Kamehameha School’s long-standing admission policy giving preference to Native Hawaiians should remain intact, and federal judges should reverse a decision finding the policy discriminatory. Kaua‘i County Council took that united stand in approving on Wednesday a resolution asking state Attorney
Kamehameha School’s long-standing admission policy giving preference to Native Hawaiians should remain intact, and federal judges should reverse a decision finding the policy discriminatory.
Kaua‘i County Council took that united stand in approving on Wednesday a resolution asking state Attorney General Mark Bennett to call for the reversal of a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision this month that Kamehameha Schools policy is discriminatory.
Council members, who met during a meeting at the historic County Building, said the action they took was the right thing to do because Hawaiians have become dispossessed and lost since the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy.
They also said they felt keeping the policy intact would enable Native Hawaiian children to become better educated so they can lead more full lives.
“In my mind, I just saw this as history, heritage, culture, roots and lifestyle,” said council chairman Kaipo Asing, who is part-Hawaiian.
He and council vice-chairman James Kunane Tokioka, who also is part-Hawaiian, introduced the resolution, which councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura, who is of Japanese ancestry, said was timely and needed.
The resolution is nonbonding, and only expresses the wish of the council on a matter.
The measure was sent to Bennett, Gov. Linda Lingle and Mayor Bryan Baptiste.
Kamehameha Schools intends to file a petition to have the federal court rehear the case, Donna Aana-Nakahara, coordinator of Kamehameha Schools Kaua‘i Regional Resource Center, told the council.
If that effort fails, they will ask the United States Supreme Court to review the case and “reverse the decision of the 9th Circuit,” Aana-Nakahara said.
The resolution noted Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, “with great wisdom, bequeath the lands she inherited as the great-granddaughter and last royal descendent of Kamehameha the Great as a perpetual endowment for the establishment and support of Kamehameha Schools.”
Asing and Tokioka said the federal government’s 1993 Apology Bill acknowledged U.S. troops invaded a sovereign Hawaiian nation a hundred years earlier, and noted social and economic changes since then have devastated the Hawaiian people.
Against this “backdrop of loss and dispossession, the mission of Kamehameha Schools becomes vital,” the council members wrote.
The United States has set indigenous people apart from the populace, alluding to Native Americans, and have accorded them a “different status because of the dispossessions and losses they suffered, as America became the country that it is,” Asing and Tokioka wrote.
As the United States has treated such recognition as lawful and political, and not unlawful discrimination, government leaders should view Kamehameha Schools’ admission policy in the same light, the council members said.
Yukimura said the news of the court decision stunned people. “I think all of us were dismayed by the news:” she said, and people across the state want that decision reversed.
The decision doesn’t just affect Hawaiians, but every resident, as the Hawaiian culture is celebrated by all, she said.
In explaining his support for the resolution, councilman Jay Furfaro said chieftains recognize the need to “coexist” with the spread of western influence in Hawai‘i.
In recognition of that fact, the Hawaiian flag, its colors and configuration, was made to reflect the power of the ancient monarchy and the influences of the British and French empires, Furfaro said.
The flag bears the symbol of the Union Jack of the British Empire, eight bars representing the eight main Hawaiian Islands and the sequential colors of blue, red and white, the color sequence found in the national flag of France, Furfaro said.
The drafters of the 1993 Apology Bill recognized the need for U.S. reconciliation with the Hawaiian people, and understood the special relationship between Hawai‘i and the federal government as it relates to the statehood act of 1959, Furfaro said.
That act recognizes the special responsibility the United States has to its indigenous people, including Hawaiians, and reinforces the need for Kamehameha Schools student admission preference for Native Hawaiians, Furfaro said.
Councilwoman Shaylene Carvalho, a career lawyer and a retired deputy prosecuting attorney for Kaua‘i County, said “Kamehameha Schools has provided many, many opportunities for Native Hawaiian people.”
Keeping the admission policy intact will work for the betterment of future Native Hawaiian children and help perpetuate the culture, she said.
Carvalho said she herself attended Kamehameha Schools for a time, and her daughter graduated from a Kamehameha preschool programs. That exposure has enriched both their lives, Carvalho indicated.
She said the federal judges are wrong if they think the school excludes non-Hawaiians. Students have Hawaiian blood, but they are part-haole and are of Japanese, Chinese and Filipino ethnicity, she said.
The court decision suggests the federal judges didn’t understand that Congress has funded programs principally for the Hawaiians for many years, she said.
Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro said that if he could, he would encourage the judges to come to Hawai‘i and “see the culture.”
Once they understand how it worked, the judges would surely change their decision, knowing that the school policy would immensely help Nave Hawaiian children, including many who need financial help, Kaneshiro said.
Tokioka said many people have talked with him about the court’s decision and that they are in “total support of the structure of the school and its admission policy.”
The court ruling affects not only the school, but could, some day, threaten funding to the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, two agencies serving Hawaiians across the state.
Tokioka said his participation in a program at Kamehameha Schools in 1972 profoundly affected his life, gave him a deeper appreciation of his Hawaiian roots. While there, he leaned how to make a nose flute, an instrument of the ancient Hawaiians.
Asing said keeping the admission’s policy intact means educational opportunities for Hawaiians so they can “lead lives as full as possible.”
Aana-Nakahara said Native Hawaiian children need every break that comes their way, and keeping the admission policy intact will help.
“Many Native Hawaiians look to Kamehameha Schools as a way by which to obtain an education and to break the cycle of poverty and disadvantage,” she said.
She noted Native Hawaiian families have some of the highest poverty rates in the state and are twice as likely to be headed by a single parent, Native Hawaiian children in public schools have the lowest test scores, and Native Hawaiian youngsters have the highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse in the state.
- Lester Chang, staff writer, 245-3681 (ext. 225) and lchang@ kauaipubco.com.
