As kia'aina of Ka Lahui Hawai'i for eight tumultuous years — or prime minister of the group that has called itself the Sovereign Nation of Hawai'i — attorney Mililani Trask advocated
a measured, peaceful approach to establishing a "nation within a nation" where
Native Hawaiians could realize self-determination. It was a localized vision born of global experience.
Trask — granddaughter of David Trask (Ho-nolulu's first native Hawaiian sheriff and a longtime territorial legislator) and sister of activist and author Haunani-Kay Trask — grew up in Honolulu and graduated from Kamehameha Schools before leaving Hawai'i to attend the University of Redlands and San Jose State University. She earned a law degree from Santa Clara University before returning home to work in the areas of Native Hawaiian land trusts, resources and legal entitlements.
As an outspoken advocate for Hawaiian sovereignty, Mililani Trask was able to connect the Hawaiian struggle with that of indigenous peoples worldwide, and she quickly drew the respect of like-minded activists around the globe.
In 1993, Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, then the United Nations' goodwill ambassador to the U.N. Decade on Indigenous Peoples, invited her to join her Indigenous Initiative for Peace. Two years later, Trask was elected second vice chair of the General Assembly of Nations of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organizations, which was founded by the Dalai Lama as an alternative to the U.N.
As head of Ka Lahui, Trask used her international experience to help formulate a model for a sovereign Hawaiian nation that balanced idealism with pragmatism.
As she told The Advertiser in 1995, "We can't just go back in time. We just can't do it. Historical truths sometimes just don't transform into workable political realities for today and tomorrow."
