Island Voices
Kanaka maoli have third option
By Kekuni Blaisdell
We kanaka maoli are now being told we must choose between two options.
The first option is to accept the U.S. Supreme Court's February 2000 Rice ruling. This decision dismissed the Office of Hawaiian Affairs as "racist" and, therefore, in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 15th Amendment, because OHA identified us kanaka maoli as the original, distinct, but dispossessed, people and nation with special rights in our homeland.
The first option has also been compounded by the Barrett lawsuit, scheduled to be heard on July 2. Plaintiff Patrick Barrett contends that Article XII of the State of Hawai'i Constitution is "racist" because it reserves OHA, Hawaiian Home Lands (HHL) and gathering rights only for kanaka maoli and excludes him as a non-Hawaiian.
The second option is to endorse U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka's current legislation that authorizes the U.S. government to recognize us kanaka maoli as indigenous to the United States. Thus, we would become permanent federal wards, under the U.S. Interior Department, similar to Indian tribes. Only in this way, it is said, could our contested "trust" claims, as OHA and HHL "beneficiaries," be protected.
Fear of the shutting down of all government and private kanaka maoli-only programs, such as OHA, HHL, Alu Like and the Kamehameha Schools, has accentuated the cry of urgency for the second option. Thus, swift passage of the Akaka Bill is deemed essential.
Meanwhile, kanaka maoli groups, dependent on U.S. and state funds, scramble to qualify as the "Native Hawaiian governing entity" to be certified by the U.S. interior secretary. They seem unaware that return of all stolen lands by the United States would provide us with more than ample resources to meet our painful health, educational, housing, employment and incarceration needs.
Both options appear to be losers, with kanaka maoli remaining colonized, landless and dependent subordinates in our own homeland. However, since the 1993 Kanaka Maoli Tribunal, a growing number of kanaka maoli and supporters have proposed what may be called "truth and justice."
Understanding a third option requires a kanaka maoli perspective of our history. The U.S. Supreme Court's reasoning in its ruling on Rice reflects the same imperialist attitude of U.S. missionaries in 1820 and haole usurpers in 1893-98 toward our "uncivilized" kanaka maoli ancestors and nation.
The irony is that now, even as we remain impoverished wards of the state under OHA, programs to provide for our relief are considered by our colonizers to be "unconstitutional." Meanwhile, the U.S. courts, media and schools seem blind to the U.S. invasion and occupation of our homeland. And the colonial establishment remains deaf and mute on the U.S. robbery of our lands and our government, in spite of the 1993 Kanaka Maoli Tribunal verdict and the 1993 U.S. Congress Apology Resolution.
Third-option remedies for these and other continuing injustices are based mainly on the Apology Resolution, international laws of occupation, restitution and self-determination, and the U.N. Human Rights Commission's 1999 Martinez Study on Indigenous Treaties, most of which the Akaka Bill ignores. Pertinent indigenous cultural law includes a timeless history of naturally free and independent indigenous peoples and nations, protectors and nurturers of their sacred environments, predating, and being interrupted by, colonialism.
With public education for our kanaka maoli people and all ka pae'aina (archipelago) residents, international oversight and self-determination referenda over mutually-agreed-upon time periods, the pono (just) outcomes become: the United States' peaceful de-occupation, decolonization and withdrawal from our homeland.
As the "self" in self-determination, we kanaka maoli create a government of our choice and design over our entire ka pae'aina, which is returned to us, descendants of the original owners and founders of our nation in time immemorial. As civil rights for non-kanaka maoli settlers among us are respected, they too join us in being liberated.
E ho'omaka kakou i k«ia ala pono 'ekolu (Let us begin this just Option Three).
Kekuni Blaisdell is a leader of the independence group Ka Pakaukau.
