BY KENNETH R. CONKLIN, PH.D. – HB1627 is a bill in the Hawaii legislature to create a state-recognized ethnic Hawaiian tribe. In view of the failure of the Akaka bill in Congress, HB1627 contains much of the worst language from that bill but brought over from the federal to the state level. The bill’s text is 37 pages long and can be downloaded from
https://tinyurl.com/4r2oy77
The hearing notice became available only Thursday morning February 3, with written testimony due by 9:45 AM Friday, for a hearing to be held at 9:45 AM Saturday February 5. How’s that for short notice! Do they really want to hear from us? The notice says decision-making will follow the hearing. But sometimes decisions are postponed. Testimony can be submitted “late” in case the committee does not make a decision immediately. See the hearing notice for details on time and place of the hearing, and how to submit testimony by way of the internet. https://tinyurl.com/4lc9eft
Here is the testimony I submitted on Thursday. Feel free to expand on any portions you like, or make your own points.
To the House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs:
HB1627 is fundamentally the same as the federal Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill, also known as the Akaka bill; except that instead of having the federal government recognize the Akaka tribe, this bill would have only the State of Hawaii recognizing that tribe.
The clear purpose of the bill is to authorize the creation of an entity with governmental powers, but restricted to people who have at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood.
That racist concept is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Since all legislators have taken an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, any legislator who votes in favor of this bill has thereby violated that oath and must resign from office.
The concept of this bill also violates the first sentence of the first Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, sometimes called the “kokokahi” (one blood) sentence, which proclaimed “Ua hana mai ke Akua i na lahuikanaka a pau i ke koko hookahi, e noho like lakou ma ka honua nei me ke kuikahi, a me ka pomaikai.” In English, it can be translated into modern usage as follows: “God has made of one blood all races of people to dwell upon this Earth in unity and blessedness.” What a beautiful and eloquently expressed concept! HB1627 is an ugly and disgusting violation of that kokokahi sentence.
King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III wrote the kokokahi sentence as the first sentence of his Declaration of Rights in 1839, which was then incorporated in its entirety to become the preamble of the Constitution of 1840. In making that proclamation the King exercised sovereignty and self-determination on behalf of his native people, and on behalf of all people of all races who were subjects and residents of his Kingdom.
Today’s Hawaiians are ethically bound to respect the wisdom of their ancestors. They are also legally and morally bound to respect the full partnership between natives and non-natives which enabled the Kingdom to be established and to thrive. All subjects of the Kingdom were fully equal under Kingdom laws, regardless of race, including voting rights and property rights. When partners work together in full equality to create and sustain a business or nation, it is morally and legally wrong for one partner to toss out or set aside or segregate other partners.
A zealous minority within the ethnic Hawaiian minority demands racial separatism. Should we allow that? Will you legislators be accomplices to such evil?
Consider the historical struggle for identity within the African-American
community. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, and the early Malcolm X, advocated racial separatism and portrayed the white man as a devil. Some radicals called for setting aside several southern states for a Nation of New Africa. Fortunately Martin Luther King used Gandhi’s spiritual tool of non-violence to appeal to people’s inner goodness, which led to full integration. After his pilgrimage to Mecca Malcolm X understood the universal brotherhood of people of all races, but was gunned down by the separatists when he tried to persuade them to pursue integration.
In Hawaii we see a similar struggle now unfolding. Some demagogues use racial grievances to stir up hatred, and leaders use victimhood statistics to build wealthy and powerful institutions on the backs of needy people who end up getting very little help.
The Akaka bill, and HB1627, would empower the demagogues and racial separatists. These bills are supported primarily by large, wealthy institutions; not by the actual people they claim to represent. Institutions like the $400 Million Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and the $9 Billion Kamehameha Schools, seek to entrench their political power. They want an exemption from the 14th Amendment requirement that all persons be given the equal protection of the laws regardless of race.
But Hawaiians are voting with their feet against the Akaka bill. After seven years and untold millions of dollars in state government money for advertising (and free T-shirts!), fewer than one-fourth of those eligible have signed up for the Kau Inoa racial registry likely to be used as a membership roll for the Akaka tribe. Sadly, if either the Akaka bill or HB1627 passes then the separatists will be able to create their tribe even though the majority of ethnic Hawaiians oppose the idea. And 80% of Hawaii’s people, having no native blood, will see our beautiful Hawaii carved up without even asking us.
Do the racial separatists have a right to go off in a corner and create their own private club for members only? Perhaps. But should the rest of us give them our encouragement and our resources to enable them to do that? Absolutely not.
It’s time for this legislature to stop encouraging racial separatism. It’s time to stand up in support of unity and equality. Just say no to HB1627 and all other bills motivated by the same mentality.
Mr. Conklin, your rejection of the concept of racial distinctions or divisions, on the premise that race or nationality is a not recognized in American law, is flawed and misleading. Besides the unlawful American census that gathers info specifically on races, and besides the fact of DHHL, which is unlawful, you overlook what even your types extoll as a virtue of the American Republic. Namely, that the American legal system was and still is exceptional on the world scene, dare I say morally superior!! Not because America is a melting pot where all races can co-exist, but because as a limited government of the people, it can provide real equity (justice) in disputes, especially where property or an entire nation is stolen in the name of American justice. This we know is exactly what happened in Hawaii when the fraudulent, self proclaimed, Republic of Hawaii, unlawfully ceded Hawaiian National lands to the US. This happened on the heels of a series of treasonous acts which are recorded in Public Law 103-150. Let me direct you to the origin of the one blood passage you site and add that the term E Pluribus Unum, “out of many one,” doesn’t say out of many many as if many laws and nationalities where envisioned by the founders. liberals who reject Hawaiian sovereignty and or justice, seem to always hang their arguments on this seal. They do this while rejecting a fixed Constitution, which prohibits Congress and the US Military from acting outside of its enumerated duties, as if a Republic could exist using different or conflicting cultural norms such as enlightenment ideas we find now in Europe. Multiculturalism/ secular humanism, which seeks to re-make American into a cosmopolitan country, where international law (the Law of Nations) not US law, should, the humanists believe, govern and define human rights! The concept “out of many one” was never intended to promote internationalism or the melting pot ideal as so many suppose. Where old Israel had been subject to Biblical justice (a moral social order), and where it was similarly accepted that all Israel should follow the “one law” principle, a cosmopolitan outcome was not the intent of this whatsoever. Rather, it was “Justice and only justice” that was the intent of the one law principle. It was, we might say, the American equivalence of the Rule of law. A Cosmopolitan country was not the reason God demanded equality under the law in other words. Equality under the law did not mean each race or nation had the same equal standing as a faithful Israelite who was a full member of Israelite society. It did mean that no foreigner traveling with Israelites could be treated arbitrarily or personally. Israelites could not subject anyone, let alone a foreigner, to a extra provisions nor to outside laws. In Hawaii’s case, I and others contend that the one law principle, i.e., the rule of law, was bypassed in a fiat declaration authored by the unlawful Republic, formerly the Committee of Safety (the self proclaimed Provisional Government). So here is the origin of the passage you cited regarding “one blood.” Acts 17: 26 “(God) has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the BOUNDS OF THEIR HABITATION.” Bounds of their habitation meaning a contiguous territory and fixed laws, such as the sort Congress ignores even still as they seek to rewrite the meaning of the commerce clause. This we must remember is a government (top down) effort to amass more central power over Americans. The Nations in other words, are morally bound to keep within their God appointed habitation’s. Don’t forget It was God who deliberately confused the one language at the Tower of Babel, dividing humans into separate races so they don’t organize themselves towards an evil purpose. God fearing Americans know that Hawaii was not lawfully acquired, and they know that no matter how entrenched some are in the ideas that nothing wrong or unlawful took place, God will not be mocked. America and American’s will be constantly subject to divine sanctions (boarder and financial troubles), unless or until Congress reverses its stance on Hawaii. America has become the exact sort of imperial menace on smaller countries that it once swore never to be. For this it will suffer the kind of confusion and internal strife that is befitting of a infidel.
High Crimes are crimes committed by US diplomats and officers who overstep and abused their delegated authority in foreign matters. In defending the contention that Annexation and Statehood were both fraud’s and unconstitutional acts, I’ve deliberately tried to isolate the original problem of abuse of power from the issue of race where the typical purveyors of equality seems to thrive. I do this to avoid debating this in a political vacuum like Conklin does, which says on one hand that Statehood was legal and that the transition from independent Hawaii to a US State was lawful, while on the other saying that the racial provisions of that same Admissions Act of 1959, created a unconstitutional distinction or preferential treatment of Native Hawaiians. Conklin deliberately isolates race issues from the original frauds and high crimes only some of which are documented in PL 103-150. Making matters worse Akaka bill advocates continue to use this same identical framing as their legal constitutional grounding for an improved political classification that clarifies and recognizes Native Hawaiians as separate people’s, thus rewarding them “parody” along the lines of other recognized American Indian Tribes. Never forget that Conklin and others like him are speaking mainly for those who hold property in Hawaii, not for those who suffer injustice at the hands of our increasingly monolithic state Legislature. The measure at hand is a State law, which if passed into law will prove that the federal stronghold over Hawaii can be dismantled from within and that real justice is still a possibility. Conklin, like others who write for Hawaii Reporter seem to practice some kind of black magic with their insistence on equality while simultaneously denying that Hawaii State is unlawful.
To Noa Napoleon:
Don’t like what you said in your post “…like
others who write for “Hawaii Reporter” seem to practice some kind
of black magic.” I am a fine, upright Christian who learned to be
this way at Kamehameha School for Boys. Please know that and
excise me from your list of spooks. (Have you seen “Slices of
Life in Hawaii Volume 1,” it contains 68 of my Hawaii Reporter
writings–don’t think you’ll find anything to exorcise.
I followed your land stuff some years back, but now I doubt your
judgement calls: Black Magic? Auwe!
J. Arthur Rath
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