Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 2, 1 Pepeluali 2000 — Reconciliation shibai and the plan to kill sovereignty [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Reconciliation shibai and the plan to kill sovereignty

AFEW WEEKS ago, Kupuna John Iopa wrote to the Advertiser calling the reconciliation hearings a dog and pony show for the state's Democrats and a Christmas junket for the feds. Bob Jones appeared to agree in his Dec. 1 Midweek eolumn, "The Plan to Kill Sovereignty." Jones opined Hawai'i's leaders "from Dan Inouye down" plan to diffuse the sovereignty movement by expressing s\ mpathy for the cause while waiting for infighting to destroy it. Jones noted that reconciliation was part of the plan - but Hawaiian nationhood was not. On the sovereignty issue, the state's Democrats have a pattem of subversion, often initiated and implemented by Hawaiians serving the U.S. system and the state's Democratic maehine - and padding their pocketbooks in the process. Consider the recent history of the movement. When Louisa Rice DeMello orgamzed A.L.O.H.A in the 1960s to move for reparations. the Democrats sent two excops, Charles Maxwell and Charhe Rose, to take over the group. Maxwell served the maehine well. He reported the Kaho'olawe flotilla to the Coast Guard, causing the arrest of several Hawahans and the seizure of their boats. He shut down the congressional hearings on Kaho'olawe by presenting the chair a goat turd lei. Maxwell was quick to support the HSEC/State/Hā Hawai'i initiative created by OHA's Clayton Hee and Governor

John Waihe'e, both Democratic Party boys. In 1993. Maxweh used his appointed position as chair of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rights to further the Hā/Native Hawahan Convention. No one was surprised when Maxwell emerged as an HSEC/Ha convention delegate and was later selected by the feds to moderate the reconciliation hearings. Dan Inouye and the Democrats have never lacked "hāpai laho Hawaiians" to do their bidding. The Democratic Party's OHA tmstees ensured OHA would never sue the state for a ceded lands inventory. Tmstees Apoliona, DeSoto, Machado and Hee have agreed to change their votes on federal legislation to maintain the patronage system, regardless of Hawaiians' health needs. Bishop Estate insiders Myron Pinky Thompson and Oz Stender have also worked to subvert sovereignty. Both encouraged and supported the KS/BE sovereignty group, Hui Kālai'āina. Documents filed in the Bishop Estate case include a memo from Doc Stryker to Stender about their plan to take over the sovereignty movement. Stender's advisor, Momi Cazimero, would later join Thompson as a Hā Hawai'i Convention delegate. KS/BE has tried to convert itself into a sovereign nation, even advancing this position in court. Lokelani Lindsey has referred to insiders' efforts to convert the schools into a "politieal entity."

As Jones indicates, the reconciliation "process" seems to be part of the strategy to kill sovereignty. Well before the hearings, Dan Inouye moved to put Danny Aranza in Interior to push through the DHHL settlement. Thanks to -this scam, the U.S. got rid of the claims against it, the state acquired acres of land and the Hawaiian homesteaders and claimants got nothing. No one in Hawai'i was consulted. Then, just one week before the hearings, OHA staffer Cohn Kippen traveled to D.C. for secret meetings with Interior, Justice and Inouye's office. Joining him was John Waihe'e. No reports on the discussion have been forthcoming. Waihe'e and Kippen represented OHA, but no one knows about what! All we know is that Interior's John Berry kept asking Hawaiians at the hearings if they wanted the HSEC/Hā Convention, Hawaiians loudly answered NO! Finally, we have the "Independence Movement - Aloha Intemet Educast," a six-hour, $180,000 global event supposedly focused on independence and paid for in part by the HSEC/Hā Democrats. It featured a film on Inouye and sovereignty activists like Kekuni Blaisdell who read prepared scripts honoring Pinky Thompson and Papa Ola Lōkahi. Thank goodness for Henry Noa, the only independence activist with enough integrity to refuse the script! ■

"As Jones indicates, the reconciliation <process' seems to be part of the strategy to kill sovereignty/,

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