Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 10, 1 October 2006 — Akaka Bill [ARTICLE]

Akaka Bill

How sad that OHA Trustee Rowena Akana would take the time to criticize the choices of others or whom they choose to sit next to just because they had one thing in eommon, and that was to lobby against the Akaka Bill

(August, KWO). It doesn't mean that Clarence Ching is whoring in bed with the enemy as OHA has been doing without shame. Now that is sickening. The next time OHA's beauty queen looks at herself in her mirror, hopefully when she turns away from it she won't suffer from amnesia, since the real "Hawaiian's phantom menaee" is none other than herself and all you trustees in OHA who have been playing that role to the hilt with the enemy behind closed doors. My questions to all of you untrustworthy trustees are, who gave you people the right to be the voices of our people? Who gave you people the right to choose to make your want our want? If it's your ehoiee to be likened to Indians, that doesn't make it our ehoiee, does it? If it's your preference to be a good American idol worshiper, that does not mean that it's also our preference, right? Why should we surrender our inherent rights and nahonal status as a constitutional people because you are willing to surrender yours for a lesser one and become wards to the U.S. Department of the Interior? If it is your desire to be good little Indian wards, you certainly have our blessings, but leave us out of it. No offense to all Native Americans, because some of their leaders, who, like yourself, were willing to short change their people and rob them of their freedom. Gwen Burrows 'Ele'ele, Kaua'i