Native Hawaiian
By Bruce Dunford
convention proceeds despite
community split
Associated PressHa Hawaii, the group sponsoring a Native Hawaiian convention, has announced that about 150 candidates have submitted nomination papers to be delegates.
However, a shouting match that erupted at a news conference on the state Capitol steps between Ha Hawaii organizers and a Hawaiian unhappy with the group exemplified the division within the Hawaiian community over the convention.
Thursday was the extended deadline for submitting nomination papers for candidates in a planned Jan. 17 Hawaiians-only election. That election will choose 85 delegates to a convention to propose the future political relationship between Hawaiians and the state and federal governments.
"We're very pleased with the number of people and the quality of candidates we have right now," said Kaipo Kincaid, executive director of Ha Hawaii, yesterday.
More applications postmarked on Dec. 10 are expected to arrive in the next few days from neighbor islands and the mainland, possibly with candidates for nine seats now without an applicant, she said.
"We have people at both ends of the activist spectrum: people that would be regarded conservative members of our community and people that would be regarded in a more active role," Kincaid said.
A convention was approved by Hawaiians participating in the Native Hawaiian vote in 1996.
That vote was put on by the state-funded Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council, which then disbanded and was succeeded by Ha Hawaii, a nonprofit group that has been raising private funds to pay for the Jan. 17 election.
Kincaid said the convention will chart its own course.
"They are an autonomous body who will operate in a manner that they see fit," she said. "They will convene, they will prescribe their own rules for governance of their own convention, they will sit and, we expect, take informational briefings from experts in the field and they will deliberate . . . on the model they will propose to the Hawaiian electorate as to what model of sovereignty they feel is best suited for the people of Hawaii.
"And there's no limitation on what they could be looking at. They could be considering anything from a monarchy to free association or any other form they care to choose," Kincaid said.
Delegates will likely organize soon after the election, she said.
Hawaiian groups opposed to the convention created the Kupono Coalition, which said Ha Hawaii's plans ignore the fact that fewer than half of the Native Hawaiians who received ballots for the 1996 Native Hawaiian vote actually participated.
The coalition contends that the convention is tainted because it is part of a state process started by the predecessor to Ha Hawaii. It is urging Hawaiians to boycott the Jan. 17 election.
The coalition instead supports a Hawaiian summit being scheduled next spring that leaders say will include all Hawaiian people and groups.
Ha Hawaii leaders say they are not tied to the state government.
"I think there are people out there who are not happy because they are not in control of the process. And that will always be the reality out there," said Ao Pohaku, a Ha Hawaii leader. "We will continue to ask our people to wake up and take a stand and make it positive, because this is the only real, real train that's moving."
