Posts Tagged Akaka

Akaka tribe jurisdictional conflicts shown by mainland examples

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

Congress is on vacation for the month of August. Thus one-third of the 113th Congress (8 of its 24 months) has expired, and the perennial Akaka bill has still not been introduced. What’s going on? If a state-recognized Akaka tribe gets federal recognition, what kinds of jurisdictional conflicts would we see in Hawaii as shown by real conflicts now happening with Indian tribes on the mainland?

OHA is building its newest racial registry, Kana’iolowalu. Embarrassed that after a year only 9300 ethnic Hawaiians had signed up, OHA is now dragging more than 100,000 names onto the list, pulling from previous racial registries such as Kau Inoa, Project Ohana, Kamehameha Schools, etc. OHA is doing this without asking those people for permission. But Census 2010 counted more than 527,000 people claiming to be “Native Hawaiian”, so even if Kana’iolowalu gets 260,000 names (extremely unlikely) it would still be a minority of those eligible by race and a far smaller minority of Hawaii’s people.

In December 2011 I pulled together 13 news reports from the final 13 weeks of that year from various places on the mainland, concerning conflicts between Indian tribes and local communities that would clearly happen in Hawaii if an Akaka tribe gets federal recognition. For each situation I described the facts and cited a link to the full news report. This year I decided that instead of looking at a wide range of topics from a three month period, I would select news reports about a single topic from a single week. So at the end of July I put the following phrase into Google, including the quote marks: “tribal jurisdiction”; and I narrowed the search to the most recent week.

For details see http://tinyurl.com/kjoedjr

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Brief Summary of Bad Surprises in the New Akaka Bill

• Tribal casinos in Hawaii even if the state legalizes only church bingo
• Grabbing for federal, state, and even private lands in Hawaii
• Akaka tribe casinos competing against genuine tribes on mainland
• Grabbing federal handouts away from genuine tribes
• Pig in a poke — recognizing a tribe before it’s created
• Race the only requirement enforced for tribal membership
• Balkanize America — any “indigenous” group can now be a tribe

An article describing these points was published on Hawaii Reporter at
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/?p=80238

A detailed webpage includes quotes from text of the new Akaka bill, links to internet webpages, and extensive commentary.
http://tinyurl.com/9yadojp

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