Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 3, 1 March 2007 — Attacks against Native Hawaiian recognition aimed at all tribal rights [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Attacks against Native Hawaiian recognition aimed at all tribal rights

By Alan Parker Editor's not.e: Alan Parker is the director of the Northwest inelian Applieel Research Institute and an Evergreen State College faculty member in Olympia, Wash. The following is from a memo he recent.Jy sent to OHA and the leaders of several major inelian organizations. The article was later published in the newspaper Indian Country Today. The views expressed in this community discussion eolumn are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect. t.he views of t.he 0ffi.ee of Hawaiian Affairs. On Jan. 17, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai'i, introduced S. 310, the Native Hawaiian Government Recognition Act, commonly known as the "Akaka Bill." On the same day, statements opposing the hill were filed by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. The next day, Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Nahonal Labor Relations Board attorney and chair of the Center for New Black Leadership, published an attack, "Disunited States: Multiculturalism run amok," at Nahonal Review Online. As I recently pointed out in remarks to the more than 200 tribal delegates attending [January's] Tribal Leaders Forum in San Diego, the highly orchestrated poliīieal campaign attacking the

Native Hawaiian hill is clearly aimed at U.S. tribes. The Akaka Bill is a proxy for an attack by the neoconservative movement on the right of tribal sovereignty, and it is clear that their line of attack would be the same if a tribal sovereignty issue were up for a vote in Congress. For this reason I believe that it is absolutely necessary for all tribal leaders to actively engage in this fight and to make sure that this anti-Native Hawaiian/anti-tribal sovereignty attack is defeated. If not, they will be emboldened to attack the weakest link that they ean find in the annor of tribal rights with all the resources at their disposal. Students of the poliīieal tactics and strategies of the neo-conserva-tive movement will recognize the elements of their campaign. They focus upon several buzzwords that are known to evoke a particular negative response in the American puhlie and then just keep repeating their arguments on as many levels of media as possible. It is irrelevant that their arguments are false or distortions of the truth (as they certainly are in this case) because they are not appealing to logic, but prejudice. These tactics have been well documented and were effectively analyzed in George Lakoff 's book Don't Think of an EIephant! As Lakoff points out, you eannot win a puhlie debate on their

chosen tenns. Just as the late President Nixon was lost as soon as he tried to argue "I am not a crook," we cannot win by arguing that native rights are not race-based preferences. To do so simply reinforces their arguments. Affirmative action as a progressive puhlie policy was defeated on exactly these claims of "reverse discrimination." A plurality of the American puhlie eoncluded after several years of being subjected to such a right-wing campaign that affirmative action unfairly penalized average white people by creating an uneven playing field. After analyzing the track record of poliīieal opposition to Native Hawaiians over the past several years, I see convincing evidence that the American Enterprise Institute and other right-wing think tanks are prepared to mount a full-scale attack on the right of tribal sovereignty as a form of racial preference. In certain periodicals, their shills have already called tribal sovereignty simply a legal fiction cloaking race-based preferences that support an unfair monopoly for tribal casinos. We know that they have put their support behind "One Nation United," the national anti-tribal rights organization based in the Northwest. Recently, they combined their "native-rights-are-just-racial-pref-

erences" argument with the need to preserve the "great American melting pot social policy" referenced in the Bush administration's Justice Department letter to the Senate this past June opposing the Native Hawaiian bill. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has thanked the Nahonal Congress of American Indians and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians for their resolutions of support, and for including Native Hawaiian recognition in NCAI's top legislative priorities in 2006. It is important to continue this support on behalf of S. 310/H.R. 505 and see that their hill is included in NCAI's top priorities for 2007. It was particularly valuable that the NCAI 2006 Legislative Priorities brochure highlighted Native Hawaiian recognition because this is a talking tool for tribal leaders who meet with senators, representatives and their staff. It is also a document that is later used by many NCAI members and their staff as a resource for understanding American Indian and Alaska

Native legislative priorities. U.S. tribal representatives must go beyond even this level of support and make it a priority to push this hill through Congress as soon as possible. NCAI working papers on legislative priorities for the 1 1 0th Congress should include the Native Hawaiian hill as an immediate priority. NCAI should step up their level of engagement, recognizing that this is not just solidarity [behind] another native people but self-protection for our most important tribal rights. If our eonunon poliheal opponents ean defeat, or even simply stall, this hill again, we are all at risk. Tribal leaders should be telling their congressional delegates, especially the new Democratic leaders on the Senate and House Indian Affairs committees, that this is must-pass legislation. Passing the hill early in this session will not end the polhieal campaign of the neoconservatives against tribal sovereignty, but it will send an important message throughout the Congress and Indian country. E3

KŪKĀKŪKĀ • DISCUSSIDN FDRUM

Alan Paker, director of the Northwest lndian Applied Research lnstitute at Evergreen State College. - Photo: Courtesy of the author