Thread: Aloha? Hawaii Moves Closer to Having Sovereign Powers

Aloha? Hawaii Moves Closer to Having Sovereign Powers

Updated: 2 hours 38 minutes ago

Tamara Lytle Contributor

WASHINGTON (Feb. 25) -- Call it Queen Liliuokalani's revenge. Long-stalled legislation to give Native Hawaiians the right to form a sovereign government passed the House this week and has the support of Hawaii native President Obama.

The bill would give Native Hawaiians the right to control their own lands, run their own health and education programs, and have a sovereign government similar to what Native American tribes have.

Hawaii already had its own government when the queen, with an American warship sitting in Honolulu Harbor, stepped down in 1883. President Grover Cleveland admitted later that year that it was a mistake. But it took Congress until 1993 to agree -- and apologize.

For more than a decade, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has pushed for legislation to give Native Hawaiians the right to form a sovereign government.

And it has taken legislation by Sen. Daniel Akaka 11 years and counting to give back to the islands a native government that would operate in addition to the state government. The bill still must pass the Senate to become law, and it faces opposition there.

Akaka called the vote Tuesday an important milestone. "We have a moral obligation, unfulfilled since the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, that we are closer to meeting today," he said.

Under the bill, Native Hawaiians would continue to be American citizens. But a newly reorganized Native Hawaiian government could negotiate with the federal government and the state of Hawaii over issues such as having more public lands turned over to the Native Hawaiians.

Native Hawaiians would not be able to open casinos, as many Indian tribes have done to billion-dollar effect. Both Hawaii state law and the pending bill bar that idea.

Hawaii's state government has an Office of Hawaiian Affairs that administers issues related to Native Hawaiians (who are about one-fifth of the state population) and the 200,000 acres of land previously granted to them. But some lawsuits and conservative politicians have begun challenging the programs as race-based discrimination.

"This legislation violates, in my view, the United States Constitution, because it establishes a separate, race-based government of Native Hawaiians," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., agreed and said he would do everything he can to block the bill in the Senate, meaning sponsors will need 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster.

"We should stand together in opposition to racially divisive and discriminatory laws like this," DeMint said. "The Native Hawaiian bill is unconstitutional and violates the national unity of E Pluribus Unum."

But Dave Helfert, spokesman for the bill's sponsor, Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, disagreed. "It's about recognition of an indigenous people," he said. "It is not about race. It's about the fact Native Hawaiians were part of another country inadvertently taken over by the United States."

Constitutional law professor Jon Van Dyke of the University of Hawaii agreed. He said the bill is constitutional and the aim is in line with the rights already granted to Native American tribes and Alaska natives, who in 1971 won the right to land, resources and the formation of a government.

Van Dyke said a Native Hawaiian government will help protect a rich culture and tradition that was under siege for years.

Last-minute negotiations over the bill focused on issues such as lawsuits involving the new government.

Some of those issues swayed Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, to withdraw her support from the bill. She backed the bill in 2007 when it passed the House previously.

(Abercrombie is stepping down from Congress to run for governor.)

Lingle objected to a change in the bill that gives the new government broad powers before it negotiates details of the new relationship with the federal and state governments, instead of after those negotiations.

"The basic problem as I see it is that in the current version of the bill, the 'governmental' (noncommercial) activities of the Native Hawaiian governing entity, its employees and its officers will be almost completely free from state and county regulation, including free from those laws and rules that protect the health and safety of Hawaii's people and protect the environment," she said. "I do not believe such a structure, of two completely different sets of rules -- one for 'governmental' activities of the Native Hawaiian governing entity and its officers and employees, and one for everyone else -- makes sense for Hawaii."

Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said she was "disappointed in the governor's position" and asked her "to reconsider, especially as many Republicans cited her opposition as their justification to vote against the bill. The Native Hawaiian people have waited for far too long for the recognition process to begin."

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/h ... s/19372474

So Hawaii will end up with double trouble.

Hylander_1314 wrote:
"So Hawaii will end up with double trouble. "

And because of the national legal precendents this legislation would establish, so would we.