The Natives Are Restless
Currie, Duncan
The Natives Are Restless Racial politics, Hawaii style. by DUNCAN CURRIE BESIDES BOASTING one of the great names in American history, Hawaii's Queen Lili-uokalani holds a unique distinction. she...
...Building on the Apology's reference to the "inherent sovereignty" of the Native Hawaiian people, Akaka's current legislation would grant membership in a new Native Hawaiian "tribe" to anyone who can trace their ancestry to "the aboriginal, indigenous, native people" living in Hawaii "on or before January 1, 1893...
...The resolution accomplishes one goal," Gorton argued...
...In effect, Native Hawaiians would be subject to a different legal code than other Americans...
...Small wonder that, in mid-May, the U.S...
...Many of Hawaii's more radical independence advocates have zinged the Akaka bill for being wimpy: It accepts the "continued foreign domination" of Hawaii by the U.S...
...But opponents expect a flurry of litigation over property claims...
...culpability in somewhat murky events, whose interpretation was distorted by politics both at the time and since...
...Former Hawaii governor Jack Burns, first elected in 1962, "was fond of saying that the easy relations between men of various races in Hawaii represented the best hope of mankind," writes historian Gavan Daws...
...annexation) and in August 2005, after the Ninth U.S...
...Now, I have no idea what the hell that means...
...the Alaska and Hawaii delegations have famously close ties...
...Which means, barring a presidential veto, Native Hawaiian sovereignty may soon be a reality...
...The state's most famous political figures include Hawaiian-Chinese and Hawaiian-Japanese...
...The Akaka bill falsely assumes that Hawaii's pre-1893 political system was racially homogenous...
...Pro-sovereignty forces insist they have no desire to build tribal casinos, as Indians have done...
...i'm leaving it up to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren...
...He notes that Mexican separatists might use the Akaka bill as a pretext for demanding their own sovereign nation in the American Southwest...
...they live all across Hawaii, and all across the United States...
...What is surprising is to see such Republican cosponsors as South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, Minnesota's Norm Coleman, and Oregon's Gordon Smith...
...annexation of Hawaii five years later...
...More than 20 percent of Hawaii's 1.2 million citizens identify themselves as either wholly or partly Native Hawaiian, which would mean they are descended from the Polynesians who settled the islands a thousand years ago...
...The court has since agreed to reconsider its decision...
...And Republican resistance has been meager...
...she is the only foreign monarch to have been deposed with the apparent help of U.S...
...Hawaii's current governor is Jewish...
...Some 94 percent of Hawaiians voted for statehood in a 1959 plebiscite...
...It's hardly surprising that Alaska's two GOP senators, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, are cosponsoring the Akaka bill...
...As a result—and because of the balkanizing implications of the resolution—some 34 senators, mostly Republicans, voted against the measure, including Arizona's John McCain and former Washington senator Slade Gorton...
...Democratic support appears to be near universal...
...The House passed similar legislation a few months later...
...That could be," Akaka told National Public Radio last summer...
...The Patton Boggs law firm, a titan of K Street lobbying, is pushing the legislation full throttle...
...You also qualify if your ancestors were eligible in 1921 for largesse from the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which stipulated at least one-half Native Hawaiian blood...
...It would conceivably be exempt, as Indian tribes are, from portions of the Bill of Rights and from the Fourteenth Amendment...
...The monarchical governments were multiracial, as was Hawaiian society...
...But GOP Senate leader Bill Frist promised him a much-belated cloture vote the week of June 5, when Congress returns from recess...
...Ever since, Akaka has been trying to get his measure to the Senate floor, with no luck...
...What this bill does is deny equal protection," Alexander told me...
...later, Congress is mulling the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, which would accord "Native Hawaiians" the same legal sovereignty as American indians and Alaska Natives and allow them to create their own race-based governing structure...
...In fact, a flood of Caucasian, Japanese, and Chinese immigration to the islands began in the mid-19th century, thanks to the growth of sugar and pineapple plantations...
...Thirteen years Duncan Currie is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...I feel that we have the votes," Akaka told me...
...But the past decade has witnessed a flare- up of separatist, and often anti-American, passions, marked by street demonstrations in 1998 (the centennial of U.S...
...It was in response to Rice that Akaka first introduced a Native Hawaiian sovereignty bill in July 2000...
...To mark the 100 th anniversary in 1993, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a resolution apologizing to the indigenous people of the Aloha State...
...The Native Hawaiian government would negotiate directly with state and federal officials...
...Rates of intermarriage today are high—more than ten times the national average, according to one Census estimate—further diluting any "Native Hawaiian" purity...
...According to Gorton—and despite the disavowals of the bill's Senate cosponsors, Hawaii Democrats Daniel inouye and Daniel Akaka— "the logical consequence of this resolution would be independence...
...Would this lead to Native Hawaiian independence...
...Get ready for the lawsuits, if not the casinos...
...These folks want outright secession...
...Alas, things didn't pan out for Liliuokalani, who eventually abdicated...
...Lingle, who campaigned on the issue of native sovereignty in 2002 and is a friend of the Bush White House, has told the New York Times there are at least 6 GOP senators who are prepared to vote with the entire 45-mem-ber Democratic caucus in favor of Akaka's bill...
...president (Grover Cleveland...
...Odds are it will pass...
...The Court ruled this violated the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal voting rights for all citizens...
...The Apology Resolution vastly overstated U.S...
...For that matter, many reside abroad...
...Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the racial-preference policy at a well-known Native Hawaiian private school was unconstitutional...
...It divides the citizens of the state of Hawaii—who are of course citizens of the United States—into two distinct groups: Native Hawaiians and all other citizens...
...We've never recognized a new Indian tribe, only existing tribes...
...We're gradually eroding what it means to be an American...
...Perhaps they simply followed the lead of Hawaii governor Linda Lingle, the first Republican elected governor since 1962...
...Here's where geography could really muddy the waters...
...The critics get succor from a 2000 Supreme Court decision, Rice v. Cayetano, which focused on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), an entity created by the state in 1978 chiefly to promote the welfare of indigenous Hawaiians...
...He disputes the analogy with Indian tribes...
...armed forces and then asked to resume her throne by a compunctious U.S...
...Besides not being a distinct political community, Native Hawaiians are not concentrated in one place...
...Some 400,000 such Native Hawaiians are scattered throughout Hawaii and the rest of the United States...
...The Akaka bill itself requires no specific blood quantum...
...Somebody with Hawaiian ancestry living in Frankfurt, Germany, could be a member of this new Hawaiian nation," says Dick Rowland, president of Hawaii's Grassroot Institute, which opposes the Akaka bill...
...Commission on Civil Rights issued a report urging Congress to reject Akaka's bill—and to reject "any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege...
...Indeed, Hawaii has long billed itself as a paragon of ethnic harmony and racial fusion...
...government, one activist told the New York Times last summer...
...Which brings us to the question: What precisely would a Native Hawaiian governing council do, and what benefits would its members enjoy...
...A concurring opinion, written by Justice Breyer and joined by Justice Souter, looked askance at the broad definition of Native Hawaiian tribal status embraced by the OHA...
...It could mean nonstop racial litigation...
...Aka-ka, whose office drafted the Senate bill, has been pushing for Native Hawaiian "self-government and self-determination" since at least the Clinton administration...
...He was prescient...
...Her overthrow in 1893 paved the way for U.S...
...A few Senate Republicans have vigorously opposed the legislation—including Arizona's Jon Kyl, Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, and Alabama's Jeff Sessions...
...Voting rights in OHA trustee elections were restricted to Native Hawaiians who satisfied a racial blood quota...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 36
