APARTHEID...
HAWAIIAN STYLE
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
[Consider the source]:
June 12, 2008
OUR OPINION
Hawaii Supreme Court ruling
tampers with federalism
THE ISSUE
Twenty-nine state attorneys general support Hawaii's appeal of a decision that froze the sale or transfer of the state's ceded land. NO other state has former royal lands that were ceded to it, but 29 state attorneys general have joined Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that blocks the sale or transfer of ceded land. They understand that failure to do so would set a dangerous precedent infringing on states' rights protected under federalist principles.
Ceded lands amount to 1.2 million acres, encompassing nearly all state-owned lands. Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled in January that a 1993 joint resolution by Congress apologizing for the overthrow of the monarchy a century earlier requires that ceded lands be "preserved" until "a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and the native Hawaiian people" is achieved.
The Apology Resolution does not exactly say that, but that was the state high court's interpretation. The resolution does say that Hawaiians never "directly relinquished their claims" to the land, implying that the state is de facto custodian of the lands.
A brief by the 29 state lawyers, prepared by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, asserts that Congress meant the resolution to be "a symbolic apology" and nothing more. If that had been the intent, Congress would have tailored it as a concurrent resolution. A joint resolution, which is what the Apology Resolution was, has the same force as a bill enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president. In this case, then-President Bill Clinton provided his signature.
"A state's ability to survive as a sovereign state is seriously undermined if the title to its lands can be singled out and impaired by the federal government," McKenna wrote. Indeed, the Admission Act granted the state "title" to the ceded lands, albeit with the conditions that the land or income from it be used for one of five purposes, including "betterment of conditions for native Hawaiians."
On that basis, the state turns over 20 percent of profits from ceded land to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The current case arose after OHA balked at the transfer of Maui acreage to the state affordable housing agency, rejecting a check for $5.8 million in compensation, about one-fifth of the property's value in compliance with the five-purpose formula.
Bennett argues in the state's appeal that "the federal government granted title to Hawaii to most of the previously ceded lands (keeping some 350,000 acres) and mandated that these ceded lands be held by Hawaii in public trust." Final reconciliation will occur after Congress passes Sen. Daniel Akaka's Hawaiian sovereignty bill and the next president signs it into law.
~ ~ ~
Oahu Publications, Inc. publishes
the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, MidWeek
and military newspapers
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
David Black, Dan Case, Dennis Francis,
Larry Johnson, Duane Kurisu, Warren Luke,
Colbert Matsumoto, Jeffrey Watanabe, Michael Wo
HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN
Dennis Francis, Publisher
Lucy Young-Oda, Assistant Editor
lyoungoda@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, Editor
fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
http://starbulletin.com/2008/06/12/editorial/editorial01.html
November 29, 2007
Social Engineers
In Paradise
By George F. Will, Washington Post
-------
"I decide who is a Jew around here."
-- Hermann Goering in 1934, when told that
a favorite Munich art dealer was Jewish.
-------
Under legislation that the House of Representatives has voted 261 to 153 to foist on Hawaii, Goering's role would be played by a panel empowered to decide who is a "Native Hawaiian" and entitled to special privileges and immunities.
Because there are perhaps only 7,000 "pure" Native Hawaiians, "Hawaiian blood" will inevitably be the criterion, and the "one-drop rule" probably will prevail. Goering would have approved of this racialist sorting-out.
Those designated Native Hawaiians would be members of a new "tribe" conjured into existence by Congress. But Congress cannot legitimately do that.
In 1959, 94 percent of Hawaiians, including a large majority of Native Hawaiians, voted for statehood. Opposition was strongest among Southern Democrats in Congress, who, with the civil rights revolution simmering, were wary of Hawaii's example of multiracial harmony.
Today, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, when accurately described, is opposed by a large majority of Hawaiians and supported by only a bare majority of the approximately 240,000 Native Hawaiians in the state. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, is a genuflection by "progressives," mostly Democrats, to "diversity" and "multiculturalism."
It would foment racial disharmony by creating a permanent caste entitled to its own government -- the Native Hawaiian Governing Entity -- within the United States. The NHGE presumably would be exempt, as Indian tribes are, from the Constitution's First, Fifth and 14th amendments. It would, Akaka says, negotiate with the state of Hawaii and the United States concerning "lands, natural resources, assets, criminal and civil jurisdiction, and historical grievances."
Reparations? We shall see. Independence -- secession? "That could be," Akaka, 83, has said, depending on "my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
The seeds of this weed were sown in 1993, when Congress passed a tendentious apology for supposed U.S. complicity -- which was neither clear nor essential -- in the peaceful 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani's monarchy by Hawaiian residents.
The novelty of America apologizing for a monarch's fall was followed in 2000 by a Supreme Court ruling overturning a Hawaiian law that excluded everyone except Native Hawaiians from voting in a statewide election for trustees of a state agency. This, the court said, violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and proscription of racial discrimination in voting.
This ruling raised doubts about the constitutionality of the racial spoils system administered by that agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Which is perhaps why Akaka decided the reorganization act was necessary despite what he has called, with weird defensiveness, his state's "perceived harmony."
There are 400,000 Native Hawaiians nationwide who will be eligible to participate in creating the NHGE. Native Hawaiians are 20 percent of Hawaii's population. They are defined as direct lineal descendants of indigenous peoples who lived on the islands before 1893 and who exercised sovereignty then -- an unintelligible provision because the queen monopolized sovereignty. She, however, was more enlightened than Akaka. She did not distinguish between Native Hawaiians and immigrants, who served in her government.
Under President George Washington, the U.S. government's Indian policy was a facet of foreign policy because tribes were considered foreign nations. The Constitution speaks not of native "peoples" but only of "Indian tribes." Akaka's legislation would create a Native Hawaiian "tribe" as a nation within the nation.
Unlike Indians, however, Native Hawaiians' land was not taken by force. They are not a compact community -- they are woven into the fabric of one of America's most polyglot states. They chose to bring themselves under the Constitution by embracing statehood.
Congress does not create tribes; it recognizes them according to settled criteria: Tribes were nations when the Constitution was written and are geographically separate and culturally distinct communities whose governments have long continuous histories. As the state of Hawaii has said, "The tribal concept simply has no place in the context of Hawaiian history."
Virtually all Democrats and a few inexplicable Republicans support this legislation, which will further inflame the ethnic grievance industry. Imagine the lesson that some descendants of Hispanics who lived in the Southwest before 1848 would learn from it. A Republican president would veto it. A Democratic president would sign it -- Sens. Biden, Clinton, Dodd and Obama support it -- but the Supreme Court would shred this plan for different laws for different races. Still, the legislation is an important symptom of Democrats' constitutional flippancy and itch for social engineering.
"One nation, indivisible"? Not for the House majority or the Senate committee that has approved Akaka's mockery of the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag: "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.", should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
On either side of the river, was there the tree of life...and
the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
– REVELATION 22:2
“Collins, huh? That would be...English? Irish?”
It’s a game we play, reckoning heritage based on the sequence of consonants and vowels in surnames, like some kind of ethnic crossword.
“Irish. Used to be O’Collins, I think.”
Our answers, of course, are misleading. We’re not Irish, but Irish-American or German-American or Japanese-American. But our nation has accumulated so many, accommodated so many (or in some cases, compelled so many), that we often drop the hyphen and cut to our roots–a sort of cultural shorthand....
Nationality is a complicated concept. Maybe that’s why I like twelve-step meetings even though I don’t have any addictions (that I know of). I like the roomful of strangers–first names only, please–who admit they’re powerless, who admit that only a Higher Power can help. This is the country I want to live in–one nationality, the country Hope and Salvation and Reaching Out and Reaching Up, where arms are only used for hugging. I’m no geographer, but I suspect that if God had a nationality, it would be among these folks–the tired, the poor, the wretched, all yearning to be free.
Father, let it be as John Oxenham’s hymn has it: “In Christ there is no East of West, in Him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
– Mark Collins, Daily Guideposts 2003
October 18, 2007
Rival cases question Hawaiian
blood requirements
By MARK NIESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WAIMANALO, Hawaii -- In Hawaii, where race and blood ancestry matter as in no other state, two legal challenges are trying to decide who is really Hawaiian enough to get some public benefits.
Native Hawaiians with strong bloodlines can get cheap island land for $1 a year. Those with more mixed ancestry still get many other benefits, including low-interest loans and acceptance for their children into the richly endowed, race-preferential Kamehameha Schools.
This public help is designed to make amends for the 1893 U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by foreign diseases. Kamehameha, with 6,700 Native Hawaiian students on three islands, has one of the richest private trusts in the nation, now worth about $7.7 billion.
In one lawsuit, Native Hawaiians with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood want control over programs currently open to all Hawaiians. In another case, state residents without Hawaiian ancestry question why they're left out.
With more people of mixed race than any other state, some racial tension is evident in the islands, although being local often is more important than being brown or black or white.
Still, proving Native Hawaiian ancestry is a big deal. Without it, you can be born in the islands but can never call yourself Hawaiian.
Shannon Kahalepauole, 25, lives on property designated for people with at least half Hawaiian blood through a 1921 act of Congress.
Among friends, she says, it doesn't matter how Hawaiian you are. But she and other Native Hawaiians know how important it can be in enjoying benefits from the state and some private institutions.
"It should be all the same. If you're Hawaiian, you're Hawaiian," Kahalepauole said as she and nine other women, all of whom consider themselves Hawaiian, prepared for a Tahitian dance exhibition Saturday (Oct. 20) in seaside Waimanalo.
But she did point out that her 10-month-old son, Ikena Paraan, who darted among the dancers in a toddler walker, has a Hawaiian father, which gives him a stronger Hawaiian ancestry than she has.
"Hawaiian is not just blood," she said. "It's culture and attitude."
Another dancer, Oriana Coleman, with an orange flower in her ear, claims she's 47 percent Hawaiian and said it's rare these days to find people who are more than 50 percent.
About 400,000 people claim Native Hawaiian ancestry nationwide, two-thirds of whom live in the islands, making them a relatively small minority in a state of 1.2 million. Roughly 60,000 of those who consider themselves Hawaiian claim at least half Hawaiian blood.
While racial issues across the country usually start with an assumption of racial equality under the law, the legal actions in the islands test the boundaries of racial preferences.
"You have to draw a line someplace," said Walter Schoettle, the attorney who filed the lawsuit seeking to stop funding of programs for people without at least half Hawaiian blood. "If you're less than 50 percent Hawaiian, you're more something else."
Island residents wanting to prove how Hawaiian they are have to trace their ancestry back to someone who was full-blooded.
Schoettle's suit maintains that the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs shouldn't be using money raised by leasing out their forefathers' land for programs for all Hawaiians, regardless of their blood quantum. Revenue comes from leasing land originally held by Hawaiian royalty, which became federal land when the U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898 and state land at statehood in 1959.
The Hawaiians-only programs include OHA funding of legal resources for pushing Hawaiian causes, a Hawaiian language program that has increased use of the native language, and support for federal recognition of Hawaiians.
"We believe in trying to raise the quality of life for all Hawaiians," said Clyde Namuo, administrator for the state office. "It is impossible to improve the conditions of 50 percent Native Hawaiians in isolation."
But the more pureblooded Hawaiians argue their lawsuit has little to do with race and everything to do with inheritance of money from lands that belonged to their ancestors.
"These are the closest relatives to the people whose lands were taken from them unjustly," Schoettle said. "It's about kinship, kinship, kinship."
The lawsuit was reinstated by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August and ordered back to District Court for consideration. A motion before the 9th Circuit from state Attorney General Mark Bennett, who has taken the position that Native Hawaiian programs should benefit all Hawaiians, is pending.
The second case involves non-Native Hawaiians who are threatening to sue if they aren't allowed to sign up on the voting rolls for a potential government for Hawaiians, similar to entities governing American Indians and Alaska Natives. The quasi government is expected to result from the so-called Akaka bill in Congress which would recognize Native Hawaiians similar to the status given American Indians.
The Kau Inoa registry currently permits people with any Hawaiian blood to enroll.
Their attorney, H. William Burgess, sent two letters to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which runs the Native Hawaiian voting registry, asking that his clients be allowed to join, Namuo said.
OHA hasn't added Burgess' clients to the Kau Inoa list or responded to Burgess' letters, Namuo said. OHA's lawyers believe non-Native Hawaiians would have a difficult time proving they've been harmed because the registration list hasn't been used for anything yet.
OHA attorney Robert Klein called Burgess' action "a shot across the bow."
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that permitted only Native Hawaiians to vote in trustee elections for the state's Office of Hawaiian Affairs, citing the constitutional ban against voting discrimination based on race. Now, all Hawaii voters participate and candidates themselves need not be Native Hawaiian, although most who run claim Hawaiian ancestry.
www.seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6600AP_HI_Hawaiian_Blood.html
March 24, 2007
OUR OPINION
Hawaiian sovereignty faces
strong House opposition
Honolulu Star-Bulletin Editorial
THE ISSUE
The U.S. House has voted not to continue authorizing funds for Hawaiian housing.
A bill to reauthorize federal funding for Hawaiian housing hit a bump in the road, but more serious roadblocks might occur if Hawaiian sovereignty continues to be denied. A House vote on the housing bill indicates that the sovereignty measure could lack congressional support to overcome a veto by President Bush, which might force sovereignty proponents to look toward the next administration for more favorable consideration.
The House vote of 262-162 in favor of the housing bill fell short of the two-thirds vote needed for passage under a special House procedure -- and also needed to override a presidential veto of the sovereignty bill proposed by Sen. Daniel Akaka. Republicans followed the advice of GOP Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who maintained that the housing measure was unconstitutional, which is precisely the contention by opponents of the Akaka Bill.
Boehner is wrong in stating that benefits for Hawaiians violate the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Rice v. Cayetano, which disallowed Hawaiians-only voting for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees. In the Rice ruling, the court pointed out that congressional funding of Hawaiian programs "is a matter of dispute" and that the court "can stay far off that difficult terrain."
However, opponents of the Akaka Bill have inferred as much. William E. Moschella, the assistant attorney for legislative affairs, said in a letter four years ago that inclusion of Hawaiians among native Americans as recipients of funding for small-business startups and expansions "raises significant constitutional concerns."
The Senate voted 56-41 last year in favor of proceeding with the Akaka Bill -- short of the 60 votes needed. On the eve of the vote, a letter by Moschella to then-Majority Leader Bill Frist made clear that the Bush administration opposes the Akaka Bill because it would "divide people by their race."
Rep. Neil Abercrombie said he now recognizes "an element in the Republican Party that is hell-bent on attacking Hawaiians as symbolic of their opposition to native interests," and he should plan accordingly. Future measures aimed at funding Hawaiian programs probably are not threatened as long as they are attached to other bills that are not controversial.
The housing bill that fell short of the votes needed would have reauthorized $10 million a year in federal block grant money for projects providing housing assistance to Hawaiians. Abercrombie said he plans to bring the bill back to the House floor as early as this week under a standard procedure that requires a simple majority for passage.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that both federal and state funding are safe from taxpayer lawsuits, although they may be challenged by people claiming to have been denied benefits because of race.
Enactment of the Akaka Bill is needed to protect Hawaiian programs from such congressional and court challenges.
Oahu Publications, Inc. publishes
the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, MidWeek
and military newspapers
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
David Black, Dan Case, Dennis Francis,
Larry Johnson, Duane Kurisu, Warren Luke,
Colbert Matsumoto, Jeffrey Watanabe, Michael Wo
HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN
Dennis Francis, Publisher
Lucy Young-Oda, Assistant Editor
Frank Bridgewater, Editor
Michael Rovner, Assistant Editor
Mary Poole, Editorial Page Editor
http://starbulletin.com/2007/03/24/editorial/editorial01.html
March 22, 2007
Republicans kill funding
for Hawaiian housing
State officials plan to revive the bill in the U.S. House
By B.J. Reyes, Star-Bulletin
State officials say they plan to continue lobbying to win passage of a bill in the U.S. House to reauthorize federal funding for native Hawaiian housing assistance programs.
Although the bill was supported 262-162, it fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage under a special House procedure. The vote came after Republican leadership in the House argued it could be unconstitutional.
U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie said he will work to bring the bill back to the floor under standard procedure, which would require only a simple majority for passage. That vote could come as early as next week, he said.
"I think it's very unfortunate that at this stage the Republican leadership is trying to politicize this bill," Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, said in a telephone interview from Washington.
While no projects are immediately put at risk by the bill's defeat, state Hawaiian Homes Director Micah Kane said planning for future projects could be affected if the bill is ultimately defeated.
"There is no immediate impact right now, but should this program not be funded, it will have a significant impact on our construction budget," Kane said.
Abercrombie and Kane said they will continue talking with lawmakers to ensure the bill's passage if and when it comes up for another vote.
The bill would have reauthorized a 2000 provision of the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act. Under that provision, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands had received about $10 million a year in federal block grant money for housing assistance projects for native Hawaiians.
The provision expired in 2005, but funding has been included each year for the department through various spending bills: $8.8 million in 2006 and $9.4 million in 2005....
The reauthorization fell 28 votes short of the two-thirds needed for passage under a special procedure aimed at limiting debate on noncontroversial bills.
Abercrombie said on the House floor that he and Republican Leader John Boehner (R, Ohio) had come to an agreement on the measure, but while Abercrombie was speaking, the GOP leader's office issued an e-mail alert urging a no vote.
A telephone message left after business hours at Boehner's Washington office was not immediately returned.
In his news release, Boehner argued that benefits for native Hawaiians were unconstitutional because of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Rice v. Cayetano, which declared they could not have different statewide voting rights than other Hawaii citizens. Boehner said the court had suggested that special legal privileges for native Hawaiians are unconstitutional.
Abercrombie argued that the decision has nothing to do with the funding bill, noting that it is simply carrying out the provisions set forth by Congress in 2000.
"Unfortunately, there's an element in the Republican party that is hell-bent on attacking Hawaiians as symbolic of their opposition to native interests," Abercrombie said. "I'm hoping that Mr. Boehner will understand that if we want to have an argument on what the proper role for native Hawaiian legislation is, that we not confuse that with this activity."
http://starbulletin.com/2007/03/22/news/story03.html
March 6, 2007
Racial tensions are simmering in
Hawaii's melting pot
By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
HONOLULU — A violent road-rage altercation between Native Hawaiians and a white couple near Pearl Harbor two weeks ago is provoking questions about whether Hawaii's harmonious "aloha" spirit is real or just a greeting for tourists.
The Feb. 19 attack, in which a Hawaiian father and son were arrested and charged with beating a soldier and his wife unconscious, was unusual here for its brutality. It sparked a public debate over race relations that is filling blogs and newspaper websites with impassioned comments along stark ethnic lines.
These divisive exchanges come as the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress are being asked to tackle another inflammatory racial issue in a state where no race is a majority: special benefits for Native Hawaiians, ranging from preference at an elite private school to free houses on government land. One side says the long-established perks compensate Hawaiians for past wrongs and preserve their valuable culture for the islands. The other side says the benefits discriminate against other racial groups.
The current controversies are exposing racial tensions below the surface of a tropical paradise that Gov. Linda Lingle says is "a model for the world" in diversity and peaceful integration. Simmering divisions pit Hawaiians against other groups, and "locals" of all races against newcomers including immigrants and military members.
At issue now is whether Hawaii will acknowledge and overcome these threats to its friendly reputation.
Last month's road-rage incident began when an SUV driven by Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Dussell, 26, who has served two tours in Iraq, struck the parked car of Gerald Paakaula, 44, at a shopping center, according to a police affidavit filed in court. Paakaula and his 16-year-old son allegedly assaulted Dussell and his wife, Dawn, 23.
The teenager allegedly shouted an obscenity along with the Hawaiian term for a white person, haole (pronounced "howl-ee"), while attacking the soldier.
The court document says the father, a truck driver, picked up the woman and slammed her to the asphalt. The teenager allegedly kicked the husband's face as he convulsed on the ground from a punch to the throat. The couple suffered broken noses, facial fractures and concussions.
In another incident Jan. 27, nine white campers in a beach park on the Big Island of Hawaii were beaten by men in their 20s who told the campers to leave the island, the police report says. Hawaii County Police Maj. John Dawrs describes the assailants as "Pacific Islanders."
Racial troubles in the islands usually don't get much public discussion. In a tourism-dependent state, talk about tensions is "like news about shark attacks," says Jon Van Dyke, a University of Hawaii law professor. "People are afraid they might lose customers."
Now, people are speaking out. Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Peter Carlisle says he's getting public pressure to add a "hate crime" charge to the felony assault charge against Paakaula. The maximum sentence for assault is five years, but that would double to 10 years if the defendant is convicted of a hate crime. Carlisle says this case doesn't fit Hawaii's hate-crime law requiring intentional "selection" of a victim because of ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
Hawaii recorded six hate crimes last year, up from one or two in each previous year since recordkeeping began in 2003, according to the state.
"There is a notion that we have this kind of rainbow society and we all get along really swell," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the university's School of Social Work. "The reality is that there are racial tensions. They are deep-seated and historical, and that history didn't abruptly stop."
The aloha culture
Hawaii, annexed by the United States as a territory in 1898 and a state since 1959, promotes a picture of aloha. Hawaiians have lavished this "love" greeting on visitors since the first missionaries came from New England in 1820. "In the host culture, tolerance is paramount," says former governor Ben Cayetano, a Democrat. "That is the greatness of Hawaii."
By many measures, Hawaii is a paragon of racial accord. One in two marriages are across ethnic lines, says Lingle, a Missouri-born haole. Most neighborhoods are integrated. In a 2005 Census survey, 21% of residents listed themselves as being of more than one race — the highest percentage of any state.
Hawaii's governors have included Caucasians, the Japanese-American George Ariyoshi, the Native Hawaiian John Waihee and the Filipino-American Cayetano. Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann is Samoan-German. The state's five-member Supreme Court includes a Filipino, a Japanese-American and a Korean-American.
One irritant in this tolerant atmosphere is a string of federal civil rights lawsuits filed since 1996, alleging that special rights for Native Hawaiians illegally discriminate against non-Hawaiians.
Lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court last week to order the private Kamehameha Schools to admit a white student. The school trustees accept few non-Hawaiians, saying they are honoring the will of the Hawaiian princess who established the school in 1883 with an endowment now worth $7.7 billion....
An estimated 246,000 Native Hawaiians live in the islands, 20% of the state's population, according to a Census survey last year. Another 140,000 live in mainland states. All but about 10,000 are of mixed races, state surveys indicate.
Hawaiians are consistently on the bottom rungs statewide in income and school test scores. At Waianae on Oahu's Leeward shore, dozens of homeless Hawaiian families camp in tents on the beach.
'Will there be any Hawaii left?'
Census studies show Native Hawaiian numbers are slowly shrinking. The islands' low-paying service jobs in tourism and the high cost of living — 27% above the national average — have driven so many to migrate to casino jobs in Las Vegas that Hawaiians now call the Nevada city "the ninth island," says Ronald Becker, chairman of the criminal justice program at Honolulu's Chaminade University.
"If all the Native Hawaiians leave, will there be any Hawaii left?" says Dave Young of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. "That's what people come here for — the Hawaiian culture."
The court battles over Native Hawaiians' status are stirring emotion. When the phone rings at the home of lawyer John Goemans on the Big Island, he picks up the call in Beverly Hills. He quietly moved a year ago, saying he fears for his safety in Hawaii. He won a federal appeals court ruling in 2005 that struck down the Kamehameha Schools' Hawaiian-preference policy.
In protest, 15,000 marchers rallied at Iolani Palace, seat of the Hawaiian kingdom that white sugar planters overthrew in 1893 with help from U.S. Marines. Signs at the rally said "Hawaiians only" and "stop stealing from Hawaiians." Lingle, the Republican governor, spoke in support of the rights of Native Hawaiians.
"Well, 15,000 people marching — and I'm the guy they're looking for — is alarming," Goemans says, explaining his flight. "Hawaiians are wonderful people, but there are some extreme firebrands." The appeals court reheard the case and reversed its ruling in December. Now, Goemans is asking the Supreme Court to review the case.
"Don't they understand the pain that they're putting everybody through?" says Dee Jay Mailer, CEO of the Kamehameha Schools, an academic powerhouse.
"It's really less about an admissions policy than about the loss of one of the last treasures of the Hawaiian people," Mailer says.
Haunani Apoliona, chairwoman of the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), says sympathy for her people is widespread.
Jeanne Larsen, 56, a hotel sous-chef who moved here from Tahiti in 1975, says: "We feel sad for them because of what was done to them years ago."
To compensate for the U.S. role in the royal overthrow, Congress in 1920 authorized free houses for 99 years to people who can prove they have at least 50% Hawaiian blood. The state manages the program on 200,000 acres of government land; 8,000 families occupy houses, with 20,000 on a waiting list. The state created OHA in 1978 to run other exclusive benefit programs.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who is of Hawaiian and Chinese ancestry, spearheaded through Congress a 1993 resolution declaring the overthrow illegal and apologizing to Hawaiians for the U.S. role in the coup. President Clinton signed the apology.
Hawaiians are having mixed success defending their privileges. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that Hawaii had set up an illegal "racial classification" when it limited elections for OHA trustees to Native Hawaiian voters. A lawsuit brought by a taxpayer group attacking OHA and the home-lease program soon will be dismissed on procedural grounds, but similar suits are sure to be filed, state Attorney General Mark Bennett says.
If Hawaiians lose their favored status in the courts, they could regain it in Congress. Akaka filed a Senate bill that would allow Hawaiians to form a separate government like those of American Indian tribes.
Federal recognition of such an entity would put Hawaiians in a position to keep their perks and demand more.
Last June, a Republican filibuster stopped the controversial Akaka bill from reaching the Senate floor for a vote. Akaka reintroduced it in January. "With a Democratic majority, the prospects are better in this Congress," says Akaka, 82.
Hawaiians are split over how to improve their group's status. Sandra Puanani Burgess, 55, the part-Hawaiian co-founder of the group Aloha for All, says Hawaiians should have no special rights.
The most radical want to secede from the United States. Ikaika Hussey, 28, of Hui Pu ("to unite"), a group opposing the Akaka bill, says it fails to offer "the option of independence."
Some Hawaiians say independence is desirable but impracticable. "Secede? Oh, God, we would love to," says Haunani-Kay Trask, 57, a Hawaiian studies professor at the University of Hawaii. "As a nationalist, I hate the United States of America. But (independence) doesn't live in the political-military world we live in, with 26 military bases in Hawaii and 7 million tourists a year."
'Not much acceptance'
Booming tourism is bringing some new social stresses. Hawaii's unemployment rate was 2% in December, the USA's lowest. The hot economy is attracting poorly educated immigrants who can have problems fitting in. Groups of young Micronesians from Western Pacific islands such as Chuk sometimes fight with other groups in low-income Honolulu neighborhoods, police reports say.
Public schools hire Frank De Lima, a popular local comedian who specializes in ethnic jokes, to warn kids that slang racial descriptions can be explosive insults to immigrants or children whose parents are in the military.
Some in Hawaii's 24.9% minority of whites say they sense discrimination.
David Bell, 50, a Honolulu teacher, is white and Canadian Indian. Even after 26 years here, he says, he feels snubbed for looking white. "There's not that much acceptance," he says. "It bothered me, but after a while you learn to deal with it. You have to earn their acceptance."
Karen Knudsen, chairwoman of the state Board of Education, says, "You will hear people say 'dumb haole,' and it's not a big deal. But you would never say 'dumb' any other group. That's considered offensive."
Military personnel say they can feel like outsiders. "At our first-day briefing, we are told to avoid certain places after dark," says Army Pfc. Jennifer Olsen, 29, of Redding, Calif., based at Oahu's Schofield Barracks.
"Sometimes, being white, we go to a store and some people are first more willing to help their own. They're very much against the military people being here. I don't understand it."
For all the problems, Hawaii is a safe place. Rates of murder and other violent crimes are low, prosecutor Carlisle says.
"The race thing isn't perfect here," he adds. "But there is a lot that people can learn about race relationships from Hawaii."
~ ~ ~
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USA Today - 03/06/07 - Hawaii-Cover
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February 26, 2003
Lingle urges Senate to pass
‘vital’ Akaka bill
By Elizabeth Wolfe, Associated Press
WASHINGTON >> The Hawaiian recognition bill now before Congress is vital to the survival of the native Hawaiian people, Gov. Linda Lingle told a Senate committee yesterday.
"It is vital to the continued character of our state, and it is vital to providing parity and consistency in federal policy for all native peoples in America," Lingle said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in support of the so-called Akaka bill to federally recognize a native Hawaiian governing entity.
Approval of the bill will bring about "what is righteous, what is practical and what is just," she said.
The legislation would establish an office in the Department of the Interior to address native Hawaiian issues. It also would create an interagency group composed of representatives of federal agencies that currently administer programs and policies affecting native Hawaiians.
As Hawaii's new Republican governor, Lingle thinks she can sway the Bush administration to do more for native Hawaiians, she said after her testimony.
Lingle said she was "more optimistic and hopeful" after conversations this week with Attorney General John Ashcroft, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and presidential adviser Karl Rove.