Archive for category Commentary

Proposed regulations for Mauna Kea, September 2018

Sep 24

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News | Comments off

On September 27, 2018 Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. submitted testimony of 18 pages regarding proposed regulations for “Public and Commercial Activities on Mauna Kea Lands.” Conklin explains 4 fundamental principles of unity and equality, and applies them to criticize and improve the proposed regulations. Conklin’s complete testimony is at
https://tinyurl.com/y8vse4k2

Here are four fundamental principles for all issues related to Hawaiian sovereignty, which are also helpful for analyzing the proposed rules for Mauna Kea:
1. We are all equal in the eyes of God regardless of race.
2. All people, regardless of race, should be treated equally under the law by our government.
3. Unity with America: Hawaii is in fact the 50th State of the USA, whose laws rightfully have jurisdiction here.
4. Unity of Hawaii: The people and lands of Hawaii should remain unified under the single sovereignty of the State of Hawaii, and should not be divided along racial lines.

Two obvious conclusions for Mauna Kea rule-making can be derived from those fundamental principles. Many proposed rules should be improved to reflect these two conclusions. These conclusions motivate and underlie all the comments I have made about specific proposed rules.
(A) Every rule should apply equally to people of all races; there should be no racial set-asides or special privileges.
(B) If rule-makers believe Article 12 Section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution requires certain rights to be granted to one particular racial group, then the best way to fulfill that requirement is to grant those same rights to all Hawaii’s people regardless of race. There is legal precedent that a law requiring benefits for one racial group can be satisfied by granting those benefits to all persons regardless of race. Furthermore, the Aloha Spirit and the need for pono require such inclusiveness rather than racial exclusion.

Proposed rules for Mauna Kea analyzed by applying those principles and conclusions include the following topics:
*Mandatory orientation program for visitors;
*Fees charged to visitors;
*Traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians;
*Snowplay;
*Burials and scattering of cremated remains;
*Interference with government function;
*Racial set-asides or preferences;
*Access for religious or cultural purposes;
*Demographic characteristics of employees, volunteers, visitors deemed irrelevant

Conklin’s complete testimony is at
https://tinyurl.com/y8vse4k2

Tags: Aloha Spirit, annexation, equality, Hawaii statehood, Hawaiian sovereignty, Ken Conklin, kokokahi, Mauna Kea, Native Hawaiian, PASH, sacred place, Sam Gon, traditional and customary rights, unity

Hirono (D,HI) v. Kavanaugh re Hawaiian racial entitlement programs and converting a racial group into a federally recognized tribe.

Sep 5

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Reference | Comments off

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

On Wednesday September 5, 2018 Senator Mazie Hirono (D, HI) was scheduled to have a half hour late in the afternoon (she has low seniority) to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the Judiciary committee confirmation hearing. Reporter Nick Grube was given information from Senator Hirono regarding the topics she intended to raise, and Grube’s article leaking that information was published in Honolulu Civil Beat [online newspaper] very early in the morning. Hirono is up for re-election this November, so of course she is grandstanding and this left-leaning online newspaper is happy to help her. The article, entitled “Brett Kavanaugh No Friend Of Special Rights For Native Hawaiians — Trump’s Supreme Court nominee once called the Office of Hawaiian Affairs a “naked racial spoils system.” is at
https://tinyurl.com/yae2osl8

Hirono’s entire 31 minute performance in the Wednesday committee hearing was later posted by her minions on YouTube at
https://tinyurl.com/y7z9u4ta
The portion devoted to Hawaiian racial entitlements, tribalism, and Rice v. Cayetano is in minutes #9:05 to 17:30 (the first 9 minutes were spent trying to embarrass Kavanaugh by asking whether he had ever sexually harassed women, and blaming him for failing to report 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinsky for doing so).

Brett Kavanaugh’s Wall Street Journal commentary: “Are Hawaiians Indians? The Justice Department Thinks So.” Wall St. J., Sept. 27, 1999, page A35 as archived by the online daily Indian compilation at “Turtle Talk” is at
https://tinyurl.com/ycugydcn

What’s this about “the justice department thinks so”? Remember that in 1999 Bill Clinton was at the end of his Presidency, and was sending high-level representatives from his Department of Justice and Department of Interior to hold “reconciliation” hearings in Hawaii, asking ethnic Hawaiians what goodies they would like from the federal government as part of the “reconciliation” called for in the apology resolution of 1993 (at the beginning of his Presidency). This was Clinton’s way of gearing up for the expected ruling in Rice v. Cayetano, which came in February 2000, and gearing up for introduction of the Akaka bill in the House and Senate in July 2000 as a way to overrule the Supreme Court.

Brett Kavanaugh, Robert Bork, and Roger Clegg jointly wrote an amicus brief in Rice v. Cayetano which was very influential in producing the 7-2 decision abolishing the portion of Hawaii’s Constitution that mandated racial segregation in Hawaii’s election of OHA trustees. Kavanaugh was the counsel of record. Everyone old enough will remember how Robert Bork got borked at his confirmation hearing for Supreme Court. Roger Clegg is now President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, where he worked for many years under the leadership of Linda Chavez; Clegg was helpful for many years in fighting the Akaka bill and Hawaii’s plethora of racial entitlement programs. The brief is very lengthy, filled with citations, and well-argued as you would expect from a nominee for Supreme Court. It’s available on findlaw, the free version of Lexis-Nexus, at
https://tinyurl.com/y8hwd7dh

Both of Judge Kavanaugh’s essays should be read by all the people of Hawaii, because they are powerful arguments against “Native Hawaiian” racial entitlement programs and the now-20-year effort to create a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe whose size could potentially now be 600,000 (one drop of the magic blood is enough to belong). The whole purpose of converting a racial group into an Indian tribe is to provide a legal basis for about a thousand currently existing racial entitlement programs to survive legal challenges under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and to increase this racial group’s political power and give them ownership of lands and corporations. Judge Kavanaugh’s essays are strong medicine against dividing the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines. For a compilation of many Hawaiian racial entitlement programs, see
https://tinyurl.com/zrfuy8k

Here is a compilation of all major articles opposing the Akaka bill (to create a Hawaiian tribe) which I updated continuously from year 2000 through 2014: The front page is an index broken into time periods; full text of each article is available in the subpages for the several time periods.
https://tinyurl.com/5eflp

Tags: Akaka bill, Brett Kavanaugh, Hawaiian racial entitlements, Hawaiian tribe, Mazie Hirono

Multimillion dollar renovation of Thomas Square in Honolulu has secessionist and racial supremacist motives.

Aug 4

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News | Comments off

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

July 31, 2018 was the 175th anniversary of a significant historical event in the Hawaiian Kingdom, when British Admiral Thomas landed at what is now called “Thomas Square” with a royal proclamation restoring sovereignty to King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III. To memorialize this anniversary a large portion of Thomas Square has undergone a major renovation which includes a huge floodlit statue of the King, an extremely tall flagpole where the Hawaiian Kingdom flag will fly 24 hours a day with no U.S. flag in sight, a very long 4-ft. tall wall with the King’s famous one-line comment etched in stone (sovereignty is preserved in righteousness), and a large cubical pile of lava rocks serving as an altar to the old Hawaiian gods.

Erecting the huge statue, flagpole, wall, and altar at Thomas Square has the same motives as erecting statues in Southern states decades after the Civil War to honor Confederate generals. The motives include resistance against U.S. military occupation, desire to restore status as a sovereign independent nation, and demands by one race for supremacy over the other races in a multiracial society.

On July 31, 1843 British Admiral Thomas landed at what is now called “Thomas Square” in Honolulu. He delivered to King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III a British royal proclamation returning sovereignty to the King. 5 months previously a rogue British warship had trained its guns on Honolulu to demand payment of overdue bills owed by native chiefs to British merchants. When the King was unable to pay, the British commander foreclosed on the debts by collecting the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom as payment. The Hawaiian King suffered alcoholic depression. A petition to the British crown was secretly written by the King’s closest advisor, an American missionary medical doctor Gerrit Judd, who made the King sign it and who recruited an American sailor to deliver it. The restoration of sovereignty on July 31 produced a huge celebration, and the date became a Hawaiian Kingdom holiday.

Today’s Hawaiian secessionists want to rip the 50th star off the U.S. flag. They believe the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy on January 17, 1893 was caused by the landing of 162 U.S. peacekeepers sent ashore to protect American lives and property and prevent expected rioting and arson as royalists and revolutionaries clashed. 5 years after the “illegal overthrow” there was an “illegal annexation” of Hawaii to the U.S., and then in 1959 there was an “illegal plebiscite” whereby Hawaii agreed to become the 50th State.

Hawaiian sovereignty activists want to undo all that history. So today’s Hawaiian secessionists look to Sovereignty Restoration Day not only as the name of a historical event 175 years ago but also as the future they expect when United Nations enforcement of “international law” combines with U.S. military and economic weakness to once again restore Hawaii to its former status as an independent nation. Hawaiian racial supremacists cherish the thought of sovereignty restoration day in the same way as Southern white nationalists cherish their memories of Robert E. Lee. A statue went up in Honolulu for the same reasons the Confederate statues were erected in Charlottesville Virginia and other Southern towns.

For a deeper analysis, and compilation of news reports about Thomas Square, see this webpage:
https://tinyurl.com/y76ma2l7

Tags: Admiral Thomas, Confederacy, Hawaiian nationalism, Hawaiian sovereignty, Kamehameha III, Kauikeaouli, racial supremacy, Robert E. Lee, sovereignty restoration day, Thomas Square, ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono, white nationalism

Hawaiian names for Honolulu train stations — weaponizing Hawaiian language to assert racial dominance

Nov 28

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, Reviews | Comments off

To:
Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit
info@honolulutransit.org

From:
Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
46-255 Kahuhipa St. Apt. 1205
Kane’ohe, HI 96744-6083
tel (808) 247-7942
e-mail Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

Re: Hawaiian names for train stations

Date: November 28, 2017

Responding to the mission statement of the Hawaiian Station Naming Program
http://hartdocs.honolulu.gov/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-21439/20171122-hawaiian-station-naming-program.pdf
and the media news release of November 22, 2017
http://hartdocs.honolulu.gov/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-21438/20171122-nr-station-hawaiian-naming.pdf

Those documents try to make it appear that it has already been decided that the train stations must have Hawaiian-language names, and that the only question remaining is what particular name each station should have.

But no! There are good reasons why Hawaiian names should not be the primary names displayed or announced; and even more good reasons why Hawaiian names should not be given any official role at all.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann said we must keep in mind the difference between “need to have” and “nice to have.” And I am adding here: considering how Hawaiian language is being used as a political weapon, Hawaiian station names might not be nice to have at all.

Here are 5 points which the HART board of directors should consider before proceeding to adopt Hawaiian-language names:

———-

1. APPLY THE LEGAL CONCEPT OF “LACHES”: THE CITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 09-158, NOT IMPLEMENTED FOR ALMOST 9 YEARS, SHOULD BE REGARDED AS EXPIRED AND IS NOW MOOT IN VIEW OF TURNOVER OF COUNCIL MEMBERS, AND NO LONGER IMPOSES ANY LEGAL OR MORAL OBLIGATION ON TODAY’S COUNCIL.

Resolution 09-158, calling for Hawaiian-language station names, was adopted on April 29, 2009 — nearly 9 years ago! There was hardly any publicity back then despite its potentially controversial nature.

The membership of City Council has turned over many times between then and now. Council Member Ann Kobayashi might be the only current member who was on the Council when the resolution was adopted. Perhaps she will recall the large controversy that erupted in 2009, at the same time when this resolution was adopted — Hawaiian activists were trying to get the Council to take away all the existing street names in the former Barbers Point military base (which had recently been turned over to Honolulu as surplus federal lands) and replace them with Hawaiian names. Old-time residents of the area, including military veterans, sent written testimony and appeared at several hearings to demand that the military heritage names be kept; and the Council decided to keep the names. It seems plausible that Resolution 09-158 was adopted merely as a ploy to mollify or calm the activists in view of the rejection of their demands to abolish military/English-language heritage names. One of the Hawaiian activists in that controversy, Shad Kane, is now a member of the current Station Naming Working Group, thus showing that his primary motivation is probably related to the politics of Hawaiian sovereignty. Furthermore, one of the proposed station names now (Kualakai) is the same as one of the proposed replacement street names from 2009, despite being a considerable distance away; which raises doubts about cultural/historical authenticity of a name that should be uniquely specific to the station’s location. See topics #4 and #5 below for more information about the old street name controversy and how it illustrates the use of Hawaiian language as a political weapon — naming something is an assertion of power or ownership.

It is inappropriate to expect today’s members to feel bound by such an old stealth or “sleeper” resolution. We’ve all seen science fiction horror movies where a long-dormant mummy, zombie, or vampire is awakened and wreaks chaos upon a hapless community. We would do well to let it remain asleep — or better yet drive a stake through its hart (pun — intentional misspelling!)

———–

2. THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF A TRANSIT STATION’S NAME IS TO QUICKLY INFORM PASSENGERS WHERE THEY ARE SO THEY WILL KNOW WHEN TO GET OFF. THE NAME SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZABLE UPON A SINGLE GLANCE AT A SIGN OR UPON HEARING A VERBAL ANNOUNCEMENT. HAWAIIAN-LANGUAGE NAMES WOULD BE UNHELPFUL AND CONFUSING TO BOTH TOURISTS AND LOCALS.

People must be told the easily recognizable English name of a currently-existing building or shopping center or neighborhood — not the ancient Hawaiian name of a long-forgotten chief who lived there once upon a time — not the ancient Hawaiian name of a geological feature which is no longer visible because of large buildings now in the way.

99% of local residents, and 100% of visitors from the mainland, will have no clue whether to get off when they see or hear some of the Hawaiian-language place-names under consideration.

Some of the names actually proposed by the Committee are extremely confusing even to local residents, because the names are contrary to actual place names already in use. One anonymous commenter to a newspaper report said the following: “So the “placeholder names” that future riders can actually associate with locations they know “now will be replaced” with these new names. Hence there will be no Pearlridge Center Station but instead there will be a Pu’uloa station that is next to Pearlridge Center but miles away from Pu’uloa Road. Really? And the station smack dab in the center of the new Ho’opili subdivision will no longer be called the Ho’opili station but instead will be called the Honouliuli station, even though the Honouliuli neighborhood is actually more directly accessible from the West Loch station, which itself will be renamed the Ho’ae’ae station. Hmmm…”

Consider how The Bus currently announces each stop. Suppose you change Puakea Nogelmeier’s recorded announcement “Kane’ohe Library and Kane’ohe Police Station” to “Hale Waihona Puke o Kane’ohe a me Hale Maka’i o Kane’ohe”? Huh? Wat dat? Wah choo sane?

Recently a half-mile-long object from outside our solar system passed by at high speed — the first such interstellar visitor known to humans. News media reported that a committee of Hawaiian language experts held meetings to figure out what name to give it, because the right to name it belongs to the astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea that discovered it. The committee dredged up the word “‘Oumuamua” which, they tell us, means leader or scout. Does that word have kaona (hidden meaning) intended to imply that creatures from outer space will soon be invading and have sent an advance party to scout our defenses? How many people, even in the community of Hawaiian-language experts, ever heard that word before now? Why not choose the somewhat more commonly heard name “‘Elele” (messenger), as in the ‘olelo no’eau “He ‘elele ka moe na ke kanaka.” (A dream is a messenger to a person) Or choose even the very commonly heard name “malihini” (visitor or guest), which also does not carry any of the hopohopo-inducing ominous kaona associated with “scout” or “messenger.” What we had with “‘Oumuamua” was a gang of language experts dredging an obscure word out of the same abyss from whence came the interstellar object. That process resembles what is being done by the transit station naming committee. Neither local residents nor tourists will have a clue what the name means when the initial publicity fades away after a few weeks. Eventually those names would make good questions in the game “Trivial Pursuit” or perhaps a Hawaiian version of “Jeapordy.”

Consider how transit stations should be (re)named in other parts of America to evoke their Native American heritages, following the lead of the committee in Honolulu:

The transit station at the bottom of Manhattan, and/or the embarkation point for the ferry boat, should be (re)named “Kioshk” which was the Indian name of what is now called Ellis Island.

The bus stop nearest to Lake Superior in Duluth Minnesota should be (re)named GitcheGumee which is the Indian name for the lake, as we know from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem “Song of Hiawatha” (“By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. …”)

In Chicago, “Navy Pier” juts out into Lake Michigan; therefore the transit station serving it should be (re)named “Mishigami” from that lake’s Indian name (Ojibwa or Algonquin).

————

3. ENGLISH LANGUAGE PLACE NAMES OF CURRENT BUILDINGS OR USES SHOULD BE PRIMARY, WHILE HAWAIIAN-LANGUAGE REMINDERS OF CULTURAL OR HISTORICAL FEATURES SHOULD BE SECONDARY. IF IT IS DESIRED TO “EDUCATE THE PUBLIC” OR TO CONVEY A FEELING OF RESPECT FOR HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE OR FOR ANCIENT PLACE-NAMES, THAT OBJECTIVE COULD BE ACHIEVED BY PLACING A SEPARATE EXPLANATORY PLAQUE ON THE STATION WALL; OR PLACING THE HAWAIIAN NAME IN SMALLER LETTERING BELOW THE COMMONLY USED ENGLISH NAME IN A SIGN, OR FOLLOWING IT IN A VERBAL ANNOUNCEMENT.

The primary purpose should be to give people practical information quickly and accurately in terms they can understand to get to their destination; but it is only a secondary purpose to educate them about historical or cultural factors which are not immediately necessary and might be of little interest to them.

If you have cancer and go to a doctor for treatment, you need to know where to go for surgery or radiation; or get a prescription for drugs. You do not need a lecture on the history of improvement in the design of scalpels, or how Marie Curie extracted radium from pitchblende, or how tamoxifen gets processed by the liver; although you should certainly be helped to get that information if you want it.

————–

4. A GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS EXPLAINING THAT THE DEMAND FOR HAWAIIAN-LANGUAGE NAMES IS THE WEAPONIZING OF HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE TO GAIN PUBLICITY AND POLITICAL POWER IN A STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL DOMINANCE. IMPOSING A NAME UPON A PERSON, PLACE, CREATURE OR OBJECT IS A POLITICAL ACT — AN ASSERTION OF DOMINANCE. SEE A LARGE, DETAILED WEBPAGE “HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE AS A POLITICAL WEAPON” AT
HTTP://TINYURL.COM/668VQYZ

It is a political act — an assertion of power or dominance — to impose a name upon a person, place, creature, or object. According to the Bible, God gave man dominion over all the creatures of the Earth, including the right to name them as a sign of man’s dominion over them. Parents who adopt a baby have a right to (re)name the baby and to get a new birth certificate reflecting the chosen name. Owners have the right to impose a name on any property they own; conversely, imposing a name is an assertion of ownership, authority, and power.

Black activists Malcolm Little, Cassius Clay, and Lou Alcindor discarded their “slave names” to become Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar; while Hawaiian activist Lily Dorton gave herself the heroic name Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa. The boy Collin Kwai Kong Wong who graduated from Kamehameha School in 1990 gave himself the powerful female name Hinaleimoana when transitioning to the woman Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu, chairperson of the HART Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group.

Racial activists and transgenders, like those on this committee, understand very well that choosing a new name is an intensely political action, an exercise of power, and a way of converting an aspiration into an apparent reality. Owners have the right to impose a name on any property they own; conversely, imposing a name is an assertion of ownership, authority, and power. The race-nationalist political motive of the HART Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group is clear from their backgrounds.

“He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Thus corporations pay megabucks for the naming rights to a sports stadium. Medical buildings and university buildings are named after the donors who endowed them. The many Billions of dollars for the Honolulu train system come from the taxpayers, not from an ethnic group claiming victimhood status reflected in allegedly low incomes and therefore low contributions to the taxes that finance the project. Seizing the naming rights to the buildings in the Honolulu rail project is a theft of the property rights of all the taxpayers in general.

According to a Hawaiian proverb: “I ka ‘olelo no ke ola, i ka ‘olelo no ka make” which means: In language there is life, in language there is death. Thus naming streets or train stations is a way of asserting ownership and authority over them through an act of political power. Streets, places, or buildings with haole or Hawaiian names mark the territory as being haole or Hawaiian in the same way as an animal urinates on a place to leave a scent mark asserting control of it, or a graffiti artist paints his indecipherable tag on a wall.

——————-

5. SPECIFICALLY: THE HAWAIIAN-LANGUAGE NAMING OF HART TRAIN STATIONS IS PRIMARILY A POLITICAL POWER PLAY RATHER THAN A DISPLAY OF RESPECT FOR CULTURE AND LANGUAGE. A SUBPAGE HAS SPECIAL RELEVANCE TO THE TRAIN STATION-NAMING PROJECT: SEE “USING HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE AS A POLITICAL WEAPON BY DEMANDING THAT THE NAMES OF PLACES AND STREETS MUST BE HAWAIIAN — HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND 5 CASE STUDIES: THURSTON AVE.(KAMAKAEHA), BARBERS POINT (KALAELOA), DILLINGHAM MILITARY RESERVATION (KAWAIHAPAI), FORT BARRETTE ROAD (KUALAKAI), DOLE ST. (KAPAAKEA STREET)” AT
HTTP://TINYURL.COM/39DQN32
SOME MEMBERS OF THE HAWAIIAN STATION NAMING WORKING GROUP HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF WORKING FOR RACE-NATIONALISM AS HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY ACTIVISTS. HART, AND THE TRANSIT PROJECT, SHOULD NOT BE USED AS PAWNS IN SUCH AN ENDEAVOR.

Black activists Malcolm Little, Cassius Clay, and Lou Alcindor discarded their “slave names” to become Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. A Hawaiian activist whose name on her Ph.D. dissertation was Lily Dorton gave herself the heroic name Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa — she speaks with pride about her Hawaiian mother but never her haole father.

The boy Collin Kwai Kong Wong who graduated from Kamehameha School in 1990 gave himself the powerful female name Hinaleimoana when transitioning to the woman Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu, who has been head of the O’ahu Island Burial Council and culture director at a Hawaiian-focus charter school noted for the aggressive involvement of its students in lobbying or disrupting city and state government agencies.

Mahealani Cypher (aka Denise DaCosta) has been President of the O’ahu Council of Hawaiian Civic Clubs writing testimony on all sorts of state and federal legislation related to Hawaiian sovereignty. For example, she repeatedly wrote bills introduced in several legislative sessions that would have turned over Ha’iku Valley (Kane’ohe) to a race-based consortium under the jurisdiction of OHA to be then automatically transferred to the Native Hawaiian tribe anticipated to achieve federal recognition. And now here she is, continuing her political activism as chairperson of the HART Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group.

It’s interesting that at least two of the five members of the Working Group — Chairperson Mahealani Cypher and Francine Gora — are residents of Ko’olaupoko and have served as Presidents of the politically aggressive Ko’olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club, despite the fact that the train will never serve the Ko’olaupoko area and these two women probably have very little knowledge of historical names or cultural usages of the areas where the train stations will be located. Their participation on the station-naming committee is purely political as they do not have cultural or historical expertise on the station areas.

Racial activists and transgenders, like those on this committee, understand very well that choosing a new name is an intensely political action, an exercise of power, and a way of converting an aspiration into an apparent reality. The race-nationalist political motive of the HART Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group is clear from their backgrounds.

City Council, and also some neighborhood boards, have previously considered and rejected efforts to remove English-language street names and replace them with “politically correct” Hawaiian names. There might be one or two Council members who lived through some of those struggles. See details of five case studies: Thurston Ave.(Kamakaeha), Barbers Point (Kalaeloa), Dillingham Military Reservation (Kawaihapai), Fort Barrette Road (Kualakai), Dole St. (Kapaakea Street). Those case studies are on a webpage at
http://tinyurl.com/39dqn32

Note that the name proposed for one of the train stations (Kualakai) is the same name unsuccessfully demanded in 2009, in a bitter battle before City Council, to replace the name of Fort Barrette Road, and was (and still is) the name of another street in that area. Note that Working Group member Shad Kane was one of the activists back then who appears to now be seeking to re-fight that old issue. Interestingly, resolution 09-158, calling for the use of Hawaiian language in naming the train stations, was adopted by City Council on April 29, 2009, at the same time when the battle was underway before the Council to change Fort Barrette Road to Kualaka’i.

Tags: HART, Hawaiian language, Hawaiian sovereignty, Historical revisionism, Honolulu trains

Comments on Linda Zhang, “Re-Building a Native Hawaiian Nation.”

Oct 8

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, Corrections, Letters, Reviews | Comments off

Letter to editor by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. in response to
Linda Zhang, “Re-Building a Native Hawaiian Nation: Base Rolls, Membership, and Land in an Effective Self-Determination Movement,” Asian Pacific American Law Journal, Vol 22, No. 1, 2017, pp. 69-93.
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/39t1k0fx

I would like to set the record straight regarding a few errors of fact and interpretation in Linda Zhang’s essay “Re-Building a Native Hawaiian Nation.”

1. Alleged invasion of Iolani Palace by U.S. troops during the Hawaiian revolution of 1893

At the bottom of page 70 Ms. Zhang states the following falsehood: “Then, in 1893, American troops seized I’olani Palace, the home of Queen Lili’uokalani and the center of the Hawaiian monarchy …” Her only citation for that assertion is an internet link from 2005 which is now dead, where the underlying blogsite continues to publish only highly one-sided propaganda pushing the concept of Hawaiian independence.

The truth is that on January 16, 1893 there were 162 U.S. sailors who landed in Honolulu as a peacekeeping force because of anticipated violence between an armed militia of local men seeking to overthrow the government, and the government’s forces. Their orders were to protect American lives and property and to prevent rioting and arson. 808 pages of sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in February 1894, in open session and under severe cross-examination, shows that the peacekeepers never invaded the Palace grounds and, indeed, did not take over any buildings nor in any way provide help to the rebels. See the Morgan Report at
http://morganreport.org
Even the Blount Report, much ballyhooed by Hawaiian sovereignty activists, makes no claim of any invasion of Palace grounds by U.S. troops.

Unfortunately the 2009 movie “Princess Kaiulani” (originally titled “The Barbarian Princess”) falsely shows such a scene. The webpage for a future film “The Islands” by Tim Chey [See endnote of 12/12/17] indicates that there will be a similar scene. Both films, of course, are produced with story lines intended to sell lots of tickets by spectacularly distorting historical fact in ways that will appeal to current sentiments. Portraying U.S. troops invading the Palace is pure propaganda which only serves to incite racial strife and anti-Americanism.

2. Alleged statistical evidence of Native Hawaiian victimhood in poverty, incarceration, and health

Page 71, near the top, says “Since then, studies have shown that Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians, continue to have some of the highest rates of poverty, incarceration, school drop-out rates, and display several negative indicators of health.”

This assertion has been repeated so many times, both in the popular media and in academic “studies”, that people now believe it. This victimhood claim is cited by tycoons of the Hawaiian grievance industry who benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars in government and philanthropic grants; and also cited by politicians seeking to arouse public sympathy for efforts to create a Hawaiian tribe. The assertion arises from statistical malpractice, whose perpetrators must surely be aware that they are engaging in a scam. Two of the main points debunking the assertion are as follows:

(a) According to Census 2010 the median age of ethnic Hawaiians in Hawaii is 26 while the median age of everyone else in Hawaii is 42. That 16 year age gap explains why incomes of Native Hawaiians are significantly lower than incomes of other ethnic groups. It also explains why Native Hawaiians have higher rates of incarceration and longer sentences than other ethnicities — not because of their ethnicity but because of the huge age gap. Drug abuse, spouse abuse, and crime — especially violent crime — are the sins of young people far more than middle-age people.

(b) Virtually all so-called Native Hawaiians have mixed ancestry. Perhaps 3/4 of them each have at least 3/4 of their heritage being Asian or Caucasian rather than Hawaiian. But when someone is a victim of poverty, incarceration, disease, etc. and is asked “What are you?” they are classified as “Native Hawaiian” AND ONLY AS NATIVE HAWAIIAN even if their native blood quantum is only a small fraction of their ancestry. Someone who is mostly Caucasian or Asian should have his victimhood attributed to one of those racial groups rather than to Native Hawaiian. The most accurate way to award victimhood tally marks to ethnic groups would be to give a fraction of a tally mark to each ethnicity in a victim’s heritage equal to the fraction of that ethnicity in his genealogy. But social scientists apparently consider it politically incorrect to ask victims for ethnic percentages; and tycoons of the Hawaiian grievance industry do not want to be robbed of the victimhood claims they use in grant applications; and researchers excuse their malpractice by saying that if they award victimhood tally marks to the highest percentage in a victim’s heritage then there would be too few Native Hawaiians to be statistically significant.

For a detailed analysis and examples of both points (a) and (b) see “Native Hawaiian victimhood — malpractice in the gathering and statistical analysis of data allegedly showing disproportionate Native Hawaiian victimhood for disease and social dysfunction.” at
http://tinyurl.com/j3aolqg

3. The proposed Native Hawaiian constitution is both racist and fascist

Linda Zhang’s article tries to portray the Hawaiian sovereignty movement as benign. For example, she says on page 77 “Part A(i) of the membership criteria is based on the lineage model. The criterion is broad enough to include ‘non-Hawaiians who were citizens of the Hawaiian Kingdom and therefore have a rightful place in the citizenry,’ thereby avoiding a potential constitutional challenge under Rice v. Cayetano.” But the actual wording of Part A(i) says “An individual who is a descendant of the aboriginal peoples who, prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the Hawaiian Islands” — which clearly would NOT include people with no native blood who were subjects (citizens) of the Kingdom; and thus it is clearly a racial requirement and cannot avoid running afoul of Rice v. Cayetano.

A claim to racial supremacy is displayed in the proposed constitution for a future federally recognized Hawaiian tribe adopted on February 26, 2016. That constitution also demands race-based ownership and control of all the lands and waters of Hawaii, as though nobody else has rights. Up front the preamble says “we join together to affirm a government of, by, and for Native Hawaiian people” [i.e., of the race, by the race, and for the race], and “affirm our ancestral [i.e., race-based] rights and Kuleana to all lands, waters, and resources of our islands and surrounding seas.” So what will become of the 80% of Hawaii’s people who have no native ancestry? The constitution asserts the same sort of “blood and land” concept as found in other fascist governments — Native Hawaiians are descendants of the gods and brothers to the land in a way nobody else can ever be who lacks a drop of Hawaiian native blood.
See “Hawaiian religious fascism” at
http://tinyurl.com/j4o2cdj
The proposed tribal constitution passed by the Na’i Aupuni convention on February 26, 2016 is available at
http://tinyurl.com/zegptkr

Note added by Ken Conklin on December 12, 2017:

Today I received a complaint that this blog entry of October 8 unfairly blames Tim Chey, the director/producer of the film “The Islands”, for a racially inflammatory and anti-American falsehood apparently portrayed in the film. According to its publicity webpage the film depicts U.S. troops invading Iolani Palace in 1893 and Queen Lili’uokalani surrendering to the U.S. troops. So who then should be blamed when a film portrays a historical falsehood which misleads viewers to think it is true and which inflames anti-white and anti-American passions? The person who hires the writers, approves the script, and assembles the financing and distribution must take the blame, as surely as the captain of a ship which runs aground or sinks because of dereliction by a navigator or other subordinate officers.

The film’s webpage is at http://theislandsmovie.com/ On December 12, 2017 the webpage still states what it has stated for many months. Sentences near the end of the story’s narrative say: “Cut Forward to: 1893 We see the reporter and Liliuokalani discussing Kapiolani when the U.S. Marines now enter the palace of Liliuokalani. She surrenders as the reporter attempts to intervene.” The falsehood about U.S. troops invading Iolani Palace in 1893 and overthrowing the Queen is apparently only a minor detail in a film that is primarily focused earlier in the 19th Century, especially 1824 when High Chiefess Kapiolani challenged the power of the volcano goddess Pele and thereby persuaded Hawaiian natives to believe in the Christian God. But a small detail, like a few drops of poison, can make a glass of sweet fruit juice deadly.

The complainer also said that the film has not yet been completed, so no falsehood has yet been portrayed. Plenty of time to fix any problem. But that assertion about timing is also false. The movie’s webpage on December 12, 2017 clearly states “Production has wrapped on the high-profile movie, ‘The Islands’ set to hit theaters in November 2018.” Tim Chey’s tweet on November 24, 2017 says “So happy! We just wrapped filming on ‘The Islands’! God is good!”
https://twitter.com/TimChey1/status/934271514257473536

In early 2017 I first became aware of the effort to produce this film, thanks to news reports in Honolulu. I found the film’s webpage, was horrified by the historical falsehood, wrote a comment seeking to correct the historical falsehood, and sent it through the film’s webpage. I also spoke with a friend of mine who has the ear of Mr. Chey; but my concern failed to elicit a response. When does the point of no return come in writing or producing a multimillion dollar film? When is the time to prevent a film from portraying a scurrilous falsehood which then gets viewed by a mass audience and inflames hatred? And once the film has finished production and gets scheduled for the theaters, and perhaps ends up getting viewed by millions on “The History Channel” or “Showtime”, how can the damage be mitigated? That problem is now in the hands of Tim Chey. I am ignorant about how films are made, and unable to recommend how to correct the problem. But surely a Christian with strong moral values, who is an expert on film production and responsible for this one, will find a way to obey the Commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

This falsehood about U.S. troops invading Iolani Palace in 1893 (sometimes also that the troops arrested the Queen and imprisoned her there) has been going around. Senators Inouye and Dorgan told that lie on the floor of the U.S. Senate on June 23, 2008 to portray Native Hawaiians as victims of the U.S. to whom we therefore owe restitution and federal recognition as an Indian tribe; and it was also portrayed in the 2009 film “Princess Kaiulani.” It’s time to put a stop to this falsehood before it pollutes the Aloha Spirit. I have also been working for years to discredit other scurrilous falsehoods inciting hatred, such as: The last Hawaiian flag atop Iolani Palace was torn into pieces distributed as souvenirs to the haoles who overthrew the Queen; President Grover Cleveland issued a proclamation naming April 30, 1894 as a national day of prayer and repentance for the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom; Hawaiian language was made illegal after the overthrow; The Royal Mausoleum was exempted from the ceded lands at annexation and remains a piece of Hawaiian Kingdom sovereign land; Native Hawaiians have the worst statistics for all the major diseases, drug abuse, poverty, incarceration etc. For the debunking of these and other falsehoods, put keywords into the search window, or read the history section, on my website at
http://tinyurl.com/6gkzk
To understand the political struggle in Hawaii which falsehoods like these are worsening, see the book “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State” at
http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa

Tags: "The Islands" movie, Akaka bill, Hawaiian grievance industry, Hawaiian tribe, Historical revisionism, Iolani Palace, Kaiulani, Linda Zhang, Native Hawaiians, overthrow, racial disparities, Tim Chey

Census race and gender questions need fixing. Mixed race respondents should tell percentages.

Apr 9

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary | Comments off

On March 1, 2017 the U.S. Office of Management and Budget published a notice in the Federal Register entitled “Revision of Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity: Proposals From Federal Interagency Working Group”
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=OMB-2017-0003-0001

The 6-page notice raised many issues and asked for comments before April 30, which can be viewed there.

Ken Conklin posted the following summary of his comments on April 7. The complete, detailed comments are at
http://tinyurl.com/kgssz9o

———

My comments address two main issues: How the race (and gender) question(s) should be worded to avoid confusing emotional aspiration with fact; and why multiracial people (especially Native Hawaiians) should be asked for the percentage of each race in their ancestry.

Here is a summary to comply with the limit of 5000 characters. For the complete commentary see
http://tinyurl.com/kgssz9o

Census questions about race should be written in a way which clarifies that respondents are being asked about the facts of their biological heritage (check the boxes for all the races you know are part of your biological ancestry) rather than their psychological/social affiliations or aspirations (check the box for the race you feel most closely affiliated with on account of upbringing or current lifestyle). Perhaps both questions should be asked. Mixed-race respondents should be asked to estimate the percentage of each race. Current single-question ambiguity between fact vs. aspiration skews statistical medians toward aspirational identities in geographic areas where mixed-race minorities have large numbers of individuals engaged in political activity to assert minority rights. People who are strongly committed to a race-based political agenda are likely to say they are solely of their favorite race. Such aspirational skewing causes inaccurate media reporting by statistically unsophisticated reporters relying on Census Bureau news releases having weak or non-existent plain-English disclaimers that data may be skewed by aspirational self-identification. Even mathematically sophisticated scholars might misinterpret aspirational identity as though it is biological fact unless they are reminded about the ambiguity.

Special attention is given to the “Native Hawaiian” category, because nearly all respondents are of mixed race and the great majority of individuals have most of their ancestry being Asian or European rather than Hawaiian. Politically-inspired aspirational responses by “Native Hawaiians” to the Census race question, marking only the “Native Hawaiian” box to assert racial pride, have produced absurd official results such as 80,000 “pure” Hawaiians are living in Hawaii. Researchers, seeking to bolster applications for government and philanthropic grants to study or provide treatment for alleged racial disparities, count anyone with any amount of Hawaiian native ancestry as being fully Native Hawaiian and do not count them also as being any of their other heritages, even when the percentage of native heritage is very small. Thus propagandists are able to make use of Census data whose aspirational answers to the race question are intentionally misinterpreted as though they are biologically factual. Political propagandists say Native Hawaiians need political autonomy to ensure that government resources are directed toward their special needs, citing Census data where there is no warning about the ambiguity between aspirational vs. factual identity. Powerful race-focused institutions say they need monetary grants to study or overcome alleged racial disparities. Nearly all Native Hawaiians are of mixed race. But every Native Hawaiian with a medical or social problem gets a full tally mark added to the Native Hawaiian category for that problem while not even a partial tally mark is awarded to any of the victim’s other races.

Whether knowingly or unknowingly, the Census Bureau has become an accomplice to statistical malpractice or outright scams which are enabled by Census questions whose ambiguity allows researchers and news media to misinterpret aspirational responses as though they represent biological fact.

To achieve credibility and political neutrality the Census Bureau should make two improvements: (1) Write the race (and gender) question(s) to specify that responses should be based on biological fact; or better yet, bifurcate the question(s) into one factual and one aspirational question; and ask multiracial respondents for estimated percentage of each ancestry. If the Census Bureau decides the additional wording of the race question is too burdensome for the decennial, then the more-detailed American Community Survey could be used, or the topic could be addressed in a special supplement in the Current Population Survey for one month each year. (2) News releases for non-academic readers; as well as data tables, graphs, and verbal summaries for scholarly use; should have prominently-placed disclaimers, in plain English or technical language appropriate to the expected audience. The disclaimers should note the fact that responses arising from social/psychological aspiration might have caused skewing of the data in a way that does not accurately reflect biological fact, especially in the case of multiracial or transgender respondents.

Tags: Census, gender question, mixed race respondents, Native Hawaiian, race question

Kaniela Ing, Hawaii legislature committee chairman, unethically disappeared written testimony by the same author on two different bills on the same day.

Feb 17

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Office of Hawaiian Affairs | Comments off

Kaniela Ing is chairman of the State of Hawaii Legislature’s House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs during the regular session of 2017. His committee held hearings on many bills.

On Friday February 10 a notice was published that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on several bills. Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D., submitted written testimony on Friday regarding two of those bills, long before the deadline for submitting testimony 24 hours before a hearing. On Tuesday afternoon the public files of submitted testimony on those two bills were made available on the Legislature’s website. Dr. Conklin noticed that his testimony was missing from the files of testimony for both bills. Perhaps on rare occasions a clerk might make a mistake and inadvertently forget to include someone’s testimony. But what are the odds that two such mistakes might be made, on the same day, for two different bills, and in both cases the testimony was submitted by the same author!

Chairman Kaniela Ing’s motives are abundantly clear for disappearing Conklin’s written testimonies, because both of them were in strong opposition to Ing’s views.

One of those bills, whose sole introducer was Kaniela Ing, would enact into law a racial restriction on candidacy for election to a state government office. In year 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Rice v. Cayetano) that it is unconstitutional to have a racial restriction on who can VOTE for OHA trustees. Later in year 2000 there was a followup lawsuit (Arakaki v. State of Hawaii) regarding the racial restriction on who can RUN as a candidate for OHA trustee. The U.S. District Court in Honolulu ruled that racial restrictions on candidacy are also unconstitutional; and that ruling was later upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Conklin’s testimony in opposition to this bill pointed out that chairman Ing is too young to remember the court decisions from 2000, but that’s no excuse for a committee chairman who should have access to legal advice before introducing a truly stupid bill.

On Tuesday night, after seeing that his testimony had been disappeared from the files on both bills, Dr. Conklin sent an email to Speaker of the House Joe Souki and all the other members of the House. The email provided attachments of each of the two disappeared testimonies so that House members could read them; complained about the censorship and requested that the testimonies be placed into the published files where they should have been all along; and asked for the perpetrator to be reprimanded. On Wednesday the testimony files for both bills had been updated with Conklin’s testimonies included.

Full text of Conklin’s email to Speaker Souki and the other 51 Representatives is copied below.

But even though the testimony files were corrected on Wednesday, major damage was already done by the suppression of the testimony from Friday through Tuesday. That’s because on Tuesday the committee made its decisions on the bills in the absence of the missing testimonies. The committee voted unanimously to pass the bill with the unconstitutional racial restriction still in it; and Conklin’s disappeared testimony was the only one warning about its unconstitutionality.

So there are two different ways to deal with committee chairman Kaniela Ing and with the members of his committee, depending on how responsibility is apportioned:

(A) If committee chairman Kaniela Ing had in fact prevented committee members from seeing Conklin’s testimony and if the members were unaware of the bill’s unconstitutionality, then Ing’s deception is responsible for committee members violating their oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States. In this case the committee has an obligation to (1) pass a motion of no-confidence in chairman Ing for deliberately misleading (i.e., lying to) them; and (2) ask the entire House to pass a resolution of censure against Ing for suppressing public testimony; and (3) to rescind the committee report and the referral advancing the bill to the next committee.

(B) If the committee actually did have access to Conklin’s testimony before passing the amended version of the bill, or if any committee members were aware of the unconstitutionality even without reading Conklin’s testimony, then the committee members are just as guilty as Kaniela Ing for knowingly and intentionally passing an unconstitutional bill, in violation of their oath of office.

Three items follow: Conklin’s email to Speaker Souki and all representatives in the House; a blog posting that provides full text of the unconstitutional bill and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony on it; a blog posting that provides full text of the other bill on which Conklin’s testimony was disappeared.

———–

Email sent to Speaker Souki and all members of the State of Hawaii House of Representatives on Tuesday night, February 14, 2017:

Aloha Hawaii members of the House of Representatives,

Written testimony that I submitted on two different controversial bills has been suppressed. My testimony has been left out of the public files, probably because the committee chairman doesn’t like it. I don’t know whether the committee members were denied the chance to read my testimony, but for sure the public has not had a chance to see it. One of the bills actually contains a change to state law which would impose a racial restriction on candidacy in an election — a racial restriction which two federal courts previously ruled unconstitutional.

I have attached both testimonies to this email to be sure you can read them.

In both cases I submitted the testimony on Friday February 10, through the Legislature’s website, for a hearing to be held on Tuesday February 14. In both cases I immediately received the automated email confirmation that the testimony had been received. But on Tuesday February 14, when the files of testimony were posted on the bills’ status webpages, my testimonies were not included.

Censoring the record of public testimony should be regarded as a serious ethical offense, and should bring a reprimand to the person responsible for the censorship. The public files of testimony, for both bills, should be edited by inserting the disappeared testimony in the same place where it should have been originally published.

Perhaps a mistake or accident could account for one incident of disappeared testimony; but when there are two such disappeared testimonies, both by the same author and on the same day, it is clearly a matter of intentional censorship. If one of the testimonies might be suppressed because it could be regarded as disrespectful, there is no such excuse in relation to the other one.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs.

The bills are:

HB1297 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY. Provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law.

and

HB118, HD1 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS. Amends the qualifications for election or appointment as an OHA Trustee to include that a person is not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.

My two testimonies are attached to this email.

Thank you for reading the testimonies and for demanding that they be included in the public files of testimony for the two bills.

Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
46-255 Kahuhipa St. Apt. 1205
Kane’ohe, HI 96744-6083
tel/fax (808) 247-7942
e-mail Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

——————-

Blog containing full text of the bill HR118 that would enact a fully litigated unconstitutional racial restriction on who can run as a candidate for state government office, and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony

https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/2017/02/17/racialrestrictionconklintestimonydisappeared/

—————

Blog containing full text of the bill HB1297 which provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law, and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony

https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/2017/02/17/legislsupportdoitribeconklintestimonydisappeared/

Tags: censored testimony, Kaniela Ing, OHA, racism

HB1297 about Hawaiian sovereignty; and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

Feb 17

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, US Comm on Civ Rights | Comments off

On Friday February 10, 2017 a notice was published by the legislature of the State of Hawaii announcing that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on the bill HB1297. Text of the bill is copied below. On that same Friday February 10 Ken Conklin submitted testimony through the Legislature’s website, long ahead of the requirement that testimony must be submitted at least 24 hours before a hearing; and Conklin immediately received the robot-generated confirmation that the testimony had been received. Conklin’s testimony is copied below.

However, after the hearing was held and the public file of written testimony was posted on the Legislature’s “status” webpage for this bill, Conklin’s testimony was not included. Might the omission have been an accident? No! It was clearly not an accident, because exactly the same thing happened with Conklin’s testimony on a different bill, HB118-HD1, whose hearing was announced and held on the same dates, and in the same committee.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs. The chairman of the committee is Kaniela Ing, a youthful far-left Hawaiian sovereignty activist whose views might be described as supporting racial entitlement programs at taxpayer expense and race-based political sovereignty. Ing despises Conklin’s views, and the feeling is mutual. Conklin’s testimony was by far the strongest submitted, so it’s no surprise that Ing censored it. The vast majority of testimony was in opposition to the bill, but for reasons Mr. Ing would approve of — based on the assertion that Hawaii is not legitimately part of the United States.

Upon seeing that his testimony had been disappeared from the public files on two bills before the same committee, Conklin sent an email on Tuesday evening to Speaker of the House Joe Souki, and to all House members, providing copies of both of the disappeared testimonies; asking that they be inserted in the public files where they should have been all along; and asking that whoever was responsible for their censoring should be reprimanded. By Wednesday afternoon the public files of testimonies had been updated for both of the bills to include Conklin’s testimony, near the top, in the rightful place where it probably belonged in the order of when the testimonies were submitted.

The public file of testimony on this bill HB1297 is 749 pages long, occupying 162 Megabytes, takes many minutes to download even with high-speed internet, and is available at
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2017/Testimony/HB1297_TESTIMONY_OMH_02-14-17_.PDF

Here is full text of the bill

HB1297 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY.
Provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:
SECTION 1. Chapter 27, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new part to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:
“PART . HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY §27- Hawaiians; sovereignty; self-governance; state support. The State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people in a manner that comports with administrative rules and procedures established by the United States Department of the Interior and that complies with federal and state law.” SECTION 2. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

Here is full text of Ken Conklin’s TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

There is no historical, legal, or moral justification for race-based political sovereignty for ethnic Hawaiians.

Proposals to “reorganize” a Native Hawaiian governing entity are absurd, because there has never been such an entity in the history of Hawaii and therefore there is nothing to be reorganized. After a thousand years, the first time all the Hawaiian islands were organized under a single governing entity was in 1810 when Kamehameha The Great finally intimidated Kaua’i’s King Kaumuali’i to surrender without a fight, and merged his domain with all the rest of the islands which Kamehameha had conquered by force of arms. But the high chiefs in Kamehameha’s ruling government included the British Caucasian John Young as Governor of Kamehameha’s own home Hawaii Island — Young’s tomb is in Mauna Ala, the Royal Mausoleum, guarded with a pair of pulo’ulo’u (sacred taboo sticks), and is the only tomb there which is built in the shape of a miniature heiau; his bones are the oldest in Mauna Ala. British Caucasian Isaac Davis was Governor of O’ahu.

Here are four persuasive reasons why this bill should be defeated.

1. The bill pledges the State government to support whatever model of sovereignty is chosen by a racial group comprising 20% of Hawaii’s people, regardless whether the other 80% oppose it. That’s clearly not pono. A proposal to create an apartheid regime by dividing the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines should not be endorsed by the legislature unless it is placed on the ballot in a general election under the same rules for approval as used for a state Constitutional amendment. But even in the unlikely event that such a proposal gets ratified by the people, it is clearly contrary to the U.S. Constitution and would likely be overruled by the courts.

2. Numerous scientific surveys show that a majority of Hawaii’s people — including probably a majority of “Native Hawaiians” — oppose this idea. The most reliable and credible surveys were done by nationally esteemed professional public opinion survey companies, including Zogby, headquartered outside Hawaii and thus insulated from propaganda generated by OHA and not beholden to OHA or Kamehameha Schools for lucrative contracts. Even when polls were done by local newspapers or by OHA, over a period of years, the results consistently show that “Native Hawaiians” have the same ranking of priorities as the general population — top priorities are education, healthcare, housing, the environment, and traffic. The lowest priorities are Native Hawaiian rights, race-based handouts — and, lowest of all — ethnic Hawaiian “nationhood” (i.e., the Akaka bill or administrative rule-making to create a Hawaiian tribe). For a compilation of information and links to survey results, see pages 29-34 in Ken Conklin’s “Testimony regarding RIN 1090–AB05” at
http://big09.angelfire.com/ ConklinTestmnyDOI081514RulesChangeHawnTribe.pdf

3. There have been perhaps a thousand news reports and commentaries over the years from 2000 through 2014 opposing the Akaka bill and, more recently, opposing the Department of Interior regulation for creating a Hawaiian tribe. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights spoke loud and clear against the Akaka bill in 2006 and 2009; and in September 2013 four Commissioners sent a letter to President Obama warning that it would be unconstitutional to use administrative rulemaking or executive order to create a Hawaiian tribe and give it federal recognition. In 2001 and 2005 the House Committee on Judiciary, and its subcommittee on the Constitution, took the unusual step of publicly opposing the Akaka bill even though a different committee had jurisdiction over “Indian” legislation. Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein published several articles opposing the Akaka bill, some of which were republished in the Congressional Record at the request of Senator Jon Kyl. Mr. Fein also wrote a monograph “Hawaii Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.” Mr. Fein’s essay is of special interest to scholars because of his analysis of the apology resolution of 1993 as well as the provisions of the Akaka bill. Full text of these items has been compiled over the years, including U.S. Commission on Civil Rights letters on official letterhead. A master index provides lists and links for specific time periods. See
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/ AkakaPublishedOpposition.html

4. During February 2016 a monthlong meeting was held on O’ahu in which unelected “Native Hawaiians” who had been candidates in an attempted election run by a group called Na’i Aupuni wrote a proposed constitution for a “Native Hawaiian” nation. They wrote it with the specific intention that it would meet the requirements of the Department of Interior “final rule” for creating a Hawaiian tribe.

Right up front in your face, the preamble says “we join together to affirm a government of, by, and for Native Hawaiian people” [i.e., of the race, by the race, and for the race], and “affirm our ancestral [i.e., race-based] rights and Kuleana to all lands, waters, and resources of our islands and surrounding seas.” [i.e., we’re gonna take over the whole place, just like Kamehameha did, who was known as “Ka Na’i Aupuni” — the conqueror.] “We reaffirm the National Sovereignty of the Nation. We reserve all rights to Sovereignty and Self-determination, including the pursuit of independence. Our highest aspirations are set upon the promise of our unity and this Constitution.”

The plain language in the preamble is the declaration of a race-war from a gathering blatantly labeled “Na’i Aupuni” which means “Conquest.”

In case there’s any doubt about fascist racial exclusivity, Article 2 — Citizenship — says “A citizen of the Native Hawaiian Nation is any descendant of the aboriginal and indigenous people who, prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the Hawaiian Islands and is enrolled in the nation.” Article 7, Section 4 reaffirms the religious belief that ethnic Hawaiians have a genealogical relationship with the islands, saying “The Nation has a right, duty, and kuleana, both individually and collectively, to sustain the ‘Aina (land, kai, wai, air) as an ancestor, source of mana, and source of life and well-being for present and future generations. And Article 8 says “The Government shall not … Make any law with intent to suppress traditional Native Hawaiian religion or beliefs.”

What will happen to the 80% of Hawaii’s current population who do not have any Hawaiian native blood? Perhaps the same thing that happened to the vast majority of the indigenous Africans when small minorities of Caucasians took over the governments of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa.

Full text of the proposed constitution is at
http://big09.angelfire.com/NatHwnConstitAdopt022616.pdf

Is this the sort of Hawaiian tribe which our legislature wants to go on record as supporting? God help us!

Tags: censorship, Conklin, Hawaiian sovereignty, Hawaiian tribe, Kaniela Ing

HB118 enacting racial restriction on running for office, and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

Feb 17

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Office of Hawaiian Affairs | Comments off

On Friday February 10, 2017 a notice was published by the legislature of the State of Hawaii announcing that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on the bill HB118-HD1. Text of the bill is copied below. On that same Friday February 10 Ken Conklin submitted testimony through the Legislature’s website, long ahead of the requirement that testimony must be submitted at least 24 hours before a hearing; and Conklin immediately received the robot-generated confirmation that the testimony had been received. Conklin’s testimony is copied below.

However, after the hearing was held and the public file of written testimony was posted on the Legislature’s “status” webpage for this bill, Conklin’s testimony was not included. Might the omission have been an accident? No! It was clearly not an accident, because exactly the same thing happened with Conklin’s testimony on a different bill, HB1297, whose hearing was announced and held on the same dates, and in the same committee.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs. The chairman of the committee is Kaniela Ing, a youthful far-left Hawaiian sovereignty activist whose views might be described as supporting race-based political sovereignty and racial entitlement programs at taxpayer expense. Ing despises Conklin’s views, and the feeling is mutual. Conklin’s testimony was by far the strongest submitted, so it’s no surprise that Ing censored it.

The bill HB118-HD1 has two main purposes corresponding to the committee chairman’s personal vendetta against an honorable man and the chairman’s racialist viewpoint. (1) The primary purpose is to single out a newly elected board member of the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs and make it illegal for him to serve on or be a candidate for the board. The bill has the appearance of being a good-government bill intended to prohibit the election of anyone who is a registered lobbyist. But in fact there is only one person now serving on the OHA board or who was recently a candidate for the board who is a registered lobbyist. He just happens to be the head of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a genuine good-government think tank; and in that capacity he occasionally lobbies the legislature seeking government transparency and accountability, offering libertarian analysis of economic issues, etc. He is an opponent of race-based political sovereignty for ethnic Hawaiians — a policy which OHA has spent tens of millions of dollars and seventeen years supporting — a policy which the chairman of the legislature’s committee on Hawaiian Affairs also supports. The committee chairman, in cahoots with a group of Hawaiian racialist institutions, therefore launched a vendetta to oust the newly elected OHA board member, and is using the issue of being a “lobbyist” as a way to pursue their vendetta. (2) The committee chairman also inserted into the bill another provision, in line with his racialist views, which would impose a racial requirement that candidates for election or appointment to the board must be racially Hawaiian. But that requirement, which was formerly a part of the Hawaii state Constitution, was ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000. Either the committee chairman is too young to know the history of that event and has no advisor to tell him about it; or else he does know the racial restriction on candidacy is unconstitutional but nevertheless he recklessly wants to enact it.

Nearly all the testimony was in support of the bill. Conklin’s was the ONLY testimony that made any mention of the unconstitutionality of the bill’s racial restriction on candidacy for the OHA board; so by disappearing Conklin’s testimony the chairman and the entire committee could safely claim to be unaware of it. Nearly all the testimonies were very brief and merely supported the fake purpose of getting rid of lobbyists as though that was the real purpose of the bill; but the two testimonies placed all the way at the bottom of a very long file of testimonies make it clear that the bill’s primary purpose is a vendetta against the newly elected OHA board member who opposes racialism and seeks an audit of the board’s corrupt contracting and expenditures.

The “status file” for this bill, posted on the Legislature’s website, shows that on Tuesday February 14, with Conklin’s testimony still missing from the public file and perhaps therefore also not being seen by the committee members, the committee “recommend that the measure be PASSED, WITH AMENDMENTS. The votes were as follows: 7 Ayes: Representative(s) Ing, Gates, Creagan, DeCoite, LoPresti, Takayama, Thielen; Ayes with reservations: none; Noes: none; and Excused: none.”

Then on Friday February 17 the status file says “Reported from OMH (Stand. Com. Rep. No. 510) as amended in HD 2, recommending passage on Second Reading and referral to JUD.”

Putting together the status reports for Tuesday February 14 and Friday February 17, it’s clear that the bill was amended and the amended bill HD2 was approved by the committee on Tuesday. At that time Conklin’s testimony was not included in the public file and probably had not been made available to the members of the committee because the chairman had disappeared it. But Conklin’s was the only testimony pointing out that the racial restriction on OHA candidacy had been ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000. So there are two possibilities:

The public file of testimony on this bill HB118-HD1 is 128 pages long, occupying 55 Megabytes, takes a couple minutes to download even with high-speed internet, and is available at
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2017/Testimony/HB118_HD1_TESTIMONY_OMH_02-14-17_.PDF

—————

Here is full text of the first version of the bill HB118-HD1 (first version other than the short-form content-free placeholder bill which this version HD1 filled with content) on which testimony was submitted:

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. Section 13D-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:

“§13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

SECTION 2. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.
SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

————–

Here is full text of the amended version HB118-HD2 approved by the committee on Tuesday February 14, 2017 — very tiny changes not affecting either the personal vendetta or the unconstitutional racial restriction on candidacy.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. Section 13D-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:
“§13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not currently registered as a lobbyist with the state ethics commission.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

SECTION 2. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.
SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

————–

Here is full text of Ken Conklin’s testimony on the first version of the bill, HB118-HD1. This testimony was either hidden from committee members by chairman Kaniela Ing, or else committee members had access to it and chose to ignore it when they approved a bill whose racial restriction on candidacy was ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000:

TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

I’ll begin my testimony to a committee on Hawaiian affairs with a sentence in Hawaiian language.

Hupo loa ke kanaka po’o o keia komike, i ho’okomo i keia pila HB 118 HD1.

Although this hearing is set for Valentines Day, I have no love for this bill nor for its sponsor. Who is to blame for this bad bill?

The chairman of this committee is, shall we say, badly misguided for introducing this bill, whose contents display an astounding level of ignorance about the history of litigation regarding candidacy for OHA trustees.

One of the major provisions in this bill is flat-out unconstitutional — a fact litigated and ruled by two federal courts. The other major provision might also be unconstitutional, although it has not yet been litigated; but it is certainly immoral if not illegal.

The following members of this committee also deserve blame for rubber-stamping this bill when they voted on February 3 and February 7 to pass this bill as amended: Ing, Gates, Creagan, DeCoite, LoPresti, Takayama, Thielen; no Noes and no reservations. You committee members really must exercise greater vigilance in monitoring the work of your very youthful and reckless chairman. He might be excused because the massively publicized litigation on this issue happened when he was a mere prepubescent boy; but if he’s going to be a committee chairman then he should compensate by having a knowledgeable advisor. Most committee members have no such excuse — if you’re older than 40 and have lived in Hawaii for at least 18 years then you will surely remember the tumultuous events of year 2000.

What’s one major bad thing about this bill?

Lines 3,4,5 on page 1 say “No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and …”

That racial restriction on candidacy has been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court in Honolulu and by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Of course this committee could rescue that provision by redefining the word “Hawaiian” to mean “citizen of Hawaii” rather than the racially exclusionary meaning requiring at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood.

I would welcome such a redefinition. Please do it! But of course you won’t; so let me continue. Here’s the story.

In year 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court by vote of 7-2 ruled in Rice v. Cayetano that there can be no racial restriction on who can vote in the election for OHA trustees.
Later in year 2000 the U.S. District Court in Honolulu, Judge Helen Gillmor presiding, ruled that there can be no racial restriction on who can run as a candidate for OHA trustee. The case was CV 00-00514 HG-BMK Arakaki et. al. vs. State of Hawaii et. al, and OHA as intervenor. I was honored to be among the multiracial group of 13 plaintiffs including 3 Native Hawaiians. We won.

Governor Cayetano ousted all nine OHA trustees on grounds they had been illegally elected. In the election of November 2000 I ran as a candidate for OHA trustee, along with 95 other candidates for the 9 seats. There were at least a dozen so-called “non-Hawaiians” [Hawaii citizens with no native blood] among the 96 candidates; and one of them, Charles Ota, won the Maui seat.

Judge Gillmor’s civil rights racial desegregation decision was appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and was upheld by the three-judge panel, with the final judgment filed on July 1, 2003 by Honolulu clerk Walter Chinn.

The judgment concludes: “… The State is ordered to permit otherwise qualified non-Hawaiians to run for office and to serve, if elected, as trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Section 5 of Article XII of the State Constitution and HRS § 13D-2 violate the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, to the extent that they require persons running for OHA trustee positions and serving, if elected, to be Hawaiian.”
What’s the other thing wrong with this bill?

The other major new provision of this bill might very well also be unconstitutional. It says “No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the [OHA] board unless the person is … Not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.”
To the best of my knowledge there is only one person serving as an OHA trustee or who was recently a candidate for OHA trustee who would be no longer eligible to be OHA trustee under provisions of this bill. I guess your committee chairman has a vendetta against him, and is (ab)using his power as a committee chairman to pursue that vendetta.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution says “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution says “The Constitution prohibits both the federal government (in this clause) and the states (in Article I, Section 10, Clause 1) from passing either bills of attainder or ex post facto laws. The Framers considered freedom from bills of attainder and ex post facto laws so important that these are the only two individual liberties that the original Constitution protects from both federal and state intrusion. As James Madison said in The Federalist No. 44, “Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.”

So even if this bill might somehow escape being ruled unconstitutional as a bill of attainder, it would clearly not be able to oust the victim of your chairman’s vendetta from his OHA trustee position where he will serve for nearly four more years; because passing this bill after the victim has already been elected and is serving would be an “ex-post- facto” law.

My dear committee members: Does this testimony seem disrespectful? Then consider where the disrespect originated. Introducing this bill, with a major provision already ruled unconstitutional, is disrespectful to the judiciary. Advancing this bill is disrespectful to the oath all legislators take to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Using the power of a legislature’s committee chairman or member to press a vendetta attempting to oust an elected official without impeachment and trial on charges of misbehavior, or denying voters the right to decide whether a candidate should be elected despite what some might regard as flaws, is disrespectful to the will of the public who elected him and disrespectful to the whole concept of democracy and due process.

Trash this bill. It has already tarnished your reputations, but you can mitigate the damage.

Tags: censorship, Grassroot Institute, Hawaiian tribe, Kaniela Ing, Keli'i Akina, Ken Conklin, OHA

Native Hawaiians Study Commission majority report 1983

Feb 6

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Reference | Comments off

The Native Hawaiians Study Commission was created by the Congress of the United States on December 22, 1980 (Title III of Public Law 96-565). The purpose of the Commission was to “conduct a study of the culture, needs and concerns of the Native Hawaiians.” The Commission released to the public a Draft Report of Findings on September 23, 1982. Following a 120-day period of public comment, a final report was written and submitted on June 23, 1983 to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.

The 747-page majority report of the NHSC begins with an executive summary and list of conclusions and recommendations, followed by 14 major chapters written by experts, focused on Hawaii’s ancient and modern history, demographics, culture, religion, and reports about responses to the unique needs of Native Hawaiians by federal and state governments, and private institutions. At the end are glossaries explaining Hawaiian-language words, a list of references, and an appendix. For each of the 747 pages of the majority report a photo of the page (click to magnify for easy readability) is next to a simple text version of its contents that is digitized and searchable. See the entire 747-page report, beautifully formatted, at
http://grihwiki.kenconklin.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Native_Hawaiians_Study_Commission_Report

Ken Conklin’s webpage about the report describes how it was created, how political differences resulted in majority report vs. minority report, and how the majority report found a home on the internet. The webpage also summarizes the conclusions reached by the Commission, and explains the importance of the NHSC report in current controversies regarding Hawaiian sovereignty and racial entitlement programs. Conklin’s webpage about the report is at
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/NHSC.html

Tags: Hawaiian culture, Hawaiian grievance industry, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian racial disparities, Hawaiian racial entitlement programs, Hawaiian religion, Native Hawaiians

The Mystery of Hawaiian History

Correcting historical revisionism and misconceptions promoted by the Akaka Bill

Archive for category Commentary

Proposed regulations for Mauna Kea, September 2018

Hirono (D,HI) v. Kavanaugh re Hawaiian racial entitlement programs and converting a racial group into a federally recognized tribe.

Multimillion dollar renovation of Thomas Square in Honolulu has secessionist and racial supremacist motives.

Hawaiian names for Honolulu train stations — weaponizing Hawaiian language to assert racial dominance

Comments on Linda Zhang, “Re-Building a Native Hawaiian Nation.”

Census race and gender questions need fixing. Mixed race respondents should tell percentages.

Kaniela Ing, Hawaii legislature committee chairman, unethically disappeared written testimony by the same author on two different bills on the same day.

HB1297 about Hawaiian sovereignty; and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

HB118 enacting racial restriction on running for office, and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

Native Hawaiians Study Commission majority report 1983

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