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Inouye unfairly accused
of misleading Senate

THE ISSUE Two former U.S. senators have accused Senator Inouye of betraying his past statement by supporting the Akaka Bill.

MEMBERS of the U.S. Senate are known for their highly collegial relationship, so last week's attack on Senator Inouye's integrity was extraordinary, even though it came from two former senators. Their accusation is baseless, distorting Inouye's remarks during a 1993 Senate debate leading to enactment of a congressional resolution apologizing for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century earlier.

Former Republican Sens. Slade Gorton of Washington and Hank Brown of Colorado made the allegation last week in an op-ed column published by the Wall Street Journal. The column maintains that the Akaka Bill is a "betrayal" of statements made by Inouye in the debate about the apology resolution and "repudiates" a promise he made.

It does nothing of the kind. In the 1993 debate, Gorton contended that "the logical consequences of this (apology) resolution would be independence." He sounded a foolish alarm that it would be "a signpost pointing toward that dark and bitter road" of "ethnic politics and claims to particular pieces of land."

Inouye called Gorton's prognosis "a painful distortion of the intent" of the resolution's authors. He explained that the apology would be "a first step ... to bring about some understanding and reconciliation.

"Are native Hawaiians Native Americans?" Inouye asked rhetorically. "This resolution has nothing to do with that. This resolution does not touch upon the Hawaiian homelands."

Gorton told the Star-Bulletin's Sally Apgar that he and Brown, both of whom voted against the apology resolution, were concerned that it "would be used for the basis of something like the Akaka Bill in the future, and it seems to me were assured it would not be." No such assurance was given -- only that the resolution by itself had nothing to do with whether Hawaiians should be considered Native Americans.

Supporters of Hawaiian recognition have cited language in the apology resolution to build their case. For example, Office of Hawaiian Affairs legal consultant Jon Van Dyke has argued that Congress, through the apology, "has explicitly acknowledged a special relationship" between the federal government and Hawaiians.

The apology resolution states that Hawaiians "lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient social system based on communal land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture and religion." The resolution also states that the Hawaiians "never relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people."

In its 2000 decision opening OHA elections to non-Hawaiian voters, the U.S. Supreme Court called Van Dyke's contention about the existence of a legal U.S.-Hawaiian relationship "a matter of some dispute" but went no further. Enactment of the Akaka Bill is needed to resolve that dispute by placing Hawaiians on an equal legal footing with other indigenous peoples of America.

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