The Akaka bill — which would afford Native Hawaiians the same type of recognition afforded American Indians and Alaska Natives — neither further balkanizes the United States nor sets up a race-based separate government in Hawai'i.

It provides a simple measure of justice and fairness to Native Hawaiians.

The special status of Native Hawaiians as an indigenous people of the United States has been recognized by the Congress for almost 100 years. The Akaka bill, Senate Bill 147, simply formalizes the relationship and will help to protect the many programs that benefit Native Hawaiians.

Native Hawaiians have fought and died for this country in wars dating back almost 100 years. They fight today for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Akaka bill will not change the patriotism or valor of Native Hawaiians or Hawai'i's other residents. It will not set up a foreign nation in Hawai'i. It will, however, put Hawai'i on an equal footing with its 49 sister states, and it will end the second-class status of Hawai'i's indigenous people — Native Hawaiians.

To the fair-minded people that we Americans pride ourselves on being, the Senate's Republican Policy Committee arguments against the passage of SB 147 are just plain wrong.

The notions they advance — that the bill "authorizes the creation of a race-based government" (that) is "profoundly counterproductive to the nation's efforts to develop a just, equitable, and color-blind society," "represents a serious distortion of the constitutional and historical standards" Congress has used to recognize America's other indigenous people, and can only "lead the nation down a path to racial balkanization" — simply are not supported by the Constitution, by history, by the language of SB 147, or by reality.

SB 147 does not treat Native Hawaiians specially. Given their shared common experience of a severe loss of their lands and self-governance, and a wholesale disruption of their cultural practices, Native Hawaiians only want to be treated as all other native indigenous Americans have been treated.

The history and experiences of American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians are in many ways indistinguishable, and thus there is no justification to argue against the passage of a bill that would extend similar treatment to the last of these native groups.

We believe it is wrong to suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that Congress cannot constitutionally accord the same treatment to Hawaiians that it has accorded to America's other native people. Indeed, the Supreme Court has recently affirmed Congress' plenary power to afford recognition to indigenous peoples under the "Indian Commerce Clause" of the United States Constitution.

The arguments against recognition for Native Hawaiians because Hawaiians cannot satisfy the requirements Congress set out for the recognition of Native Americans (in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934) are simply not relevant because Congress has not and need not include those conditions in the Akaka bill. Native Hawaiians have always had to rely on a separate bill for recognition because the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 was never intended to be the means of providing recognition for Native Hawaiians — it literally only applies to the native people of the "continental United States."

While it is true that Hawaiians no longer have an existing governmental structure with which to formally engage in government-to-government relations with the United States; that Hawaiians' last form of government was a monarchy; and that anthropologically, Hawaiians have not organized themselves in "tribes," Alaska Natives have never been so organized, and individual members of American Indian tribes do not exercise sovereignty directly.

SB 147's very purpose is to allow Native Hawaiians to restore the governmental structure that the United States has since acknowledged it had a substantial hand in destroying. The only reason Native Hawaiians have no sovereign entity today is because the United States aided in the extinguishment of Hawaiians' sovereignty. It is simply untrue that Congress cannot recognize Native Hawaiians because Native Hawaiians lack the very sovereignty that SB 147 was written to give them.

The claim that nothing in SB 147 guarantees that the governing entity the bill allows Native Hawaiians to form will be "democratic in nature," ignores the fact that the other native entities Congress has recognized — the Alaska Native corporations and Native American tribes — by definition, are permitted to govern themselves as they see fit.

Their governments are, however, essentially democratic in nature, and there is no reason to believe Native Hawaiians will not similarly organize themselves. And should they organize themselves in a way unsatisfactory to Congress, Congress is in no way compelled to afford them any further rights.

SB 147 essentially conveys nothing beyond recognition itself — no land, no resources, no territorial sovereignty.

The Policy Committee complains that SB 147 provides no mechanism to enable Hawai'i's residents to determine whether they want the new Native Hawaiian entity "in their midst."

This ignores two realities: The residents of Hawai'i already have adopted provisions in their Constitution and laws recognizing and according Hawai'i's native people and culture a special place in the community; and SB 147 expressly ensures that the state will be involved as a co-equal in the negotiations that will take place between the state, the Hawaiian governing entity, and the United States.

The notion that SB 147 contravenes political understandings reached at the time of Hawai'i's statehood is inaccurate. At statehood, both the federal government and the people of Hawai'i made provision for certain lands, and the income and proceeds from those lands, to be held as a public trust and used (in part) for the benefit of Hawai'i's native people.

Assertions that state taxation and regulation of Native Hawaiian assets or behavior will be hampered by SB 147's passage are baseless. Voicing specious claims that SB 147's enactment could lead to secession is simply irresponsible. Nothing in SB 147 authorizes or permits total independence for a Native Hawaiian nation. Claims that SB 147's passage will subject the state and the United States to additional litigation and expose them to greater liability are similarly unsupported and unsupportable.

If necessary, that can be clarified in the bill, as the United States Department of Justice has now requested.

There is also no basis for fears that Hawai'i will be overrun by gambling interests (the bill expressly makes the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act unavailable to the Native Hawaiian entity, and we would firmly support stronger language banning gambling), or that funding for other native groups and programs will be reduced. Nothing in SB 147 takes funding away from existing Native American tribes. Indeed, American Indians and Alaska Natives fully support SB 147.

More fundamentally, it is offensive to pit one native community against another.

Rather than crack the "melting pot" that is Hawai'i, passage of SB 147 will finally give official and long-overdue recognition to the losses Native Hawaiians have suffered. If equality and justice among all of this nation's people is to be achieved, then SB 147 must be enacted. The "American values" the Policy Committee touts demand no less.