INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY WEBSITE EDITOR KEN CONKLIN:
There are at least three basic and conflicting positions in opposition to the Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill (Akaka bill). (1) The mainstream opposition, which has been most successful in preventing the bill from being passed for six years, is the "Aloha For All" argument that it would be historically, legally, and morally wrong to create a racial separatist government for ethnic Hawaiians. Hawai'i should remain unified under a single sovereignty with equality for all persons regardless of race. (2) A secessionist viewpoint is taken by supporters of re-establishing Hawai'i as an independent nation. Most supporters of this position are ethnic Hawaiians; and all supporters of this position believe that ethnic Hawaiians are entitled to racial supremacy in voting rights and property rights in a restored nation of Hawai'i under a theory of "indigenous rights." They believe Hawai'i is under a long-standing illegal military occupation by the United States. (3) A third position is taken by some of the ethnic Hawaiians who have at least 50% native blood quantum. They point to laws enacted by both the federal government and the State of Hawai'i that already give special rights to "native Hawaiians of the blood." They say it is historically, legally, and morally wrong for the special rights established for native Hawaiians of the blood to be broadened (and diluted) to include the far larger number of "one drop" or "toenail" Hawaiians.
The open letter to President Bush by Maui Loa is in this third category.
There are various groups of ethnic Hawaiians who have a native blood quantum of at least 50%. The "Hou Hawaiians" under Chief Maui Loa is one of those groups. They claim that the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921 already constitutes federal recognition of their special rights as comparable to an Indian tribe. That law set aside 203,500 acres of the "ceded lands" exclusively for ethnic Hawaiians of at least 50% blood quantum for long-term residential and agricultural leases. The Admissions Act (Statehood act) of 1959 included a provision in section 5(f) that revenues from the ceded lands can be used for any one or more of five purposes, with one of those purposes being "for the betterment of native Hawaiians" as defined in HHCA. The state Constitutional Convention of 1978 established the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and legislation two years later specified that 20% of all ceded land revenues must be diverted to OHA for the benefit of native Hawaiians as defined in HHCA (i.e., 50% blood quantum). But the Hawaiian Homelands have always had a very long waiting list, with nowhere near enough resources to "put Hawaiians back on the land." Although nearly all of OHA's $400 Million is earmarked by law for the 50% Hawaiians of the blood, OHA has lost sight of that blood quantum restriction and focuses most of its attention on the larger group of one-drop Hawaiians (which, of course, includes the 50%ers).
This open letter to President Bush strongly opposes the Akaka bill on the grounds that it would be a theft of the lands and special rights of "native Hawaiians of the blood" by opening up those lands and resources to the larger group of "one-drop" or "toenail" Hawaiians.
Essentially the same content was published in the nationally-circulated journal "Indian Country Today" on April 26, 2005, under the title "An Open Letter to the White House: native Hawaiian sovereignty" at:
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410836
The basic concepts in this document were published as a paid advertisement in the form of a two-page spread in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (print edition) on April 26, 2005. A photo image of that ad can be seen at:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/MauiLoaAkakaAd.jpeg
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An Open Letter to the White House:
native Hawaiian sovereignty
From Chief Maui Loa
April 6, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii
Corruption, Fraud, Deceit: Exposing the Akaka Bill.
The state of Hawaii improperly spends wads of public money to make brazen misrepresentations in a push to convince the White House to instruct Republicans in congress to pass the state's S.147, the Akaka bill; but the bill does not express White House policy: not legally; not politically. It fact, it seeks to circumvent existing federal tribal policy and law in Hawaii by reinventing it in a manner tailor-made to cover up past wrongful acts by Hawaii's dominant Democratic Party.
A Party made up of and controlled by Asian American immigrants who took advantage of an opportunity to increase the head count in order to increase the total amount of federal dollars being appropriated for state programs.
Here is one of countless examples illustrating this harmful and deceitful fraud. For decades, without due diligence, National Institutes of Health have been granting federal assistance to the University of Hawaii Native Hawaiian Center of Excellence. The Center's director has made a record as a loud advocate for secession from the United States and reinstatement of the kingdom of Hawaii, as his views receive a great deal of media attention. What is the explanation for this odd situation?
Upon examination it becomes evident that since this so-called Native Hawaiian is genetically an Asian having perhaps one distant ancestor who was a resident of the kingdom of Hawaii, (factored going back to only 1893, the year of the end of the kingdom, instead of going back to 1778, the year of discovery as in the 1921 and 1959 federal statutes enacted to express United States tribal policy), there is no medical basis upon which to single him out for special treatment or special research. To study diabetes or heart disease in this made-up political category, capital "N" Native Hawaiian, makes therefore no sense since it is not a biological category so cannot be a medical foundation for federal assistance.
The Center's Director, who is an Asian American, advocates for restoration of the kingdom because it would be the only way in which the misrepresentations that are at the foundation of his department would become factual. Perhaps he never imagined in his wildest dreams that the American people would be gullible enough to permit the state to get away with converting Asian Americans into Native Americans so he might as well advocate for restoration of the monarchy?
Senate bill S.147, the Akaka Bill, has exactly the same intent; namely to deceive congress and the White House by blowing smoke so federal assistance for a large group of actually ineligible recipients formulated for political purposes can continue by converting that group into something "identical" to Native Americans based upon what they misrepresent as the "overthrow" of the kingdom; together with what they misrepresent as the less-than-formal existing federal recognition; which now according to them needs to become "formal" so as to include them.
Role of missionary era royalist land trusts in scheme.
Here is another compelling illustration. KSBE stands for Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate, which is one of several missionary era royalist land trusts left over from colonial days. The trustees today of these out-dated Hawaii institutions embody the Asian immigrations to my Nation, just like the state legislature; the Hawaii Supreme Court and all other state government and local government branches and agencies, elected and civil service.
Today KSBE is an instrument of considerable Asian American political power based upon its vast wealth and its network of companies. This political power is the origin of the political category, the so-called capital "N" Native Hawaiian that now seeks to use S.147 to become "formally" recognized as Native Americans, or as "indigenous" to my Nation when it was a kingdom. There is no large law firm; there is no politician, of either party, who is not controlled by being indebted to KSBE in Hawaii.
It is doubtful, however, that the reach of this trust extends into the White House? The U.S. Department of Education withdrew federal assistance to KSBE's schools because it practices racial preference policies in admitting those defined by the made-up definition, capital "N" Native Hawaiian, which of course, encompasses a population produced in large part by Asian immigrations to my Nation.
The single most important wrongful characteristic of this made up category is that it meshes Hawaii's Asian American immigrants together with Hawaii's native Hawaiians of the Blood already recognized and singled out as the nearest kinship group by the United States since 1921. Sometimes it is helpful to think about this mess as if it were a patent infringement case. The native Hawaiian of the Blood obtained from the U.S. the patent and copyright as Hawaii's Indians in 1921 and 1959 federal statutes mandating land and money.
As time went by, immigrants to Hawaii who had no background with Indians or civil rights came to Hawaii from the Far East and misappropriated local indigenous culture and adopted Western culture; so as to fit in. A lot of confusion resulted and this necessitated a course of judicial review.
However, the newcomers hired a powerful law firm to represent them (the state of Hawaii is this "law firm") so they could hang on to what they profited by infringing on the patent: a not uncommon situation.
Do the numbers make sense?
In 1921 there were only a few thousand native Hawaiians of the Blood surviving in Hawaii when the U.S. set aside reservations for us from the Public Lands. From 1852 to 1898 around fifty thousand Chinese contract laborers arrived in Hawaii. From 1885 to 1924 two hundred thousand Japanese workers were allowed to immigrate followed by over eight thousand workers from Okinawa. From 1921 to 1930 over seven thousand Filipinos arrived annually in Hawaii.
Today, Asian Americans write Hawaii's laws, including the bill in question, the Akaka bill. How did a few thousand native Hawaiian of the Blood individuals explode into 943,000, which is the number according to the U.S. Census of U.S. residents who say they are Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander in combination with one or more other races?
The purpose of KSBE, since it began as a Protestant missionary school, was to convert heathens into Christians, just like all Indian country and Third World missionary schools of the colonial era. This entailed no appearance of my Nation's native language or any other feature of my Nation's aboriginal culture in the school, including religious, economic or political features.
Costume party decadence dooms aboriginal culture.
Then for demographic reasons KSBE began to invent a new, Protestant based culture they christened the "Hawaiian" culture wherein each and every aspect of it is made up. It is this made-up, newly minted version of my culture, which is Hawaiian in name only, which one sees today everywhere in Hawaii, and which is pushed by KSBE to promote its schools as elite. To outsiders with critical abilities, it appears flat and insubstantial, but to its adherents, it approaches being what they like to term "sacred". Hawaii's congressional delegation buys into this cult of Kamehameha for its political value.
Nothing can change the fact that made-up culture is nevertheless a fake. As an actual native Hawaiian of the Blood, it is often offensively racist thus demeaning to be subjected to imitations of my actual culture. This is not to say this fabricated substitute culture cannot be entertaining and even sometimes artistic on its own merits; especially when at best it expresses some measure of re-enactment of the original.
Yet, newcomers to our shores, like Hawaii's current governor or a university president, or each of the members and most of the staff of Hawaii's delegation to Washington, who lack any kind of deeper understanding, foolishly mistake the artificial substitute for the real thing and so become enmeshed and trapped in the propaganda.
There is no basis upon which to argue that this phony "Hawaiian" culture merits "formal" recognition (or even grants of public money) from the people of the United States. The United States is the real thing in the world and to embrace a fake thing in Hawaii as government policy would demonstrate a weakness to be exploited by America's enemies, domestic and foreign.
It is better to let the end of this charade work fully, now that it is being exposed, not permit S.147 to continue it on the weak and untested promise that the American people might need the state's power to control Hawaii in the event of future Pacific wars. Would the state inter Chinese American capital "N" "Native Hawaiians" in such an event?
United States case law provides two interesting methods to deal with the institutionalization of this inauthentic but persistent made-up version of my actual aboriginal culture.
A federal appeals court recently ruled that fake Indian jewelry can be sold but it must have a disclaimer. Therefore, this fake culture can be advertised as "Hawaiian" or capital "N" Native Hawaiian provided it contains a qualification so the public and consumers are not confused and think they are seeing or buying actual, original native Hawaiian culture.
The Northern Cheyenne tribe recently filed a lawsuit against a Catholic missionary school that has raised tens of millions of dollars by marketing the "plight" and "financial need" of the tribe; calling the scheme "one of the most successful fund-raising enterprises in American history". Well, I would add KSBE's phenomenal billions of dollars success and the state's scheme to raise funds in the form of federal assistance to that list.
KSBE is a trust that formerly owned ten percent of Goldman Sachs before the private investment bank went public. KSBE had a relationship with President Clinton which resulted in passing the so-called "Apology Bill"; upon which the so-called Akaka bill is based.
In colonial and plantation days, KSBE was established as a means to protect the land holdings of a Mr. Bishop; who married a descendant of the Kamehameha line. The type of trust he established utilized Protestant missionary schools for "Hawaiians and part Hawaiians" as its non-profit justification.
As time passed, the number of prospective students decreased in inverse proportion to the growth of the size of the assets of the trust. With its basis of existence in trouble, the pool of applicants needed to be expanded by broadening the definitions written in the will using the congress. Hiram Fong, Hawaii's first Chinese Senator, was happy to accommodate KSBE.
Seizing an opportunity lobbied for by my elders--who were already defined by the United States--to be included as Hawaii's Indians in Public Law 93-644 in 1974, trustees of KSBE altered the federal definition into a new definition suited to their interests. And thus was born the so called capital "N" Native Hawaiian category. It has grown in use over the decades.
This is part of a pattern wherein each action taken by federal and local government in the public interest adverse to KSBE is countered by a re-action on the part of its trustees and those under their influence in local government to sustain their own self-interests. The Akaka bill is the latest such re-action.
I think a recent episode is one harbinger of the fate of the Akaka bill. A scandal that made news across America involves KSBE and the Democratic Party. A recent president of the University of Hawaii, news reports show, acquired his position on the recommendation of one of the state's Democratic Party Asian American U.S. senators. The qualifications the individual possessed must have been more political than academic; contributing to his downfall. He had gained a good reputation as a political party fund raiser and as an expert at urban renewal, making him a seemingly good fit for Hawaii's culture.
This new ex-president's best friend in Hawaii was the very same KSBE trustee who formulated in 1974 the made-up definition, capital "N" Native Hawaiian.
Just as this new president was starting his job at the university in Manoa Valley, news stories appeared in the daily papers discussing university involvement in urban development of real estate just below the university; properties which KSBE is a major owner of. The university president was dismissed and left Hawaii after a period of turmoil reported in newspapers across America.
The very same fund the state's Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) possesses (an agency concocted to embody this made-up new definition) was used before OHA to fund public education, including the University of Hawaii system. There is a rational explanation of and an easy remedy for this illegal diversion, which results in these funds being returned to education instead of being used to sustain the network of the Democratic Party set up using the wrongful scheme now being rightly unraveled by the federal government, and you can be sure it is not the Akaka bill.
Part II. Royalist, Asian American, OHA, Akaka Scheme at fault: Not U.S.
In 1921, Hawaii's Asian Americans objected to the federal blood quantum being set in accord with federal tribal policy and law at from pure to fifty percent. Nevertheless, the United States prevailed. The law was largely ignored until the Hou Band of native Hawaiians of the Blood took legal action in Washington, D.C. federal court.
Today's generation of Asian Americans claims that they "will outvote you" should the Akaka bill legalize their schemes. It is time for the United States to stand firm, say no to the Akaka bill and prevail once again.
Hawaii's royalists in 1921 figured they had it all because they had several hundred thousand acres of good land. Today, they feel differently and see an opportunity to increase their control over what happens to all land in the islands into the future using the Akaka bill.
In 1959 the state formulated a state version of the original 1921 federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which it used to convert our former federal reservations to state ownership. Upon the first citation of the state's act by a native Hawaiian of the Blood, a federal court found the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, amended, to be solely a state law. This leaves the original federal 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act as the only federal law which the state has not altered to suit its own interests.
After 1959, the state failed to do as it agreed and provide revenues from the Public Lands to native Hawaiians of the Blood recognized in the 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act.
In 1974 Senator Inouye cut the native Hawaiian off from direct federal assistance and managed thereafter the language in any federal program for Indians so that the state only received federal assistance, in our name, for an inflated number including ineligible Asian Americans; to be doled out in grants after being used to fund more state jobs.
After 1974 Senator Inouye used the inflated head count numbers to draft and pass bills in congress that wrongly obtained increased federal assistance for the state to fund more government jobs. It is the termination of federal assistance for those who are really ineligible that is part of the state's motivation to buy more time using the Akaka bill.
These bills and the amount they brought in federal assistance to the state from the federal treasury are what the bill's backers cite as being at risk. I have explained how they used our federal standing to leverage these funds, thus injuring us.
I can only attribute to the good job done by Inouye and his friends at obscuring the facts the lack of outcry by the public at being duped by having their tax dollars used to fund this Democratic Party hijack scheme. Public, it's time to start paying closer attention to this matter. I need more help in stopping them from continuing to get away with it. Fax, call, email the White House and Republican Senators in congress.
Many if not all of these doubtful bills require periodic reauthorization. It is the custom of the congress to let lapse periodic authorization bills that turn out to be unconstitutional when each comes up for renewal of funding. This is the proven, fair way to thwart the scheme and it has already started.
In 1978, the state legislature concocted the Office of Hawaiian Affairs as a trustee of Public Land revenues for native Hawaiians of the Blood. OHA hands these funds out as small grants to just about anyone remotely connected to the word "Hawaiian" and pays its operating expenses with these funds. The OHA claims falsely that federal law provides these funds for "betterment of the conditions of Hawaiians".
The state is exposed to possibly being ordered to make restitution of all funds it obtained by fraud from the federal treasury. Hawaii's class action lawyers should be rejoicing over the prospect and sharpening their legal daggers.
In ignoring federal recognition for Hawaii's native Hawaiians of the Blood, untold numbers of my people lose their land and houses because of tax lien foreclosures or harassment by local governments involving sanitation, building codes and land use issues. A practice that continues today and which not even passage of the Akaka bill is likely to change because the discriminatory practices are so ingrained in the local attitudes of the Asian Americans who enforce these kinds of regulations and laws. It will take direct legal action by the U.S. Department of Justice to force a change so that these wrongdoers come into compliance with federal law.
Some properties of the Hou Band received direct federal assistance from the United States which had as a purpose strengthening tribal self-government through self-determined economic development. To date, fighting hostile neighbors and local government agencies and state agencies which refuse stubbornly to admit they are wrong has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and wrongfully imposed penalties.
The only way local government will shut us down will be by using a swat team and bulldozers, with the national media watching.
It is a noteworthy fact that today's land use system is mostly an overlay of the land use of the colonial area. This means that it is mostly missionary era royalist land trusts and plantation corporations which enjoy commercial use of their land.
Financial institutions as lenders are forced to lend into inherently discriminatory land use patterns, exposing them to class action lawsuits and placing local governments at risk for massive exposure as penalties for not having the courage to try to change the status quo in land use to make it equitable for the public.
Missionary era royalist land trusts have a practice of not building affordable housing because the U.S. Supreme Court held that missionary era royalist trust land would have to be sold to leaseholders because it is in the public interest to do so. This has the effect of increasing homelessness, which contributes to squatting by native Hawaiians on public lands. The state legislature under pressure from these land trusts recently criminalized squatting on public lands: a law which to their credit many in Hawaii find most distasteful and offensive.
The state's Department of Hawaiian Homes, simply by writing a letter to a county department of Planning and Permitting or the State Land Use Commission, receives exemptions from their laws and rules to get commercial zoning. How can this be?
I think it is because the state uses the existing federal recognition of native Hawaiians of the Blood as its means of exemption? You know, good old boys; one hand washing the other.
When an actual native HawaiianÑinstead of the state acting as one--wants to have the same, easy exemption, the state says we must first give title to our land to the state. Imagine this? We work our fingers to the bone to buy back some of our own land, and because the state ignores federal law, the only way we can have a business on it is to give the land to the state or obey the land use dictates of an outdated, unfair colonial system that favors "royalty".
This outrage is in the same category as the state's Akaka bill scheme being used to obtain preferential treatment in the form of federal assistance in our name while at the same time denying us exercise of the same entitlement to that preference directly (from the federal treasury) or indirectly (from the state or local governments). Is this ignorance or arrogance?
It is noteworthy that any land use in Hawaii is subject to a vote by elected officials or the public and the U.S. Supreme Court has already found the state at fault for funding any vote involving race (Asian Americans masquerading as Native Americans) or federally recognized native Hawaiians of the Blood.
This is the status quo and this is the status quo which the Akaka bill seeks to use congress to codify and institutionalize. I ask you, does this sound like mistreatment by the United States? Or does this sound like mistreatment by the state acting as an enforcement arm of special interests and against the public interest in contravention of all existing federal laws enacted by congress to ensure fairness and uniformity in all states?
Part III. Realities Akaka bill fears.
I speak to the White House with the voice of the only genuine native Hawaiian of the Blood self-determined tribal body having no vested interest in continuation of the state's intrusion into our sovereign affairs. The solution I advocate for White House consideration works for the United States and it works for authentic native Hawaiians. In time, it will come to work for the state as Hawaii's demographics change to become more like that of the West and less like that of the Far East; as we become more modern thanks to the guidance of the White House and therefore less trapped by our colonial and plantation past.
I speak to the White House to convey why S.147 should not be permitted to pass in the Senate or then pass in the House. The state's S.147 is not a way to express White House policy. It is not a native Hawaiian bill. It is overkill.
There is a simple, routine administrative provision which reaffirms federal tribal policy and law in this situation and this is the remedy the situation calls for and which I am asking the White House to implement.
S.147 creates a nasty and persistent backlash of divisive, unnecessary legal and political woes involving race and the role of the state that would inevitably end up back in the United States Supreme Court while buying more time for the state's bizarre political scheme to continue.
Let no one forget that the sole reason for S.147 is the fact the U.S. Supreme Court already examined the matter; already found it unconstitutional and already started the process of unraveling the state's scheme. A scheme that is in reality as far from being bi-partisan as possible. A scheme hatched and carried out by a state government bureaucracy controlled for forty years by one party: the Democratic Party.
A noteworthy state misrepresentation is that the United States has mistreated the native Hawaiian and this bill is the means to now do the right thing? I can only marvel at the self-righteous arrogance behind such a blatant lie. It is the state and those associated with the state that routinely mistreats the native Hawaiian of the Blood. This is a provable, conclusive legal fact. This bill attempts to cover this up as it shifts the blame for its own misdeeds to the United States.
At the very most the United States might only be reprimanded for not being as vigilant as it is required by law to be in enforcing, through the Executive Branch, existing federal statutes enacted by earlier congresses? Or, perhaps, we have not been as demanding of the Department of Justice as we should be?
We want to see Republican President Bush standing shoulder to shoulder with Republican President Warren G. Harding and the 67th Congress, which had the wisdom and the clarity then to see the solution and formalize it into the law of the land. Law never repealed. We cannot live with anything else.
This is a grave situation. We do not want to see the President standing behind President Clinton's corrupt Apology Bill or standing shoulder to shoulder with Hawaii's Asian American pretenders and their servile representatives in congress.
In accord with established federal tribal policy and law, in 1921 the 67th Congress mandated federal reservations for native Hawaiians of the Blood from Public Lands. In 1959 the 93rd Congress mandated revenues from Public Lands be used for betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians of the Blood.
In 1921 using its plenary powers under the Commerce Clause, the U.S. Congress mandated that federal reservations from the Public Lands be set aside exclusively for the nearest kinship group to the Nation of Hawaii, those having from pure to fifty percent blood quantum. In 1959 the state converted the title to those lands to the state but with federal oversight.
The Solicitor of the Department of Interior in 1920 wrote an Opinion: Would an Act of Congress setting apart a limited area of the Public Lands of the Territory of Hawaii for lease and occupation by native Hawaiians be unconstitutional? And the Solicitor wrote that "it would not. There are numerous congressional precedents for such action. The Act of Congress approved February 8, 1887, as amended by the Act of February 28, 1891 (26 State. 794) authorizes public lands which have been set apart as Indian reservations by order of the President to be surveyed and 80 acres of land therein to be allotted to each Indian located upon the reservation, or where the lands are valuable for grazing to be allotted in areas of 160 acres. Another section of the same act authorizes any Indian entitled to allotment to make settlement upon any public lands of the United States not otherwise appropriated and to have same allotted to them."
The Hawaiian Homes Commission was organized by the same act (the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, signed July 9, 1921 by President Warren G. Harding) to administer its provisions. (No capital "N" Native Hawaiian was recognized in this act. They did not exist).
Were the backers of the Akaka bill not so desperate they might take the time to examine carefully the trend in federal district courts across the land and in the U.S. Supreme Court to clean up the mess concerning federal land in trust and recognition so that the off-the-wall stuff pulled by elected representatives in Congress and states is eliminated and the central, traditional role of the Department of the Interior once again prevails. This trend is bad news for the Akaka bill's off-the-wall, state scheme. But it is good news for the Homestead Associations.
Because it is a stage agency, the Department of Hawaiian Homes cannot govern homestead lands occupied exclusively by native Hawaiians of the Blood. Pursuant to the Hou Band placing land in trust as its restored federal reservation, each homestead association will have to reorganize itself into a tribal government and apply to place the land of their homesteads collectively into trust with the Secretary of the Interior for protection as their own restored federal reservation. Each band could come together in a native Hawaiian congress if we each see some benefit to be gained from doing so.
With each new tribal government having then its own blood quantum rule on that particular federal reservation, they can then obtain directly the revenues from Public Lands mandated on a pro rata share for their enrollment. They can start the ball rolling today by demanding from the state's OHA their pro rata share and then sue the OHA if they resist the demand. Funds obtained which actually belong to the homesteaders can be used to purchase occupied homeland tracts back from the state when placing them in trust to the United States so as to be able to develop them without state involvement or interference.
Several years ago an OHA trustee leading an organization known as Ka La Hui petitioned the Department of Interior to be recognized as a tribe but was turned down, with Interior saying the "breeds are trying to get ahead of the bloods".
The membership of Ka La Hui was indiscreet in that it attempted to demonstrate the diversity of Hawaii's present day population, but the federal government was not buying it then and it is doubtful they will buy it now in the form of the follow up to that attempt by the same people; namely the Akaka bill. If the Department of the Interior said no, the Ka La Hui/Akaka bill people rationalized; we will go to the congress. But, they are bucking a trend.
Any Asian Americans left out can organize themselves into a group with an enrollment determined as descendants of the kingdom factored from 1893, and buy land or tender missionary era royalist trust land, then apply to the Department of Interior to have it placed in trust? Whether or not Interior takes it in trust will be up to Interior. Why wait 25 years, as the Akaka bill would have them do, if they think of themselves as having a right to the same federal status as Hawaii's actual native Hawaiians? Why not prove it today without reinventing the wheel?
In the Hawaii Admissions Act in 1959, Act of March 18, 1959, Public Law 86-3, Stat. 4, (Admission Act) the United States mandated revenues from Public Lands for the betterment of conditions of native Hawaiians of the Blood:
"The lands granted to the State of Hawaii by subsection (b) of this section and public lands retained by the United States under subsections (c) and (d) and later conveyed to the State under disposition of any such lands and the income therefrom, shall be held by said State as a public trust for the support of the public schools and other public education 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. Such lands, proceeds, and income shall be managed and disposed of for one or more of the foregoing purposes in such manner as the constitution and laws of said state may provide, and their use for any other object shall constitute a breach of trust for which suit may be brought by the United States". (No capital "N" Native Hawaiians was recognized in this act. They did not exist.)
The state used native Hawaiian of the Blood revenues mandated by congress only for public education. The formula used in Indian Country to divide revenues of former aboriginal lands converted into Public Lands is fifty percent public, fifty percent Indians.
When the Hou Band sued the Department of Justice in 1980, then Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus agreed on December 3, 1980 to ensure that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) would thenceforth oversee the state's management of our former federal reservations to make certain we did not continue to be mistreated by the state.
Our Asian American legislators had given their own unique twist in 1978 to the national fifty/fifty standard when they organized, in state law only, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs: which they use to divert funds not mandated for them. Since Asian Americans are not really Native Americans in Hawaii, they are part of the public group. So those served by the OHA are not only discriminating against the native Hawaiian of the Blood, they are discriminating against the rest of the same public they are a part of. Since a state agency cannot discriminate, they seek to become a "sovereign" agency so as to be immune from legal attacks for discriminating.
When included in the public group, the Asian Americans of the OHA do not have any claim to public land revenues in federal legal reality. As truly members of the public group, they only have a right to share along with every other ethnic group in their portion of public land revenues. Not being members of the public group, native Hawaiians are a kinship group not a racial group.
To demonstrate how much control the KSBE/OHA faction has over the state, rather than using state power to force them to conform to federal law, as any other state would do in the public interest, the state seeks to invent new federal law just for them! The public has my encouragement to be just as outraged as we are about this madness and should support and welcome the current spate of legal actions seeking to end the madness.
As for ceded lands, the claim by OHA that their constituents are entitled to reparations from ceded lands because they might have been part of the kingdom is ridiculous and utterly without legal merit. It is a fantasy created because our Asian American legislature went too far when it started to act as though it possessed a power that only Congress has, namely to write law to govern native affairs. Was this ignorance, naivety or deliberate deception? In historical fact and legal reality, the U.S. has nothing to fear as a claim from Asian Americans who were ineligible to receive federal assistance and who have no basis for a claim in connection with the Hawaiian kingdom or the Republic of Hawaii.
It has been in defense of these 1921 and 1959 federal mandates that the Hou Band of native Hawaiians of the Blood of Hawaii has been battling the state toe to toe for six decades at our own expense. The state and those it represents in the current battle have never asked the United States to come to their side in any legal fight against the Hou Band. How could they?
The state and those it represents rather have been defendants in the Hou Band's legal war with Hawaii government wherein the Hou Band struggles to move the state aside so the federal mandates intended for us and our people can as congress intended work in accordance with long established federal tribal policy and law.
And so now we find ourselves in a situation wherein the state and those who use it as their weapon seek to use Congress in S.147 to not only move us aside, but to terminate us using a form of legislative genocide: I can only wonder in amazement at this bizarre turn of events. I am ashamed to be implicated in such a sordid affair, even at a distance.
It is with sadness and personal shame that I admit it was Hou Band elders, all now gone to their Heavenly peace (after lives filled with unhappy suffering), who began having native Hawaiians of the Blood included in federal Indian programs financed by appropriations needing periodic reauthorization.
It was the Hou Band alone as sovereign native Hawaiians of the Blood that qualified for and received direct federal assistance as Indians in addition to being entitled to our 1921 federal reservations and the 1959 Public Land revenues.
In February of 1977 the state legislature even formally recognized the Hou Band as Hawaii's Native Americans in an effort to get this issue right. But starting in 1974, things had changed for the worse. It was not until 1999 when the federal government's U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, that things got back on the right track; at least until the Akaka bill was fabricated to try to keep the scheme going for a while longer until they could figure something else out.
How did boiler plate federal tribal policy and law become so distorted? I can only tell you the story as the Hou Band lived it. Yet, in the telling of this sorry tale, I hope to remind the White House that what is real is embodied in my tale just as it is embedded as if in granite in the true practice of justice for America's actual indigenous people, including us, the native Hawaiians of the Blood, as intended by the 67th congress and 93rd congress but blocked by the forces now trying to gain the upper hand in Hawaii over the federal system, over us and over the public.
Just as the majority of the public in the U.S. are Western, or European, in my bones and in my blood, I am a tribal man. All the knowledge I have of myself and my history feels tribal, because it is. Yes, Hawaii, you do have Indians living within your borders and we are not Asian Americans. One has only to look around in Hawaii to verify this with your own eyes.
My great, great grandfathers were tribal people in 1778 when British sea captain James Cook described us in his daily journal as Indians; as did other members of this and other foreign expeditions to my Nation. These intruders went to war with us and then imposed a British style colonial government with a despotic ruler: thus was born the cult of Kamehameha, which persists to this day.
My great, great grandfathers were not English; nor were they Chinese, Japanese or Filipino. We used to call ourselves Hawaiians before we had to begin to distinguish ourselves as being indigenous, or, native, to the tribal nation of Hawaii. The United States called us native Hawaiians of the Blood in 1921 in a law that mandated federal reservations for us that has never been repealed. We do not need to be "formally" recognized by anyone else.
My grandfathers were full bloods; the chiefs of the Kalaeloa clans and our names have many spellings, all of which I am intimately familiar with as an expert on our genealogy and geography. I am a half blood Hawaiian, having fifty percent blood, one of by our count 3,500 pure blood to fifty percent blood tribal indigenous people. My mother is one of only some 400 full blood tribal indigenous people surviving, and she is 83.
Our enrollment is only 350 principal enrollees having the legal blood quantum. Of course, we permit the families of our enrollees to share through their elders who are of the blood any benefits we are fortunate enough to possess.
But we live in a hostile environment created by the state. It has always been our purpose and plan to act sovereign in our daily lives. This has brought down upon us suffering and misery in the form of the heavy hand of local government and the hatred and abuse of neighbors.
We in full knowledge of our indigenous birthright entitlements act in accordance with them, but this places us squarely in the deadly sights of everyone else because the state ignores our entitlements, except insofar as it partakes of them for its own benefit in our name.
To make this situation even more tragic, we are also subject to the scorn of the Asian Americans who have come along lately and used the state to become our substitutes because of the federal assistance programs we first obtained thinking they were only for us!
From the moment of initial United States involvement with my Nation, there has been a conflict between those connected to the British style despots, or Royalism, and the tribal in my Nation. This same conflict exists at this very moment. The major difference between days of old and today, however, is that the influence of the United States and the power of the tribal outweigh royalist power. This is so in part because as time passed, the original Hawaiian and part Hawaiian royalists have been replaced by Asian Americans harboring a mad delusion that they are somehow us. A parody is a bad imitation.
The Hawaii royalist Asian American's claim to be actual Native Americans is weak to non-existent and cannot prevail without "formal" federal recognition using the bizarre scheme projected by their Akaka bill.
An illustration of this is that a young Chinese woman, who in every way appears to be Chinese, could claim foolishly to be a "Hawaiian Princess". How can this be? Well, the legal meaning of blood is the area of contention. Federal measurements of blood versus so-called royal blood, as in royal blood line. So-called royal blood has no legal standing in the United States, which fought wars to rid itself of the yolk of oppression imposed by monarchies and un-elected dictators on free societies.
What is further damaging to the fantasy of royal blood being dominant over our blood is the misrepresentation made by the royalists that the United States overthrew their kingdom and thus owes them reparations.
My Nation had ceased being a British style kingdom when it became an insular territory of the United States. It was a Republic.
My Asian American neighbors, who immigrated, or, intruded into my Nation's affairs have a fantasy that because today they control the land trusts established by the royalists they are due reparations for those royal lands that became government lands of the Republic and Territory. It is the state of Hawaii's "royal" Asian Americans who are pushing the Akaka Bill. They are motivated by greed and fear and they will tell any lie to achieve their goals.
They misrepresent the actual historical and legal facts; ignoring them or distorting them to make it appear it was them, the Asians, who were singled out by the United States in 1920 and 1959 when in fact it was us, the actual, genuine native Hawaiians of the Blood, having from pure to fifty percent blood, only. They say it was their kingdom that was "overthrown" and for which the United States owes them a process of "reconciliation".
In the Akaka bill there are blatant misrepresentations that I asked the Senator to correct: he flatly refused, leading me to file an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee:
So as to deceive the public, the White House and congress, Senator Akaka tries to make it appear that Asian Americans posing as capital "N" Native Hawaiians were recognized by the 67th congress in the original Hawaiian Homes Commission Act when this made-up group did not come into existence until 1974.
Akaka writes that "É203,500 acres of land to address the conditions of Native Hawaiians (note the capital "N") in the Federal Territory that later became the State of Hawaii". By contrast, what the 67th congress actually wrote and passed as law follows: "Éto better the conditions of native Hawaiians". The 67th congress law defined a small "n" native Hawaiian as being of the Blood. Is this an attempt to deceive by making it appear wrongly that the 1921 law exclusively reserving land for occupation by native Hawaiians of the Blood included Asian Americans?
When taken together with an identical misrepresentation concerning the 1959 law mandating revenues from Pubic Lands exclusively for the very same native Hawaiians of the Blood it would seem to be a deliberate attempt to mislead? When appearing to quote the 1959 Admissions Act, Akaka writes "ÉCongress established a public trust for 5 purposes, 1 of which is the betterment of conditions of Native Hawaiians". Note the capital "N". In fact, the 1959 Admissions Act uses the same small "n' meant by congress to define only the native Hawaiian of the Blood.
The exact language enacted into law in 1921, which has never been repealed, reads as follows: "(7) The term "native Hawaiian" means any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian islands previous to 1778." Senator Akaka and the other newly minted, immigrant Asian Americans posing as Native Americans or as "identical" to Native Americans are not included.
Sovereign Nation of Hawaiiª Enterprises
P.O. Box 459
Haleiwa, HI 96712
808-638-7841
chiefmauiloa@yahoo.com
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