Posts Tagged Hawaiian tribe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note added by Ken Conklin on December 12, 2017:

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

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

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

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

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

Note added by Ken Conklin on December 3, 2019:

Tim Chey’s ecumenical Christian movie “The Islands” is finally being released on December 6, 2019 in many dozens of theaters scattered throughout the mainland and in Hawaii. Rumor has it that the film no longer includes the racially inflammatory scene falsely depicting U.S. Marines invading the Palace and arresting the Queen.

Events in Hawaii during the two years since filming wrapped prompted Ken Conklin to take another look at the battle between Christianity vs. the ancient Hawaiian religion for the hearts and minds of today’s ethnic Hawaiians. The ancient Pagan religion is being revived for political purposes, to support a desire for racial supremacy in government decision-making and land use policy. This has been seen most clearly in the protests over the TMT telescope project on Mauna Kea. Chey’s movie focuses on the heroism of a high chiefess invoking the Christian God in 1824 to stop a volcanic lava flow threatening Hilo. But 57 years later, in 1881, a very powerful native princess ignored the Christian God and successfully prayed publicly to the volcano goddess Pele to stop the lava threatening Hilo in 1881 after the Christian community had failed. In 2018 a massive weeks-long volcanic eruption destroyed hundreds of homes in the Puna area of Hawaii Island, but there were no public appeals for either the Christian God or the Pagan goddess to stop the lava. Both Christianity and Hawaiian paganism are in a steep decline; but the ancient Hawaiian religion is definitely winning the battle as seen at Mauna Kea. For further discussion see the following new webpage by Ken Conklin:

The rise and fall of Christianity in Hawaiian politics. Ethnic Hawaiian race-nationalists are currently rejecting Christianity and reviving their ancient Pagan religion as a political weapon to assert racial supremacy over government decision-making and land ownership. Something similar happened in the 1800s. A movie released December 6, 2019 portrays a heroic native Hawaiian chiefess publicly defying the volcano goddess Pele and invoking the Christian God to stop lava from destroying Hilo in 1824; but in 1881 a powerful native Hawaiian princess saved Hilo by publicly praying to Pele after Christian missionaries and their followers had failed to stop the lava.

https://tinyurl.com/tbbb7f2

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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.

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

—————

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

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

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

Ҥ13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

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

————–

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

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

SECTION 1. Section 13D-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:
Ҥ13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not currently registered as a lobbyist with the state ethics commission.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

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

————–

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

TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s one major bad thing about this bill?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Testimony in opposition to Department of Interior proposal to create a Hawaiian tribe by administrative rule change

August 19, 2014 was the final day to submit testimony regarding the Department of Interior Advance Notice of Proposed Rule-Making to create a Hawaiian tribe and give it federal recognition by an administrative procedure or executive order without Congressional action.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-06-20/pdf/2014-14430.pdf

At least 2069 written comments were submitted during the 60 day comment period. A large majority were opposed to the Department of Interior proposal. The following seven testimonies are especially valuable in opposition because they explicitly rely upon the fundamental principles of racial equality and the unity of all Hawaii’s people under the undivided sovereignty of the State of Hawaii:

(1) Kenneth R. Conklin of the Center for Hawaiian Sovereignty Studies
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOI-2014-0002-0887
and
http://big09.angelfire.com/ConklinTestmnyDOI081514RulesChangeHawnTribe.pdf

(2) Keli’i Akina, President, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposeGRIHKeliiAkina.pdf

(3) Hans A. von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/pdf/LM136.pdf
and
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposeHeritageVonSpakovsky.pdf

(4) Paul M. Sullivan
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposePaulSullivan.pdf

(5) H.W. Burgess
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposeHWBurgess.pdf

(6) Sandra Puanani Burgess
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposeSandraPuananiBurgess.pdf

(7) Jack Miller
http://big09.angelfire.com/ANPRMopposeJackMiller.pdf

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