http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605290191may29,1,3096026.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Long-stalled legislation stirs fears of secession, gambling, reparations
By Kirsten Scharnberg Tribune national correspondent
Email: kscharnberg@tribune.com
HONOLULU -- Long-stalled legislation to grant Native Hawaiians the same federal recognition and self-governance that most Native American tribes possess is scheduled to make it to the Senate floor amid charges that such a move would intensify racial tensions in the nation's 50th state and further strengthen a growing movement to secede from the United States.
"I have received assurances from the Senate leadership that a motion will finally be filed during the first week of June that would force debate and a vote on my bill," Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) said in an interview last week.
The Native Hawaiian Recognition bill, introduced in 1999 and known colloquially as the Akaka bill after the man who became the first Native Hawaiian to serve in the U.S. Senate, is by no means assured of passing. Indeed, the legislation faces an uphill battle, particularly after a federal civil rights commission recommended this month that the bill be rejected because it would be "discriminatory" to the majority of Hawaii citizens not of Native Hawaiian ancestry.
But the bill has supporters in both political parties. Akaka said he has the support of most Democrats, and some Republicans have crossed the political aisle to co-sponsor the legislation. Hawaii's Republican governor, Linda Lingle, has made passage of the bill one of the priorities of her administration. And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has pledged to file the motion that, if supported by at least 60 senators, would force what surely would be a heated debate and vote on the bill.
Yet no debate in Washington can match the controversy Akaka's bill has spurred here in his home state.
Throughout much of the past decade, activist groups on all sides of the issue have sprung up, deeply polarizing people on the issue.
One group, Aloha for All, represents the viewpoint of many non-Native Hawaiian citizens with slogans such as, "Aloha is for everyone, the Akaka bill isn't." Other groups that advocate for the bill have thousands of members who display yard signs and T-shirts throughout Hawaii that read, "Kau Inoa," a declaration in the Hawaiian language that indicates the bearer has registered to become a part of the new Native Hawaiian government if it is formed. And then there are hard-liners who advocate an active revolt against the U.S., a nation they say overthrew their monarchy 113 years ago, annexed them into the union without the approval of the Hawaiian people and has been illegally occupying the islands ever since.
"No one sees this bill in the same light," said Fuentes Louis, a born-and-raised Hawaii citizen who is part Native Hawaiian. "That's only going to intensify when the bill is debated in the Senate for all the nation to see."
At its core, the Akaka bill would create a separate, sovereign government for Native Hawaiians, who would be recognized as an indigenous population that existed before Hawaii was part of the United States. This new government would conduct sovereign-to-sovereign relations with the United States, as many Indian tribes do today, Akaka said.
What else the Akaka bill would accomplish and lead to is the source of much contention.
Contentious issues abound
One of the bill's staunchest supporters, the head of a Hawaiian affairs body, said its passage would preserve more than 100 federally funded programs that are available only to Native Hawaiians, including a trust that allows them to lease land for $1 a year and a high-achieving private-school system that gives such preference to Native Hawaiians that only two non-native students have been admitted in 40 years.
Many such programs are in the midst of long-running--and increasingly successful--lawsuits charging that the programs are race-based and unconstitutional and should be ended or made available to all Hawaii's citizens.
Advocates of the bill say a sovereign government would give Native Hawaiians authority over their own destiny for the first time in three generations and empower them in ways that would reverse trends resulting in high percentages of them among the state's unemployed, homeless and imprisoned.
"Under all those statistics is a deep feeling of being disenfranchised, a feeling that we have been wronged," said Clyde Namu'o, Office of Hawaiian Affairs administrator. "Literally our country was taken away from us."
Opponents argue with that theory. They contend that even the history of the argument is flawed, saying the United States had only a tangential role in the mostly Hawaiian-led insurrection that led to the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy. They further point out that 94 percent of Hawaiian voters approved statehood in 1959.
But the core of their battle against the bill is ideological, not historical. Because a sovereign Native Hawaiian government would, based on bloodlines, likely admit into the group Native Hawaiians from anywhere, opponents of the Akaka bill allege that non-Native Hawaiian citizens of the state would be subject to decisions influenced by non-residents. Even more, they say the bill would segregate the state based on ancestry and render non-Native Hawaiians second-class citizens in the state where they pay taxes.
"Passage of this bill would leave 80 percent of the population subservient to a hereditary elite consisting of anyone with ancestry indigenous to the islands," said H. William Burgess, a lawyer who has advocated against the Akaka bill and who has lived in Hawaii for 50 years. "It would allow the breakup of the state government and a giveaway to this new nation of public lands, natural resources and some or all of the government authority of the state."
The bill even has vitriolic criticism from a vocal segment of Native Hawaiians who say the bill would legitimize what they see as the prolonged occupation of their country and deprive them of their right of self-determination and independence. Many of these groups want immediate secession from the United States.
"Many people are telling me, `Enough talk already. We must riot,'" said Charles Ka'uluwehi Maxwell, a Native Hawaiian who reluctantly supports the Akaka bill as a first step toward Hawaiian independence but who says the bill does not go nearly far enough.
<< style="">
Other groups have asked the United Nations to examine whether the U.S. is in violation of international human-rights treaties for "stealing" Hawaiians' lands.
It is even hard amid all the rhetoric to tell exactly how Hawaiians--Native or otherwise--feel about the Akaka bill.
Hawaiian support split
A survey conducted in 2003 by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a quasi-state entity that promotes the native causes and supports the bill, found that 86 percent of 303 Native Hawaiians and 78 percent of 301 non-Native Hawaiians believed Native Hawaiians should be recognized by the United States as a distinct group, similar to American Indians and Alaska Natives. But a survey released last week by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, an activist group opposed to the Akaka bill, found that 2 out of 3 respondents opposed the organization of a Native Hawaiian sovereign government.
If the bill reaches the Senate floor--it was slated for debate last September but scuttled after Hurricane Katrina shifted congressional attention--several key topics are sure to get the majority of debate.
Although Akaka has revised his original bill to say gaming would not be allowed, concerns remain that a sovereign Hawaiian government could overrule that on their own land. The Justice Department is concerned that the bill would mean Native Hawaiians would not be subject to federal criminal laws and that it would serve as grounds to sue the federal government for reparations. The Defense Department has expressed worry that a sovereign Hawaiian government would attempt to take land now used by the military.
The debate also is likely to focus on an apology bill passed by Congress in 1993, the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of Hawaiian Queen Lili'uokalani, and signed by President Bill Clinton; proponents of sovereignty say the apology admitted wrongdoing by the U.S. and therefore requires that restitution be made.
And the Senate will address a newly released report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the bipartisan federal commission assigned by the president and Congress to study and collect information relating to discrimination or a denial of equal protection of the laws. The commission came out against the bill, saying it "would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege."
The bill's debate and future have high political stakes for Akaka, a three-term senator facing a tough election and recently categorized by Time magazine as one of the nation's five worst senators.
"Nothing about this is going to be easy," he said last week.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Humane-Rights-Agenda Blog
++++++++++++++++++++++
De Todos Para Todos Blog
++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++
c/s
++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment