A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

A decade later, native Hawaiian activists, attorneys, and their supporters are still
fighting against the legislative language of bills that, while sticking to the arbitrary 50%
blood quantum definition, would maintain plenary power of Congress over them, and
would grant federal recognition only to a ‘domestic dependent nation.’ While the weary
and the moderates argue for accepting any amount of recognition, most community
leaders want true independence, arguing that “Hawaiian sovereignty and self-
determination are inherent – as acknowledged in the U.S. Apology Resolution – and,
therefore, cannot be legislated by the United States.” 398 Though there are many competing
models of the desired amount, range, and execution of Native Hawaiian sovereignty, the
idea of a land base is common to them all. Thus, Charles Ka’ai’ai’s following statement
is representative:
I have learned that occupying our land is essential if we talk about becoming
sovereign. We have to have a land base. This is the beginning of the exercising of
our sovereign rights. Being land based connects us to our other native rights:
water, ocean and land resources, fishing, hunting and gathering, allowing us to
continue to practice our cultural traditions. 399
On the other hand, one has to realize that native Hawaiians
are the only indigenous people under direct US governmental control who have no
legal standing to sue in federal court for breach of trust on their lands or for
malfeasance of that trust. By federal law, Native Hawaiians are wards of the state,
and specifically of the State of Hawai’i, and are thus – like children, the insane
and criminals – deprived of their basic right to sue their trustee, the State of
Hawai’i. 400
In 1978 the new state constitution established the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), an
organization that, among other tasks, is responsible for land distribution. Mililani Trask,
kia‘aina and spokesperson of Ka Lahui Hawai’i, claims: “The State’s policy is further
assimilation. The legislative reports underlying OHA have as their goal the promotion of
398 Kauanui in Honolulu Weekly 01/30-02/05/2002: 5.
399 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), He Alo A He Alo (Face to Face): Hawaiian Voices on
Sovereignty, Honolulu 1993: 69. Native Hawaiian land trusts include “200,000 acres of Hawaiian
Homelands and 1.4 million acres of ceded lands and the natural resources, including the shoals and reefs
which are submerged lands. In addition, we have millions of acres that are currently held by private trusts”
(116).
400 Reshela DuPuis, Documenting Community: Activist Videography in Hawai’i. Ann Arbor 1997: 5.
152