COMMENTARY
Federal recognition is key
By Ryan Mielke
U.S. District Judge David Ezra stunned the Hawaiian community on Aug. 20 when he allowed, albeit temporarily, Brayden Mohica-Cummings, a non-Hawaiian seventh-grader, to be admitted to Kamehameha Schools.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
The controversy is greater than the admission of a non-Hawaiian to Kamehameha Schools. It's about the erosion of Hawaiian rights and the pressing need to protect them by way of federal recognition. For without federal recognition, all efforts aimed at assisting Hawaiians will be perpetually open to attack by a handful of attorneys. It's not a conspiracy, per se. It is, however, an exploitation of a window of time before that yet-unrealized federal recognition.
Brayden Mohica-Cummings, left, with his attorney, Eric Grant, and mother Kalena Santos, answers media questions after a federal judge granted a restraining order allowing the seventh-grader to begin attending Kamehameha Schools despite being denied entry earlier because of questions regarding Mohica-Cummings' Hawaiian ancestry.
It's going to take federal recognition to preserve what rightfully belongs to Hawaiians, in much the same way federal recognition has empowered hundreds of native American tribes on the Mainland. Such status will go a long way in ending the legal wrangling over the status of Hawaiians and their rights.
If there is anything getting in the way of Hawaiian self-determination and the protection of their trusts, it is the many bystanders who are ignorant about past Hawaiian injustices and are under the sway of a small band of strident attorneys who want to eliminate hard-won entitlements.
A case in point is Kamehameha Schools, founded in the 1884 will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiian children. Right now, the trust's policy of admitting only children of Hawaiian ancestry is being challenged.
In the Mohica-Cummings case, the trust has been slapped with a lawsuit for giving what it assumed was a Hawaiian applicant tentative approval for admission before clear and definitive verification was supplied by the boy's parents — proof that no good deed goes unpunished. In a real game of gotcha, the boy's attorneys went to court to ensure the admission sticks.
Kamehameha Schools, having successfully stewarded the trust assets, has for decades endeavored to live up to the intent of the princess's will by providing for the education of Hawaiian children who remain worst off in virtually every negative socioeconomic statistic. Public and private organizations chartered to better the conditions of the Hawaiian people are here, or are functioning successfully in part, due to state and federal laws. Like it or not, these are laws similar to those protecting the interests of native Americans on the Mainland.
Should those challenging Kamehameha Schools' admission policy be successful, Hawai'i's social fabric will unravel even further as Hawaiians are saddled with yet another indignity that could set back decades of progress and aloha.
John Goemans, who is representing Mohica-Cummings in his efforts to attend Kamehameha Schools, successfully sued the state of Hawai'i for the right of non-Hawaiians to vote in elections of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Opening the election brought non-Hawaiian Maui entrepreneur Charles Ota to the OHA board.
Ota declined to run for a second term, having decided that OHA trustees should be of Hawaiian ancestry after all.
Non-Hawaiians such as Gov. Linda Lingle are showing their support for Hawaiians in the face of apparent resistance from the Bush administration. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Solicitor General Ted Olson are key to shaping federal policy toward Native Hawaiians.
One small problem, though:
Olson successfully argued against OHA's Hawaiians-only elections before the U.S. Supreme Court. His argument erroneously posited that the Hawaiian "issue" is about race. Not so.
It is a political issue that has been painstakingly reinforced throughout American case history and statutes. Federal laws have recognized the "special, political relationship" between the United States and its native people (including the National Historic Preservation Act, the Native American Languages Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Native Hawaiian Education Act).
Again, only Hawaiians are without the major federal recognition Congress has provided most other native groups.
Of course, we are all part of the cultural and ethnic tapestry that is Hawai'i, but Hawaiians undeniably are the host culture, and were undeniably wronged. It's time we all recognize that and stand in solidarity of their right to self-determination. Hawaiian educational programs, funded by such trusts as Kamehameha Schools, and the socioeconomic and political future of Hawaiians cannot be protected if we act like apathetic sheep.
Ryan Mielke is a former programs and information director at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, where he worked for five years. He is now vice president at Starr-PR in Honolulu. He is not under contract or working for any of the organizations listed in his article.
