Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 1 Kepakemapa 1983 — NHLC Hosts Convention on Native Hawaiian Rights [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NHLC Hosts Convention on Native Hawaiian Rights

Over 350 participants gathered at Kamehameha Schools on May 27-28, 1983, for a landmark two-day conferenee on Native Hawaiian Rights, presented by(the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation. Funded in part by a grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the conference was successful in bringing diverse elements of both the legal and Hawaiian communities together to discuss the sources and extent of native Hawaiian rights. The conference featured three mainland guest speakers with extensive backgrounds in native American rights: 1.) Neil Levy, Professor of Law at Golden Gate University, San Francisco; 2. David Getches, Professor of Law at University of Colorado, Boulder, and former director of the Native American Rights Fund; and 3. Leroy Wilder, a Karok Indian, and partner in the Washington, D.C. firm of Hobbs, Straus, Levy and Wilder, heading their Portland, Oregon office. Besides these three mainland speakers, more than 20 loeal experts also donated their time to speak on the five major topics of the conference: 1) land rights; 2) access and gathering rights; 3) water and mineral rights, 4) reparations, and 5) cultural and historical preservation rights.

Former Chief Justice William S. Richardson, who helped to shape the case law in this area, opened the eonference by emphasizing that the right of indigenous people to keep their culture alive is a basic human right. Friday's luneheon speaker, Neil Levy, pointed out that Hawaiians face problems similar to Eskimos and American Indians. The next morning, David Getches graphically illustrated this with the lessons that Hawaiians ean learn from the Alaskan claims settlement experience. Saturday's luneheon speaker, Lt. Gov. John Waihee, outlined the Hawaiian movement and acknowledged the leaders of that movement, many of whom were in the audience. The conference resulted in an awareness to the Hawaiian community of the many difficulties involved in identifying and developing the rights of Native Hawaiians. These difficulties stem from the unsettled state of the law, the limitation on resources (primarily legal - attorney and support services) devoted to developing Native Hawaiian rights, and the laek of a planned and deliberate approach to the development of such rights. In the weeks following the conference, NHLC staff members have met with both the Conference Coordinating Committee and OHA staff to discuss further actions. Plans are being made to develop the next phase of the project.