Bill
Giving Native Hawaiians Sovereignty Is Too Much for Some, Too Little
for Others
by Deane
Murphy 15 July 2005 published by The
New York Times
Hawaii is once
again awash with mainlanders, as summer vacationers delight in its
beaches and make themselves feel at home even on distant tropical
islands. Breakfast at Starbucks, lunch at Subway, dinner at Red
Lobster and a restful night at the Marriott or Hilton.
But most visitors soon discover something profoundly different about
the 50th state that the requisite luaus and hula dances only hint
at. The 250,000 indigenous people of Polynesian ancestry who are
among Hawaii's 1.2 million residents make the state like no other,
sustaining a native Hawaiian cultural and linguistic imprint that
preceded the arrival of Capt. James Cook by a millennium.
Now, 112 years after United States troops helped overthrow the independent
Kingdom of Hawaii and 12 years after Congress apologized for it,
that Hawaiian distinctiveness appears close to being formally recognized
by the United States government. A bill that for the first time
would extend sovereignty to the native Hawaiian people is poised
for a vote - and likely approval - in the United States Senate despite
opposition from many Republicans who denounce the measure as unworkable
and as promoting racial Balkanization.
The bill, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, is
considered the most significant development for native Hawaiians
since statehood in 1959. The measure would give them equivalent
legal standing to American Indians and native Alaskans and lead
to the creation of a governing body that would make decisions on
behalf of the estimated 400,000 native Hawaiians in the United States.
The governing body would also have the power to negotiate with federal
and state authorities over the disposition of vast amounts of land
and resources taken by the United States when the islands were annexed
in 1898, including about 300 square miles of land long ago set aside
for use as native homelands and an additional 2,500 square miles
scattered throughout the islands being held in trusts.
Haunani Apoliona, a musician who is chairwoman of the Office of
Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency that would be superseded by the
new governing body, said the bill was a long overdue acknowledgment
that Hawaiian history did not begin with the arrival of Cook and
the British Navy in 1778.
"We were here before Columbus," Ms. Apoliona said. "We
were in Hawaii before the Pilgrims."
The House of Representatives has passed earlier versions of the
bill and would take up the current one if the Senate passes it,
perhaps as early as next week.
The Bush administration has remained largely neutral on the measure,
though the Justice Department on Wednesday cast some doubt on the
constitutionality of the proposed law, namely whether Congress has
the authority to treat native Hawaiians as it does Indian tribes.
Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said in a letter
to Congress that the proposed law also must be amended to include
protections for United States military operations in Hawaii and
stronger language precluding casino gambling.
The bill's supporters in Hawaii say that they do not intend to have
casinos and that the Justice Department's other concerns can be
addressed.
But they acknowledge there are basic questions that will take years
of negotiations to answer, like how native Hawaiians would go about
governing themselves, whether native Hawaiians in and outside the
state would live under different laws from other citizens, and who
would qualify as a native, given the large degree of assimilation
through marriage and the many Hawaiians living on the mainland.
As for the measure's constitutionality, most everyone believes that
will ultimately be determined by the United States Supreme Court.
The measure, which took more than five years to reach the Senate
floor, arises from conflicting crosscurrents in Hawaiian society,
as native Hawaiians grow impatient for the United States to right
the wrongs of more than a century ago, while many nonnative residents
and interest groups seek to scale back entitlement programs already
available to native Hawaiians.
Backed by Hawaii's two senators, Daniel K. Akaka and Daniel K. Inouye,
both Democrats, the legislation grew in part out of a desire to
inoculate the entitlement programs, which cover things like education
and housing, from race-based legal challenges. One such challenge
was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 2000, when the
court ruled that native-Hawaiian-only voting in statewide elections
for the board Ms. Apoliona leads at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs
violated the 15th Amendment.
The bill is opposed by conservatives on the islands and in the Senate
who see it as a step back. They say it would create a race-based
government, provide a new vehicle for Hawaiian secessionist groups
and spawn endless litigation by people seeking redress against the
federal government.
In a report by the Senate Republican Policy Committee, which provides
analysis on behalf of Republican Party positions, Senator Jon Kyl
of Arizona said that the bill amounted to a "rejection of the
American melting pot ideal." The report said that the legislation
ran counter to a "broad consensus in Congress and in the nation"
at the time of Hawaiian statehood that the native Hawaiian people
would not be treated separately.
In Hawaii, the bill is being criticized by some as not radical enough.
Kekuni Blaisdell, a retired professor of medicine who coordinates
a network of indigenous Hawaiian groups that favor independence,
said native Hawaiians like Ms. Apoliona were misguided in their
acceptance of "continued foreign domination" by the American
government.
Every Thursday night, in his home in the well-to-do hills above
downtown Honolulu, Mr. Blaisdell and a dozen or so other activists
meet to discuss ways to promote independence for Kanaka Maoli, the
Hawaiian term for the islands' indigenous people and the only descriptor
Mr. Blaisdell, who is 80, accepts. Another group of activists, led
by Dennis Kanahele, live on a compound of leased state land elsewhere
on Oahu where they fly the Hawaiian flag upside down as a symbol
of distress.
"The bill keeps us under the heel of the United States and
assures our subservient status as Native Americans, which we are
not," said Mr. Blaisdell, who keeps a photograph on the wall
of his grandmother, an orphan who was cared for by the royal family.
"We were illegally invaded and occupied by the United States,
and we were and still are a separate people and nation."
Opponents in the Senate are drafting amendments that would undo
some of the bill's central provisions and require a referendum in
Hawaii, which could put the proposal at the mercy of the roughly
80 percent of Hawaiians who are not native as well as independence
groups like Mr. Blaisdell's.
A survey conducted on behalf of the State Office of Hawaiian Affairs
showed strong public support for the bill, while a poll released
by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a nonprofit group critical
of the bill, showed that two out of three residents were against
it.
Hawaii's governor, Linda Lingle, who has staked much of her political
reputation on passage of the legislation, said in an interview that
she had spoken with six Republican senators who were committed to
join the Senate's 44 Democrats and one independent in voting for
the bill.
Ms. Lingle's support may very well make the difference. As the state's
first Republican governor since 1962, she has a good relationship
with the Bush administration, which is eager to see her succeed.
The Justice Department's letter, sent Wednesday to the Senate Committee
on Indian Affairs, identified four "serious policy concerns"
raised by the bill, but said the administration was willing to work
with Congress to address them.
Aside from the matters of gambling and military operations, the
letter also called for limiting potential claims against the federal
government and clarifying jurisdiction over criminal matters on
native Hawaiian lands.
Ms. Lingle, who is not a native Hawaiian, said the issues could
be dealt with without altering the essence of the bill.
She rejected criticism that the bill was about race, saying it was
an effort to recognize a "distinct people" in the same
way Congress has recognized American Indians and native Alaskans.
"The only possible issue of discrimination is if this bill
does not pass," the governor said. "It would continue
the discrimination against native Hawaiians by treating them differently.
They would be the only one of the indigenous people not recognized
in this fashion."
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