From August through November, 2007 a special committee established by Legislative resolution has been holding “informal community discussion forums” on several islands regarding bioprospecting. This committee is racially and ideologically “stacked” with a legislatively mandated majority of ethnic Hawaiians, including two OHA trustees and the two top leaders of the sovereignty activist organization ‘Ilio’ulaokalani; and by being housed inside OHA.

What is bioprospecting? Should ethnic Hawaiians be given a disproportionately large share of any revenue generated from bioprospecting? Should the Legislature give away licensing rights, revenue, and jurisdictional authority to ethnic Hawaiians as a racial group even before the Akaka bill passes, before there is a Native Hawaiian governing entity, and before there are any negotiations in which the State (on behalf of all Hawaii’s people) might get something in return for such giveaways?

A webpage contains the press release announcing the committee hearings, some news reports describing bioprospecting and the hearings, the testimony of Ken Conklin for the forum at Windward Community College on November 27, and links to other related webpages. See

http://tinyurl.com/yud9gw

Half of Hawaii’s charter schools are referred to in various ways as “host culture” or “Native Hawaiian” or “Hawaiian culture” charter schools. [These schools are not the same as the Hawaiian language immersion schools.]

The host-culture charter schools are helping to foster ethnic pride. But they are also being used as madrassas to indoctrinate children with religious beliefs and twisted history designed to promote feelings of entitlement to racial supremacy, racial separatism, and ethnic nationalism.

The Hawaii State Senate Education Committee has scheduled an informational briefing on (all the) charter schools for Thursday November 29.

Ken Conklin submitted written testimony. That testimony, along with the published notice of the briefing, and links to related webpages about the “host culture” charter schools, can be seen at

http://tinyurl.com/2wfxvl

A lawsuit against OHA by native Hawaiians with high blood quantum was resurrected by U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2007 after having been dismissed by Judge Mollway of the U.S. District Court in Honolulu (the same judge whose dismissal of Arakaki v. Lingle was also overruled by the 9th Circuit Court). A motion to intervene was filed in November 2007 by a group of 6 plaintiffs with no Hawaiian native blood, who seek to protect the rights of a million Hawaii citizens to share in the ceded lands trust. A webpage provides news reports and commentaries from August, plus full text of the November plaintiffs’ motion to intervene and opposition to State of Hawaii position. See
http://tinyurl.com/yo2ovk

On November 13, 2007 OHA suddenly published a slick 67-page document which tried to smear the Hawaii Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just two days before a long-scheduled public meeting. The document also tried to twist history to support the Akaka bill and tried to discredit earlier testimony opposing the bill.

OHA’s 67-page document is entitled “Correcting the Record: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Justice for Native Hawaiians.” It can be downloaded in pdf format from the OHA website at

http://oha.org/images/stories/071113correcting.pdf

and a list of appendices can be downloaded at

http://oha.org/images/stories/071113appendices.pdf

A rebuttal to OHA’s 67-page document was published by civil rights activists one day later. It is entitled “Correcting OHA’s Deceptive ‘Correcting the Record’.” It was written by a few civil rights activists operating under urgent time pressure with zero budget, to counteract the slick OHA document produced by a large staff with large budget over a period of about two months. The civil rights rebuttal describes how the previous civil rights committee from 1996 to 2006 was overwhelmingly stacked with supporters of race-based government and private programs, and worked closely with OHA and the powerful race-based institutions to counteract the Rice v. Cayetano decision, to facilitate development of the Akaka bill, and to support the Akaka bill throughout the first six years it was pending in Congress. The rebuttal straightens out some of the twisted Hawaiian history presented in the OHA report. This rebuttal can be found at the GRIH Wiki.