Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 9, 1 September 2005 — Recognition issues debated [ARTICLE]

Recognition issues debated

By Sterling Kini Wong

As the Sept. 6 date for a vote on whether to force the Akaka Bill to the U.S. Senate floor nears, two televised discussions between supporters and opponents of the bill were held in Honolulu. The forums offered the public a rare face-to-face dialog between the bill's advocates, opponents who say it would hurt rather than help true Hawaiian self-determina-tion and those who elaim it represents a form of racial discrimination. During the second of the two debates, Bruce Fein, a Washington, D.C., attorney and a eonsultant for the Grassroot Institute of Hawai'i conservative think tank, said that the bill "defiles the Constitution," that Native Hawaiians have no inherent sovereign rights, and that the United States took no land from Hawaiians as the result of annexation. "What was so bad about the overthrow and annexation?" Fein said. "Hawaiians ... like nonNative Hawaiians equally prospered under annexation. They both received full citizenship. If they don't want citizenship, the Constitution permits them to renounce it and go elsewhere." Hawai'i Attorney General Mark Bennett, who supports the bill on behalf of Gov. Linda Lingle's administration, responded that the Constitution, through the Indian Commerce Clause, affords

Congress the power to recognize and deal with America's native people, including Native Hawaiians, on a one-to-one basis. "If Congress was to exercise that power [in the case of Native Hawaiians], the Supreme Court would find it to be constitutional," he said. Kaleikoa Ka'eo, a spokesperson for the antiAkaka Bill umbrella group Hui Pū, said that government negotiations over the bill represent another chapter in a long history of nonHawaiians forcing polhieal decisions on Native Hawaiian's. "Where is the self-determination in that?" he asked. "The whole idea that [the Akaka Bill] is a movement of self-determina-tion is a fallacy, it's a fraud ... Hawaiians should decide for themselves what's good for Hawaiians - it's simple." Former state Supreme Court Justice Robert Klein, who serves as board attorney for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said that the bill's opponents offer no other way to defend against the current lawsuits challenging Hawaiian programs and institutions. "What I hear [in arguments against the bill] is fearmongering anddespair," he said. "The Akaka Bill is neither; it is hope. It presents Hawaiian people with hope that they ean preserve the assets they have and need." VI

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