Archive for category Commentary

TMT Mauna Kea U of Calif Regents Oral Testimony Given on 9/16/20

Sep 16

Posted by Ken Conklin in #MaunaKea, #TMT, Commentary, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian sovereignty, Native Hawaiians | Comments off

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

BACKGROUND: Hawaiian sovereignty activists have protested against the University of Hawaii proposal to build a thirty-meter telescope as part of the astronomy campus atop Mauna Kea. One of the major elements of their protest is the claim that Mauna Kea is a sacred place which TMT would desecrate — a claim sincerely believed by some but also asserted falsely for political advantage by many activists who have no religious beliefs or even conflicting beliefs. Several years ago they forcibly blocked the access road to disrupt a blessing ceremony customarily done when beginning a new project. Then in 2019 and 2020 a mob of hundreds of protesters forcibly blocked the access road to prevent construction from beginning, rotating mob members, building permanent tents and other facilities squarely on the road, and placing kupuna (elders) on their front line to dissuade police from enforcing the law. A timid, fearful, politically correct governor and mayor tolerated the year-long blockade until the COVID-19 virus forced everyone to go home.

The TMT project, like other observatories that have operated for decades, is funded by a consortium including universities on the mainland and around the world. The activists have sent their leaders to meet with the regents or boards of directors of some of those institutions to lobby them to withdraw from the project, thus undercutting its financial base. In response the University of California Board of Regents held hearings over the internet with livestreaming, and invited public testimony by telephone (to avoid infection from the COVID-19 virus). Below is Ken Conklin’s time-limited testimony from Wednesday September 16, 2020.

Aloha kakou,

‘O Ken Conklin keia mai ke ahupua’a ‘o He’eia, Ko’olaupoko, O’ahu, Hawaii.

I am Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D., a retired professor of Philosophy.
I have lived in Kane’ohe for 28 years, have studied Hawaiian history and the ancient religion in depth, and speak Hawaiian with moderate fluency.

Some ethnic Hawaiians oppose the TMT project because they claim Mauna Kea is a sacred place, and TMT would be a desecration of of it.

Here are three reasons why that claim should be rejected:

1. Most ethnic Hawaiians today are Christians. The real disrespect of ancestors and desecration of the ancient religion comes at the hands of ethnic Hawaiians who today abuse it as a mere pawn in their political chess game. The four primary native Hawaiian leaders, exercising self- determination on behalf of their people, officially abolished their old religion in 1819, when Kamehameha died, the year BEFORE the Christian missionaries arrived. They were King Liholiho Kamehameha II; Keopuolani who was Kamehameha’s sacred wife and mother of the next two Kings; Ka’ahumanu who was Kamehameha’s favorite wife and acted as co-ruler with Liholiho; and Kahuna Nui (High Priest) Hewahewa. They abolished the old religion by publicly violating an important taboo at a large banquet and then ordering the heiaus (stone temples) and wooden idols to be destroyed throughout all the islands. Today’s ethnic Hawaiians are welcome to invent any religion they wish; but cannot claim the old religion remains authoritative.

2. According to the most widely-recognized creation legend from the old religion, the goddess who gave birth to Haloa, the primordial ancestor from whom all ethnic Hawaiians are descended, was Ho’ohokukalani . Her name literally means “She who placed the stars into the heavens.” She gave birth to Haloa on Mauna Kea. Therefore Mauna Kea is exactly the right place where mother goddess Ho’ohokukalani should be worshipped by her descendants. Telescopes are today’s implements whereby Hawaiians today can worship their primordial goddess Mother who placed the stars into the heavens.

3. It would be unconstitutional for any governmental agency, including the Board of Regents, to adopt a religion as the basis for making laws or regulations. The First Amendment to our Constitution commands that there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Neither the U.S. nor State of Hawaii nor State of California nor Board of Regents is allowed to elevate the ancient Hawaiian religion, nor any ersatz reinvented version of it, as the authority for making government decisions. No matter how much you may respect the ancient religion, no matter how much you may admire the modern people who reinvent that religion as a basis for their own political activism, you must ignore that religion when setting government policy for the shared use of Mauna Kea by all the people of our multiracial society.

Tags: #TMT

Unity and Equality — Fundamental Principles to Guide Hawaii’s Future

Sep 12

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian sovereignty | Comments off

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

These four civil rights principles should guide Hawaii’s future. They are widely accepted but need stronger application. Good people should stand up publicly to proclaim them, and defend them against radical activists noisily demanding special rights based on race or religion. First I’ll state these simple, clear principles; then explain them.

1. Equality before God: All humans are equal in the eyes of God regardless of race.

2. Equality under the law: Government should treat all people equally under the law regardless of race.

3. Unity with America: Hawaii is 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, not divided along racial lines.

1. Those who don’t believe in God, or believe in 400,000 gods, have other ways to say it. “All men [people] are created equal.” Don’t believe in creationism? Natural Law gives every human equal worth and inalienable rights. A beautiful Hawaiian creation legend says the gods mated and gave birth to these islands as living beings. Later the gods mated and gave birth to the first human from whom we all are descended. Thus humans are children of the gods and brothers/sisters to the ‘aina. Unfortunately some activists twist this legend to say only people with Hawaiian blood have this genealogy; therefore ethnic Hawaiians have a god-given right to rule Hawaii. Using religion or race as a basis to demand political power in Hawaii is just as unacceptable as jihad in the Middle East, fascism in Europe, or white nationalism in South Carolina.

2. Equal treatment under the law means there should be no special rights or government entitlement programs for one race preferentially or exclusively. Hawaii has many hundreds of such programs. They are illegal under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and morally repugnant as “institutional racism” comparable to Jim Crow laws in the old South. For each program, either open it so all races have access or shut it down. If “Native Hawaiians” are truly the most needy, then they will receive most of the help if help is given based on need alone. Article 12 Section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution grants special rights to Native Hawaiians for “traditional and customary practices” interpreted to include trespassing for shoreline access, religious practices, or gathering certain materials. The pono way to honor that provision while also honoring equality under the law is to extend the traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians to all citizens. In the Kingdom those rights were for everyone regardless of race (“hoa’aina” meant “tenant” not “native tenant”; “kanaka” meant race-neutral “person”).

3. The Hawaiian revolution of 1893 was done entirely by local men while 162 U.S. peacekeepers, present for fear of rioting or arson, were never needed. Hawaii remained an independent nation until 1898. The Republic was given full-fledged international recognition as the rightful successor government by Emperors, Kings, Queens, and Presidents of at least 19 nations, including Queen Victoria — all personally signed letters congratulating President Dole. In 1897 the Republic offered a Treaty of Annexation to the U.S., which the U.S. then accepted. Losing Senators complained that ratification by both House and Senate was not correct procedure for a Treaty. But neither Hawaiian secessionists nor U.N. has standing to overrule the method chosen by the sovereign U.S. to make its internal decision to ratify what the Republic of Hawaii offered. Yes we are Americans.

4. What Kamehameha hath joined together, let no politicians rip asunder. The people and lands of Hawaii should remain unified under the single sovereignty of the State of Hawaii, not divided along racial lines — no race-based government federally recognized as an Indian tribe.

* Dr. Conklin has lived in Kane’ohe since 1992. He is a retired professor of Philosophy. His book “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State” has multiple copies in library branches and is also available from his website “Hawaiian Sovereignty: Thinking Carefully About It.”

Tags: aloha for all, equality, unity

Conklin rebuttal to Bill Fernandez, “The Temple of Science”

Aug 11

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian sovereignty, News, Reference | Comments off

Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. provides a rebuttal to the following article:
Bill Fernandez, “The Temple of Science,” The Garden Island [Kaua’i newspaper], August 9, 2019, Guest Commentary.
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2019/08/09/opinion/the-temple-of-science/

The Garden Island newspaper editor’s tagline says “Bill Fernandez is a former attorney, judge and mayor, is an author and is a resident of Kapaa.” So Mr. Fernandez is not some crazy sovereignty activist whose ignorance and zealousness cause him to twist history and say outright falsehoods in a manner which an attorney might call “excited utterance.” His essay should be taken seriously, which is exactly how he intends it to be taken. I will provide a point-by-point rebuttal to his numbing litany of grievances. This rebuttal is too detailed (and perhaps boring) to be published in a newspaper. Truth is often boring, so please bear with me.

Bill Fernandez was born and raised on Kaua’i and then went to the mainland [California] for college, where he became a successful lawyer, mayor, and judge. So he is an example of local boy makes good on the mainland, retires, and comes “home” to Kaua’i. See a biography of him published in [surprise!] the same newspaper two months before this essay: “Bill Fernandez honored by Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association” as the honoree of the year and paraded through Waikiki, article in The Garden Island newspaper on June 12, 2019 at
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2019/06/12/hawaii-news/bill-fernandez-honored-by-kamehameha-schools-alumni-association/

Therefore he’s a big fish in a small pond, gets a lot of local respect. The local newspaper will publish whatever he submits to them and has done so for years, even if it is bombastic and filled with falsehoods. And of course it would be “rude” and unacceptable for public relations to publish any aggressive rebuttal, as well as impractical to publish a lengthy and boring one.

First, Conklin’s overall, general, very quick analysis of the motive of Mr. Fernandez. After that, rebuttals are given to specific points in the order they are raised by Mr. Fernandez.

——-

Conklin’s overall, general, very quick reply concerning motive of Mr. Fernandez:

Victimhood is a wonderful asset to have. If you can persuade people that you’re a victim, that gives you the right to seek sympathy, and to demand reparations. Sympathy leads to political power, and reparations lead to wealth. See webpage
“The Hawaiian Grievance Industry — Panhandling for Race-Based Handouts and Political Power” at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/grievanceindustry.html

One of the strange things about politics in Hawai’i is the aggressiveness of racial profiling and racial stereotyping for fun and profit. But surprisingly, in Hawaii the profiling and stereotyping are done by ethnic Hawaiians against ethnic Hawaiians as a racial group! Ethnic Hawaiian leaders love to portray their group as having the worst statistics for cancer, heart disease, drug abuse, incarceration, poverty … the list goes on and on. The idea is to make the general public feel sorry for them and give them political power to manage their own affairs; and to use the data to get government and philanthropic grants for “research studies” whose main purpose is to do more studies to get more data to bolster more grant applications while building a permanent cadre of highly paid bureaucrats and leaders (without actually doing research to find out how the “Hawaiian gene” causes these bad things [there is no real connection and probably no Hawaiian gene] or how to cure the problems biologically). See detailed analysis and examples in webpage
“Native Hawaiian victimhood — malpractice in the gathering and statistical analysis of data allegedly showing disproportionate Native Hawaiian victimhood for disease and social dysfunction. How and why the Hawaiian grievance industry uses bogus statistics to scam government and philanthropic organizations, politicians, and public opinion.” at
http://big11a.angelfire.com/NatHwnVictimhoodStatScam.html
See also webpage
“For Hawaiians Only. Webpages identifying and describing government funded racial entitlement programs providing benefits exclusively to Native Hawaiians using taxpayer dollars from the U.S. and State of Hawaii.” at
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/ForHawaiiansOnly.html

During the past 20 years Mr. Fernandez occasionally wrote essays supporting the Akaka bill to create a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe as a way of providing legal defense for hundreds of racial entitlement programs, and other essays to support Kamehameha Schools’ racially exclusionary admissions policy. To find some of those items go to the front page of my website at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/
and use the little internal search engine for these two pairs of keywords (one pair at a time)
Fernandez Akaka
Fernandez Kamehameha

Mr. Fernandez, being a former lawyer and judge, might have some experience with lawyers who sue insurance companies on behalf of clients who suffered minor injuries in a fender-bender. A client’s car might have been rear-ended at a stop light by the car behind him traveling at 2 MPH; client claims whiplash caused severe neck injuries and lawyer sues for a bazillion dollars for medical injuries and “pain and suffering.” Of course the injuries and pain will be grossly inflated, and disabilities with unrelated causes will be ascribed to the fender-bender, in hopes that the damages awarded by the jury will be huge (along with the lawyer’s 1/3 contingency fee).

———

Fernandez: “Suppression of the Hawaiian culture began in 1820 when missionaries arrived and decreed that Hawaiian culture and language, the hula, mele, oli, chants, and songs were immoral, lewd, and pagan.

Conklin: Fernandez should be reminded that the missionaries had no authority to decree anything. They were welcomed by the native chiefs in 1820, AFTER the native leaders had already abolished the old religion in 1819, the year before the missionaries came. Any new laws were “decreed” not by missionaries but by the dictatorial authority of the native kings and chiefs exercising self-determination on behalf of the natives.

The old religion was abolished publicly and decisively by the 4 top leaders of the natives themselves at a huge lu’au that was held soon after the death of Kamehameha The Great to introduce his elder son Liholiho who was now Kamehameha II. The leaders abolished the old religion by publicly breaking the ‘aikapu (men and women must eat separately). These 2 men and 2 women sat down together and ate — a sacrilege punishable by immediate death — and the assembled crowd gasped in horror until a short speech was given.

1. King Liholiho Kamehameha II; the elder son of Kamehameha The Great;

2. Keopuolani, his biological mother, the “sacred wife” of Kamehameha The Great, had the highest spiritual mana in all Hawaii and the kapumoe (anyone nearby must lie face down in the dirt to avoid polluting her mana);

3. Ka’ahumanu his stepmother and favorite wife of Kamehameha The Great, who made a political coup by stepping forward at the lu’au immediately after breaking the ‘aikapu; she stood next to Liholiho and boldly took over the government by announcing “We two shall rule together” and proceeded to be kuhina nui (regent) for both Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III for many years;

4. Hewahewa, the kahuna nui (high priest) of the old religion. By the way, although “hewa” means “sin”, his name instead referred to sacred dancing.

Today’s activists on Mauna Kea and in other political actions disrespect the clear choice of their ancestral leadership by trying to revive the dead religion they killed, and also by using that deeply revered old religion as a mere pawn in today’s political games.

————-

Fernandez: “This suppression continued [from 1820 missionary arrival] until the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s.”

Conklin: Mr. Fernandez conveniently overlooks the fact that the monarchy retained absolute power over lawmaking and administration of justice, until the first Constitution was proclaimed in 1840 creating a legislature and judiciary and giving rights to individuals. Further, the monarchy retained absolute ownership of all Hawaii lands including the right to take back previous land grants on the whim of the King, until the Mahele process began in 1848 to create private fee-simple land ownership. Fernandez overlooks the fact that the monarchy continued until the revolution of 1893 overthrew it. He overlooks the fact that at least 6 native Hawaiians were on the committee that wrote the Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, and the Speaker of the House was full-blooded native former royalist John Kaulukou. Fernandez overlooks the fact that the first and second Territorial Delegates to the U.S. Congress, elected by public vote of all citizens without racial restriction or property requirements, were Native Hawaiians Robert Wilcox and [former] Crown Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole. He forgets that the Territorial legislature, elected by vote of all citizens, had a majority of Native Hawaiians for three to four decades, until World War 2. John Waihe’e was Governor of Hawaii for 8 years, 1996 – 2004. Native Hawaiian members in the state Senate and House continue to be roughly in proportion to their population, including powerful committee chairmanships and leadership positions. There has been a huge renaissance of Hawaiian culture and language starting in the 1970s and strengthening through now, perhaps most visible in hula [televised Merrie Monarch and Prince Lot annual hula festivals], voyaging canoes [Hokule’a and many others], and song contests [televised annual Kamehameha School]. What suppression is Mr. Fernandez talking about? The only suppression is any shred of objectivity in Fernandez’ mind.

——–

Fernandez: “Hawaiians lost their land to the colonizers.”

Conklin: Whoa! The Government lands of the Kingdom remained under control of the monarch and legislature where natives held the great majority, and the Crown lands remained property of the monarch and then of the Kingdom government for 73 years after the missionaries arrived, until there was no more crown after 1893. That’s 2/3 of Hawaii’s land that was NOT “lost to the colonizers.” The largest private landowner (large in both body and landholdings!) was Princess Ruth Ke’elikolani, who gave her land to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, who gave the combined lands of Ruth and Pauahi to Kamehameha Schools — approximately 10% of all the lands in Hawaii even to this day. Then there are the 203,000 acres set aside for native Hawaiians in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920; and other lands such as the entire Kahana Valley on O’ahu. Regarding Kahana Valley and “lost land”: It’s amusing how one activist (Robert Stauffer) wrote a whole book claiming that Kahana Valley fell out of Hawaiian ownership simply because it became owned by Mary Foster, who had “only” 1/4 Hawaiian blood. See my detailed book review
“Kahana: How the Land Was Lost by Robert H. Stauffer. BOOK REVIEW” at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/staufferkahana.html

———-

Fernandez: “Colonizers also know that suppression of native language is key to subjugating a native people. Look at Hawaii. After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, they banned the use of the Hawaiian language (Act 57, section 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii). This law led to the suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government, and the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.”

Conklin: Judge Fernandez, Your “Honor”, you need to read what the law actually said and learn how it was implemented. You — a lawyer and judge — need to read what the law said! It’s easy to tell a lie and move on; it’s harder to explain the truth. Bear with me. This is a topic where I am an expert witness.

The Hawaiian kingdom had a compulsory school attendance law, which was continued under the Provisional Government, Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaii. Any school attendance law must include a definition of what constitutes a “school.” To make sure parents or factories or taro farms cannot get around the law by establishing sham “schools,” the government defines the minimum requirements that must be met before a “school” is certified as meeting the requirements of the attendance law. Such minimum requirements for facilities, curriculum, and performance review apply to all schools, both government and private. Government certification of schools does not prohibit other schools or academies. For example, Christian churches can operate “Sunday schools” or Buddhist temples can have “Dharma schools” for religious instruction; or ethnic groups can set up after-school or weekend academies to perpetuate a culture and language — the Japanese did that with hundreds of after-school academies throughout the 1900s and continuing now.

Following the revolution of 1893, the Republic of Hawai’i passed a law more than three years later, in 1896, specifying that English must be the language of instruction in any school receiving “recognition” or certification as meeting the compulsory attendance law. Here is the exact wording of that law:

1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii, Act 57, sec. 30: “The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department.” [signed] June 8 A.D., 1896 Sanford B. Dole, President of the Republic of Hawaii.

The law clearly concerns only schools, not society at large and certainly not newspapers. It does not single out Hawaiian language at all — it applies equally to all languages other than English, including Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, etc. The majority of Hawaii’s children at that time were children of Japanese and Chinese plantation workers, and there were also numerous immigrants from Portugal working on the plantations, mostly as lunas. The law wanted every citizen or long-term resident to have a language in common that they all could speak — especially Japanese and Chinese. The Republic was looking forward to annexation to the United States. Every child born in Hawaii would grow up to become American citizens after annexation, and English would be essential for citizen participation in government and commerce. The law does not prohibit establishing private after-school or weekend academies where the medium of instruction could be Hawaiian (or any other language) — it merely states that such schools will not be recognized by the government as satisfying the requirement that all children must attend school. The law clearly states that other languages (including Hawaiian) may be taught in a language course. Hawaiian language courses were offered at Kamehameha School, but Spanish was more popular with the students. And in fact the Territorial legislature passed laws appropriating money to publish Hawaiian language dictionaries for use in the government schools.

Some ethnic groups, most notably first-generation immigrant Japanese plantation workers, did indeed have private schools for “after school” or weekend instruction in their language and culture (see astonishing information about just how prevalent this was, near the end of a webpage). Many, perhaps most Hawaiian parents went so far as to demand that their children speak only English at home as well as at school. There was simply no desire among Hawaiian parents to set up special academies to perpetuate Hawaiian language. Ethnic Hawaiians working on the plantations or elsewhere were legally free to do what the Japanese actually did. The Hawaiians were also being paid at a higher wage rate than the Japanese, who were at the bottom of the scale (until Filipinos started coming to Hawai’i in 1906 and occupied the bottom). The Japanese felt it was important to invest their time and money to perpetuate their culture and language; while the Hawaiian parents, to the contrary, felt it was important to demand that their children speak English and assimilate to Euro-American cultural values.

There are many, many details to explain, but not here in a mere comment. So let me give the following webpage links:

Was Hawaiian Language Illegal?
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl

Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned.
https://tinyurl.com/z77ogbq

“Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed” [I’ll be adding this ridiculous Fernandez article to the collection]
https://tinyurl.com/83xmb

“Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon” with 16 detailed subpages
https://tinyurl.com/668vqyz

————-

Fernandez: “This law [English as the language of instruction in schools] led to the suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government, and the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.”

Conklin: In recent years we have all learned that newspapers printed in Hawaiian language were published continuously from 1834 all the way through 1948. Some lasted only a short time with small circulation; others had large circulation and lasted for many years. There were both English-language and Hawaiian-language newspapers editorially favorable to the monarchy and opposed to annexation; and also newspapers in both languages happy with the overthrow of the monarchy and favorable to annexation.

Following the January 17 1893 revolution, the revolutionary Provisional Government did what all revolutionary governments in the world have always done with mass media (including radio and television nowadays) — they temporarily banned the publication of pro-monarchy newspapers. But in Hawaii such censorship to stifle possible rioting lasted only one or two weeks, and then freedom of the press resumed. There were newspapers that viciously attacked President Sanford Dole and published poetry and stories favorable to Lili’uokalani and other royalists. Perhaps even Mr. Fernandez might have heard the widely known stories about people loyal to Lili’uokalani visiting her when she was imprisoned in the Palace following the attempted Wilcox counterrevolution of 1895 — and they always brought her flowers WRAPPED IN ROYALIST NEWSPAPERS so that she could circumvent the ban on political information going to or from her and see what her friends were doing on her behalf. Clearly, there was no censorship or “suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government” as claimed by Fernandez.

Fernandez is also wrong that the language law caused “the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.” Surely a lawyer/judge can understand the difference between teaching a language as a subject of study vs. teaching subject matter in math, science, history, etc. through the use of that language as the medium of instruction. Read the wording of the law Judge Fernandez. It clearly says “where it is desired that another language [could be Hawaiian] shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance.” Families not already fluent in Hawaiian had no interest in getting their kids to learn it; whereas families that spoke Hawaiian at home could continue doing so and could also send their kids to after-school academies to be taught in Hawaiian just like the Japanese established Japanese-language academies; but most Hawaiian parents were glad to have their kids learn English in school and many such parents demanded their kids speak only English in the home as well — the parents would speak Hawaiian between themselves but required their kids to speak only English.

———–

Fernandez: “When annexation and the Organic Act created the Territory, the Hawaiian people received nothing because no government existed to protect them nor categorize them as the indigenous people of the eight islands of the archipelago. Unlike some North American tribes on the continent no treaty was enacted.”

Conklin: That’s absurd! The natives received whatever everyone else received, including American citizenship for all persons who were citizens of the Republic of Hawaii and for anyone born in Hawaii; and a guarantee that revenue from the ceded lands must be used “for education and other public purposes” for the benefit of all residents of the Territory including natives. Fernandez is in reality complaining that there were no racial entitlement programs benefiting ethnic Hawaiians exclusively based on race alone [until the first such law was enacted — the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920]. Today we have over a thousand racially exclusionary programs solely for the benefit of Native Hawaiians. I hope he’ll go to the library and read my book identifying what he apparently champions: “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State.” It’s also available for purchase direct from the publisher through
http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa

Fernandez’ talk about North American tribes shows that he continues to favor creation of a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe, either through legislation like the Akaka bill [Fernandez wrote essays favoring the bill when it was alive in Congress] or through implementation of the Department of Interior regulation proclaimed by publication in the Federal Register on October 14, 2016. That regulation is a sleeper agent of Hawaiian apartheid ready to be implemented whenever the tribalists feel political conditions are right.

A webpage reviews the history of efforts to get official government recognition of ethnic Hawaiians as a political entity or Indian tribe — a narrative summary covering 19 years 2000 through 2018, broken into two-year Congressional periods. Each “Congress” has a link to an index for that two year period, broken into sub-indexes in chronological order, linking to webpages providing full text of news reports, commentaries, and lawsuits regarding the Akaka bill in Congress, stealth maneuvers by Senator Inouye, Obama Department of Interior regulatory process, Hawaii legislature bills and resolutions, etc.; and efforts to gain local and international recognition of Hawaii as an allegedly continuing independent nation, through protests and lawsuits in Hawaii regarding Mauna Kea and taxes on land, and lobbying activity in the United Nations (both New York and Geneva). Go to
http://big11a.angelfire.com/AkakaHistSummary2000to2018.html

See a webpage describing how the DOI regulation 43CFR50 was proclaimed, including links to full text of the regulation and testimony in opposition during both comment periods:
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/Repeal43CFR50.html

————

After reciting his lengthy list of alleged victimhood grievances relying on history-twisting and falsehoods, Mr. Fernandez then spends the second half of his essay expressing his views about how Hawaiian culture before Captain Cook was superior to European and American culture, and how the Native Hawaiian blockade and takeover of Mauna Kea illustrates respect for the land and is a reassertion of Native Hawaiian self-determination. He cites the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and he says “Lieutenant Governor Josh Green got it right when on Mauna Kea he said, ‘It is time for reconciliation with Hawaii’s host culture.'”

Conklin has webpages showing that ethnic Hawaiians are not an indigenous people, that the term “host culture” is a poisonous concept implying that people with no Hawaiian blood are merely guests with no rightful standing in the ethnic Hawaiian homeland, and a direct response to Josh Green’s pandering screed.

The concept of Native Hawaiians owning the “host culture” is astoundingly divisive because it portrays everyone lacking a drop of the magic blood as being mere guests. It’s a racist political tactic which in recent years many academics and journalists have begun calling “othering” — portray ethnic Hawaiians as being entitled to govern Hawaii because, according to a creation legend, they are biologically children of the gods and brothers to the land in a way nobody else can ever be who lacks a drop of the magic blood — therefore portraying everyone else as “other” — different, alien, permanent outsider, mere (unwanted) guest or even invader and exploiter and oppressor. That’s exactly the tone of Bill Fernandez’ commentary.

An example of “othering” is the demand that nobody lacking a drop of the magic blood can use the word “Hawaiian” to describe themselves. Every “Hawaiian” by definition has the magic blood; every OTHER person can be a resident or “settler” but is always a “non-Hawaiian.” Because of pressure from ethnic Hawaiian activists, the Associated Press a few years ago included in its stylesheet that in news reports the word “Hawaiian” must be reserved for ethnic Hawaiians, while others can be called “Hawaii resident” or “Hawaii-born” or “native of Hawaii” but never “Hawaiian” or “native Hawaiian.” At this time there are Caucasians with no Hawaiian blood whose families have lived in Hawaii for 8 generations, and Asians whose families have 6 generations in Hawaii; but the language police call them non-Hawaiian will not allow them to call themselves Hawaiian.

Although I was not born or raised in Hawaii, I visited during three summers from 1982 to 1989, felt a spiritual calling, and moved permanently to Kane’ohe in 1992 — and since then I have never left Hawaii, for 27 years! I have traveled to dozens of nations and speak 6 languages. But Hawaii hanai’d (adopted) me, and I hanai’d Hawaii. I have probably lived in Hawaii longer than Bill Fernandez. For sure I have lived in Hawaii longer than most ethnic Hawaiians have been on this Earth, since Census says their median age is 26. I understand the culture and history, and speak Hawaiian with moderate fluency. Hawaii is my hanai homeland. I am Hawaiian, whether the language police like it or not. A well-known song describes my own odyssey: “He Hawai’i Au” also known as “I Keia Po”. My journey was lengthy, seeking a place in this world; but I have returned; and I clearly realize that home is in my heart; I will not wander again because I understand — I am Hawaiian.
Words (Hawaiian/English)
https://www.huapala.org/He/He_Hawaii_Au.html
Music (First video has song sung like a hymn with beautiful scenery and artifacts, then faster upbeat tempo; automatically followed by all-Japanese hula performance of it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ovXExp42I

“Are kanaka maoli indigenous to Hawai’i? Would the status of being indigenous give them special rights?”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/indigenous.html

“Akaka Bill: Replacing Democracy and Individual Rights With Indigenous Communal (Group) Rights”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/AkakaDemocIndivRtsVsCommunalGpRts.html

“Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights — The General Theory, and Why It Does Not Apply in Hawaii”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/indigenousintellproprts.html

“Were non-kanaka maoli historically full partners in Hawai’i, or only second-class guests?”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/fullpartners.html

“Asian Settler Colonialism [Hawaii] — book review”
http://www.angelfire.com/big09a/AsianSettlerColonialism.html

“Hawaiian religious fascism. A twisted version of a beautiful creation legend provides the theological basis for a claim that ethnic Hawaiians are entitled to racial supremacy in the governance and cultural life of the Hawaiian islands.” [includes a link to full text of the “Constitution of the Native Hawaiian Nation” adopted on February 26, 2016 in a monthlong meeting paid for by OHA, and an analysis of its racism and fascism — this is the tribal Constitution which would be submitted to the Department of Interior as part of the process for federal recognition of a Hawaiian tribe under 43CFR50]
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/HawnReligFascism.html

“The Aloha Spirit. How aloha for all, manifested in the twin pillars of unity and equality, can overcome Hawaiian religious fascism which is the theological basis for a claim to racial supremacy.”
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/AlohaUnityEquality.html

Ken Conklin’s Facebook reply to Lt. Gov. Josh Green’s pandering support for the Mauna Kea protesters:
https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.conklin.10/posts/1607282602740030

Tags: Bill Fernandez, Hawaiian grievance industry, Hawaiian language illegal, Hawaiian religion, Mauna Kea

Hawaiian language never banned; Goebbels Award to PBS-Hawaii

Mar 28

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News, Reference | Comments off

The Goebbels Award For Outstanding Use of Media for Propaganda Disguised As Fact

has been awarded jointly to PBS-Hawaii and Leslie Wilcox, its President and CEO;

for refusing to correct a racially inflammatory falsehood about the alleged banning of Hawaiian language in the schools of Hawaii. The falsehood was asserted repeatedly in advertisements through email, televised teasers, and website announcements ahead of an INSIGHTS panel discussion televised live on March 28, 2019 regarding the history and revival of Hawaiian language; and was anticipated to be also asserted by panelists during the discussion.

This Goebbels Award can be seen at
http://big11a.angelfire.com/GoebbelsAwardPBSLeslie032819.html

For a long time PBS-Hawaii President/CEO Leslie Wilxcox has been sending out an email blast on Fridays announcing major TV shows that will be broadcast during the following week. The contents of those announcements are also displayed on the station’s website, Facebook page, etc. for maximum publicity. The announcement sent on Friday March 22, 2019 included a description of an upcoming 60-minute live panel discussion in the long-running “Insights” series to be broadcast on Thursday March 28 from 8-9 PM.

The announcement can be seen where it was placed on the PBS-Hawaii website on March 22 at
https://www.pbshawaii.org/insights-on-pbs-hawaii-the-hawaiian-language/

The first sentence says:
“Ka ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i, the Hawaiian Language, once forbidden in schools and nearly lost, is flourishing again in these Islands.”

The racially inflammatory falsehood is this seemingly harmless phrase of four words in the first sentence: “…once forbidden in schools…”

The truth is that HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE HAS NEVER BEEN MADE ILLEGAL OR SUPPRESSED IN WRITTEN PUBLICATIONS, NOR IN PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SPEECH OR PERFORMANCES; AND HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE HAS NEVER BEEN FORBIDDEN BY LAW IN SCHOOLS. An amendment to the compulsory attendance law was passed in 1896 to require that any public or private “school” must use English as the language for teaching all subjects in order for that school to be certified as meeting the requirement that all children must attend “school” — but the amendment did NOT forbid after-school or weekend academies from using Japanese or Hawaiian or any other language, and did not prohibit teaching language courses. Japanese parents created such Japanese language academies for their children to learn Japanese culture and history; but Hawaiian parents chose not to do that.

Why is it racially inflammatory to assert that Hawaiian language was illegal in daily life or forbidden in schools? Because today’s Hawaiian sovereignty activists have repeatedly and loudly made such claims as a way of portraying Native Hawaiians as victims entitled to reparations. The U.S. in general, and “haoles” (white people) in particular, are called colonial oppressors who suppressed native culture and even “made our native language illegal right here in our own homeland.” “My grandma told me she was beaten by her haole teacher for speaking Hawaiian in school.” For decades the activists claimed that Hawaiian language had been made illegal. When they were challenged to cite such a law, or to name even a single person who had been jailed for speaking Hawaiian, they could not do so. When it became publicly clear that dozens of Hawaiian language newspapers had been openly published continuously through 1948, and the Kamehameha song contest had been running since 1920 etc., a few professors of Hawaiian language nevertheless continued to insist the language had been made illegal. The claim of general illegality has been forced by the facts to retreat to a claim of the language being banned in school. But it is false, and still racially inflammatory, and must be completely discredited. Comes now the PBS-Hawaii “Insights” TV show with a panel of Hawaiian-language zealots accustomed to earning a living based partly on asserting the now-disproved lie, with the PBS-Hawaii corporate leadership acting as accomplices by giving them a megaphone. Hawaiian is a beautiful language that deserves to be preserved and to thrive as an important element of the culture which is the core of what makes Hawaii a special place. The beautiful language must be liberated from an ugly political demagoguery broadcasting a racially incendiary lie which serves only to foment racial resentment and hatred.

The Goebbels Award provides a copy of the warning to PHS-Hawaii and its executives demanding a correction of the falsehood, which included a summary of evidence that it is false, an explanation of why it is racially incendiary, and links to webpages where detailed proof of falsity can be found.

See the Goebbels Award to PBS-Hawaii and Leslie Wilcox at
http://tinyurl.com/yyqj247m

Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl

Examples of published false claims that Hawaiian language was made illegal:
https://tinyurl.com/83xmb

Hawaii Dept of Education refused to correct the language-ban falsehood on its website and in its curriculum, and was given a Goebbels Award on April 25, 2016
https://tinyurl.com/z77ogbq

Tags: Goebbels Award, Hawaiian grievance industry, Hawaiian language, Hawaiian language ban, Leslie Wilcox, Native Hawaiian, PBS-Hawaii

Hawaii Legislature 2019 — Bills and Resolutions

Feb 10

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

Hawaii Legislature 2019 — Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty and Racial Entitlement Programs. Text, testimony, and outcome.

A webpage provides complete information on 19 bills or resolutions for which Ken Conklin has submitted testimony as of February 10, 2019:
https://tinyurl.com/y4ou3cg8

The webpage will be updated continuously whenever a new item is introduced (there might be many more).

Examples:

SB1501 appropriates $439 Million tax dollars for DHHL for 2 years!

HB402/SB1363 gives OHA $139 Million to make up for alleged underpayment of 20% of ceded land revenues, and then $35 Million per year starting now.

SB195/SB642 requires that the Hawaiian version of a law be held binding if the law in question was originally drafted in Hawaiian and then translated into English. Requires that ‘okina and kahako be used, when appropriate, in documents prepared by or for state or county agencies or officials.

HB1119/SB1451 Reestablishes Kingdom holiday as a permanent annual official state holiday, November 28: La Ku’oko’a, which the bill calls “Hawaiian Recognition Day” although that has always been translated as, and will be perceived as, “Hawaiian Independence Day.”

How Kamehameha School bribes other schools to be partners in racial segregation

Jan 21

Posted by Ken Conklin in Commentary, News | Comments off

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

A new webpage at
https://tinyurl.com/y8cny7ew
focuses on a diabolical technique whereby Kamehameha Schools (Bishop Estate) is now aggressively using its vast wealth (perhaps $15 BILLION) to enlist public and private schools and colleges as accomplices in racial segregation and also as partners in pushing race-supremacist curriculum not only to ethnic Hawaiian students but to all their students. Institutions in Hawaii and also mainland USA are being infected.

For about a century KSBE has ruthlessly enforced a policy of racial segregation in its admissions policy for full-time students from kindergarten through grade 12 on all of its campuses, except for a handful of students admitted to settle or forestall desegregation lawsuits. The funny thing is that the racist admissions policy is NOT required by the Will of founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, and was not in place in the school’s early years — it is a policy adopted by the trustees for their own political reasons, presumably related to facilitating ethnic pride and ethnic nationalism.
Despite propaganda to the contrary, the Will of KSBE founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop does NOT require a policy that only racially-defined Native Hawaiians can attend — even the mere “preference” for “children of the aboriginal blood” as set forth in Pauahi’s Will applies only to orphans and indigents, who are a small portion of the students.

The vicious tenacity whereby KSBE maintains its segregationist policy is demonstrated by the fact that in May 2007 the trustees paid SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS plus admission with full tuition for grades 7-12 to settle one lawsuit by a single student moments before the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to take that student’s desegregation case which trustees rightly feared would result in striking down the admissions policy.

The importance the trustees place on the segregationist admissions policy is also demonstrated by a decision made by the trustees at the time when scandals were capturing public attention and the IRS was investigating the corporate entity regarding its tax exemption: the trustees decided that if the IRS ever notified KSBE that it must choose between its tax exemption, worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year, or its race-based admissions policy, the trustees would give up the tax exemption to protect racial segregation.

A new webpage focuses not on the admissions policy for Kamehameha School itself, but on a diabolical technique whereby KSBE has been enlisting public and private schools and colleges as partners in racial segregation and also as partners in pushing race-supremacist curriculum not only to ethnic Hawaiian students but to all their students.

This technique allows KSBE to infiltrate and subvert the admissions policies and curricula of other schools and colleges in Hawaii and mainland USA by matching the number of dollars those other schools set aside to provide scholarships for students to pursue majors in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) — but ONLY for students who have Hawaiian blood. Most private colleges and K-12 schools have relatively small endowments, and have a limited amount of money which they can set aside each year to provide scholarships to academically well-qualified students whose families are financially needy. When KSBE now makes contractual agreements with those schools to provide matching funds but only for ethnic Hawaiians, KSBE provides a strong incentive to those other schools to take scholarship money away from students who lack Hawaiian blood in order to get extra money from KSBE. Those other schools will now be enthusiastic to recruit ethnic Hawaiians but far less eager to recruit students of other ethnicities, and will divert their limited pot of scholarship money toward ethnic Hawaiians at the expense of other races.

KSBE’s sudden announcement in December 2018 that it is focusing on STEM subjects as those are taught in other schools and colleges coincides with an announcement by University of Hawaii that its Mathematics department is now a world leader in curriculum development and teacher certification in the field of ethnomath.

What is ethnomath? It is the description of how any particular culture, past or present, has used unique culture-based ways of estimating, counting, measuring, constructing buildings, describing natural phenomena, etc. Ethnomath might study how astronomy was used for practical purposes in astrology, navigation, planting and harvesting; and learning how some cultures had priests and princes who secretly anticipated eclipses and thereby inspired awe, fear, or political revolutions. Ethnomath might create lists of the names of the counting-numbers in different cultures; comparing Roman numerals with Arabic numbers, visiting merchants in Chinatown to watch them using an abacus, analyzing the ratios found in Egyptian pyramids, the human body, and the spirals of certain plants. Ethnomath might study the temperature and speed of water flowing through a taro patch to analyze how those factors affect the health and size of the kalo (corm) and length of the ha (stalk). In Hawaii ethnomath will certainly include descriptions of how navigators on the hugely celebrated voyaging canoe Hokule’a use the positions of the stars to “calculate” which way to point the boat.

To a casual observer, STEM subjects like mathematics, biology, technology, etc. would seem to have objective subject matter not corrupted by politics, emotions, and race. These subjects are also academically difficult and demanding. Genuine Mathematics involves abstract reasoning to prove theorems, solving equations, calculus, etc., unlike ethnomath which focuses on low-level measurement and description of tangible objects used in everyday cultural activities. STEM subjects attracted few ethnic Hawaiian students who were generally more interested in studying culture-based “soft subjects” like history, anthropology, or political science; and staging political rallies; rather than keeping their noses to the grindstone in the library.

Ethnomath is a way for racialists to finally be able to invade those parts of the liberal arts curriculum that were previously safe from identity politics. So it’s no wonder that the University of Hawaii, with its huge “Hawaiian Studies” program, is proud to boast of being a world leader in ethnomath. And KSBE is happy to provide matching grants for colleges in Hawaii and on the mainland to give racially exclusive scholarships for students to major in ethno-STEM.

The detailed new webpage is entitled “How Kamehameha School bribes other schools to be partners in racial segregation” and can be found at
https://tinyurl.com/y8cny7ew

Tags: Bishop Estate, ethnomath, Kamehameha School, Native Hawaiian, race-based scholarships, racial pride, racial segregation, STEM subjects, University of Hawaii

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

The Mystery of Hawaiian History

Correcting historical revisionism and misconceptions promoted by the Akaka Bill

Archive for category Commentary

TMT Mauna Kea U of Calif Regents Oral Testimony Given on 9/16/20

Unity and Equality — Fundamental Principles to Guide Hawaii’s Future

Conklin rebuttal to Bill Fernandez, “The Temple of Science”

Hawaiian language never banned; Goebbels Award to PBS-Hawaii

Hawaii Legislature 2019 — Bills and Resolutions

How Kamehameha School bribes other schools to be partners in racial segregation

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

Archives

Meta