Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 4, 1 ʻApelila 2000 — Ho ʻiho'i i ke ea o ka Hawai ʻi kūʻ okoʻa mana piha [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Ho ʻiho'i i ke ea o ka Hawai ʻi kūʻ okoʻa mana piha

T'S BEEN inspiring to dream of selfdetermination, challenging to debate the different options, and cathartic to denounce any state involvement in a process for Hawaiian sovereignty. But now that the Rice decision has tumed out to be a "bullet" aimed at our sovereignty, it's time to make the hard choices. As Native Hawaiians, we need to examine how we ean secure our rights now, under the United States, and in the future, under an independent Hawai'i govemment. Remember that even under an independent Hawai'i government we may only comprise 20 percent of the population. This makes it critical for us to secure our entitlements now, under the U.S. govemment, to protect our unique rights and status as we make the transition toward an independent Hawai'i government in the future. No one wants to surrender rights we still enjoyed as an independent naūon, but we can't ignore the overwhelming presenee of the United States govemment, despite its illegal history. President Grover Cleveland in 1893 and the U.S. Congress and President Clinton in 1993 admitted that the overthrow was illegal. The annexation accomplished by a Joint Resolution rather than an endorsement of

two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate was illegal. The state has illegal title to the crown and government lands of the Kingdom of Hawai'i. So, we have to look at the presence of U.S. power and devise a strategy suited to our unique cultural heritage and integrity. Perhaps we should take the steps necessary to achieve autonomous status within the United States through a special act of Congress. It's not the independence that we dream about or hunger for, but it's a first step. Moreover, it will give us an important beach head from whieh to launeh our full strategy for self-determi-nation. In anticipation of an assault on the entitlements and status of Native Hawaiians, our primary goal of reconciliation should be to facilitate a process to achieve autonomy. One option is to form a Native Hawaiian federal commission that will: • Negotiate an autonomy compact with representatives of the Native Hawaiian people; • Begin the process to reinscribe Hawai'i with the U.N. Committee on Decolonization; • Determine compensation for claims

from the descendants of Native Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom for mismanagement of Native Hawaiian resources, particularly,

the crown and government lands of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, Hawaiian Home Lands, the Queen's Hospital, the University of Hawai'i and any unjust confisca-

tion of property rights, such as fisheries. The United Nations has adopted a declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples and nations, whieh might provide a status that would improve upon that of Native Americans. Unfortunately, the United States has not adopted this declaration. There should be a recommendation for the United States to adopt this policy for all native peoples in the U.S.: Hawaiians, Native Americans, and Alaskan natives, Eskimos and Aleuts. In the interim, a commission could: • Channel federal funds appropriated for native peoples, including Hawaiians, into the Native Hawaiian community; • Conduct a metes and bounds survey of the inventory of the crown and govemment lands that the United States illegally received from the Republic of Hawai'i; • Plaee a moratorium on the sale of surplus federal lands in Hawai'i; • Initiate a policy to repatriate federal surplus lands into a trust for a sovereign Hawaiian entity, such as the state has done for the Kaho'olawe Island Reserve; and • Support and facilitate the reauthorization of the Native Hawaiian Education Act and the Native Hawaiian Health Care Act. ■

V 1 C E CHAlRPERSON'S MESSAGE

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