(c) Copyright 2004 by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
** Editor's note: The following essay was published in virtually identical language in Hawaii Reporter, an on-line newspaper, on January 26, 2004. It may be seen there at:
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?edd6527e-6f27-43b3-9431-7dc86fbb77e2
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In January 2004 President Bush signed the omnibus $373 billion appropriations bill HR 2673 which includes a small section establishing a U.S. Office of Native Hawaiian Relations and appropriating $100,000 to fund the operations of that office. This article will provide the exact language of the legislation, explain why the new bureaucracy was created, and discuss its implications for the future. A quick introduction is provided for citizens who would like to learn how to use the Library of Congress Web site to read current bills and historic documents (your tax dollars at work!)
Throughout their long careers in the Senate, Hawaii Senators Dan Inouye and Dan Akaka have served as members of the Indian Affairs Committee. Whenever the Democrats are in power, Inouye is chairman of that committee; otherwise his friend, "Republican" Ben Nighthorse Campbell (an Indian and formerly a Democrat) is in power and gives Inouye free rein to handle Hawaiian issues.
One might wonder why both Hawaii Senators have invested their careers sitting on the Indian Affairs committee when there are no Indian tribes in Hawaii. Senators can only serve on a limited number of committees. Why did they "waste" one committee choice instead of serving on a different committee with relevance for all Hawaii's people? The answer is: pork, and the racial spoils system. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs frequently brags that there are over 160 programs providing benefits to "Native Hawaiians."
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/listhawnentitlements.html
Those programs got established and funded because Inouye and Akaka, as members of the Indian Affairs committee, were able to insert the words "Native Hawaiians" virtually unnoticed into legislation intended to provide benefits to real Indian tribes and Native Alaskans.
Now that so many federal programs have been established that benefit "Native Hawaiians," it seems to make sense that there should be a special office in the Department of Interior to coordinate all those programs and provide liaison between ethnic Hawaiian beneficiary institutions and the various federal agencies that administer these programs.
Setting up an office funded with $100,000 will perhaps provide one administrator, one secretary, a telephone and some paper clips. But the language establishing this office is closely similar to part of Section 5 of the Akaka bill, and thus might be seen as the beginning of an attempt to pass the Akaka bill piece by piece, embedding individual pieces deep inside other bills, much as a bitter pill may be broken into pieces and hidden inside bowls of ice cream. The Hawaiian office inside the Department of Interior will also be heavily used as a lobbying headquarters for state politicians trying to pass the Akaka bill and for ethnic Hawaiians seeking additional race-based programs at the expense of taxpayers from California to Maine.
The Akaka bill has a long history of stealth and deception in the way it was created and the way efforts have been made to pass it. In 2000 and 2001 there were extreme stealth maneuvers in both the House and Senate designed to pass the entire Akaka bill all at once by hiding it among a collection of non-controversial bills to be passed by unanimous consent on a voice vote at dinner time, and by hiding it "by reference" in the form of a single sentence buried deep inside a huge appropriations bill. For details, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/StealthDeception.html
As opposition grew stronger, the bill lay dormant throughout 2002. In the new 108th Congress starting 2003, the amended bill S.344 was passed out of its Senate committee and then lay dormant, while the House version H.R.665 remained unamended and never even got a committee hearing. Gov. Lingle's personal lobbying for the bill both in Washington and during President Bush's October 2003 visit to Hawaii yielded negligible results. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/AkakaHist108thCong.html
While Gov. Lingle has announced she will continue to aggressively lobby U.S. Senators and members of the Bush administration for the Akaka bill (including a February 2004 trip to Washington), a new strategy has emerged. Opposition to the Akaka bill may be so great that the bill cannot be passed intact in its totality. Therefore bits and pieces of the bill might be inserted into other "must-pass" bills, such as the gigantic omnibus appropriations bill just signed into law.
There are two stealth strategies simultaneously at work here. (1) A terrorist might know he cannot successfully smuggle an entire nuclear bomb into the U.S., so he cleverly smuggles individual pieces of the bomb and then reassembles the pieces at the target location. Thus, one small piece of the Akaka bill has now been passed. (2) A general might send a few real tanks into battle accompanied by larger-than-life decoys whose job is to divert or distract the defenders so the real tanks can get through. A magician might make large gestures with one hand, and have his pretty assistant wave colored handkerchiefs attracting the audience's attention, while using his unwatched hand to get the "magic" accomplished. Thus, the complete but unpassable Akaka bill might be used as a decoy even while bits and pieces of it get passed as embedded in other bills.
In fact, the whole concept of the Akaka bill is apartheid by stealth. It would allow Hawaii to be carved up along racial lines without any vote of approval either by ethnic Hawaiians as a group or by Hawaii's people as a whole. Those ethnic Hawaiians who like the idea of setting up a race-based government can sign up for the "tribe" and elect delegates to a "constitutional convention." But the probably large majority of ethnic Hawaiians who hate the concept of racial separatism have no way to vote against it, since any vote to "ratify" the constitution can be participated in only by those who signed up for the tribe. And there will never be any vote by Hawaii's people as a whole. For extensive information on what's wrong with the Akaka bill, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/OpposeAkakaBill.html
The language setting up the U.S. Office for Native Hawaiian Relations is short. It is contained in the very last subsection of the omnibus appropriations bill, where miscellaneous pork provisions or Christmas tree ornaments are added at the last minute. Below is the complete text of the 4-paragraph Hawaiian "Section 148," and a brief description of how to find it in the context of the entire bill. Following that, sections 146 through the start of 149 are provided so that readers can easily "turn over the rock" to see the deep dark place where the Hawaiian office was created and the hodgepodge of unrelated topics surrounding it. In all likelihood the only Senators and Representatives who were aware of what they were voting for were Inouye, Akaka, Abercrombie and Case. We get a chance to vote three of them out of office this coming November.
The omnibus appropriations bill is H.R.2673 of the 108th Congress. The entire appropriations bill, leading to the small Hawaiian section, can be viewed at the website of the Library of Congress as follows. Note that your search through this huge website always uses temporary links, so that after ten minutes you cannot backup but must start all over.
(1) Go to
http://thomas.loc.gov/
(2) On the front page of that Web site, put H.R.2673 into the bill-number search window.
(3) Then choose the final version #6, "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)."
(4) Scroll all the way down to the bottom, below DIVISION H--MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATIONS AND OFFSETS and click on the very last link offered: 'SEC. 9. TERMINATION OF COMMISSION.
(5) Scroll down to Section 148. Here's what you'll find, in its entirety:
SEC. 148. UNITED STATES OFFICE FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN RELATIONS.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT -- The sum of $100,000 is appropriated, to remain available until expended, for the establishment of the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations within the Office of the Secretary of the Interior.
(b) DUTIES -- The Office shall --
(1) effectuate and implement the special legal relationship between the Native Hawaiian people and the United States;
(2) continue the process of reconciliation with the Native Hawaiian people; and
(3) fully integrate the principle and practice of meaningful, regular, and appropriate consultation with the Native Hawaiian people by assuring timely notification of and prior consultation with the Native Hawaiian people before any Federal agency takes any actions that may have the potential to significantly affect Native Hawaiian resources, rights, or lands.
We might note in passing that despite the language of item (3) there are no "Native Hawaiian resources, rights, or lands." For example, OHA is an agency of the State of Hawaii and, thanks to Rice v. Cayetano and Arakaki #1 all Hawaii voters get to vote for and run for OHA trustee without racial exclusion. And the lands of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands are owned by the State of Hawaii. Native Hawaiians have the same rights as all other Hawaii citizens under the state and federal Constitutions, although the Akaka bill would take away some of those Constitutional rights from tribal members while purporting to give them special rights within the tribe.
Here are sections 146 through the first part of 149, so that readers can see the hodgepodge of unrelated topics in which the Akaka-bill piece (section 148) is hidden:
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SEC. 146. For the purposes described in section 386 of the Energy Policy Act of 2003 there is authorized to be appropriated $1,000,000, except that upon that Act becoming law, section 386 is amended through this Act:
(1) in subsection (a) by inserting before the term `to issue' the phrase `or with an entity the Secretary determines is qualified to construct and operate a liquefied natural gas project to transport liquefied natural gas from Southcentral Alaska to West Coast States,';
(2) at the end of paragraph 386(b)(1) by striking the period and inserting `, or after the Secretary certifies there exists a qualified entity to construct and operate a liquefied natural gas project to transport liquefied natural gas from Southcentral Alaska to West Coast States. In no case shall loan guarantees be issued for more than one qualified project.';
(3) at the end of paragraph 386(c)(2) by striking the period and inserting `, except that the total amount of principal that may be guaranteed for a qualified liquefied natural gas project may not exceed a principal amount in which the cost of loan guarantees, as defined by section 502(5) of the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (2 U.S.C. 661a(5)), exceeds $2,000,000,000.'; and
(4) at paragraph 386(g)(4): (A) by inserting before the term `consisting' the new term `or system'; and (B) by inserting between the term `plants' and the `)' the phrase `liquification plants and liquefied natural gas tankers for transportation of liquefied natural gas from Southcentral Alaska to the West Coast'.
SEC. 147. PAYMENT OF EXPENSES AFTER THE DEATH OF CERTAIN FEDERAL EMPLOYEES IN THE STATE OF ALASKA.
Section 1308 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 3198) is amended --
(1) by redesignating subsection (c) as subsection (d); and
(2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following: `(c) PAYMENT OF EXPENSES AFTER DEATH OF AN EMPLOYEE- `(1) DEFINITION OF IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBER --- In this subsection, the term `immediate family member' means a person related to a deceased employee that was a member of the household of the deceased employee at the time of death.
`(2) PAYMENTS -- If an employee appointed under the program established by subsection (a) dies in the performance of any assigned duties on or after October 1, 2002, the Secretary may --
`(A) pay or reimburse reasonable expenses, regardless of when those expenses are incurred, for the preparation and transportation of the remains of the deceased employee to a location in the State of Alaska which is selected by the surviving head of household of the deceased employee;
`(B) pay or reimburse reasonable expenses, regardless of when those expenses are incurred, for transporting immediate family members and the baggage and household goods of the deceased employee and immediate family members to a community in the State of Alaska which is selected by the surviving head of household of the deceased employee.'.
SEC. 148. UNITED STATES OFFICE FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN RELATIONS.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT- The sum of $100,000 is appropriated, to remain available until expended, for the establishment of the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations within the Office of the Secretary of the Interior.
(b) DUTIES- The Office shall -- (1) effectuate and implement the special legal relationship between the Native Hawaiian people and the United States;
(2) continue the process of reconciliation with the Native Hawaiian people; and
(3) fully integrate the principle and practice of meaningful, regular, and appropriate consultation with the Native Hawaiian people by assuring timely notification of and prior consultation with the Native Hawaiian people before any Federal agency takes any actions that may have the potential to significantly affect Native Hawaiian resources, rights, or lands.
SEC. 149. LEASE OF TRIBALLY-OWNED LAND BY ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK RESERVATION. The first section of the Act of August 9, 1955 (25 U.S.C. 415), is amended by adding at the end the following: `(g) LEASE OF TRIBALLY-OWNED LAND BY ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK RESERVATION --
`(1) IN GENERAL -- Notwithstanding subsection (a) and any regulations under part 162 of title 25, Code of Federal Regulations (or any successor regulation), subject to paragraph (2), the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation may lease to the Northern Border Pipeline Company tribally-owned land on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation for 1 or more interstate gas pipelines.
`(2) CONDITIONS -- A lease entered into under paragraph (1) -- `(A) shall commence during fiscal year 2011 for an initial term of 25 years; `(B) may be renewed for an additional term of 25 years; and `(C) shall specify in the terms of the lease an annual rental rate -- ...
[section 149 continues substantially longer]
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(c) Copyright 2004 by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved.