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OHA to discuss
federal proposal
for native office

Reaction so far
has been mixed

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs board will discuss tomorrow its strategy on a proposal that may be introduced as federal legislation.

The proposal, drafted by the Native Hawaiian Task Force headed by U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, creates a permanent native Hawaiian office in Washington, D.C., and an interagency council to coordinate federal policy on Hawaiian programs.

It is being circulated throughout the native community with mixed response, including from members of a working group charged by the task force with providing input from the native community.

Attorney Beadie Dawson told the working group yesterday she is not willing to accept the short-form bill as written because it makes references to the 1993 congressional apology resolution, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 and other federal legislation that deals with Hawaiians.

Dawson, who along with the rest were named to the working group by Akaka, believes those laws should be left out of the bill to ensure they will not become sticking points for Congress, which has the power to amend or rescind those laws.

Instead, she suggested, the bill should focus simply on the federal recognition of Hawaiians as the indigenous people of Hawaii with a right to self-determination. It should also say the U.S. has a trust responsibility to support that sovereignty, she said.

"Let's clean up this bill and make it as simple as possible so it can pass," Dawson said.

The native working group is one of five groups hustling under a tight task force deadline to provide input on the bill, which addresses the political status of Hawaiians.

Their task is complicated by a lack of money to fly in neighbor island group members or to conduct public hearings on the proposal. A plan to have OHA use money already set aside for sovereignty education remains pending.

Hawaii's delegation by the end of next month wants to introduce legislation to protect the 160 statutes that affect native Hawaiians in the wake of the Rice vs. Cayetano decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. That ruling, which overturned the lower courts in Hawaii, opened up the state's Hawaiians-only election to all state voters.

Community leader Roy Benham favors the draft bill because it does what is needed right now: protection of federal race-based programs from others who want to eliminate them.

Others, however, see the time frame as too short to get extensive input from the community. Mililani Trask, an OHA trustee, argued for a public hearing before the bill is introduced so all Hawaiians can share their thoughts on it before it becomes part of the bill's congressional record.

Trask said opposition within the Hawaiian community on the measure before Congress could be used as strategy by members of Congress to block the bill.

Kina'u Boyd Kamali'i, former OHA trustee and state lawmaker, echoed recent comments by U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, who said publicly that the time frame the task force has given everyone is unrealistic and that there is no way the measure can get through a Republican-controlled House of Representatives by the end of September.

"The timetable for us is the end of May or the beginning of June," Kamali'i said.

"It's not going to happen because we haven't even taken it out to the community."

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