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!
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.
OR
(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.
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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
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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/
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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