I'm on the fence about the Akaka Bill
Dan Akaka, junior senator from Hawaii, submitted a bill to essentially award the Native Hawaiian federal status similar to that given to Native Americans, including Eskimos.
The bill was narrowly defeated via a Cloture vote today (Cloture votes prevent filibustering).
I’m on the fence about this bill. Originally, I was against it. It sounded like rewriting history. What happened in Hawaii was nothing like what happened to the Native Americans; that was more like one nation (the various Native American tribes) being overrun by another nation (the good ole US of A). Most people are probably unaware, that the Constitution specifically talks about Native American issues and specifically treats them as “foreign nations”. Native Americans weren’t considered “citizens” of the United States until the 20th century.
The case of Hawaii was more like that of Texas: Citizens of the country (Mexico in the case of Texas, the Kingdom of Hawaii in the case of Hawaii) broke away or overthrew the existing government and set up their own “Republic” in place of it. In both the Hawaiian an Texan cases, there was some degree of unofficial U.S. involvement in the governmental change.
In the case of Hawaii, certain lands were passed over to the Federal Government for their administration (these were lands originally held by the rulers of Hawaii, that the subsequent Republic of Hawaii also held in trust). The US government has been managing these lands since then, but not as reservations; Native Hawaiians have always had the same citizenship rights as all other residents / citizens of Hawaii.
According to Senator Akaka’s web page, his bill would just add more formality to the relationship between the Federal Government and the Native Hawaiian people, placing the management of the lands in the Department of the Interior (where Native American lands are administered) and establishing some sort of working relationship between the Federal Government and the Native Hawaiian. It specifically disallows any question of land seizure or even creation of Casinos on Native Hawaiian land. These were amendments added because of concerns expressed by various other Senators.
This sounded pretty benign to me: the Feds already had some sort of acknowledged special relationship with Native Hawaiian, this just added more structure to that relationship.
But, Senator Akaka talked about issues like the Native Hawaiian “deciding” whether to have a monarchy or not. So, this sounds more like the creation of a special, ethnic shadow government for Native Hawaiian. The State of Hawaii tried this before, creating the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
So, I’m on the fence here. Frankly, I think the Hawaiian politicians are just pandering to the liberal constituency of their state, rewriting history by accepting that the United States government overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii. This seems to be slowly becoming the “conventional wisdom” in the state, and its just wrong.
Native Hawaiian activists like to talk about how :“their land” was “stolen” from them, but to this date, the largest private land owner in the state is a Native Hawaiian trust, the Bishop Estate. And there are many other wealthy Native Hawaiian families as well. Also, before those “thieving” white people had their way, it was impossible for common people to own land in Hawaii; Hawaii used a feudal system where land was controlled solely by their nobility, not by the common folk.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I feel better.
6/8/2006 5:17:31 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
general | politics