LIHUE — Representatives of the Reinstated Hawaiian Government organization set up signs and lawn chairs at the Lihue Aairport Gateway intersection on Wednesday. About 20 Kauai residents took part in the rally. They said their protest was staged to educate
LIHUE — Representatives of the Reinstated Hawaiian Government organization set up signs and lawn chairs at the Lihue Aairport Gateway intersection on Wednesday.
About 20 Kauai residents took part in the rally. They said their protest was staged to educate the people of Kauai about native Hawaiian sovereignty issues, including what to do with ceded lands and former crown lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom now in control of the State of Hawaii.
“This is a campaign to safeguard Hawaiian assets, Hawaiian Homes and OHA are not protecting Hawaiian assets,” said Keo Kauihana of Anahola. “This is an effort to have them think out of the federal framework.”
Kauihana referred to Arakaki v. Cayetano, a civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in March 2002 challenging the constitutionality of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Department of Hawaiian Homelands providing services solely on racial qualifications.
The two state agencies were created to place Hawaiians on lands that were considered ceded lands and kept in trust after the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893.
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Rice v. Cayetano that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ native Hawaiians-only election policy was unconstitutional because it was based on race. In another federal suit, Arakaki v. Cayetano, it was contended that both OHA and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands should be dissolved because any race-based governmental office is unconstitutional. If OHA and DHHL are broken up under Arakaki v. Cayetano, Hawaii’s land assets would have to be managed by some other entity. According to an informational packet the group distributed, the solution is to “transfer the assets of OHA and DHHL to the government of the Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom.”
The group at the airport, and other native Hawaiian groups advocating sovereignty for the Hawaiian people claim they are not subject to the laws of the United States, but to international law, which they call the law of nations.
In 1993, the U.S. Congress and President Bill Clinton issued an apology to native Hawaiians, which the group claims proves that native Hawaiians never directly relinquished ownership of the lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
In 1999, those at the rally said, a native Hawaiian government was reinstated, and a government now exists that is led by a prime minister, has a legislature made up of 24 island representatives and 24 nobles with delegates from each main Hawaiian island. The group is now focusing on legislation in Congress proposed by Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka. The bill would reclassify native Hawaiians as a native people and shift the OHA land trust to reservation status funded with federal monies, creating an entity similar to the “nation within a nation” concept that controls Native American reservations on the Mainland.
On the Web: http://www.reinstated.org.
