Officials want
part-Hawaiians
counted in federal
census data

Accurate data will improve
Hawaiian services,
officials say

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

STATE OFFICIALS from two Hawaiian agencies are returning from Washington, D.C., confident they have persuaded federal census officials to include those of mixed Hawaiian ancestry when they release data on native Hawaiians this summer.

They say it is important to show that while Census 2000 identified about 399,000 people nationwide as full native Hawaiians, it must also show the 476,000 people who said they are of part-Hawaiian ancestry.

"If the agencies do not aggregate the information this way, then our numbers are just going to disappear," said Jobie M.K.M. Yamaguchi, deputy director of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

"What the census information is showing is that for whatever reason ... a number of our people -- more than those who selected native Hawaiian alone -- selected native Hawaiian in combination with another race," she said.

Without such an accurate count, Hawaiian agencies may underestimate the number of Hawaiians they must serve, Yamaguchi said during a telephone interview yesterday from Washington, D.C.

Also, an increase in Hawaiians statewide could mean increases in funding.

Yamaguchi and Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona serve on an advisory committee to the U.S. Census Bureau and met with federal officials this week to stress the importance of including the minimum and maximum number of people who claim Hawaiian ancestry in official census data.

This is the first census in which Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders were counted in a separate category. In 1990 they were lumped together in what was the Asian and Pacific Islander category. The categories were changed in 1997.

The separation means all federal agencies are now required to collect independent data on native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, something that was not done in the past.

And to ensure the country's racial diversity is accurately counted, Census 2000 allowed people to choose more than one race category.

"I think this ability to identify more than one race and how that gets tabulated have been an issue of some discussion across the federal government, and is really an important one for us as native Hawaiians in our category," Yamaguchi said.

Census data released this week showed those who claim full or part-Hawaiian ancestry made up a total of 0.3 percent of the country's population of 281,421,906.

"At least now, the Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have their own numbers; we're not combined or collapsed into an Asian and Pacific Islander category," Apoliona said.

With 875,000 people nationwide with Hawaiian ancestry, OHA will have to discuss how far the agency's reach should go in helping better the conditions of Hawaiians, Apoliona said.

"We explained our point," she said. "I think it was received very well by the chief statistician, who is the recipient of all the comments for the Federal Register deadline, which is March 19," she said.

Data on races in Hawaii are now expected sometime next week.