Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The U.S. Department of Interior support being given to reestablishing government to government relations between Native
Hawaiians and the United States Government a relationship that
never existed through the Department of Interior has to be seen for
what it is a move to extinguish the Kingdom and create a Native
American tribe.
One question those choosing to participate in the Nai Aupuni process
need to answer for themselves and others is why today is different
than 1996. As I understand the history, OHA funded a process that
led to a gathering of Hawaiians to discuss future governance. When
85% (according to Bumpy) voted in favor of independence, OHA
pulled the funding from the effort and nothing came of it. What would
you expect to happen if those supporting independence prevailed in
the Na'i Aupuni process, i.e. what would be different than 1996 and
why?
Compare the difference between a situation in which an independent
Kingdom decided to change its form of governance to a situation in
which a group of Native Hawaiians decide to choose a form of
government that might be adopted at some future time.
In the first scenario, the authority is present in the Kingdom subjects
to decide and implement a new form of government.
In Nai Aupuni, the participants have no authority to decide anything.
That distinction highlights a more fundamental issue. In the quote
above from Moanis paper, the Kingdom and independence are
only one of many options.
Implicit in that position is that the Kingdom does not currently exist
and independence is only one model for the future. We are not
really talking about models for governance; we are talking about
sovereignty as complete or partial. Explicit in the options position is
that something short of independence is a satisfactory response to
the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom Government. These three
assumptions the Kingdom does not exist, independence is only one
model, and quasi-independence for Native Hawaiians is justice are
the foundation of the Nai Aupuni process, so those who participate
are accepting that initial context.
If the Kingdom still exists, then the task is to complete the restoration
of the Kingdom Government as the nation is restored. Reducing the
Kingdom to a subordinate status is not an option.
One recent commentary compared the nation-within-a-nation solution
to a thief stealing your home and then agreeing that you can live in
your garage. What real power can we expect the nation-within-anation to have? Can that quasi-government ban the use of high
intensity sonar in Hawaiian waters? Order the closing of United
States bases and a clean up of their pollution? Stop the construction
of TMT on Mauna a Wakea? Or will the quasi-government have
some self determination internally and operate externally subject to
the veto of the Department of Interior?
As to boycotts, the Kue petition set the groundwork for the boycott of
the statehood plebiscite. That boycott permits us today to challenge
the legitimacy of that vote based on non-participation as well as the
failure to offer independence as an option.
Assuming for the moment that 90,000 people legitimately registered
with OHA, that registration took place during a time when OHA clearly
favored nation-within-a-nation. Reasonable propositions are that
those signing up understood that they were supporting OHAs
position and that those opposed to OHAs position did not sign up
(despite OHAs threat that those not signing up would be excluded
from participating in the future nation-within-a-nation). To the extent
that proposition is true, the initial electorate is heavily weighted
toward supporters of nation-within-a-nation. How are those favoring
independence supposed to register an equal number of supporters at
this late hour?
Imagine that an electoral process was being planned to include the
Democratic and Republican parties. At the beginning of the process,
only Republicans could register to vote. After years of registering
Republicans, the process opened up to Democrats a few months
prior to the election. Obviously, such an election would not even
appear to be legitimate. To the contrary, the election would clearly be
rigged.