ethnic Hawaiians can feel comfortable that using the new method is consistent with the ancient method and therefore is not a desecration and will have the blessings of their ancestors.

This bill provides evidence that water cremation is not detrimental to public health, has been approved and is being used in other states, and is less damaging to the environment than cremation by fire. The information about other states shows that this method of disposal is not limited by race or ethnicity.

This bill provides a procedure for dealing with unclaimed bodies, or remains after a corpse has been used for transplantation, therapy, research, or education. Water cremation is offered as one of the methods that a donor's family or unclaimed-body administrator is authorized to choose, but choice is allowed and water cremation is not mandated.

In my own case, I am registered with the willed body program of the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine. In my medical advance directive and in by Will I have described my own preference for final disposal of my remains after they have been used for transplantation and/or teaching anatomy through dissection. This bill makes it clear that my wishes will be respected and not overruled by any government officials who might think they are implementing this legislation.

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SB2734
RELATING TO THE JUDICIARY'S �OLELO HAWAI�I INITIATIVES.
 Appropriates funds for staff positions and various services to support the �Olelo Hawai�i Initiatives.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

List of 3 main points

1. $300,000 proposed in this bill is merely seed money for a project that will mushroom to hundreds of millions in future, as shown by demands made in previous legislation and in Chief Justice Recktenwald's own 50-page report.

2. Practical need for using a language vs. ethnic pride or vanity in seeing a language displayed -- who should pay?

3. The case of Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo.

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This bill proposes to appropriate $300,000 seed money to establish the beginnings of a new bureaucracy inside the Judiciary for the purpose of fostering and normalizing Hawaiian language, by translating various legal documents into Hawaiian. First comes $100,000 for salary for a chief bureaucrat (who might already have been chosen behind the scenes); and then an additional $200,000 "for implementation, including translation services, website upgrades, preparation of materials, and educational efforts." Of course that's only the beginning.

A hidden purpose of this bill is to set up a bureaucracy that will expand by leaps and bounds to provide paid employment for the growing number of people who become fluent in Hawaiian language but cannot find jobs as teachers of it. Let's remember how the labor unions lobbied aggressively for the Honolulu rail project because they wanted jobs; but now the people of Hawaii are stuck paying more than $10 Billion for an ugly makework project that most people don't want and will never use (like translating the Hawaii Revised Statutes into Hawaiian).

As this bill points out, "[I]n 2015, the legislature adopted a concurrent resolution, H.C.R. No. 217, Session Laws of Hawaii 2015, that requested the judiciary to convene a task force to examine and report on establishing �Ōlelo Hawai�i resources for the judiciary... made several recommendations and identified projects that can serve as a guide to the judiciary."

In the regular session of 2016 this legislature entertained companion bills SB2162 and HB2180 whose purpose was to appropriate $500,000.00 in seed money for the judiciary to begin a program to train people to become expert in both Hawaiian language and the specialized concepts of the legal profession to the point where they can translate the Hawaii Revised Statutes into Hawaiian, along with case law that might be cited to support or oppose legal briefs or memos in current courtroom proceedings. And that was only seed money!

Bill SB560 in the legislature of 2017 provides evidence of the costs for translation services. For translating just one document from English to Hawaiian -- the state Constitution -- SB560 proposed an appropriation of $25,000.00 for year 2017 and an additional $25,000.00 for year 2018, to be given to the University of Hawaii.

The $300,000 proposed in this year's bill is merely an acorn poised to grow into a mighty oak tree. Why is the Judiciary proposing a make-work boutique project when it presumably has plenty of work to cope with the practical realities of a huge backlog of cases [especially jury trials] resulting from the COVID pandemic?

I have read the 50-page report by Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald to the House Judiciary Committee dated December 16, 2015: "Report of the Hawaiian Language Web Feasibility Task Force" appointed pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution No. 217, House Draft 1, Senate Draft 1 adopted by the Legislature in 2015. IT PROPOSES A PAY RATE OF $500 PER HOUR FOR THE EXPERT TRANSLATORS proposed in SB2162 regular session of 2016. How many hundreds of millions of dollars would be needed to translate the Hawaii Revised Statutes into Hawaiian, along with case law that might be cited to support or oppose legal briefs or memos in current courtroom proceedings? Mr. Recktenwald did NOT hire anyone to translate his own report into Hawaiian language. Why not? He should be willing to take a pay cut to get the job done! His document was 50 pages long. If each page required one hour to translate, the cost for just that one document alone, at his proposed pay rate of $500.00 per hour, would be $25,000.00.

2. Practical need for using a language vs. ethnic pride or vanity in seeing a language displayed -- who should pay?

There is no practical NEED for anyone to speak Hawaiian in court, nor to have state laws or legal documents pleadings or documents available in Hawaiian, because everyone who can speak Hawaiian is more fluent in English. By contrast, there is great NEED for translations of documents into and from Asian and European languages, and NEED for courtroom interpreters for those languages. Let's spend taxpayer dollars for what is NEEDED; not for using Hawaiian language as a vanity display of ethnic heritage and pride.

According to OHA's latest annual report, on June 30, 2021 OHA had assets of $764,820,000.00. And according to bills which are winning unanimous approval in "Hawaiian Affairs" legislative committees this year, OHA demands $638 Million in arrears plus $79 Million per year in future from ceded land revenues. Let OHA pay for using Hawaiian language as a vanity display of ethnic heritage and pride. The $300,000 called for in this bill, and all the money needed to fund the future dreams of Mark Recktenwald and the Hawaiian language empire, is a smaller portion of OHA's wealth than a single puakenikeni blossom on a Kamehameha Day float.

Giving priority to Hawaiian language is a political stunt to bolster ethnic pride and get votes from a constituency that demands visible tokens of validation and status; but it has no practical usefulness. It seems likely that every person outside Ni'ihau who speaks Hawaiian also speaks English with greater fluency.

Princess Ruth Ke'elikolani (hoo dat?) insisted on speaking Hawaiian when giving speeches, interviews, or testimony, even though she was perfectly capable of understanding and speaking English fluently. She was famous for humiliating haole diplomats and news reporters this way, forcing them to hire translators. She felt she was having a political and "moral" victory by forcing them to use Hawaiian. Hawaiian sovereignty activists and language zealots follow her lead and do this same stunt nowadays -- see discussion about the case of Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo who did precisely this stunt in court recently, humiliating the individual judge by forcing him to knuckle under to the demand for a court interpreter and humiliating the entire Judiciary by eliciting a policy to unnecessarily provide interpreters for Hawaiian language in the same manner as they provide necessary interpreters for speakers of other languages who lack understanding of English.

Nobody NEEDS to speak or hear Hawaiian to express himself or to understand what someone is saying -- the activists demand it to score a political point; and sometimes to simply "gum up the works" when there is testimony on an environmental impact statement regarding telescopes on Mauna Kea or construction on a military base. Please see a large and detailed webpage "Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon" at
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/HawLangPolitWeapon.html

There are numerous Hawaiian sovereignty activists and Hawaiian language zealots who certainly would make demands for thousands of documents -- not because there is any real need to have those documents in Hawaiian language, but merely for the pleasure and ethnic pride of seeing them and with the conscious intention of providing employment for their friends.

3. The case of Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo.

Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo is a community college instructor who speaks English fluently. In fact he teaches classes using English as the language of instruction, makes fiery political speeches in English, and has also learned to speak Hawaiian fluently. He demanded to give court testimony in Hawaiian, not because he is unable to speak English, but merely as a stunt -- a form of Hawaiian sovereignty street theatre or political activism.

Hawaii is filled with the Aloha Spirit. Our people are kind and generous, and show our good will to people who cannot speak English by allowing them to give testimony in their own language and by providing them at our own taxpayer expense with interpreters who have been certified by the court to be fluent in both their own language and English. But Kaeo's political stunt was neither kind nor generous. It did not display good will, let alone the Aloha Spirit. He could easily have spoken English, but he chose to speak Hawaiian as a way to FORCE everyone else to either learn Hawaiian or to spend taxpayer dollars to hire speakers of Hawaiian. That's what today's bill in our legislature is all about -- a political stunt that would inconvenience everyone and, over time, would cost a lot of money merely for the sake of cultural/ linguistic chauvinism.

Hawaii has large numbers of people from many ethnic backgrounds who speak different languages in their homes; but we all come together in shared spaces where we are expected to speak English. Inability to speak English is treated as a disability or handicap. People who cannot speak English are given special accommodation to help them communicate in their own language, just as someone who is deaf gets a sign-language interpreter, someone who is blind is allowed to use a seeing-eye dog even in places where dogs are not normally allowed, and someone who cannot walk is allowed to use a wheelchair and elevator. Kaeo who is fluent in English but insists on speaking Hawaiian is like a marathon runner who might demand just for fun to come to court in a noisy wheelchair with a taxpayer-supplied assistant to push it for him.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser of January 25, 2018 reported: "A Maui District Court judge on Wednesday issued a bench warrant for the arrest of a University of Hawaii-�Maui College assistant professor of Hawaiian studies after he refused in court to acknowledge himself in the English language. Kaleikoa Kaeo, who was scheduled to start a trial for his August 2017 arrest for trying to block a shipment of parts to the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope under construction atop Haleakala, spoke only in the Hawaiian language when Judge Blaine J. Kobayashi asked him repeatedly if he was present for the trial. While an interpreter was provided for Kaeo during his initial court appearance, Kobayashi in December approved a motion by the Maui Prosecutor's Office requiring that the trial be conducted in English. There is no legal requirement to have Hawaiian language interpreters for those who speak English but prefer to speak Hawaiian in court, according to the state Judiciary. Nevertheless, Wednesday's events prompted outrage within the Hawaiian community. Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chief Executive Officer Kamana'opono Crabbe issued a statement saying the agency is "deeply disturbed and offended" that Kaeo was prohibited from defending himself in the Hawaiian language and that a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chief Executive Officer Kamana'opono Crabbe issued a statement saying the agency is "deeply disturbed and offended" that Kaeo was prohibited from defending himself in the Hawaiian language and that a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. "Punishing Native Hawaiians for speaking our native language (evokes) a disturbing era in Hawaii's history when olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian language) was prohibited in schools, a form of cultural suppression that substantially contributed to the near extinction of the Hawaiian language," the statement said. "It is disappointing that the state government continues to place barriers on olelo Hawaii, 40 years after Hawaii's Constitution was amended to recognize the Hawaiian language as an official language of the state. We demand that the state Judiciary find an immediate solution to this issue.""

Honolulu Star-Advertiser, January 26, 2018 reported: "An interpreter was not available when Kaeo showed up for a Nov. 22 hearing at which the prosecutor told Kobayashi she wanted to conduct the trial in English. In its written request the prosecutor says requiring a Hawaiian-�language interpreter will cause needless delay and unnecessary expense because Kaeo is fluent in English. The prosecutor also said a federal judge had ruled in a civil case that the right to assert a federally protected language does not extend to judicial proceedings. Kaeo did not submit a written response. ... The Hawaii Judiciary says Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires it to provide language interpreters when a party or a witness in a case has limited English proficiency or is unable to hear, understand, speak or use English sufficiently to effectively participate in court proceedings. Hawaiian cultural practitioner Daniel Anthony says he has intentionally gotten traffic tickets so he can go to court and assert his right to participate in the proceeding in Hawaiian. "I've been detained a couple of times," he said, but no longer than six hours. When the judge ordered him back into court in the afternoon to conduct the hearing, the prosecutor would ask to have the case continued every time he refused to speak in English. Anthony said the cases were dismissed, and the court eventually provided him a Hawaiian-language interpreter."

Chelsea Davis, Hawaii News Now, January 26, 3:45 PM reported: "The state Judiciary says it will provide interpreters to those seeking to speaking Hawaiian in court "to the extent reasonably possible." ... In a statement, the Judiciary said it will start implementing the new policy immediately. It also asked those interested to serve as Hawaiian interpreters to contact the Office of Equality and Access to the Courts at 539-4860. The policy stands in contrast to the Judiciary's previous statements on using Hawaiian in court. Earlier this week, the Judiciary said: "There is no legal requirement to provide Hawaiian language interpreters to court participants who speak English but prefer to speak in Hawaiian. In those cases, judges have the discretion to grant, or deny, a request for an interpreter."... Kaeo said. "This is not just about language. This is a larger questions in which Hawaiians have been struggling to become visible within Hawaii and the world." ... The Hawaii State Judiciary issued a statement to Hawaii News Now on Wednesday stating, "there is no legal requirement to provide Hawaiian language interpreters to court participants who speak English but prefer to speak in Hawaiian. In those cases, judges have the discretion to grant, or deny, a request for an interpreter."

Honolulu Star-Advertiser, January 26, 2018, Breaking news at 4:28 PM reported: "The Hawaii State Judiciary will allow the use of Hawaiian language interpreters in courtrooms when participants in legal proceedings "choose to express themselves through the Hawaiian language." The new policy was announced today, following a widely reported incident ... In announcing the new policy yesterday, the Judiciary said it would develop implementation procedures and solicited public input. Comments may be sent to pao@courts.hawaii.gov."

On January 27, 2018 I, Kenneth Conklin, sent an email to the Judiciary's public affairs office at the email address in the news report, which included the following points:

The Hawaiian language is a great treasure for Hawaii's people of all races, and indeed for all the world. Most people of good will are pleased to assist in preserving the language, reviving it and helping it to thrive in everyday use. I myself have spent considerable time and effort over a period of many years learning Hawaiian language to a level of moderate fluency; and I'm proud to use it for reading, writing, and occasionally in public speaking.

However, the primary purpose of our courts is to adjudicate cases in controversy in accord with the Constitution and statutes; it is not to engage in well-meaning adventures in cultural expression or "social justice." Indeed, there are good reasons why judges are given considerable protection against political pressure, including the campaign we have seen in recent days in the criminal trial of Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo (Maui) and the civil case regarding possession and occupancy of the Coco Palms resort (Kaua'i).

Let me remind you that judges and lawyers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Hawaii -- not an oath of allegiance to the Kingdom of Hawaii nor to an effort to restore Hawaii as an independent nation nor to help create a Hawaiian tribe.

Perhaps you intend to persist in a newly adopted policy of allowing testimony in Hawaiian language by people who are equally fluent in English, and perhaps also allowing written documents in Hawaiian language to be introduced as testimony or evidence or exhibits, and perhaps also providing Hawaiian language interpreters at taxpayer expense.

If you do these things for ethnic Hawaiians, and/or for speakers of Hawaiian language, then you MUST also do these things for people of all ethnicities and all languages. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes the Equal Protection clause which requires all people to be treated equally under the law and has been interpreted to require equal treatment regardless of race, religion, or national origin.

Hawaii has thousands of people who are first or second generation from Philippines, Japan, China, Korea, etc. who are fluent in English but who might prefer to use their native language in court. You must now allow them to do so. Indeed, their right to use their native language is superior to the right of an ethnic Hawaiian to use Hawaiian, because virtually 100% of the people who speak Hawaiian are native speakers of English (i.e., they grew up speaking English) even though they are genetically natives of Hawaii.

Let me remind you that Article XV Section 4 of the Hawaii Constitution includes a disclaimer or restriction, which I have emphasized in this quotation of it: "English and Hawaiian shall be the official languages of Hawaii, EXCEPT THAT HAWAIIAN SHALL BE REQUIRED FOR PUBLIC ACTS AND TRANSACTIONS ONLY AS PROVIDED BY LAW."

I have researched the legislative history of Article XV Section 4 from the transcripts of the Constitutional Convention of 1978, and have found no evidence that there was any legislative intent to place Hawaiian on an equal footing with English in legal proceedings. Indeed, the author of Article XV Section 4, Adelaide (Frenchy) De Soto, explicitly said that her reason for introducing it was her unhappiness that Hawaiian was grouped with foreign languages in college catalogues. Please see my webpage on this topic at
https://tinyurl.com/ybn4l6pd

One more point needs to be raised here even though it is "politically incorrect" and perhaps painful to do so.

Probably everyone who chooses to use Hawaiian language in court proceedings will do so for political reasons as an act of resistance, defiance and hostility toward the United States and its "puppet regime" the State of Hawaii.

The Hawaiian-speakers in your courtrooms are engaged in street-theatre. They are literally in contempt of court, because they claim your court has no jurisdiction over them due to the "illegal military invasion and occupation" of Hawaii as admitted in the U.S. "confession" of 1993 (i.e., the apology resolution). So even after you are so kind to let them testify in Hawaiian, and you are so generous to pay for their interpreters, they will then refuse to obey your decision or court order.

These Hawaiian sovereignty protesters are intentionally using Hawaiian language as a political weapon to delay and disrupt court proceedings, and to assert the continuing existence of a Hawaiian nation. By allowing Hawaiian language testimony you are allowing your courtroom to be used as the stage for a political rally by people who refuse to recognize your jurisdiction or legitimacy. Whether you realize it or not, you are an enabler and accessory to racial divisiveness, anti-Americanism, anarchy and revolution. Please see my large, detailed webpage "Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon" at
http://tinyurl.com/668vqyz

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

There were many holidays in the Kingdom of Hawaii which have never been proposed to become holidays of the State of Hawaii. For example, Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III, whose glorious statue now graces Thomas Square, did not know the date of his birth and was unable to reconstruct it on the Western calendar based on stories or other events that happened on that same day; so, like royals in other nations sometimes do (even when the do know their actual birthdate), he proclaimed for himself an "official birthdate" of March 17 to enable his subjects to celebrate. Today we call that St. Patrick's Day, and that's no blarney. But perhaps the Hawaiian sovereigntists will present the legislature with another bill like this one, to rename that date Kauikeaouli Day. Might as well!

First of all: The academic language police will not like the name "La Kuokoa." They would insist on spelling it with correct diacritical marks as "Lā Kū'oko'a".

Second: This bill is mistaken in saying that "Lā Ku'oko'a" (however spelled) means "Hawaiian Recognition Day" -- the word "Hawaiian" or even "Ko Hawai'i Pae 'Āina" is not included, which could yield the word "Hawaiian." So if the term to be used is "Lā Kū'oko'a" then the word "Hawaiian" should be removed from the English part of the designation. Note also that today's race-activists strongly insist that the word "Hawaiian" refers exclusively to people who have a drop of the magic blood [Associated Press stylebook endorses this usage], whereas the Kingdom of Hawaii was multiracial with full equality for many hundreds of Asians and Euro-American immigrants who took the loyalty oath to become naturalized subjects of the Kingdom, some of whom were elected or appointed to the legislature or served in the cabinet or as department heads. Calling it "Hawaiian Recognition Day" thus implies that what is to be recognized is a racial group, not a multiracial nation and certainly not the [Fake!] State of Hawaii.

Third and more importantly: The word "kū'oko'a" does not translate as "recognition" -- not in the Pukui/Elbert dictionary and not as used among today's activists. The dictionary also does not translate the English word "recognition" into Hawaiian by using the word "kū'oko'a." The word "kū'oko'a" in both the dictionary and in its usage among activists means "independence." Saying that "La Kū'oko'a" means "Recognition Day" is an act of subterfuge and deception. It's actually an example of kaona -- a double-meaning; a sort of code word or phrase which superficially seems to be presented as meaning one thing when actually it is intended to convey a stronger, more profound meaning to people "in the know." Like a song or hula about a bird flitting from flower to flower sipping the nectar, which is actually sarcasm against a man in the front row, too stupid to grasp the metaphor, who everyone knows is a bed-hopping womanizer. Will you legislators fall for this treasonous bill which is actually an insult to your intelligence? Or do you perhaps endorse its intent?

Fourth and most importantly: voting to make "Lā Ku'oko'a" a holiday of the State of Hawaii could be construed as a violation of a legislator's oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" because it is not intended to be a simple acknowledgment of a piece of history but rather as a celebration of the secessionists' hope for a return of sovereignty to an independent nation of Hawaii. Please take notice of HB2475 in this year's legislature which proposes to name July 31 as a State of Hawaii holiday "Lā Ho'iho'i Ea" which was also a Kingdom holiday meaning "Sovereignty Restoration Day" -- another example of a day whose recognition by the State of Hawaii would not merely acknowledge a historic Kingdom holiday from long ago but rather would endorse the secessionist hope for an actual restoration of sovereign independence to Hawaii.

Do you legislators really want to proclaim a Hawaiian Independence Day and a Hawaiian Sovereignty Restoration Day? I know there are some who do. If they have a sense of honor they should resign from the legislature of a State of Hawaii which they believe should not exist because of the "illegal overthrow" of 1893 and "illegal annexation" of 1898 and "illegal statehood vote" of 1959, not to mention colonial oppression, making Hawaiian language illegal, denationalization, and a never-ending litany of grievances.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

Three points will be discussed in this testimony:

1. The most important point is that prior legislation and existing statute law make it clear that Kaho'olawe is not to be regarded as the permanent property of the State of Hawaii, and that its transfer to a different government is expected to happen within the next few years. Therefore the legislature must either stop wasting State government money on Kaho'olawe; or else pass legislation rescinding the automatic transfer of the island to a different government, so that money spent to rehabilitate that island actually is for the long-term benefit of the State.

2. All expenses for rehabilitating and maintaining Kaho'olawe should be paid by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs from its share of ceded land revenues, not from the State's general fund.

3. It seems there are no statements of long-term or even short-term goals and objectives regarding the intended uses of Kaho'olawe. For example, we might like to create a sustainable water supply so that vegetation can grow without constant human intervention, but why should we do that? Do we want significant numbers of people to have that island as their primary place of residence where they can grow their own food? We should not merely appropriate money and then wait for people to figure out how to use it -- we should have a statement of purposes first, and then figure out how much money is needed to achieve those purposes and how to hold the recipients accountable for achieving those purposes. Don't spend money without saying why; and don't hire bureaucrats with no way to measure whether they achieve goals which nobody has stated.

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1. Kaho'olawe is not to be regarded as the permanent property of the State of Hawaii; its transfer to a different government is expected to happen within the next few years.

HB455 of year 2019 made clear that Kaho'olawe is not to be regarded as the permanent property of the State of Hawaii, and that its transfer to a different government is expected to happen within the next few years. According to that bill: "Pursuant to section 6K-9, Hawaii Revised Statutes, the management and control of the Kahoolawe island reserve will be transferred to a sovereign native Hawaiian entity upon its recognition by the State and the federal government. This event is anticipated to occur within the timeframe of the 2026 strategic plan." It's unclear whether the expected "Native Hawaiian entity" will be a sovereign independent nation recognized internationally, or whether it will be similar to an Indian tribe as envisioned by the numerous versions of the "Akaka bill" in Congress from 2000 to 2012. Either way, Kaho'olawe WILL be transferred out of the State of Hawaii and into the Hawaiian nation -- a transfer expected within the next four years.

How serious is the threat that a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe will soon be created? Although the Akaka bill has not been re-introduced in Congress since the end of 2012, Senator Brian Schatz zealously devoted his entire maiden speech to pushing in favor of it on June 11, 2013, even though no such bill had been introduced at that time 6 months into the new Congress and even though it has never been introduced from then until now. Full text of his speech, and analysis of it, is at https://www.angelfire.com/big09/AkakaSchatzMaiden061113.html Senator Schatz has served on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee continuously for more than 9 years, and as its Chairman during 2021-2022. He is also Chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, the same position from which Senator Inouye repeatedly attached the Akaka bill by reference (merely naming its bill number and declaring it to be "hereby enacted") deep inside must-pass military or national debt appropriations bills.

Near the start of the current 117th Congress, on January 21, 2021 KITV News reported "The new administration is opening the door for federal recognition for Native Hawaiians, allowing greater self-determination and control similar to other Native American tribes. ... "We have a historic opportunity to be able to walk through that portal," Esther Kia'aina said. Before winning a seat on the Honolulu City Council, Esther Kia'aina worked in D.C. for decades. She says the tide turned after the U.S. government issued a formal apology for the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. President Biden recently appointed Deb Haaland as the first Native American Interior Secretary, if Native Hawaiians want recognition, Kia'aina says no[w] is the time to stand up. ... As the debate continues there's also a new Native Hawaiian voice at the Capitol who is listening. "I do feel that it's important to hear from our Native Hawaiian community so they can have input on whatever future that holds as far as governance but as a Native Hawaiian and one who represents Hawaii in Congress I look forward to bringing that Native Hawaiian perspective," Hawaii U.S. Congressman Kai Kahele said.

The President could issue an executive order to recognize a Hawaiian tribe, but such an order would be fragile since it could be reversed by any future President. Congressional action through something like the Akaka bill would be permanent and remains a strong possibility. But there is another way to create a Hawaiian tribe and get federal recognition for it. A regulation unilaterally proclaimed by the U.S. Department of Interior at the end of the Obama administration remains in place and could be activated at any time, like a sleeper agent in a spy movie.

43 CFR 50 "Procedures for Reestablishing a Formal Government-to- Government Relationship With the Native Hawaiian Community" was published by the Department of Interior in the Federal Register on October 14, 2016, pp. 71278-71323, thereby making it law. This rule became effective November 14, 2016, 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. In a format that is easy to read, 43 CFR 50 is at
http://tinyurl.com/jyvdbwg
To see the rule as it was actually formatted in the Federal Register, go to
http://tinyurl.com/znjgwkr

How serious is the threat that an internationally recognized sovereign independent Nation of Hawaii will be created? [which would automatically receive a transfer of Kaho'olawe according to HRS 6K-9]

One lecturer in Hawaiian Studies at a community college has been, for more than two decades, filing federal lawsuits and corresponding with foreign government consulates in the U.S. demanding that the U.S. disgorge and withdraw is belligerent military occupation of Hawaii. Another activist who styles himself as Foreign Minister of the still-living Kingdom of Hawaii has for many years been making at least one trip annually to both the United Nations in New York and the United Nations in Geneva Switzerland to lobby diplomats of foreign governments, some of which are enemies of the U.S., to invoke old treaties between their nations and the Hawaiian kingdom, and to introduce legislation in the General Assembly to reinstate Hawaii on the U.N. list of non-self-governing territories in need of decolonization. Consider also the ongoing effort to remove the name and statue of President McKinley from the high school, on grounds that McKinley performed a despicable act in persuading Congress to agree to the "illegal" Treaty of Annexation in 1898 -- the primary purpose of that effort is to show the world [falsely but convincingly] that Hawaii rejects being part of America and wants help to escape. In 2021 a committee of this legislature held a hearing on a resolution demanding that the Board of Education remove McKinley's name and statue, and the committee seemed shocked by the strong resistance to that proposal.

One piece of evidence showing the seriousness of intent to create a sovereign Hawaiian nation is the fact that in 2015 the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs engaged in a well-funded process to create a Constitution for that nation. That effort proceeded in tandem with the Department of Interior multi-year series of hearings and preliminary drafts of 43 CFR 50. All versions of that emerging regulation called for ethnic Hawaiians to hold an election to select delegates to a Constitutional Convention, who would then write a Constitution, get it ratified by a vote of ethnic Hawaiians, and submit it to the Secretary of Interior for approval. OHA spent millions of dollars to update its list of ethnic Hawaiians, and subcontracted to a specially created "private" but wholly owned subsidiary "Na'i Aupuni" to hold an election of delegates. However, a lawsuit by Judicial Watch and Grassroot Institute of Hawaii succeeded in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an injunction by 5-4 vote blocking the election results from being used, on account of the Rice v. Cayetano Supreme Court decision of year 2000 which ruled that a state government agency [OHA's subsidiary Na'i Aupuni] cannot hold a racially exclusionary election.

Because of the Supreme Court injunction a decision was made to seat at the constitutional convention all 151 people who were still interested in participating (out of the 209 who had originally filed papers to run as candidates), but to cut the length of the convention from 8 weeks to 4 weeks in order to get the work done within the original budget. The Na'i Aupuni convention met throughout the entire month of February and voted to approve its Constitution on February 26, 2016. The Constitution was published on the Na'i Aupuni website; but of course Na'i Aupuni no longer exists and neither does its website. However, the Constitution remains available here:
http://big09.angelfire.com/NatHwnConstitAdopt022616.pdf

The Native Hawaiian Nation is racially exclusionary, restricted to people who have at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood. All lands and waters of the archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands shall belong to the Native Hawaiian Nation. In other words: This nation is of, by, and for the race exclusively; and the race owns all the lands and waters of Hawaii. The constitution reasserts the concept from the ancient Hawaiian religion, that ethnic Hawaiians have a genealogical relationship with the gods and the land, which is the basis of their race-based rights to control the government and how the lands are used. Here's the relevant exact language from the constitution as approved by the Na'i Aupuni convention on February 26, 2016: Right up front in your face, the preamble says "we join together to affirm a government of, by, and for Native Hawaiian people" [i.e., of the race, by the race, and for the race], and "affirm our ancestral [i.e., race-based] rights and Kuleana to all lands, waters, and resources of our islands and surrounding seas." [i.e., we're gonna take over the whole place, just like Kamehameha did, who was known as "Ka Na'i Aupuni" -- the conqueror.] "We reaffirm the National Sovereignty of the Nation. We reserve all rights to Sovereignty and Self-determination, including the pursuit of independence. Our highest aspirations are set upon the promise of our unity and this Constitution." By the way, "Na'i Aupuni" means "Conquest" and was one nickname for Kamehameha Ka Na'i Aupuni "The Conqueror." In case there's any doubt about racial exclusivity, Article 2 -- Citizenship -- says "A citizen of the Native Hawaiian Nation is any descendant of the aboriginal and indigenous people who, prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the Hawaiian Islands and is enrolled in the nation." Article 7, Section 4 reaffirms the religious belief that ethnic Hawaiians have a genealogical relationship with the islands, saying "The Nation has a right, duty, and kuleana, both individually and collectively, to sustain the 'Aina (land, kai, wai, air) as an ancestor, source of mana, and source of life and well-being for present and future generations. And Article 8 says "The Government shall not ... Make any law with intent to suppress traditional Native Hawaiian religion or beliefs." Notice also that although the Constitution seems designed to pursue federal recognition as an Indian tribe, it also says "We reserve all rights to Sovereignty and Self-determination, including the pursuit of independence."

This bill now in the Hawaii legislature is a simple bill appropriating money to establish a bureaucracy for restoring Kaho'olawe Island. In this section of my testimony I am saying you should not do that because under HRS 6K-9 it is envisioned that Kaho'olawe will no longer belong to the State of Hawaii, and there is a strategic plan, referred to in HB455 of year 2019, which anticipated that the transfer will happen by 2026. If the ethnic Hawaiian power-elite in Hawaii decides to move forward to implement the federal regulation 43 CFR 50, and to put forward the Na'i Aupuni racist Constitution which allows for independent nationhood, there is absolutely no way you in the legislature can stop it. But you do have it in your power to stop throwing money down the rathole of a soon-to-be outside-of-Hawaii Kaho'olawe. You legislators can overcome this objection merely by getting rid of the automatic transfer of Kaho'olawe to the anticipated Hawaiian nation.

PLEASE RESCIND HRS 6K-9. You have it in your power to do that.

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2. All expenses for rehabilitating and maintaining Kaho'olawe should be paid by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs from its share of ceded land revenues, not from the State's general fund. The text of this bill specifically identifies ethnic Hawaiians as the primary beneficiaries. The first sentence makes that clear when it says "Through Act 340, Session Laws of Hawaii 1993, the legislature found that the island of Kaho�olawe was of significant cultural and historic importance to the native people of Hawaii." and the second sentence refers to "the existence of archaeological and other cultural and historic sites, and the presence of native and endangered flora and fauna ..." "The State" and "the people of Hawaii" are briefly mentioned, but only in a condescending way implying they are are of lesser status. Accordingly, all expenses for rehabilitating and maintaining Kaho'olawe should be paid by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs from its share of ceded land revenues, not from the State's general fund.

According to OHA's latest annual report, on June 30, 2021 OHA had assets of $764,820,000. Another bill already approved by a committee this year calls for $638 Million in arrears plus $79 Million per year in future for OHA from ceded land revenues, exclusively for "betterment of Native Hawaiians" who comprise 20% of Hawaii's people; with no set-aside of 4 times those amounts exclusively for the other 80% of Hawaii's people who lack a drop of Hawaiian blood.

What the heck do you folks think OHA should be doing with all that money? This bill says "There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $500,000 or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2022-2023 in natural and physical environment (LNR906) for the Kaho�olawe island reserve commission." And in addition "There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $72,000 or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2022-2023 to fund two full-time equivalent (2.00 FTE) permanent positions in natural and physical environment (LNR906) for the Kaho�olawe island reserve commission." That's a mere $572,000 which is a tiny drop in the bucket for OHA. But it would establish a good precedent: OHA should be responsible for projects and costs that are primarily for the benefit of ethnic Hawaiians. That's why Section 5(f) of the Statehood Act of 1959 identifies "the betterment of native Hawaiians" as one of the 5 purposes for which revenues from the ceded lands can be used. Of course we know that $572,000 is merely seed money -- something to get the ball rolling -- the beginning of expenditures that will mushroom to hundreds of millions of dollars in a few years. Make OHA pay!

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3. What are the long-term or even short-term goals and objectives regarding the intended uses of Kaho'olawe? We should not merely appropriate money and then wait for people to figure out how to use it -- we should have a statement of purposes first, and then figure out how much money is needed to achieve those purposes and how to hold the recipients accountable for achieving those purposes. Don't spend money without saying why; and don't hire bureaucrats with no way to measure whether they achieve goals which nobody has stated.

In 1992 I first came to live permanently in Kane'ohe, and for several years (1992 to 1995) I was enrolled in courses in Hawaiian language, history, and culture. That was the same time period when the bombing of the "target island" was stopped, ownership of the island was transferred to Hawaii, and Congress appropriated $400 Million for cleanup of unexploded ordnance. I attended community meetings celebrating these events. Both in my classes and in community meetings I was invited several times to go along on a one- day visit to Kaho'olawe. I politely declined. But it was clear from those community events, from televised news reports, and from the invitations to tag along, that there was no clear plan or purpose for how to use the island. Indeed, some might consider it sacrilegious, or at least disrespectful, to talk about "using" Kaho'olawe. An 'olelo no'eau says: "He ali'i ka 'aina; he kauwa ke kanaka." Land is a chief, people are its humble servants. Our job is not to use the land but to serve it.

But in practice casually visiting Kaho'olawe was seen partly as a sort of tourist daytrip for fun and adventure. A bit daring because of all the unexploded bombs and need to stay on a narrowly defined path. It was also regarded by some activists as a pilgrimage to a sacred place, born from the womb of a god and giving birth to other creatures -- Ke kohe [lawe] malamalama o Kanaloa was its legendary name, identifying it as the shining [portable] vagina of the sea god Kanaloa. So the activists performed protocol: chants, prayers, setting up a lele for offerings of fish or vegetables. Very nice, and very impressive to daytrippers.

Is that it? Is that the reason why the State of Hawaii should spend lots of money to rehabilitate Kaho'olawe? Simply to admire it and perhaps to worship it? Is the ancient religion the native Hawaiians now adopted as the official religion of the State of Hawaii? Or maybe it will become the island where the capitol of the Hawaiian nation will be erected. Or maybe we can turn it into a vegetable garden and send the produce by barge a short distance to Maui. Or maybe it would be a great place for OHA to build a casino! Figure out what you want to do with it before you spend tax dollars on it.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION (First testimony)

In education we're familiar with the fundamental 3 Rs:
Reading, (w)Riting, and 'Rithmetic.

Here are the 4 Rs of HB2024:
Racism, Religion, Retrogression, Re-education.

The first two are both immoral and illegal for legislation; the third would be very damaging to Hawaii's economy and status. The fourth would give ethnic Hawaiian propagandists the right to use Mauna Kea the way they currently use Iolani Palace, as a prop to brainwash visitors to believe in an idealized version of Hawaiian culture and a victimhood analysis of Hawaii's history.

RACISM

This bill is racist in the way it was created and in the way it requires that it must be implemented.

The "working group" established in 2021 to develop a plan for Mauna Kea was deliberately stacked with ethnic Hawaiians, far out of proportion to their percentage of Hawaii's citizens. So of course they developed a plan with not only racial preferences but actual racial requirements. The working group was created in urgent response to multi-year protests by a group of anti-telescope activists who were overwhelmingly ethnic Hawaiian and used Hawaiian cultural symbols, chants, and prayers to illegally blockade the access road and occupy adjacent areas with semi-permanent tents, shacks, and race-based religious "altars." In politics we know "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" -- in this case, a racial group dominated the protests, so the politicians created a working group dominated by that racial group in hopes of pacifying them, anticipating that group would create a plan catering to the perceived desires of that racial group, which is exactly what has happened. In politics we know that if you yell loud enough you will drown out opposing views. No matter that the protesters in particular, and astronomy opponents in general, are a minority among the minority of ethnic Hawaiians -- they claim to speak on behalf of all racially defined Hawaiians, and the media publish news reports falsely portraying the protesters as expressing that alleged consensus.

The text of this bill proposes to create a "Mauna Kea stewardship authority" empowered to create and enforce regulations by authority of the government of the State of Hawaii. This authority will have 9 members: 2 ex-officio and 7 appointed. At least one of the two ex- officio members is guaranteed to be racially Hawaiian because that member is the CEO of OHA or person designated by that CEO. The bill also requires that "four of the seven non-ex-officio members of the authority shall be Native Hawaiian residents of the county of Hawaii, with a preference for Native Hawaiian residents of the county of Hawaii for all seven non-ex-officio members." Thus, at least 5 of the 9 members (i.e., a majority) are guaranteed to be racially Hawaiian; and this bill adds a preference that all 7 of the appointed members should be racially Hawaiian (plus the ex-officio OHA CEO or designee).

Furthermore, "A majority of all members shall constitute a quorum to do business, and the concurrence of a majority of all members shall be necessary to make any action of the authority valid." Since at least 4 of the 7 appointed members, and at least 5 of the 9 total members, are guaranteed to be racially Hawaiian, and since a majority consisting of 5 out of 9 members is a sufficient quorum to conduct business and make decisions, it would be easy for the racial Hawaiians to conduct business and adopt regulations (i.e., LAWS OF THE STATE OF HAWAII) without approval or even without notification to any non-racial- Hawaiian. THIS IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF RACISM: the exercise of power by one racial group without consent by (or even notification to) others. This systemic racism would have the authority of the government including police powers, fines, arrest and imprisonment. Also note that this bill specifies that a voting bloc of 4 out of the 9 members must be under the control of OHA: the ex-officio CEO of OHA (or designee), plus the 3 members designated as items 7,8,9 who are nominated by OHA "in coordination with the Edith Kanaka�ole Foundation and I Ola Hāloa Hawaiian studies program at Hawaii community college."

A totally unacceptable part of this bill, both because of its racism and because of its requirement to transfer sovereignty out of the State of Hawaii, is this:

"� -8 Transfer. The lands under the jurisdiction of the authority shall be held in trust as part of the public land trust; provided that the State shall transfer management and control of the lands to a sovereign Native Hawaiian entity upon its recognition by the United States and the State of Hawaii."

That same language is already in the law regarding the entire island of Kaho'olawe. Pursuant to section 6K-9, Hawaii Revised Statutes, the management and control of the Kahoolawe island reserve will be transferred to a sovereign native Hawaiian entity upon its recognition by the State and the federal government. This event is anticipated to occur within the timeframe of the 2026 Kaho'olawe strategic plan. That same language has been incorporated into other bills in the recent past which fortunately failed, regarding the governance of Kahana Valley, Makua Valley, Ha'iku Valley (Ko'olaupoko O'ahu), and perhaps others. Some Hawaiian sovereignty activists are secessionists who would like to kick out the USA completely and make Hawaii an independent nation; other activists want to create a Hawaiian tribe and get federal recognition of it and then divide the people and lands of Hawaii between tribal vs. non-tribal. Both types of sovereignty activists realize it will take a while to achieve their dream; so in the meanwhile they want to carve out bits and pieces of Hawaii (this bill proposes it for Mauna Kea) to be designated as apartheid-style bantustans. These carve-outs, including approximately 70 DHHL "Hawaiian Homelands", are moth-holes in the fabric of Hawaii's society, where the number of holes and the size of each one seem to increase over time.

RELIGION

The word "sacred" and other religious concepts are sprinkled throughout this bill in a way that is contrary to America's well- established principle that there should be a wall of separation between government and religion. Of course the Hawaiian sovereignty activists will immediately shout "America's laws and principles have no jurisdiction or application here" (because the overthrow of the monarchy, Treaty of Annexation, and Statehood vote were all "illegal"). If you legislators believe that, you should resign.

One way we use that word "sacred" in everyday life is not a problem for separation of government and religion, because it's not a reference to religion but merely refers to something that is important; majestic; arouses awe or respect or strong affection. A child is sacred to its parents. Money is sacred to a miser or tycoon. And yes, a powerful telescope is sacred to an astronomer.

But in this bill, the ancient Hawaiian religion is enshrined and embedded everywhere. It's unacceptable or at least worrisome to many ethnic Hawaiians who consider themselves good Christians or Jews; and completely unacceptable to the remaining 80% of Hawaii's people.

Here are some items in the bill that need further explication for any legislators who might not be aware of how certain terms are used and the religious beliefs they entail.
"Mauna Kea serves as an important genealogical site"
"I Ola Hāloa Hawaiian studies program"
"Hawaiian cultural values embedded in the sacred landscape of the mauna"
"'aina aloha"

Kumulipo is a beautiful ancient Hawaiian creation legend passed down orally for centuries by priests who were trained to chant all 2102 lines perfectly. The elements of Kumulipo pertaining to the creation of the Hawaiian islands and the creation of humans can be summarized as follows.

The gods mated and gave birth to the Hawaiian islands as living beings, which remain alive to this day. Earth Mother's name, Papahanaumoku, literally means Papa-who-gave-birth-to-the-islands. Sky Father Wakea mated with Papa who gave birth to the goddess Ho'ohokukalani, whose name means she who placed the stars into the heavens. Later when Papa was away on a journey, Wakea mated with his daughter Ho'ohokukalani (not child-molesting but a sacred ni'aupi'o mating), who then gave birth to a deformed stillborn baby Haloanakalaukapapili. Wakea and Ho'ohokukalani buried it, and from that burial grew the first taro plant. Wakea and Ho'ohokukalani mated again, and from that mating Ho'ohokukalani gave birth to a perfect human baby boy, to whom they gave the name Haloa to honor the stillborn elder brother.

What was the role of the perfect baby boy Haloa as ancestor of future generations?

A benign interpretation is that Haloa is a Hawaiian name for the Biblical Adam -- the ancestor from whom all humans are descended. Thus we are all children of the gods and siblings to the land, endowed with a divine right to receive sustenance and a stewardship responsibility to take care of the land and exercise authority over how it should be used.

But Hawaiian sovereignty activists twist the creation legend to say that Haloa is the primordial ancestor only of ethnic Hawaiians. Anyone who has at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood is a descendant of Haloa, but nobody else is a part of this family. Only ethnic Hawaiians are children of the gods and siblings of the land, while nobody else ever can be who lacks a drop of the magic blood. Therefore ethnic Hawaiians have a divine right to rule Hawaii. This is an evil fascist theology to justify ethnic Hawaiian racial supremacy. This theology is the explanation for what makes Mauna-a-Wakea sacred and why it is "an important genealogical site": it is literally the place where sky (Wakea) and Earth (Papa) came together to mate, from which are descended the islands, the taro plant, and then the primordial ancestor, named Haloa, of all ethnic Hawaiians. "I Ola Hāloa" (the Hawaiian studies program at Hawaii [Island] Community College) is named for that primordial ancestor Haloa, and is an assertion that he lives (through all his genetic [racial] descendants who have at least one drop of the magic blood).

The ancient Hawaiian religion with centuries of tenure was permanently abolished in 1819, the year before the first Christian missionaries arrived. It was abolished by the four top political and spiritual leaders of the Kingdom in a public display in front of perhaps a thousand important people. After careful planning, they broke a major taboo ('aikapu) whose violation normally carried the death penalty (men and women must not eat together), and then gave a short speech proclaiming that the old religion was now overthrown, and ordering the destruction of all the stone temples and burning of the idols throughout all of Hawaii. The four leaders were the child King Liholiho Kamehameha II; his biological mother Keopuolani (sacred wife of Kamehameha The Great and mother of the next two Kings who were his sons by her) who had the highest mana (spiritual power) in Hawaii; his regent (co-ruler) stepmother Ka'ahumanu ("favorite" wife of Kamehameha The Great among more than 20 official wives and numerous unofficial concubines); and Kahuna Nui (High Priest) Hewahewa. These leaders freely exercised self-determination on behalf of the entire nation. Soon thereafter came a short civil war. High chief Kekuaokalani, to whom Kamehameha The Great had entrusted the war god Ku, and his army, fought to preserve the old religion but were slaughtered in the Battle of Kuamo'o. Some ethnic Hawaiians today seek to revive the old religion as a political power-seeking ploy, thereby disrespecting the freely-chosen self-determination of their ancestors, and also disrespecting the Christianity practiced by most ethnic Hawaiians today. Many ethnic Hawaiians today claim to embrace both Christianity and the ancient religion, and pray or chant to the god(s) of both. There are even a few left-leaning Christian pastors who tell their flocks it's OK to embrace both; but the Protestant missionaries of the 19th Century and the Catholic hierarchy of today reject such syncretism. One thing that makes Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III famous among historians was his gut-wrenching public vacillation between the two religions: He dearly loved his younger sister Nahi'ena'ena (same pair of parents) and made a baby with her (especially for love and also fto fulfill a political requirement for genealogical enhancement of mana in the royal family) even while periodically repenting and trying to be a good Christian when the missionaries warned him about incest.

An essay drafted by 7 Native Hawaiian leaders in July, 2021 is entitled "The Historical Context for Sacredness, Title, and Decision Making in Hawai�i: Implications for TMT on Maunakea." It points out that the ancient Hawaiian religion and its gods had no objection to using areas near the summit of Mauna Kea for commercial and industrial purposes which included living and working there, digging into the ground to quarry rocks for sale or barter, and leaving their trash behind. It is not "Wao Akua" (the realm of the gods where ordinary people are not allowed to live or work).

"Archaeological evidence demonstrates that, while the kapu system was in effect, Hawaiians utilized Maunakea as a valuable resource for industrial activities for over 500 years until the time of western contact. Hawaiians excavated the upper slopes of Maunakea for stone of exceptional quality to make tools. As described by Hawaiian cultural practitioner and master navigator Kalepa Baybayan during the TMT contested case hearing, �[t]hey ... shaped the environment by quarrying rock, left behind evidence of their work, and took materials off the mountain to serve their communities, within the presence and with full consent of their gods.� This adze quarry complex covers an area over 900 times the size of the permitted TMT site, which itself is small compared to the entire astronomy precinct"

Hawaii is multiracial, with many different religions. No individual race or religion should be allowed to dictate to everyone else what will be the decisions of the government. The U.S. Constitution, First Amendment, says there shall be no "establishment of religion" by the government, meaning that government must not adopt any particular set of religious beliefs as the primary basis for making decisions that affect all people of all different religions. That Amendment allows "free exercise" of religion by any religion, so long as it doesn't force itself on anyone who is not an adherent of it.

It would be both legally and morally wrong for any government agency to award custody of Mauna Kea to any racial group or to adopt decisions or regulations establishing the ancient Hawaiian religion as the primary authority.

The Constitution of the State of Hawaii, Article XII, Section 7 declares that the State "reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua�a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights.� Subsequent court decisions have ruled that those rights extend to ethnic Hawaiians beyond the borders of any particular ahupua'a, and apply to shoreline access and gathering of certain plants for subsistence and cultural practices. To avoid imposing racial exclusivity, ALL SUCH RIGHTS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO EVERY RESIDENT OF HAWAII. We would thereby ensure that all Native Hawaiians would be protected as required by the Constitution, while also manifesting the Aloha Spirit and the value "ho'okipa" as we avoid racial supremacy or exclusivity. The fact that native Hawaiians had certain rights in ancient times, and still have those rights today under the State Constitution, does not in any way prohibit those rights from being available to all Hawaii's people of all races today. Another way of saying it is that those rights previously belonged to all Hawaii's people (who were, of course, all native Hawaiians back then), and continue to belong to all Hawaii's people today (regardless of race). There's nothing wrong with that, is there? Unless you're a flat-out racist demanding racial supremacy.

RETROGRESSION

This bill as written makes it clear there is no future for astronomy on Mauna Kea. Of course the "working group" and legislators who created it will say even the Thirty Meter Telescope remains a possibility; and the news media obediently repeated that nonsense. But the language in this bill is very clear. Astronomy will be phased out while environmental protection and cultural/religious uses will grow until all the telescopes and evidence of human habitation are removed and the upper zone of the mountain will be retrogressed to its natural state.

� -6 Astronomy development; framework: "The authority shall develop a framework to limit astronomy development on Mauna Kea through development limitations that may include limitations on the number of astronomy facilities or an astronomy facility footprint limitation; provided that IN ESTABLISHING A FRAMEWORK TO CONTROL ASTRONOMY DEVELOPMENT ON MAUNA KEA, THE AUTHORITY SHALL ESTABLISH A PLAN TO RETURN THE MAUNA ABOVE NINE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED FEET ELEVATION TO ITS NATURAL STATE." Note the word "shall" (mandated) as opposed to "may" (allowed).

Also, � -12 says "Any lease issued by the authority for the purposes of an astronomical observatory shall ensure that the astronomical observatory shall plan for and finance its decommissioning process on Mauna Kea and return and restore the impacted areas, to the greatest extent possible, to their pre-construction condition; provided that the authority shall determine what site restoration shall be based on, including but not limited to the protection of the natural and cultural resources on Mauna Kea and in accordance with the authority's guiding operational values and principles. [We will allow you to be born, but only if your genome includes a timed-release death gene]

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser of January 30, 2022 published an article summarizing a report by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization that "The state�s astronomy sector pumped $110 million into Hawaii�s economy in 2019 and generated an overall economic impact twice that ... astronomy�s overall economic impact of $221 million, which includes indirect expenditures, is nearly as much as agriculture statewide."

In Hawaii we often hear people lamenting the fact that many of our best and brightest children go away to college and never come back. Hawaii's economy is based on tourism and the military, providing little opportunity for people with advanced educations in science and technology. People born and raised in Hawaii often feel that all they can look forward to is a job as a hotel maid, store clerk, bus driver, carpenter, etc. Even locally-grown adults sometimes feel squeezed out and leave for other states with better opportunities -- Hawaii's population has declined in recent years due to out-migration. Retrogression by abolishing astronomy and its associated technology would probably accelerate the diaspora of Hawaii's people.

The COVID pandemic shut down Hawaii's tourist industry, and local folks discovered how nice it is to have good access to our beautiful environment without competition from tourists. The Navy's leaky fuel storage tanks at Red Hill created anti-military sentiment and a wish that we could kick the military out of Hawaii. If we don't want tourism, and we don't want a huge military presence, what's left to stimulate the economy and provide jobs?

Astronomy provides safe high-status jobs with good salaries for intelligent people of all races; does not pollute the environment; helps advance our knowledge of the universe, its ongoing story of creation, and our place among the stars. We have stunningly beautiful photos of galaxies, nebulae, planets, and even black holes from close to the time of the "big bang." Getting rid of telescopes on Mauna Kea would give a victory to anti-science troglodytes and damage our economy.

RE-EDUCATION

� -11 (c) of this bill says "The authority shall require all people accessing Mauna Kea to undergo an annual orientation anchored by the authority's guiding operational values and principles; provided that all employees, contractors, leaseholders, and others who regularly access Mauna Kea shall have more extensive and frequent training on the authority's guiding operational values and principles.

What are those values and principles? � -2(9)(h) explains:
The authority shall adopt and follow the following guiding operational values and principles:
(1) Mauna Aloha � We understand the reciprocal value of the mauna and a long-term commitment to maintaining the integrity of Mauna Kea;
(2) �Ōpū Kupuna � We understand and embrace a duty and accountability to Mauna Kea, the natural environment, and to perpetuate the Hawaiian cultural values embedded in the sacred landscape of the mauna; and
(3) Holomua �Oi Kelakela � We are driven by creativity and innovation, constantly challenging the status quo, with a stewardship of Mauna Kea that is informed based on existing knowledge and traditions, as well as on new and expanding knowledge. We are mindful and observant of needs, trends, and opportunities and seek new knowledge and opportunities in ways that enhance the ability to serve as stewards without jeopardizing the foundation of aina aloha.

Thus this bill would give ethnic Hawaiian propagandists the right to use Mauna Kea the way they currently use Iolani Palace, as a prop to brainwash visitors to believe that the idealized version of Hawaiian culture they are being told about is actually true, an animist religious viewpoint, and a victimhood analysis of Hawaii's history.

In some ways this one-time orientation for casual visitors, and frequent re-indoctrination for employees and regular visitors, is similar to the re- education methodology used in several Asian nations after a cultural or political revolution: Chairman Mao's cultural revolution in China; Pol Pot's re-education camps in Cambodia; similar campaigns in Viet Nam after the Americans were kicked out; and what's now happening with the Uyghurs in China and the women and girls in Afghanistan following the Taliban victory. They all need to be re-educated to adapt and assimilate to the newly dominant culture/religion/philosophy/ethnicity.

Should visitors (both residents and tourists) to certain special places be required to undergo an "orientation" program, video, lecture, or escorted tour? There is a good orientation program at Hanauma Bay, where all visitors are told how to snorkel responsibly and must not stand on the coral because that kills it -- this orientation program is racially/culturally neutral and free from divisive propaganda. There is a bad situation at Iolani Palace which has fallen under the control of Hawaiian sovereignty zealots, who focus on the "imprisonment room" and the beautiful songs and quilt created by the wonderful Lili'uokalani who was "illegally overthrown" by the USA [false], without explaining how she demanded the beheading of the local men who overthrew her, why she was imprisoned for conspiracy in a violent counterrevolution, and that she abdicated and swore allegiance to the Republic, and was fully pardoned by her magnanimous friend President Dole. The focus is on the ten years when the Palace was the Capitol of the Kingdom, but no mention of the 5 years when it was Capitol of the Republic and 70 years when it was Capitol of the Territory of Hawaii proudly flying the U.S. flag on the highest center pole. Iolani Palace is owned by the Department of Parks within DLNR, on behalf of all Hawaii's people. But is has become a propaganda factory miseducating kama'aina and malihini, leading them to believe it remains the Capitol of a still-living Kingdom of Hawaii where the spirit of Lili'uokalani still lives.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION (Second version of testimony in response to massively-rewritten bill)

To: SENATE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS For hearing Tuesday April 5, 2022
Re: SB 2024 HD1, SD1 RELATING TO MAUNA KEA.
Establishes the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority as the principal authority for management of state- managed lands above the 9,200 feet elevation line on Mauna Kea, in conjunction with the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Requires the authority to manage land uses; human activities, uses, and access; stewardship; education; research; disposition; and overall operations. Authorizes the Authority to develop a framework to allow astronomy development on Mauna Kea. Authorizes the Authority to establish advisory groups. Allows the Authority to limit certain commercial use and activities on Mauna Kea. Requires the Authority to allow the University of Hawaii a certain amount of viewing time at the telescopes. Provides certain restrictions on leases. Requires the timely decommissioning of certain telescopes. Requires an application and fee for all recreational users of Mauna Kea. Establishes the Mauna Kea Management Special Fund. Requires an audit of the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority. Reverts management to the University of Hawaii Board of Regents and President if the audit finds the Authority unfit to continue. Appropriates funds. Effective 1/1/2055. (SD1)

TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

The best thing to do with HB2024 is to trash it. The bill is a chaotic mix of conflicting concepts serving no discernible purpose other than to incorporate a few concerns of competing interest groups. Do nothing this year regarding Mauna Kea.

But if this legislature is so captivated by the sunken cost of its investment in this bill up to now that you are simply unable to write it off as a total loss (sort of like the Honolulu rail project), then the second-best thing to do is to take the membership of the Stewardship Authority envisioned in the current draft of this bill and convert that into a new Working Group to begin all over again with the writing of a new bill to be introduced next year.

Hawaiian culture places strong weight on using genealogy as a factor in judging credibility and moral legitimacy. The genealogy of this bill shows that it was conceived in a cesspool of racial grievance, self- righteous religious zealotry, and uncompromising hostility toward UH in general and astronomy in particular.

This bill was written through a dishonest, flat-out racist process that created a Working Group heavily stacked with race-partisan anti- telescope activists. So of course that group wrote a bill whose original text called for a Mauna Kea Stewardship Authority [governing group] heavily stacked with at least 5 out of 9 members mandated to be ethnic Hawaiians (who are about 20% of Hawaii's population); and, according to a racial preference explicitly in that bill, probably 7 or 8 of the 9 members would actually be ethnic Hawaiians. In addition, the original text of the bill called for UH and the Institute for Astronomy to be completely excluded from the Stewardship Authority. All drafts, including the latest one, envision a future when the upper portion of the mountain will be returned to a pristine condition with no telescopes allowed.

Please review the testimony I submitted for the triple-committee hearing (hurry, hurry, hurry) in the House on Saturday, February 19, 2022; and also to the Senate Committee on Higher Education on Tuesday, March 22, 2022: That testimony consists of 13 pages beginning about 20% of the way down the file of all testimony to HRE at
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2022/Testimony/ HB2024_HD1_TESTIMONY_HRE_03-22-22_.PDF

My testimony focused on the 4 Rs of HB2024:

Racism: Unconstitutional racial stacking of the Working Group and Stewardship Authority). Religion: ESTABLISHMENT of ancient Hawaiian religion as basis for state government decision, violating the Constitution's First Amendment "Establishment Clause" -- despite the fact that that religion was abolished by the Kingdom's 4 top native leaders acting jointly in 1819, the year before the Christian missionaries arrived. Those leaders were King Liholiho Kamehameha II; his mother Queen Keopiolani who was Kamehameha's sacred wife with highest mana in all Hawaii; regent Queen Ka'ahumanu who was Kamehameha's "favorite" wife; and Kahuna Nui (High Priest Hewahewa. Nearly all ethnic Hawaiians today are Christians; very few actually worship the ancient gods who were overthrown by their ancestors in 1819, but instead today's activists pretend to believe in the ancient religion and stage public chants and prayers to use the ancient religion as a form of street theatre, as a political ploy to gain public sympathy and deference from gullible politicians and media.

Retrogression: Astronomy provides safe high-status jobs with good salaries for intelligent people of all races. Getting rid of telescopes on Mauna Kea would give a victory to anti-science troglodytes and damage our economy).

Re-education: The bill would give ethnic Hawaiian propagandists the right to use Mauna Kea the way they currently use Iolani Palace, as a prop to brainwash visitors to believe that the idealized version of Hawaiian culture they are being told about is actually true; to inculcate an animist religious viewpoint; and to inflict a victimhood analysis of Hawaii's history). The best thing to do with HB2024 is to trash it. The bill is a chaotic mix of conflicting concepts serving no discernible purpose other than to incorporate a few concerns of competing interest groups. Do nothing this year regarding Mauna Kea. But if this legislature is so captivated by the sunken cost of its investment in this bill up to now that you are simply unable to write it off as a total loss (sort of like the Honolulu rail project), then the second-best thing to do is to take the membership of the Stewardship Authority envisioned in the current draft of this bill and convert that into a new Working Group to begin all over again with the writing of a new bill to be introduced next year.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

Really? This stooopid resolution was chosen by the committee chair to get a hearing? The motive for the resolution is clear. Turn Captain Cook into a Soviet-style non-person. Cancel him. Do to Captain Cook what comedian Stephen Colbert does to President Trump: delete him from memory by never again mentioning his name.

Captain Cook was the greatest explorer of the Pacific Ocean's islands and coastal areas in the history of the world. Although his first brief encounter with Hawaii's natives took place in Kaua'i and Ni'ihau, the encounter that changed world history happened in Kealakekua Bay directly below the place now known as Captain Cook.

According to most historians and cultural anthropologists, he was treated as a god by the natives because the white sails on his ship resembled the banners of Lono and he arrived along "the pathway of God" [Ke Ala Ke Akua] returning from Kahiki as Lono had promised he would do and during the Makahiki season dedicated to Lono. Even the Europeans treated him like a god, as discussed in Gananath Obeyesekere's book "The Apotheosis of Captain Cook."

He set up an astronomical observatory at a heiau near where the memorial statue was later placed in the harbor. A few months later, trying to sail to Alaska, a mast broke on his ship and he returned to the bay to repair it. But his return was no longer during the Makahiki season; some natives stole a small boat from him; he tried to take the local chief hostage to bargain for return of the boat, and the natives killed him during a shoreline skirmish.

Throughout Hawaiian history, place-names have changed to memorialize major new events or the names of ali'i or leaders who came there to live. Greater status or fame displaces lesser status or fame.

Should we now replace the name "Kamehameha" on so many of our roads order to restore the names of the ancient paths or alahele that were there before the great conqueror murdered his way into power? That's the logic underlying the demand to remove "Captain Cook" and replace it with the name "Ka'awaloa" that was previously there.

Then there's the practical necessity to get approval from a majority of the residents and business owners in Captain Cook who would incur major expense to change their addresses and documents.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

During this legislature session of 2022, this committee has heard HB2475 which proposes to establish La Ho'iho'i Ea as a State of Hawaii holiday; and HB1449 to establish JuneteenthDay as a State of Hawaii holiday; and now HR14/HCR15 to recognize St. Patrick's Day as ... whatever.

I oppose all three of these proposed actions because Hawaii already has several ethnic-focused holidays and we do not need further proliferation of them. As a man of Irish ancestry I also oppose HR14/HCR15 for the additional reason that it is written in a style and manner which is demeaning and discriminatory against my race and ethnicity, by comparison with the HB2475 and HB1449. HB2475 and HB1449 are BILLS which presumably carry the force of law; while HR14/HCR15 is merely a RESOLUTION -- a mere expression of opinion or sentiment or state-of-mind.

The difference can be seen in the identical language found in HB2475 and HB1449 but not found in HR14/HCR15: the bills cite Section 8-1, Hawaii Revised Statutes, "The following days of each year are set apart and established as state holidays: [list of them is provided]" and the bills propose to insert the new holiday into the chronology; and the bills end by proclaiming that "Section 8-32, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows: [Specified month and day] of each year shall be known and designated as [name of new holiday] to commemorate [description of historic event].

By contrast, HR14/HCR15 does not cite Section 8-1, Hawaii Revised Statutes; does not provide the list of recognized holidays; does not refer to the proposed new date as a "holiday", and does not insert the new date into any such list. The proposed new date is merely a ... something-or-other.

Whatever small element of respect HR14/HCR15 bestows upon Caucasians in general or Irish ethnicity and culture in particular, is greatly overshadowed by relative disrespect shown by comparison with HB2475 and HB1449. HR14/HCR15 damns by faint praise, reinforcing what we see every day in the treatment of us Whites as the much-despised "haoles" -- the N-----s of Hawaii, who have no state government agencies or racial entitlement government programs specifically serving us, no multibillion dollar private institutions exclusively for our group, no song contests or hula competitions broadcast statewide and, indeed, worldwide.

Kill this resolution. Give us Whites instead something genuine: what the Democrat party liberals seem to now be campaigning for: equity, diversity, and inclusiveness.

The only good thing about this resolution is that it strongly and repeatedly refers to United States of America and "the noteworthy contributions and achievements of Irish-Americans to OUR NATION." Such language must be hard to tolerate for some legislators who routinely support bills and resolutions referring to the "illegal overthrow" of the monarchy, "illegal annexation" of Hawaii to America, and seeking to remove McKinley's name and statue from that high school because McKinley is credited with lobbying Congress to agree to the Treaty of Annexation proposed by the Republic of Hawaii. Get your story straight. Are we Americans or not? Is Hawaii a victim of McKinley like Ukraine is a victim of Putin?

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HCR104/HR100
and SCR119/SR106
URGING THE BOARD OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES TO RENAME THE RUSSIAN FORT ELISABETH STATE HISTORICAL PARK IN WAIMEA, KAUA�I, AS "PA�ULA�ULA"

Bill text (including all amended versions), history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HCR&billnumber=104&year=2022
and
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HR&billnumber=100&year=2022
and
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SCR&billnumber=119&year=2022 and
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=SR&billnumber=106&year=2022

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

The Russian-ness of Russian Fort is an essential part of Kaua'i's history. Everyone knows the ruthless warrior Kamehameha, who treated all the Hawaiian islands like Russia is now treating Ukraine, repeatedly tried but failed to invade Kaua'i until he intimidated King Kaumuali'i into ceding power and becoming a puppet vassal in 1810. But Kaumuali'i never gave up in his heart. In 1817 he conspired with a Russian trading company to build Russian Fort as a tactic to begin reasserting power. Even as late as 1824 his son Humehume engaged in battle against Kamehameha's successor-son Liholiho resulting in the deaths of 10 rebels and 8 Liholiho soldiers.

The current attempt to rename Russian Fort by giving it an obscure Hawaiian-language name is typical of the ethnic cleansing and homogenization of Hawaiian history which Hawaiian race-partisans have been doing for several decades. For example Rev. Dr. Gerrit Judd, hero of 1843 sovereignty restoration, is never mentioned at annual celebrations of Ka La Ho'iho'i Ea, and activists would like to re-name Thomas Square.

In all cultures, including Hawaiian, the name of a place has changed when a major event takes place there. For many generations local residents might name a piece of land based on what it looks like or how it is used: for example Big Bend or Grand Rapids. Pa'ula'ula is a name like that, identifying a river bank that resembles a red wall. Big deal! But when an important event happens at a place or when a historically significant building is constructed there, then local residents begin calling that place by a new name referring to the event or building; and that new name reflecting human activity eventually replaces the old name that merely described the general appearance of the land. That's what happened at Russian Fort.

Consider the place now known as Mauna Ala [the Royal Mausoleum in Nu'uanu, Honolulu]. But there's no mountain there! There's not even a hill, as some suggest by translating its name to "Fragrant Hill" which would more correctly be called Pu'u 'A'ala. One writer suggested the name is kaona for "Eternal Paths" [Mau Na Ala]. In any case, why not "return" the place-name to what it was before the mausoleum was created there -- Pohukaina. Or how about the even more-general place-name Nu'uanu.

Don't disrespect Kaumuali'i's attempted restoration of Kaua'i's sovereignty by suppressing the Russian essence and intended military purpose of Russian Fort. Do not try to remove Russian Fort from the history of Hawaii by removing its name from signs and books, like politicians in the Soviet Union turned their ideological enemies into non-persons by removing their names from history books.

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SCR125/SR110
REQUESTING THE DEPARTMENT OF HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS TO ESTABLISH A WORKING GROUP TO RETURN CROWN LANDS TO NATIVE HAWAIIANS.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

There is no reason why DHHL should establish a working group "to return crown lands to Native Hawaiians" for the simple reason that "Native Hawaiians" as a group were never the owners of the crown lands, and therefore those lands cannot be "returned" to them.

This issue was firmly and unequivocally settled by the decision in the only lawsuit ever brought by ex-queen Lili'uokalani against the U.S. Lili'uokalani demanded compensation from the U.S. for the crown lands, which she claimed had belonged to herself personally; and the Court ruled that she had never been the owner of those lands. Furthermore, by claiming personal ownership of the crown lands and demanding compensation only for herself, the ex-queen displayed her belief that so-called "Native Hawaiians" were not the owners of those lands -- she could have named them as co-plaintiffs or they could have moved to be added as class-action complainants, but neither of those things occurred. According to Lili'uokalani, she was sole owner.

Full text of Lili'uokalani's complaint filed in 1909, and full text of the Court's decision filed in 1910, along with commentary, can be found on a webpage:
"Lili'uokalani Loses A Big One (The Crown Lands) -- Liliuokalani v. United States, 45 Ct. Cl. 418 (1910)" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/ liliucrownlands.html

The ex-queen lost the case. But in the process, many of the claims made today by the sovereignty activists were asserted by the ex- queen and rejected by the Court based on irrefutable evidence. After seeing all the evidence and hearing all the arguments on both sides, the Court of Claims became convinced that her claims had no merit. The decision itself is a valuable legal document. It is important not only because it contains these arguments concerning the Crown Lands, but also because of the very important appendices included by the Court as part of the evidence. Some of the material in these appendices is difficult or impossible to find anywhere else, and decisively refutes claims raised by today's sovereignty activists on issues in addition to the Crown Lands. It is also interesting that she never sued the United States for the "illegal overthrow" or the "illegal annexation" to try to reverse those events or be compensated for them; she sued only for money for "her" Crown Lands. The manner in which she lost lays out the evidence and the arguments for both sides in a direct confrontation between the ex-Queen and the United States. Such a direct legal confrontation at such a high level over "sovereignty" issues was never repeated for 90 years, until the Rice v. Cayetano case. The decision of the Court of Claims (like the Supreme Court decision in Rice v. Cayetano) is very clear and convincing. For example, in the Lili'uokalani decision, the Court cited the Treaty of Annexation both as evidence that the Court has jurisdiction to decide the case and as affirmation that the Treaty exists and is valid; and the Court provided full text of the Treaty of Annexation in an appendix which is included in the webpage.

Here are some of the "whereas" assertions in this resolution SCR125/ SR110 offered in 2022, and refutations of them.

Reso: "the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in violation of international law"

Refut: There is no international law against a revolution. And of course all revolutions that overthrow an existing government are illegal under the laws of the overthrown government.

Reso: "the Crown Lands ... became a collective resource to support the Hawaiian monarchs and Hawaiian people ... [and] were not truly "public" but were an entitlement of the Hawaiian people as the beneficiaries of a trust maintained by their monarch"

Refut: Part II of the Court's own summary of its decision, on page 419, clearly states: "The Hawaiian statute of 1865 curtailed the title vested in the King to the purpose of maintaining the royal state and dignity; and the King approved the statute which divested the sovereign of whatever legal title he had theretofore had in the crown lands. After that the lands belonged to the office and not to the individual."

Reso: "the lands taken by the Provisional Government in 1893, Republic of Hawaii in 1894, and United States in 1898 were taken without the consent of or compensation to the Hawaiian people ... the 1993 federal Apology Resolution confirms that one million eight hundred thousand acres of Crown and Government Lands were thereafter ceded to the United States without the consent of or compensation to the Native Hawaiian people or their sovereign government" Refut: Regarding "Lands were thereafter ceded to the United States without the consent of the Native Hawaiian people or their sovereign government": The nation of Hawaii remained an internationally recognized independent nation under its two successor governments: the Provisional Government and the Republic of Hawaii. After a revolution, the successor government speaks to other nations on behalf of all the nation's people including those on the losing side, whether they like it or not. Emperors, Kings, Queens, and Presidents of at least 19 nations personally signed letters addressed to President Dole, Republic of Hawaii, formally recognizing the Republic as the rightful successor government of the still-independent nation of Hawaii; thus, under international law, the Republic had the right to offer the Treaty of Annexation including the ceding of Hawaii's public lands. See photos of those letters at
https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/recognition-of-the-republic-of- hawaii/

Further Refut: The claim that the crown, government and public lands of Hawaii were ceded to the United States "without compensation to the Native Hawaiian people or their sovereign government" is false. The United States compensated the Republic of Hawai'i government and its people (including kanaka maoli) by assuming their public debts, including the debts incurred under the Kingdom for the issuance of bonds to redeem all encumbrances on the Crown lands incurred by various monarchs to support their lavish lifestyles [including Kalakaua's trip around the world and his construction and furnishing of Iolani Palace], as noted on pages 431-434 of the Court decision.

Further refutation concerning the 1993 apology resolution:

The Hawaii Supreme Court had ruled unanimously, 5-0, in favor of a lawsuit by OHA demanding that no parcel of ceded lands can be sold by the State of Hawaii without permission from Native Hawaiians [presumably that would be OHA] and based its decision partly on the 1993 apology resolution. But on March 31, 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously, 9-0, to overturn the Hawaii Supreme Court's ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court clearly and forcefully rejected the apology resolution as having any force of law regarding the ownership of the ceded lands, concluding that the State of Hawaii owns all the public lands (including the crown lands) in fee simple absolute and can freely lease or sell them without regard to the apology resolution. Full text of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in HAWAII ET AL. v. OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS ET AL. is available at
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1372.pdf

See also a scholarly essay by Constitutional law attorney Bruce Fein, reprinted in the Congressional Record:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/ AkakaFeinCongRec061405.html

See also Patrick W. Hanifin, esq', HAWAIIAN REPARATIONS: NOTHING LOST, NOTHING OWED XVII HAWAII BAR JOURNAL No. 2 (1982)
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles/HanifinReparations1982.pdf

and also "U.S. apology resolution 20th anniversary -- A resolution was introduced in the Hawaii legislature to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the U.S. apology resolution; and testimony by Kenneth Conklin, Ph.D., was offered to the Hawaii legislature in the form of a substitute resolution explaining that the apology resolution is filled with falsehoods, has produced bad consequences, and should be repealed."
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/ApologyReso20thAnniv.html

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HCR130/HR130
APOLOGIZING TO THE NATIVE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE FOR THE EFFECTIVE PROHIBITION IN HAWAII SCHOOLS OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL USE OF THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE FROM 1896 TO 1986.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION
[This is the first testimony on this resolution, given to the only committee which held hearings on it in the House. The committee and the House ignored this testimony and passed the resolution unanimously, unamended, sending it to the Senate. Conklin then rewrote his testimony for the hearing in the Senate, beginning with a very strong, perhaps impolite demand to pay attention to the falsehoods, and reorganizing the testimony to feature the debunking of those falsehoods upfront. However, all 5 Senate committee members are Hawaiian sovereignty zealots, who will likely also ignore the testimony. The second version of Conklin's testimony is copied immediately below the first version.]

The primary, relatively new thrust of this resolution is: "an apology to the Native Hawaiian people for the effective prohibition in Hawaii schools of the instructional use of �Ōlelo Hawaii from 1896 to 1986." But no apology is owed for something that did not happen as alleged, and where the alleged victims were already eagerly embracing the cultural change being inappropriately complained about.

In his short story "The Man Upstairs" P.G. Wodehouse wrote: "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them." We've seen the truth of that here in Hawai'i with the 1993 Congressional apology to Native Hawaiians for the allegedly U.S.-caused overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Now we can foresee the truth of that in this resolution's attempt to have our legislature enact a local version of a resolution apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the alleged suppression of their language.

The Native Hawaiian grievance industry has profited enormously from the 1993 apology resolution, which has yielded public sympathy leading to political power and hundreds of "Hawaiians-only" racial entitlement monetary grants. The Hawaiian grievance industry hopes to imitate the federal apology resolution and its benefits by having the State legislature enact a similar apology resolution for alleged language-suppression, leading to legislation providing hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution to translate into Hawaiian the state Constitution, the Hawaii Revised Statutes, all court decisions and government regulations, etc. providing hundreds of high- paying government jobs for a growing army of race-partisan college graduates who majored in Hawaiian language or "Hawaiian Studies" and are otherwise unemployable. The resolution correctly notes that the current state Constitution, as revised and adopted in 1978, says Hawaiian is one of the two official languages of the state. The complaint seems to demand an apology for routine activity contrary to that -- activity which happened from 1896 to 1986 because of a law passed 90 years previously in 1896. Isn't that just a bit ex-post- facto?

The allegedly evil law was Act 57, Laws of the Republic of Hawaii 1896, which, according to this resolution, "declared an English-only law over Hawaii's public schools, prohibiting the use of �Ōlelo Hawaii as a medium of instruction."

Whoa! Really? What did the law actually say? Was Hawaiian language prohibited from being taught? Was Hawaiian language explicitly mentioned and singled out for suppression? Did the greatest effect of the law fall upon Native Hawaiians and Hawaiian language or did the law's greatest effect fall on other ethnic groups speaking other languages? Were most Native Hawaiians actually impacted by the law? Because, as in basketball: if no harm, then no foul. See Patrick W. Hanifin, esq."Hawaiian Reparations: Nothing Lost, Nothing Owed" Hawaii Bar Journal, XVII, 2 (1982).

Here's the allegedly evil law:

1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii, Act 57, sec. 30: "The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department." [signed] June 8 A.D., 1896 Sanford B. Dole, President of the Republic of Hawaii.

Notice that Hawaiian language is not mentioned at all. The law is positive, requiring that something must be done -- it is not negative, prohibiting something. The law explicitly allows languages other than English [including Hawaiian] to be taught. The last sentence of the law explains the context. The Kingdom, Provisional Government, Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaii all had compulsory school attendance laws. Parents, farms, taro patches and factories were not allowed to use children like slaves -- all governments required children to attend "school" so they could have a chance at a good future. But what is a "school"? Governments must license any "school", whether public or private, that wants to satisfy the law requiring all children to attend "school"; and government must enact regulations for who can be a teacher, what are the minimum requirements for the curriculum, how many days a school must be in session per year, etc. This law, Act 57 (1896) added the requirement that to be certified as a "school", every subject must be taught using English as the language of instruction.

Notice that the law applies to private schools as well as government (public) schools. There's an important reason for that, and it shows that if any ethnic group was victimized by this law, it was Asians and not Native Hawaiians who would be the victims and to whom any apology and/or restitution would be owed.

By the 1890s a large majority of the kids in Hawaii were Asian. The main target of the law was the private schools being run by the sugar plantation owners, where nearly all the kids were children of Asian plantation workers, plus a few Portuguese or Puerto Ricans etc. (Filipinos did not start coming to Hawaii in large numbers until 1906). School lessons were taught in Japanese or Chinese, etc. But English was already the main language of business and success in Hawaii. Furthermore, the Republic was aiming toward annexation to the U.S. where English was the predominant language. Kids born in Hawaii would grow up as U.S. citizens with voting rights, even if their parents did not naturalize. To have a society where everyone could understand each other and where democracy would be possible, it was important to have one language which everyone could speak, regardless of what language was spoken in the home. The solution was to require all the kids in Hawaii to learn English. Why not let Hawaiian be that universal language? Because outside Hawaii, nobody spoke Hawaiian. And because when foreigners came to Hawaii and wanted to assimilate, they almost always chose to learn English rather than Hawaiian.

Did this law cause a major decline in the ability of native Hawaiian children to speak Hawaiian? No -- for two reasons.

(1) If kids were speaking Hawaiian at home and in everyday life outside of school they would continue doing so. Kids can easily be fluent in two languages if each is a significant part of their life. For example, consider today's Hawaiian language immersion schools, where kids must learn every subject exclusively through Hawaiian language. But when you speak with those kids outside the school, somehow they can also speak English just fine. How is that possible? Because kids are surrounded by English on the street, on TV and radio, on the internet, etc. Speaking exclusively Hawaiian at school does not kill their English. Even if the parents of immersion kids speak Hawaiian at home, that still does not kill the kids' ability to speak English. So if the native Hawaiian kids in 1896 were forced to speak only English at school, that would not ruin their ability to speak the Hawaiian in their everyday life outside of school. So what then accounts for the gradual dying out of Hawaiian language, if it's not caused by English-only schooling? Simple. Everyday life in Hawaii was becoming increasingly dominated by English. Hawaiian was dying by natural causes, not by malice-of-forethought murder. Even in native Hawaiian homes the parents often demanded their kids to speak only English in the home because loving parents wanted their kids to succeed in the emerging society -- the parents might continue speaking in Hawaii to each other (especially to keep secrets from the kids!) even while demanding their kids speak to them only in English. This is what immigrant families often do in America today (probably including those now coming from Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc.) -- parents continue speaking their native language to each other, but demand their kids speak English. Of course Native Hawaiians were not immigrants to Hawaii; but their society was changing rapidly around them -- some say they were becoming "strangers in their own land" and thus they adopted the success-strategies of immigrants.

(2) Very few of the kids in the private schools on the plantations were Native Hawaiian, because Native Hawaiians usually did not want to work on sugar plantations. So the great majority of Native Hawaiian kids attended the government (public) schools. But the government schools moved inexorably from using Hawaiian as the language for teaching all school subjects to using English. This happened because the Native Hawaiian government adopted a deliberate, explicit policy to switch from Hawaiian to English for the good of the kids and the good of the national economy; and because the native Hawaiian parents demanded to have their kids in schools where English was the language of instruction. At first the policy of gradually switching the government schools from Hawaiian to English was quite controversial among the ali'i; and there was pain and nostalgia expressed by some of the government leaders who adopted this policy. But the switch was very thorough. In 1892, the year before the overthrow when Lili'uokalani was still head of the government, 95% of all the government schools were already using English as the language of instruction -- thus the Kingdom was nearly in full compliance with the so-called evil 1896 law of the Republic even though it was still the monarchy in charge in 1892. This means that the 1896 law had very little impact on Native Hawaiians or the Hawaiian language, and was definitely not the cause of the near-extinction of Hawaiian language. No harm, no foul. No apology is warranted. 95% of the government schools in the Kingdom of Hawaii had switched from Hawaiian to English as the language of instruction BEFORE the monarchy was overthrown, even while Kalakaua and Lili'uokalani held power? Yes, the proof is below. If anyone strangled and nearly killed Hawaiian language, it was the native leaders and monarchs, not Act 57 of 1896.

A scholarly study of the history of language in Hawai'i was done as a dissertation by John Reinecke at the University of Hawai'i in 1935. The dissertation was improved and published as a book. John E. Reinecke, "Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935." Edited by Stanley M. Tsuzaki. Honolulu: Universiry of Hawaii Press, 1969. Reprinted 1988. Paperback edition February, 1995.

Mr. Reinecke says the shift from Hawaiian language to English began under the Kingdom and was very far along by the time the monarchy was overthrown (see Table 8, pp. 70-73). Reinecke's chart summarizes the number of schools and students operating in Hawaiian and English based on Education Department reports from 1847 to 1902. The number of students in Hawaiian language schools falls continuously through this period while the number in English-language schools rises; likewise the numbers of schools operating in the respective languages. The number of students in Hawaiian- language schools dropped below 50% in 1881 or 1882. By 1892 (the year before the overthrow), only 5.2% of students were in Hawaiian language schools and there were only 28 such schools in the Kingdom; at the same time, 94.8% of students were in the 140 English-language schools. According to Reinecke, there were several factors accounting for this switch from Hawaiian to English as the favored language even before the overthrow.

(A) as early as the late 1840s, the Kingdom government had a policy of gradually increasing education in English because the government saw that as the more valuable language for developing the country in the long run (see factor C). They probably figured that parents could teach their children Hawaiian at home but the schools should teach English as much as possible to open up opportunities.

(B) English language schools were considered better schools by almost everyone and initially charged extra while the Hawaiian schools were free. A lawsuit was actually filed over the the extra charge for English-language schools! Naone v. Thurston 1 Haw. 220 (1856) Asa Thurston (father of revolutionary Lorrin Thurston) unsuccessfully argued that he was being discriminated against by having to pay about $5 extra to educate little Lorrin and his siblings). Later, when the government got enough tax revenue to be able to afford to stop charging extra, people of all ethnicities (including Hawaiian) rapidly shifted their children to the now-free English language schools. But even before the extra fee was abolished, people of all ethnicities, including Native Hawaiians, were switching schools in favor of the English-language ones as soon as they could afford to pay the extra fee.

(C) Immigrants to the Kingdom, especially the Portuguese who brought their families, wanted to have their children educated in English. The Portuguese had no cultural reasons to prefer one language foreign to themselves (English) over another language foreign to themselves (Hawaiian); but all the practical reasons favored learning English rather than Hawaiian. English was already the language of business in Hawaii and certainly of the international business in the Pacific at that time. English was increasingly the language of government, even before Annexation. English (at least pidgin English) was the lingua franca that allowed immigrant Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipinos (who started coming soon after 1900), etc. to communicate with each other; so the better their children learned English the more opportunities they would have. There may be a few immigrant families who chose Hawaiian as the language for their children's assimilation -- Reinecke said he knew of one case where a Japanese man married a Portuguese woman, started a rice farm, and the entire family spoke Hawaiian as their primary language in their home in Wai'alua, O'ahu. But "the exception proves the rule": most immigrant families chose English as their language of assimilation to Hawai'i, because English was clearly becoming the language for economic and social advancement.

(D) Reinecke also stresses another factor in the shift from Hawaiian to English: intermarriage between Hawaiians and others. The hapa (mixed-race) Hawaiian children picked up English rather than learning either or both of their parents' original languages fluently. Reinecke cites statistics showing that, at any given time, hapa-Hawaiians were more fluent in English and relatively less fluent in Hawaiian than "pure" Hawaiians. One explanation might be that at any given time the median age of hapa people is lower than the median age of "pure" anything because intermarriages have become steadily more common, leading to a growing number of hapa children in each new generation. Since the overall trend is towards English, English fluency is positively correlated with youth.

Another book confirms that the transition from Hawaiian to English as the medium of instruction was well underway voluntarily by the midpoint of the Kingdom, and was nearly complete before the monarchy was overthrown. See Albert J. Schutz, "The Voices of Eden: A History of Hawaiian Language Studies," (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994). It was an official policy of the Kingdom's schools to promote English-language instruction, because learning English opened the door to the outside world both commercially and culturally. Many ethnic Hawaiian families preferred English- language schools to Hawaiian language schools. As first-generation Asian immigrants began producing children who reached school age, especially after the overthrow and during the Territorial period, very few of them showed any interest in Hawaiian language and were glad to have their children educated through the medium of English. During the Territorial period, Hawaiian language was taught as a second language in the public schools, and enrollments in Hawaiian were greater than enrollments in Japanese. Hawaiian language studies at the University of Hawai'i go as far back as the 1920s. By contrast, Kamehameha School (exclusively for ethnic Hawaiian children by a policy decision of its board of trustees) prohibited Hawaiian language from 1887 up to about 1923, when the school began teaching Hawaiian as a second language. And here it's worthwhile to note that Kamehameha was teaching Hawaiian as a second language at a time when today's sovereignty activists like to say that the 1896 English- language law would ban Hawaiian language in any school, public or private.

A remarkable booklet "Ha'ilono 2008" was produced by the staff of the Ho'olaupa'i Hawaiian Newspaper project under the auspices of Bishop Museum. On page 20 the booklet says: "We often hear that the decline of the Hawaiian language resulted from a law banning its use, passed by the Republic of Hawaii in 1896. The newspapers, however, tell a different story. In 1845, S.M. Kamakau petitions Kamehameha III, questioning the merit of appointing non-native over native Hawaiians for government positions. Kauikeaouli responds that he sees the importance of the old ways, but times are changing and he needs in office people trained in the Western ways to deal with foreign nations. 'I however hope that the time will come when these positions will be again placed among our own, once the young chiefs are educated.' To the right [photo of newspaper clipping from Ka Hoku O Ka Pakipika, May 8, 1862, p.2], Kamehameha IV addresses the legislature in 1862, '... I stated previously my opinion to you, that it is important to change all Hawaii's schools to English speaking schools, and I once again put this forth to all.' Wai'ohinu, in 1875, sees English as the way for Hawaii to hold on to its independence. He states, 'Kamehameha III was greatly admired for his establishing the English language schools for the young chiefs to learn English. His foresight that English would be the means through which we would survive, was like that of a prophet."

This material is taken from Hawaii. Kingdom, Legislature. Education Committee � Report of the Committee on Public Education. [Honolulu, 1882], Archives of Hawai'i.

"The subject of English-language instruction is, in fact, central to this report. The committee express general approval of a plan to introduce English into all the schools, but with some reservations: "It is a good measure, doubtless, to turn all our schools into English schools, and yet it is contrary to rule and precedent in any nation to bring in a new and strange language, and proceed to force it upon the young, in order that they shall forget their mother tongue. A feeling of regret arises in considering the possibility that we, and the nation of the future, are to talk only in English, and that we are no more to hear the familiar accents and smooth-flowing speech that has come down to us from our ancestors." With respect to English instruction in government select schools, "the committee beg to say that in their opinion it will be advisable to make it a rule that in all select schools, taught in English, the pupils be forbidden during school hours from conversing in Hawaiian. It is thought that the enforcement of such a rule would be of great value in aiding the scholars to master and familiarize themselves with the strange tongue."

Debunking 3 false or misleading statements asserted as fact in this resolution.

Shameful falsehoods like the following three destroy any credibility this resolution might hope to have. Why are egregious falsehoods asserted in the case of alleged whiplash resulting from fender-benders or alleged racial victimhood due to historical events? To grossly magnify the alleged damages to an alleged victim in hopes of eliciting a profuse apology leading to enormous financial -- or even political --restitution.

Falsehood #1: "Whereas the Hawaiian Monarchy's judiciary; law enforcement; health system; and public systems for education, which were the genesis of Hawaii's public education system, all functioned solely in the Hawaiian language"

Rebuttal: The concept of having a legal system based on written laws came from Britain and America. Throughout the Hawaiian Kingdom nearly all the judges and lawyers were Caucasian men of European and American origin whose native language was English. Most of the government department heads, school principals and teachers were English-speaking Caucasians. The proceedings of the legislature were published each year in a book stating what laws were passed, and that book was published in side-by-side English and Hawaiian. Juries for cases alleging crimes committed by Caucasians were required to be composed of Caucasians and the proceedings were conducted in English. Court decisions, most notably the ones regarding Constitutional law, were written in English: for example Rex v. Booth, 1863. To see a compilation of all the major court decisions of, for example, 1863: google the phrase
Hawaii reports 1863 legal decisions

Falsehood #2:
"Whereas the �Ōlelo Hawaii was excluded from Hawaii's public schools for ninety years and would not be heard in official instruction for four generations"

Rebuttal:
The following information comes from The American Law Review, Volume 54 (Little, Brown, and Company, 1920), page 67:

The 1896 law was reaffirmed in a 1915 law that had identical wording and is copied in full on page 67 of the American Law Review.
The law was amended in 1919 is on that same page 67, as follows:
"Hawaii, Laws 1919, page 259, act 191, amending Rev. Laws 1915, sec. 277. The English language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools within the Territory, and any school where English is not the medium and basis of instruction shall not be recognized as a public or private school within the provisions of this chapter, and attendance thereat shall not be considered attendance at school in compliance with law; Provided, however, That the Hawaiian language shall be taught in addition to the English in all normal and high schools of the Territory; and that, where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the department by direct order in any particular instance: Provided further, That instruction in such courses shall be elective."

Let me emphasize this portion of the 1919 law: "the Hawaiian language shall be taught in addition to the English in all normal and high schools of the Territory". "Normal" schools refers to schools that trained teachers, so clearly the government believed it was important for teachers to understand and speak Hawaiian because they would be dealing with children who might speak Hawaiian to them or to other children during the school day. It was accepted as a matter of course that Hawaiian would be heard and spoken in school, which is why the law required teachers to be trained to at least a moderate level of fluency in Hawaiian. And of course the law also says that Hawaiian language courses must be taught in all the high schools, even aside from the teacher-education schools.

Here is some information about the laws of Hawai'i concerning Hawaiian language, taken from a sheet distributed by kumu hula John Lake in his Hawaiian culture classes. 1913: $10,000 appropriated for publication of a Hawaiian dictionary; 1919: Law that Hawaiian shall be taught as a subject in all high schools and teachers' colleges; 1923: $2000 appropriated for writing and publishing textbooks in Hawaiian; 1935: Daily instruction of at least 10 minutes in Hawaiian conversation or writing required in elementary schools serving Hawaiian Homes children. Clearly, Hawaiian language was alive, and received government funding in the schools throughout the Territorial period.

For detailed in-depth reubuttal to this nonsense, see webpage "Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned."
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html

Misleading statement #3: "due to Act 57, many students were punished for speaking �Ōlelo Hawaii at school, and the number of Hawaiian language speakers collapsed from nearly forty thousand in 1896 to a mere two thousand in 1978"

Rebuttal: In modern America some wealthy parents who speak English at home think French is the language that sophisticated cultural elites should be able to speak at social events, art galleries, or while traveling abroad; so they send their kids to French language-immersion schools where the kids have all their math, science, history etc. classes taught through French language, and the kids are required to speak only French even on the playground. The kids get punished if they speak anything other than French. That's how language-immersion schools work. Despite school being conducted solely in French, the kids have no problem speaking their native language English outside school, because English is the language they are surrounded with "in real life." Likewise, in today's Hawaiian language- immersion schools, kids get punished for speaking English at school but still can speak fluent English because English is the language they are surrounded with "in real life." Act 57 required all "schools", public or private, to be English language-immersion schools in order to be certified as meeting the compulsory attendance law. In those schools kids who spoke anything other than English would be punished, regardless whether the "forbidden" other language was Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, or anything else. No race or language was singled out for punishment. And most of the kids affected by this policy were Asians attending the privately run schools on the plantations. As discussed earlier, the alleged decline of Hawaiian language speakers from 40,000 in 1896 to only 2,000 in 1978 was due to large-scale economic and social factors rather than the language of instruction in school.

Further rebuttal: Neither Act 57 of 1896 nor any of its successors prohibited parents or cultural institutions from creating special academies for their kids to attend after school and on weekends, where any or all of the classes could be taught in whatever language was desired, and where the history, culture and customs of the parents' homeland could be infused into the kids. Native Hawaiian parents chose not to do this because almost all of them strongly wanted their kids to attend English-language schools. By contrast, many Asian parents -- especially the Japanese ones -- created such special after-school and weekend academies for their kids. This happened even though, by law, Japanese and other Asian plantation laborers were paid lower wages than Native Hawaiian laborers; so the Asians endured a greater financial sacrifice to create their special academies for language and culture.

A scholarly study of the history of language in Hawai'i was done as a dissertation by John Reinecke at the University of Hawai'i in 1935. The dissertation was improved and published as a book. John E. Reinecke, "Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935." Edited by Stanley M. Tsuzaki. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1969. Reprinted 1988. Paperback edition February, 1995.

Reinecke, on pages 127-129, mentions that despite efforts by the Territorial government to suppress Japanese-language schools, there were a great many such schools. These Japanese schools, of course, were not certified by the government of Hawai'i as meeting the compulsory attendance laws. Children of Japanese ethnicity went to learn Japanese language and culture at these private schools after already spending the day in the regular government-certified English-language schools. About 5 out of every 6 ethnic Japanese children in Hawai'i attended these after-school Japanese language and culture schools -- In 1931 the figure was 87%.

Here are two items taken from the indicated pages of Rich Budnick, "Hawaii's Forgotten History 1900-1999" (Honolulu: Aloha Press, 2005).

p. 49: 11/24/20: Governor Charles McCarthy signs a law to require the Department of Public Instruction to regulate private foreign language schools, limit instruction to one hour per day, and to issue licenses to such schools and their teachers. All foreign language school teachers must pass an English test and possess the "ideals of democracy ... promote Americanism." There are 163 such schools -- 9 Korean, 7 Chinese and 147 Japanese -- with 300 teachers and 20,000 students. Many schools file a lawsuit to protest the law.

p. 58: 12/31/26: Superintendent of Public Instruction reports that a majority of Hawaii's 29,546 Asian students attending foreign language schools are U.S. citizens, not aliens.

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Ken Conklin's SECOND TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION
[This is Conklin's second, revised testimony on this resolution, given to the only committee which held hearings on it in the Senate. The House committee and the full House ignored Conklin's first testimony and passed the resolution unanimously, unamended, sending it to the Senate. Conklin then rewrote his testimony for the hearing in the Senate, beginning with a very strong, perhaps impolite demand to pay attention to the falsehoods, and reorganizing the testimony to feature the debunking of those falsehoods upfront. However, all 5 Senate committee members are Hawaiian sovereignty zealots.]

Trigger warning: This testimony is very blunt. Some legislators might take offense. Too bad! Your attention is needed to some important issues. I am going to identify blatantly false statements contained in the "whereas" clauses of this resolution, and will prove that they are false. I will also identify misleading statements and explain what is misleading about them. Many well-meaning people today complain about divisive, hate-filled rhetoric that threatens our ability to live together in peace and harmony. This is your chance to put an end to one small element of that divisiveness. I will describe what happened with Hawaiian language historically, and why the claims of victimhood in this resolution are not merely false but also racially divisive.

Any legislator who votes in favor of this resolution will be knowingly lying about important topics in Hawaiian history. In particular, the assertion that Hawaiian language was made illegal or suppressed by the Republic, Territory, and State governments, is not only false, it is also racially incendiary, spurring Hawaiian hatred toward haoles. It is used as another in a long list of trumped-up racial grievances intended to create public sympathy leading to political power and many hundreds of racial entitlement programs funded by philanthropic grants and by federal and state government money -- as you members of this particular committee are especially well aware. So I call upon you to trash this resolution as a small step toward eventual reconciliation.

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FALSEHOOD: "Whereas the �Ōlelo Hawaii was excluded from Hawaii's public schools for ninety years and would not be heard in official instruction for four generations"

This falsehood is one of several found in a very short webpage entitled "History of Hawaiian Education" authored by the Department of Education subdepartment of Hawaiian Education and cited by news reporters and by OHA as an authoritative source. I provided extensive proof of its falsity to DOE officials at several levels all the way to the Superintendent, who eventually refused to correct the falsehood simply on the grounds that they have all been told this story repeatedly. DOE did not bother to study my research. Don't you make the same mistake! See my webpage "Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned." at
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html

Here are some irrefutable facts in REBUTTAL:

The following information comes from The American Law Review, Volume 54 (Little, Brown, and Company, 1920), page 67:

"Hawaii, Laws 1919, page 259, act 191, amending Rev. Laws 1915, sec. 277. The English language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools within the Territory, and any school where English is not the medium and basis of instruction shall not be recognized as a public or private school within the provisions of this chapter, and attendance thereat shall not be considered attendance at school in compliance with law; PROVIDED, HOWEVER, THAT THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE SHALL BE TAUGHT IN ADDITION TO THE ENGLISH IN ALL NORMAL AND HIGH SCHOOLS OF THE TERRITORY; and that, where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the department by direct order in any particular instance: Provided further, That instruction in such courses shall be elective."

Let me emphasize this portion of the 1919 law: "the Hawaiian language shall be taught in addition to the English in all normal and high schools of the Territory". "Normal" schools refers to schools that trained teachers, so clearly the government believed it was important for teachers to understand and speak Hawaiian because they would be dealing with children who might speak Hawaiian to them or to other children during the school day. It was accepted as a matter of course that Hawaiian would be heard and spoken in school, which is why the law required teachers to be trained to at least a moderate level of fluency in Hawaiian. And of course THE LAW ALSO SAYS THAT HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE COURSES MUST BE TAUGHT IN ALL THE HIGH SCHOOLS, EVEN ASIDE FROM THE TEACHER-EDUCATION SCHOOLS.

So we have proof that this resolution asserts a FALSEHOOD when it says "�Ōlelo Hawaii was excluded from Hawaii's public schools for ninety years and would not be heard in official instruction for four generations." Pure baloney! And obviously written in an emotion-laden way intended to generate anger and hatred toward those who committed such a dastardly crime against the Hawaiian people.

With all this evidence of falsehood, and knowing it is racially incendiary, are you legislators actually going to vote to perpetuate the lie?

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FALSEHOOD: "Whereas the Hawaiian Monarchy's judiciary; law enforcement; health system; and public systems for education, which were the genesis of Hawaii's public education system, all functioned solely in the Hawaiian language"

REBUTTAL: The concept of having a legal system based on written laws came from Britain and America. Throughout the Hawaiian Kingdom nearly all the judges and lawyers were Caucasian men of European and American origin whose native language was English. Most of the government department heads, school principals and teachers were English-speaking Caucasians. The proceedings of the legislature were published each year in a book stating what laws were passed, and that book was published in side-by-side English and Hawaiian. Juries for cases alleging crimes committed by Caucasians were required to be composed of Caucasians and the proceedings were conducted in English. Court decisions, most notably the ones regarding Constitutional law, were written in English: for example Rex v. Booth, 1863. SO IT IS A LIE TO SAY "HAWAIIAN MONARCHY'S JUDICIARY; LAW ENFORCEMENT; HEALTH SYSTEM; AND PUBLIC SYSTEMS FOR EDUCATION, WHICH WERE THE GENESIS OF HAWAII'S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM, ALL FUNCTIONED SOLELY IN THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE." ARE YOU GOING TO VOTE FOR THIS RESOLUTION THEREBY BECOMING AN ACCOMPLICE TO PERPETUATING A HATEFUL LIE? To see a compilation of all the major court decisions of, for example, 1863: google the phrase

Hawaii reports 1863 legal decisions

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STATEMENT MISLEADING IN MANY WAYS (let's examine some of them):
"Whereas due to Act 57, many students were punished for speaking �Ōlelo Hawaii at school, and the number of Hawaiian language speakers collapsed from nearly forty thousand in 1896 to a mere two thousand in 1978"

REBUTTAL: Every language-immersion school, no matter which language it is, punishes children who refuse to comply with the rule to stay immersed. Furthermore, the huge decline in number of Hawaiian-speakers was caused by numerous socioeconomic changes including native parents' choice for their children and native government leaders' choice for the future of the Kingdom, and cannot be blamed on the English-immersion requirement for schools.

In modern America some wealthy parents who speak English at home think French is the language that sophisticated cultural elites should be able to speak at social events, art galleries, or while traveling abroad; so they send their kids to French language-immersion schools where the kids have all their math, science, history etc. classes taught through French language, and the kids are required to speak only French even on the playground. The kids get punished if they speak anything other than French. That's how language- immersion schools work. Despite school being conducted solely in French, the kids have no problem speaking their native language English outside school, because English is the language they are surrounded with "in real life."

Likewise, in today's Hawaiian language-immersion schools, kids get punished for speaking English at school but still can speak fluent English because English is the language they are surrounded with "in real life." If native kids in the mid-to-late 1800s were actually surrounded by Hawaiian "in real life" they would remain fluent in Hawaiian despite English-only schools. That did not happen, because Hawaiian language was in decline as the primary language of everyday use. Act 57 required all "schools", public or private, to be English language- immersion schools in order to be certified as meeting the compulsory attendance law. In those schools kids who spoke anything other than English would be punished, regardless whether the "forbidden" other language was Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, or anything else. NO RACE OR LANGUAGE WAS SINGLED OUT FOR PUNISHMENT. AND MOST OF THE KIDS AFFECTED BY THIS POLICY WERE ASIANS ATTENDING THE PRIVATELY RUN SCHOOLS ON THE PLANTATIONS. As discussed earlier, the alleged decline of Hawaiian language speakers from 40,000 in 1896 to only 2,000 in 1978 was due to large-scale economic and social factors rather than the language of instruction in school.

A scholarly study of the history of language in Hawai'i was done as a dissertation by John Reinecke at the University of Hawai'i in 1935. The dissertation was improved and published as a book. John E. Reinecke, "Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935." Edited by Stanley M. Tsuzaki. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1969. Reprinted 1988. Paperback edition February, 1995.

Here are two items taken from the indicated pages of Rich Budnick, "Hawaii's Forgotten History 1900-1999" (Honolulu: Aloha Press, 2005).

p. 58: 12/31/26: Superintendent of Public Instruction reports that a majority of Hawaii's 29,546 Asian students attending foreign language schools are U.S. citizens, not aliens.

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The allegedly evil law for which this resolution says we must apologize was Act 57, Laws of the Republic of Hawaii 1896, which, according to this resolution, "declared an English-only law over Hawaii's public schools, prohibiting the use of �Ōlelo Hawaii as a medium of instruction." Whoa! Really? What did the law actually say? Was Hawaiian language prohibited from being taught? Was Hawaiian language explicitly mentioned and singled out for suppression? Did the greatest effect of the law fall upon Native Hawaiians and Hawaiian language or did the law's greatest effect fall on other ethnic groups speaking other languages? Were most Native Hawaiians actually impacted by the law? Because, as in basketball: if no harm, then no foul. See Patrick W. Hanifin, esq."Hawaiian Reparations: Nothing Lost, Nothing Owed" Hawaii Bar Journal, XVII, 2 (1982).

Here's the allegedly evil law:

Did this law cause a major decline in the ability of native Hawaiian children to speak Hawaiian? No -- for two reasons.

So what then accounts for the gradual dying out of Hawaiian language, if it's not caused by English-only schooling? Simple. Everyday life in Hawaii was becoming increasingly dominated by English. Hawaiian was dying by natural causes, not by malice-of-forethought murder. Even in native Hawaiian homes the parents often demanded their kids to speak only English in the home because loving parents wanted their kids to succeed in the emerging society -- the parents might continue speaking in Hawaii to each other (especially to keep secrets from the kids!) even while demanding their kids speak to them only in English. This is what immigrant families often do in America today (probably including those now coming from Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc.) -- parents continue speaking their native language to each other, but demand their kids speak English. Of course Native Hawaiians were not immigrants to Hawaii; but their society was changing rapidly around them -- some say they were becoming "strangers in their own land" and thus they adopted the success-strategies of immigrants.

(2) Very few of the kids in the private schools on the plantations were Native Hawaiian, because Native Hawaiians usually did not want to work on sugar plantations. So the great majority of Native Hawaiian kids attended the government (public) schools. But the government schools moved inexorably from using Hawaiian as the language for teaching all school subjects to using English. This happened because the Native Hawaiian government adopted a deliberate, explicit policy to switch from Hawaiian to English for the good of the kids and the good of the national economy; and because the native Hawaiian parents demanded to have their kids in schools where English was the language of instruction. At first the policy of gradually switching the government schools from Hawaiian to English was quite controversial among the ali'i; and there was pain and nostalgia expressed by some of the government leaders who adopted this policy. But the switch was very thorough. In 1892, the year before the overthrow when Lili'uokalani was still head of the government, 95% of all the government schools were already using English as the language of instruction -- thus the Kingdom was nearly in full compliance with the so-called evil 1896 law of the Republic even though it was still the monarchy in charge in 1892. This means that the 1896 law had very little impact on Native Hawaiians or the Hawaiian language, and was definitely not the cause of the near-extinction of Hawaiian language. No harm, no foul. No apology is warranted. 95% of the government schools in the Kingdom of Hawaii had switched from Hawaiian to English as the language of instruction BEFORE the monarchy was overthrown, even while Kalakaua and Lili'uokalani held power? If anyone strangled and nearly killed Hawaiian language, it was the native leaders and monarchs, not Act 57 of 1896.

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John E. Reinecke, "Language and Dialect in Hawaii: A Sociolinguistic History to 1935" says the shift from Hawaiian language to English began under the Kingdom and was very far along by the time the monarchy was overthrown (see Table 8, pp. 70-73). Reinecke's chart summarizes the number of schools and students operating in Hawaiian and English based on Education Department reports from 1847 to 1902. The number of students in Hawaiian language schools falls continuously through this period while the number in English-language schools rises; likewise the numbers of schools operating in the respective languages. The number of students in Hawaiian- language schools dropped below 50% in 1881 or 1882. By 1892 (the year before the overthrow), only 5.2% of students were in Hawaiian language schools and there were only 28 such schools in the Kingdom; at the same time, 94.8% of students were in the 140 English- According to Reinecke, there were several factors accounting for this switch from Hawaiian to English as the favored language even before the overthrow.

Helena G. Allen published a book whose title clearly shows her political views: "The Betrayal of Liliuokalani" (Glendale CA, Arthur H. Clark Co., 1982). On page 111 she says the following in the context of discussing Lot Kamerhameha V and the early 1860s: "Verbal battles were raging throughout the islands of whether Hawaii should be bilingual or only English speaking. There was no thought that the language, official or otherwise, should be Hawaiian. With the loss of a language, as [Lorenzo] Lyons pointed out, comes the destruction of cultural connotations and denotations. It was, however, becoming fairly obvious that a non-English speaking person could have no important government post. The country people began to cry to have English taught in their schools, 'Or,' they said, 'we will be nothing.'" By the time of the overthrow, English was well-established as the standard language of the Kingdom for use in government and business. Throughout Kalakaua's reign, the official record of proceedings of the Legislature was published twice in the same book: English and Hawaiian. Queen Lili'uokalani herself had only one time in her career when she gave a speech at the opening of the Legislature, and she used English to give her speech even though most of the Nobles and Representatives were native Hawaiian. A remarkable booklet "Ha'ilono 2008" was produced by the staff of the Ho'olaupa'i Hawaiian Newspaper project under the auspices of Bishop Museum. On page 20 the booklet says: "We often hear that the decline of the Hawaiian language resulted from a law banning its use, passed by the Republic of Hawaii in 1896. The newspapers, however, tell a different story. In 1845, S.M. Kamakau petitions Kamehameha III, questioning the merit of appointing non-native over native Hawaiians for government positions. Kauikeaouli responds that he sees the importance of the old ways, but times are changing and he needs in office people trained in the Western ways to deal with foreign nations. 'I however hope that the time will come when these positions will be again placed among our own, once the young chiefs are educated.' To the right [photo of newspaper clipping from Ka Hoku O Ka Pakipika, May 8, 1862, p.2], Kamehameha IV addresses the legislature in 1862, '... I stated previously my opinion to you, that it is important to change all Hawaii's schools to English speaking schools, and I once again put this forth to all.' Wai'ohinu, in 1875, sees English as the way for Hawaii to hold on to its independence. He states, 'Kamehameha III was greatly admired for his establishing the English language schools for the young chiefs to learn English. His foresight that English would be the means through which we would survive, was like that of a prophet."

The document below from 1882 makes that policy of using English language as the medium of instruction crystal clear. It explicitly says "... it will be advisable to make it a rule that in all select schools, taught in English, the pupils be forbidden during school hours from conversing in Hawaiian. It is thought that the enforcement of such a rule would be of great value in aiding the scholars to master and familiarize themselves with the strange tongue." Thus, if forbidding children to speak Hawaiian in school is regarded as an act of suppressing Hawaiian language, then it was King Kalakaua himself who was already suppressing Hawaiian language in 1882! This material is taken from Hawaii. Kingdom, Legislature. Education Committee � Report of the Committee on Public Education. [Honolulu, 1882], Archives of Hawai'i. "The subject of English-language instruction is, in fact, central to this report. The committee express general approval of a plan to introduce English into all the schools, but with some reservations: "It is a good measure, doubtless, to turn all our schools into English schools, and yet it is contrary to rule and precedent in any nation to bring in a new and strange language, and proceed to force it upon the young, in order that they shall forget their mother tongue. A feeling of regret arises in considering the possibility that we, and the nation of the future, are to talk only in English, and that we are no more to hear the familiar accents and smooth-flowing speech that has come down to us from our ancestors." With respect to English instruction in government select schools, "the committee beg to say that in their opinion it will be advisable to make it a rule that in all select schools, taught in English, the pupils be forbidden during school hours from conversing in Hawaiian. It is thought that the enforcement of such a rule would be of great value in aiding the scholars to master and familiarize themselves with the strange tongue."

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This proposed resolution has three conclusions, or operative clauses. Two of them are the usual stuff apologizing for the overthrow of the monarchy and pledging to address its ramifications -- those are widely debated ad nauseum in many places and are therefore ignored in this testimony. The primary, relatively new thrust of this resolution is: "an apology to the Native Hawaiian people for the effective prohibition in Hawaii schools of the instructional use of �Ōlelo Hawaii from 1896 to 1986."

But no apology is owed for something that did not happen as alleged, and where the alleged victims were already eagerly embracing the cultural change being inappropriately complained about.

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Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

There is only one reason why some activists want to abolish "McKinley" from the name of the school and remove his statue from the campus. The reason is, they want to rip the 50th star off the American flag and return Hawaii to its former status as an independent nation. And through this resolution they want to enlist you legislators as collaborators in their treasonous propaganda campaign.

The strongest evidence that this is their motive is easy to see in the "whereas" clauses of this resolution and in documents provided by the NEA and the HSTA which are filled with historical falsehoods trashing the alleged U.S. "invasion" and "occupation" of Hawaii; alleged suppression of Hawaiian language and culture; and civics curriculum in the early Territorial period. Portraying Native Hawaiians as victims of colonial oppression and/or belligerent military occupation is designed to bolster demands to "give Hawaii back to the Hawaiians", thereby producing a race-supremacist government and turning the other 80% of Hawaii's people into second-class citizens. The leaders of America and also most of the leaders of the Republic of Hawaii were White men. So it's no surprise that today's secessionist efforts to reverse Annexation and establish ethnic Hawaiian racial supremacy are anti-White. But in recent years that racism has also become anti-Asian. The activists have produced a book and other materials saying that Hawaii citizens of Japanese and other Asian ancestries, even after several generations born and raised in Hawaii, are mere "settlers" or "guests" in a Hawaiian homeland where they have special rights as the "hosts." They say that unless Hawaii people of Asian ancestry line up to support Hawaiian secession under the leadership of ethnic Hawaiians, you are colonialists, just as guilty as the haoles, oppressing the "indigenous" people whose blood makes them children of the gods and brothers/sisters to the land (Kumulipo creation legend) in a way you never can be if you lack a drop of the magic blood. This is the same sort of "blood and soil" race-supremacist fascism that ruined Germany and Japan causing world war in the 1930s and 40s; and more recently it was revived by white nationalists in the U.S. You legislators have a responsibility to stop that fascism from getting established in Hawaii. See my detailed review of the book "Asian Settler Colonialism" published by UH Press in 2008, demanding that Asians subordinate themselves to ethnic Hawaiians:
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/AsianSettlerColonialism.html

The activists hate President McKinley because he successfully persuaded Congress to pass the joint resolution in 1898 whereby the U.S. agreed to the Treaty of Annexation offered by the Republic of Hawaii in 1897. McKinley also signed the Organic Act in 1900 establishing basic laws for the Territory of Hawaii. McKinley also appointed Republic of Hawaii's President Sanford B. Dole to be the first Territorial Governor, thus ensuring stability and continuity of governance under the same head of state throughout the turbulent decade from 1893 (Revolutionary Provisional Government) to 1894 (Republic of Hawaii) to 1898 (Annexation) to 1900 (Organic Act) to 1903 (end of Dole's term as Governor).

The activists hope to enlist you legislators as allies in their campaign of secession. They know that if you agree to this resolution, they will have a propaganda victory allowing them to say to the rest of America "Let us outa here!" They will cite your approval of this resolution as evidence to our nation's enemies in the United Nations that "America is weak and falling apart." Communist China, now building a navy more powerful than ours, and seeing the Hawaiian secessionist movement being led by so many people whose ancestry is Chinese as well as Hawaiian, might decide Hawaii is low-hanging fruit for plucking, in much the same way that a German leader in the 1930s felt he had a right to take over part of Czechoslovakia and all of Austria to liberate his fellow ethnic Germans who were so numerous there. Certainly when the U.S. complains in the United Nations about China's internal suppression of ethnic minorities and oppression of Tibet and Hong Kong, China will answer by accusing the U.S. of doing the same thing in Hawaii as evidenced by the resolution passed by Hawaii's own legislature bitterly crying out to be liberated.

In November 2020, seeing how aggressive the activists were becoming in their drive to purge "McKinley" from the school, I created a webpage documenting their intentions and opposing them. Please see my "Open letter to students, alumni, teachers, administrators, staff, community, and Board of Education explaining why the school's name and statue deserve to remain in place, and why a Hawaiian secessionist demand to remove them should be strongly rejected" at
tinyurl.com/hmepjz7k

A friend of mine, the late Thurston Twigg-Smith, wrote a book entitled "Hawaiian Sovereignty: Do the Facts Matter?" which he graciously allowed me to post on my website where you can download it for free:
http://tinyurl.com/6osxwp

Yes, the facts do matter. There are numerous falsehoods about Hawaii's history in the "whereas" clauses of this resolution, and in two articles authored by Keanu Sai in the NEA newspaper, and in the lengthy HSTA essay:
https://www.hsta.org/news/recent-stories/mckinley-high-school- deserves-a-name-that-honors-its-true-spirit-community-legacy/

Shame on Hawaii's teachers for propagating such falsehoods, and especially for filling the minds of our children with them. Below are just a few of those falsehoods, with brief corrections and links to evidence proving falsehood. I know you don't have time to study these issues now, but hopefully when the legislative session is over you might take the time to learn about some of them.

By the way, an item in the HSTA essay says "According to the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, 168 Confederate symbols, including 94 monuments, were removed across the United States in 2020, virtually all of them following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers."

I'm sure we all remember the outbreak of violence, arson, looting, and attacks on police that accompanied the "removal" of those statues and monuments in numerous cities.

Perhaps we should wonder whether the mention of those events in the HSTA essay is intended as a veiled threat that something similar might happen to McKinley High School and/or to the statue if we fail to comply with the activists' demands. That's all the more reason to stand up against such threats. Please do not knuckle under to them. It might be wise to ask each activist who testifies, to give a pledge that they will not engage in violence or vandalism, and that they will assist law enforcement in identifying, arresting, and prosecuting anyone who does. "Kapu aloha", right? Testimony from anyone who refuses to take such a pledge should be summarily rejected for the same reasons it is unwise to negotiate with terrorists. Please vote "NAY" and consign this resolution to the trash.

Below are brief replies to specific falsehoods in the resolution (and to arguments often put forward to bolster them)

WAS THE MCKINLEY STATUE ERECTED TO HUMILIATE AND SUBJUGATE NATIVE HAWAIIANS? Reso: "... when the statue of William McKinley was erected in 1911, several years after the renaming of the school, it was not to honor the President of the United States, but rather as a symbol to perpetuate the subjugation of Native Hawaiians and reinforce the lie that the Hawaiian islands belong to the United States of America"

Reply: There is not even any attempt to give evidence that was the motive; legislators should never endorse such bitter sentiments. And by the way, it is not a lie to say: the Hawaiian islands really do belong to the United States of America; don't you legislators agree? Didn't you take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Meet some of those enemies; i.e., the supporters of this resolution.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE SIGNED ANTI-ANNEXATION PETITION?
Reso: "... eighty percent of the adult population signed the Kū�e Petitions against annexation in 1897"

Reply: There were 21,269 signatures on the petition opposing annexation. Interpolation of Census data shows there were about 39,542 full or part Hawaiians in 1897, the year of the anti-annexation petition. Thus, the 21,269 signatures on the petition represented 54% of the native population. But wait! Everyone says there were non- natives among the 21,269 people who signed the petition, although we cannot be sure how many. Well, if there were non-natives signing, then shouldn't the percentage of signers be calculated using the whole number of people in the entire population? Apparently non-natives were welcome to sign the petition, but the overwhelming majority refused. The whole population in 1896 was 109,020; in 1900 it was 154,001; so interpolation yields 120,265 as the population in 1897, which means the 21,269 signatures represent only 18% of the population. Furthermore, at that time only men could vote, and there were other important voter eligibility restrictions; so there is no relationship between petition signatures and eligible voters. But there's more to the story. In addition to the anti-annexation petition with 21,269 signatures, there was allegedly another petition containing over 17,000 signatures collected by a different organization. The trouble is, that second petition had a different purpose -- it called for Lili'uokalani to be restored to the throne! Hawaiian sovereignty activists like to add the numbers on the two petitions, for a total of around 38,000 to 39,000 signatures, which would represent virtually every native and part-native man, woman, and baby. But of course that's silly. The two petitions are on different topics. And probably everyone who signed the smaller petition (restore the queen) would have also signed the larger petition (stop annexation). Indeed, the gap of 4,000 signatures could be interpreted to mean that there were 4,000 natives who opposed annexation but also opposed restoring the monarchy and wanted the Republic of Hawai'i to continue as an independent nation under the coalition of White and Hawaiian oligarchs!

DOES U.S. JOINT RESOLUTION HAVE POWER TO REACH OUT AND GRAB A FOREIGN NATION (I.E., HAWAII)?
Reso: "... the Newlands Resolution illegitimately claimed United States annexation of the Hawaiian islands, even though such a document does not have any power or legitimacy to annex an internationally recognized nation ..."
Sai, NEA, 10/01/18: "Many government officials and constitutional scholars could not explain how a joint resolution could have the extra- territorial force and effect of a treaty in annexing Hawai�i, a foreign and sovereign state. ... In 1824, the United Supreme Court explained that, �the legislation of every country is territorial,� and that the �laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territory... for it would be �at variance with the independence and sovereignty of foreign nations.�

Reply: Annexation did not begin with the U.S. passing a resolution to reach out and grab Hawaii. Annexation began with the Republic of Hawaii offering a Treaty of Annexation to the U.S. Afterward, the U.S. Congress had heated debates about the Treaty in both the House and Senate for many months, and finally passed a joint resolution to accept it: Senate 42-21; House 209-91. Sovereignty means that a nation has the sole right to decide for itself what method it will use for agreeing to a treaty offered by another nation. In 1898 the U.S. used the method of joint resolution to accept the offer of the Treaty of Annexation from the independent nation Republic of Hawaii, just as in 1845 the U.S. used the method of joint resolution to accept the offer of the Treaty of Annexation from the independent nation Republic of Texas. See
"Treaty of Annexation between the Republic of Hawaii and the United States of America (1898). Full text of the treaty, and of the resolutions whereby the Republic of Hawaii legislature and the U.S. Congress ratified it. The politics surrounding the treaty, then and now" at
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/TreatyOfAnnexationHawaiiUS.html

Further reply: The secessionists also say that the Republic of Hawaii was not a legitimate government and therefore had no right to offer a Treaty of Annexation. But in fact the Republic was the successor government of a still-independent nation of Hawaii, following the revolution of 1893 which overthrew the monarchy. The Republic got its legitimacy under international law in the same way as the Kingdom had done: by receiving formal diplomatic recognition from the heads- of-state of numerous foreign governments. After holding a Constitutional Convention and producing a Constitution, President Dole requested formal recognition. During Fall 1894 letters were received in 11 languages that were personally signed by Emperors, Kings, Queens, and Presidents of at least 19 foreign nations on 4 continents formally recognizing the Republic as the rightful, lawful government of Hawaii. One of those letters was from Queen Victoria of Britain, who had close relationships with Queen Emma and Queen Lili'uokalani. Other letters were from the Tsar of Russia, the King and Queen of Spain, the Presidents of France and Switzerland, two Crown Princes of China under authority of the Emperor while a war with Japan was raging; etc. Even ex-queen Lili'uokalani personally signed a letter of abdication and oath of loyalty to the Republic, witnessed by her personal attorney and former cabinet ministers. Photos of all these documents, along with supporting letters from diplomatic representatives, were taken in the Archives of Hawaii and are available online at
https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/recognition-of-the-republic-of- hawaii/

U.S. APOLOGY RESOLUTION

Reso: "the "Apology Resolution" ...acknowledges that "the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty ... either through a plebiscite or referendum""

Reply: Must the inhabitants of a territory be consulted, prior to being annexed? In the annexations of the Louisiana Territory and the Territory of Alaska, the inhabitants were not consulted by France or Russia (who sold those territories to the U.S.) nor by the U.S. There were only two times when annexations of land to the United States included consulting the inhabitants of the annexed areas: Texas and Hawaii. The reason why the inhabitants were consulted in these two cases was that these were independent nations prior to annexation. In the case of Texas, there was a plebiscite in which the vote was limited to white males who had sworn loyalty to the Republic of Texas. In the case of Hawaii, the elected legislature of the Republic of Hawai'i made the commitment. When a government makes a decision, it is binding on everyone in that nation regardless of the fact that some people -- perhaps many people -- don't like it. Native Hawaiians made up only 40% of the population at the time of the overthrow in 1893, 26% at the time of annexation in 1900, and perhaps 20% today. Source: Robert C. Schmitt. Demographic Statistics of Hawaii: 1778-1965. (Honolulu, 1968) The first U.S. Census was in 1900 and it showed a total population of154,001 of whom 29,779 were Hawaiian, 7,857 were part-Hawaiian, 28,819 Caucasian, 25,767 Chinese, 61,111 Japanese. I did not vote for President Biden, nor for either of my Senators, nor for my House Representative. But they have authority to make decisions affecting me whether I like it or not.

Reso: "the "Apology Resolution" ... acknowledges that "the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their ... national lands ...""

Reply: The national lands of Hawaii belonged to the multiracial nation, not to any particular ethnic group. The government lands of the Kingdom belonged to the government on behalf of all the people, not to ethnic Hawaiians in particular. The crown lands became owned by the government in 1865 when the legislature passed a law -- eagerly signed by the King -- to issue government bonds to pay off the mortgage on the crown lands that had been made by Lota Kamehameha V and was in danger of being foreclosed, in return for the King surrendering ownership to the government.

Further reply: The apology resolution is filled with falsehoods, has produced bad consequences, and should be repealed. For details see
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/ApologyReso20thAnniv.html

FOLLOWING ANNEXATION, WERE HAWAII PUBLIC SCHOOLS USED TO STRIP NATIVE CHILDREN OF THEIR NATIONAL IDENTITY AND BRAINWASH THEM INTO PATRIOTISM TOWARD AMERICA?

Reso: "... following the enactment of the Newlands Resolution, Hawaii's public education system was pressed into service to indoctrinate, denationalize, "Americanize," and convert generations of Hawaii's children into patriotic United States citizens" HSTA document citing Sai 10/13/18: "To enforce the annexation, the government implemented a �methodical plan of Americanization� that �sought to obliterate the national consciousness of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the minds of the school children throughout the islands. It was developed by the Territory of Hawai�i�s Department of Public Instruction and called �Programme for Patriotic Exercises in the Public Schools.��

Reply: Of course the local government of the Territory of Hawaii, and its Department of Education, felt it important to implement a civics education program to help school children understand their rights and responsibilities as U.S. citizens during the first decade following Annexation; just as the DOE today feels it important to mandate 4 years of "Social Studies" courses required for high school graduation. Even Kamehameha School required male students to take ROTC courses until the U.S. military withdrew its cooperation from that program in 2002 due to racially exclusionary admissions policy.

DID THE REPUBLIC OF HAWAII, OR THE TERRITORY, MAKE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE ILLEGAL?

RESO: "... the result of the illegal annexation ... displaced Native Hawaiians, robbing them of their ... language ..."
HSTA DOCUMENT: "The government made it illegal for anyone to have a Native Hawaiian first name, or even speak the Hawaiian language in public"

REPLY: I have thoroughly researched and disproved the often-repeated assertion that Hawaiian language was suppressed or made illegal, including a detailed rebuttal to a webpage making those assertions published by the Office of Hawaiian Education within the DOE; but DOE refuses to correct it despite overwhelming proof of falsity. For facts see
"Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?" at
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
and
"Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned" at
https://tinyurl.com/y6phnzeh

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SCR159, SD1
URGING THE OFFICE OF PLANNING AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TO DEVELOP A PLAN TO INCLUDE A SPECIFIC ROLE FOR THE NATIVE HAWAIIAN COMMUNITY IN THE COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT PLAN.

Ken Conklin's TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

This resolution does well when it urges "that the Department Of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism's Office of Planning and Sustainable Development is urged to develop a consultation implementation plan to include consultation with the native Hawaiian community on the types of cultural resources, practices, and knowledge concerning ocean policy in its Coastal Zone Management Plan."

However, this resolution does something immoral, and probably illegal, when it establishes racial supremacy and cuts out 80% of Hawaii's people from such consultation solely because they lack a drop of Hawaiian native blood.

It's very simple. Give all residents of Hawaii the same rights, and consultations, which this resolution proposes for ethnic Hawaiians. Such a policy will ensure that ethnic Hawaiians will get those rights and consultations (along with everyone else).

The right way to urge DBEDT to reach out and do consultations regarding its Coastal Zone Management Plan is to urge such consultations for ALL individuals and groups who "rely on the ocean for foods they eat", and for "a transportation corridor for people and animals, a graveyard for ancestors, and a spiritually imbued marinescape." ALL HAWAII'S PEOPLE RELY UPON THE OCEAN FOR THOSE THINGS, AND DESERVE TO BE CONSULTED, REGARDLESS OF RACE. There must not be first-class citizenship and consultation for ethnic Hawaiians; while ethnic Filipinos, Japanese, Caucasians, Blacks, etc. are totally left out or relegated to second-class status.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Section 1, clearly says that no state is allowed "to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Now, what about the Hawaii Constitution as amended in 1978, whose Article XII, Section 7 is cited as the basis for this resolution. A careful reading of it will confirm that it refers to rights which were customarily and traditionally exercised by native Hawaiians, but does NOT say that those rights did not also customarily and traditionally pertain to non-natives; and does prohibit other ethnicities from also exercising those same rights. Indeed, all subjects of the Hawaiian Kingdom regardless of race had the same rights regardless whether they were native-born or immigrants who were naturalized.

Why should the State of Hawaii today engage in racial discrimination which was not practiced in the Kingdom?

The racial exclusivity in consultation proposed in this resolution is illegal under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and morally repugnant as "systemic racism" or �institutional racism� comparable to Jim Crow laws in the old South. For each program, either open it so all races have access or shut it down. If �Native Hawaiians� are truly the most needy, then they will receive most of the help if help is given based on need alone. Article 12 Section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution grants special rights to Native Hawaiians for �traditional and customary practices� interpreted under the PASH decision to include trespassing for shoreline access, religious practices, or gathering certain materials. The pono way to honor that provision while also honoring equality under the law is to extend the traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians to all citizens. In the Kingdom those rights were for everyone regardless of race (�hoa�aina� meant �tenant� not �native tenant�; �kanaka� meant race-neutral �person�).

The phrase in the Mahele laws beginning in 1848 and culminating in the Kuleana Act of 1850 is: "koe nae ke kuleana o na kanaka." The individual word whose meaning has morphed is "kanaka." When private land ownership was created by granting royal patent deeds during the unfolding stages of the Mahele, chiefs were given huge swaths of land, while peasants living on and farming individual parcels were given the right to have fee-simple ownership of their parcels. The problem was that the chief's land completely surrounded the peasant's small parcel, thus making it necessary for a peasant to trespass through the chief's land in order to gather materials necessary for daily life, or to go to the ocean for fishing. So in the interest of what we today might call "social justice", the chief's royal patent deed gave him ownership "but reserving the rights of the people" [for gathering or shoreline access]. That Hawaiian phrase �koe nae ke kuleana o na kanaka� today is always translated to mean "reserving the rights of the native tenants." However, there was nothing racial about the word "kanaka" back in 1850, although today it has come to refer to so-called "Native Hawaiians." The word "kanaka" simply meant person, or human being, with an implication that it might be referring to a servant or peasant. If you look up "kanaka" in the big Pukui/Elbert dictionary you will find no racial terms. Furthermore, the word "kanaka" does not mean "tenant" -- that word is "hoaaina." Although non-natives made up only a small percentage of Hawaii's population in 1850, the rights reserved to the "kanaka" in the Kuleana Act were reserved for ALL the "people" regardless of race and regardless whether they were tenants under a particular chief.

The Hawaii Constitution Article 12 Section 7, and also the PASH decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court, include racial restrictions which are modern distortions and simply do not grow out of the Mahele or the Kuleana Act. "The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua�a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights." The traditional and customary rights of native Hawaiians from before 1778, and still possessed under the Kuleana Act of 1850 -- those terms describe what rights are being referred to, but those terms should NOT be construed as limiting those rights to members of any particular racial or ethnic group. By interpreting those rights to be possessed by ALL Hawaii's people, we would ensure equality under the law for everyone including ethnic Hawaiians.

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HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE IN PREVIOUS YEARS -- TESTIMONY BY KEN CONKLIN AND SOME MEMBERS OF THE ALOHA FOR ALL AND GRASSROOT INSTITUTE GROUPS.

Personal note by Ken Conklin: I came permanently to live in Hawaii in 1992. From then until 1998 I spent full time doing independent study about Hawaiian language, history, and culture. I felt a strong spiritual relationship with the land and people, which I sensed on three summer vacations beginning 1982 and was one of my main motives for coming to live here permanently. Because of the beautiful spirituality in Hawaiian music, hula, and legends, I was inclined to go along with the historical victimhood narrative pushed by Hawaiian sovereignty activists on such topics as the overthrow of the monarchy (1893), annexation (1898), and statehood (1959). I attended a large number of Hawaiian sovereignty rallies, panel discussions at University of Hawaii, and conversations in public places or in private homes; and read many books. But having a Ph.D. in philosophy I am accustomed to studying issues that are both complex and controversial, asking lots of questions, and doing research. And my masters in Mathematics made me feel a need to be logical and keep my beliefs clear and consistent. The more questions I asked, the more my erstwhile "friends" began questioning my "loyalty" to them and to their movement. In many cases they did not know the facts; and in some cases they did know the facts but persisted in telling me half-truths or outright lies. It took many months of soul-searching, gut-wrenching introspection to figure things out; and then everything fit together within a few days and I saw the whole gestalt picture -- the face of evil in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Since then I gradually began stepping out of private life, writing letters to editor, creating this website, running as a candidate for OHA trustee in 2000, writing my book, etc. I began writing testimony on bills in Congress and in the state legislature around year 1999. For the past decade the internet has made it increasingly easy to keep up to date about bills in the legislature and to submit testimony by email or through the legislature's website.

Below are some webpages providing testimony to the Hawaii legislature over the years, mostly by myself but also some by friends who were members of the Aloha For All and Grassroot Institute of Hawaii groups. This is an incomplete list, but it shows the kind of issues arising in the legislature over time and how civil rights activists are fighting back in an effort to protect unity, equality, and aloha for all. There's a gathering storm in Hawaii as racial supremacists demand either creation of a racial separatist tribe recognized by the state and federal governments, or else restoration of Hawaii's status as an independent nation with racial supremacy for ethnic Hawaiians under the modern theory of "indigenous rights." See my book "Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State"
http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa

I hope that Hawaii citizens who read the bills and testimony in this year's legislature, and in the legislatures since 2002, will see the dangers, rise to the occasion, and hold their state Senators and Representatives accountable.

Here are webpages covering State of Hawaii legislation related to Hawaiian sovereignty in previous years, listed in reverse chronological order (most recent listed first).

Hawaii Legislature 2021 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2020 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2019 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2018 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2017 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2016 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

Hawaii Legislature 2015 -- Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty. Text, testimony, and outcome.

In 2014 no compilation was kept of racist bills in the Hawaii state legislature. However, special attention was given to very dangerous legislation creating and expanding a racial registry for building a Hawaiian tribe. See webpage

"Building a Hawaiian tribe through actions of the state legislature: May 2014 progress report (Roll Commission failure to follow the requirements of enabling legislation Act 195; identity theft of 87,000 names from earlier racial registries; enrollment of minor children; legislative hearing as cheerleader rather than oversight enforcer; and more issues)" at
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/KanaiolowaluMay2014ProgRpt.html

March 11, 2013: Racial entitlement bills in the 2013 Hawaii legislature (and how all the Republicans except Senator Slom and Representative McDermott are voting in lockstep with the Democrats)

February 10, 2013: U.S. apology resolution 20th anniversary -- A resolution was introduced in the Hawaii legislature to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the U.S. apology resolution; and testimony was offered to the Hawaii legislature in the form of a substitute resolution explaining that the apology resolution is filled with falsehoods, has produced bad consequences, and should be repealed.

July 24, 2011: Racial set-asides of land, money, and political power -- how Act 195 will move Hawaii toward New Zealand and Fiji

July 12, 2011: Gearing up for the divorce -- Klub Kanaka greedily looks ahead to property division and alimony from the State of Hawaii (Hawaii House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs holds informational briefing for government departments to tell how they can help implement Act 195 creating a state-recognized tribe)

May 4, 2011: Hawaii begins to create a state-recognized tribe. SB1520 passed the legislature on May 3, 2011. Why did they do it? What happens now?

April 1, 2011: HR258 and HCR293 in the Hawaii legislature of 2011 -- A resolution to rip the Treaty of Annexation out of the hand of President McKinley in his statue in front of McKinley High School

March 22, 2011: HCR107 in the Hawaii legislature of 2011 -- A resolution establishing a joint legislative investigating committee to investigate the status of two alleged executive agreements entered into in 1893 between United States President Grover Cleveland and Queen Liliuokalani of the Hawaiian Kingdom, called the Liliuokalani assignment and the agreement of restoration.

February 3, 2009: Ceded lands issues in the Hawaii Legislature, 2009

February 3, 2009: Legislation in Hawaii in 2009 to declare ethnic Hawaiians as an indigenous people

January 17, 2009: Office of Hawaiian Affairs -- Watching the Moves It Makes in 2009 to Expand the Evil Empire. Subpages include protest of Supreme Court ceded lands case; OHA demand for legislative moratorium on ceded land sales; OHA demand for "back rent" settlement; Akaka bill; other issues as they arise in 2009 including Waimea Valley, Waokele o Puna, etc. Links to coverage of evil Empire expansion in previous years.

January 14, 2009: Some important issues for the Hawaii Legislature in 2009. Stop the giveaway. Just say no.

October 12, 2008: Iolani Palace and the Golden Jubilee of Hawaii Statehood. The Palace was the Capitol of the Republic of Hawaii (1894-1898), Territory of Hawaii (1898-1959), and State of Hawaii (1959-1968), where the transition to Statehood took place in 1959. But the state government is now prohibiting use of the Palace for jubilee celebration due to threats from secessionists and concerns for political correctness.