Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 8, 1 August 2005 — A common sense response [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A common sense response

Editor's note: The following article was published in the Honolulu Advertiser July 18, 2005, as Trustee Mossman 's response to an advertisement by Grassroot Hawai'i against the Akaka Bill. What would Hawai'i be without Hawaiians? Another California? New York? Can that ever be? A concerted effort is being made by a small group of so called "grassroots" individuals who incite fear and doubt amongst the people of Hawai'i and our nation that Senate Bill 147, the Akaka bill, will create a racist government in Hawai'i, raise your taxes and discriminate illegally against all other people who live here. They attack the bill and elaim it "shoehorns" Native Hawaiians into a "tribe," whieh could not be further from the truth. The word tribe is used five times in the 15-page Akaka bill

in two definitions, "Indian Programs" and "Indian Tribe," neither of whieh has anything to do with Native Hawaiians. They elaim we cannot just spring out of anonymity and become a tribe for purposes of discriminating against all others. Perish the thought. Hawaiians were here before all others. They lived a culture and civilization that is only in part surviving today as a result of the discovery of their sacred land by explorers from other lands. What is left today is the remains of a unique Hawaiian culture special to this plaee, and a Hawaiian people who are the foundation and spirit of our island community. With the good comes the bad, though, and Native Hawaiians, as with so many other indigenous peoples who have been subjected to other cultures, lead in the worst categories of our society from bad health, to no education, to joblessness, to homelessness, etc. Hawaiians are not Indians or tribes

as we know them today. Hawaiians, Indians, and Alaskans are the only indigenous peoples of the United States, and the other two groups have already been recognized. Have they created a so-called Balkanization of America? Is it right to deny a whole people the right to eall the land of their ancestors their homeland while others who eome here will always have a country to eall theirs? With one stroke of a court's pen the identity of a whole people will disappear from the laws of our nalion and state. That is the real threat. And this same group of Akaka opponents, with the unwitting assistance of those who argue for complete removal from the United States, want to deny Hawaiians whatever federal benefits they have now and cast any resulting burden upon the state of Hawai'i. The Akaka bill provides a process and opportunity for Native Hawaiians to be recognized and allowed to address

their own problems and concerns within the structure of the United States government. It requires an elected Native Hawaiian goveming entity to negotiate with the state and federal govemments to resolve longstanding claims as a result of an illegal overthrow aided by the United States. It offers reconciliation to a people so long forgotten by the rest of America that even the flora and fauna of their beloved land have more protection than they themselves. And so these persons whose roots do not appear to be very deep in the grass of Hawai'i, who seek to nurture the rights and responsibilities of the individual, would best be advised not to trample on the rights of a native people to their ultimate eliminahon. Let's not become California West to avoid remaining Hawai'i.

Boyd P. Mossman Trustee, Maui