John Waihee

John Waihee thought back to his childhood, when the whole notion of Hawaiian sovereignty wasn’t even part of the political conversation.

Now, he said, most people agree on the basic historical facts. And Waihee, the recently appointed chairman of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, said that’s evidence of the real progress that supporters of the cause have made.

"How long have I been doing this stuff?" the former governor, at 65, wondered aloud. "It’s, like, spooky, you know? Forty years?

"Anyway, in general, back in the 1970s, most people thought, ‘I don’t mind helping Hawaiians,’ but had no knowledge of what happened to Queen Liliuokalani, and the rest of it.

"Now they cannot say it didn’t happen," he added. "They weave their own justifications for why it shouldn’t matter, but not that it didn’t happen."

The aim for the commission is to begin this summer with a campaign of outreach to Native Hawaiians — those who’ve been involved in previous enrollment efforts as well as those who’ve been on the sidelines — to sign on with the reorganization of an indigenous political entity.

Waihee considers all the past projects — the Native Hawaiian Convention, United Nations protests and the Ka Lahui Hawaii organization of past decades, as well as ongoing Akaka Bill advocacy — as prologue to the current mission, which he calls the "missing ingredient."

It’s a unifying purpose, he said, and in the end was the inducement for him to leave thoughts of armchair retirement behind him.

"A friend of mine, she said, ‘What you got to think about is, what’s the last great thing our generation can do for the movement? And this is an opportunity to unify everybody.’

"Then I thought about it and said, ‘Yeah, that’s worth doing.’"

QUESTION: What is the mission of the Roll Commission?

ANSWER: I think that our mission is to lay the foundation for the restoration of Hawaiian self-determination, sovereignty. It is that simple and that clear. And we do that by creating a roll of qualified Native Hawaiians to organize — the purpose of organizing their own government, which is the missing ingredient.

In all of our efforts toward recognition, whether it’s state recognition, federal recognition or even international recognition, we don’t exist in terms of a governing structure. We exist as a people. People know who we are, but we don’t exist in terms of having our own voice.

Q: So the roll would represent the population of the sovereign nation? Could it be described as the electorate?

A: Yeah, I think ultimately that’s its purpose. It could be described as the electorate. Obviously, it’s voluntary.

Q: Just because you’re Hawaiian, you don’t have to be a part?

A: No. But it’s making that option available, to be part of the electorate, to be part of the organizational group for Hawaiian self-governance.

Now, Act 195, which is our base legislation, is pretty straightforward. It established a commission of five people; we have the duty of putting together a roll of qualified Native Hawaiians, which the act defines as someone who can trace their ancestry back to 1778 in these islands, and who has some cultural connection to Native Hawaiian people, and who is 18 years old.

Q: So, there is a cultural component?

A: Yeah, and it’s not so much what (the act) says as much as, what will be our approach to doing this, when we’re taking the approach of having a campaign that will not only target Native Hawaiians but the general public.

Our mission is to lay this foundation; our approach is to move the questions around, if you will, and to get people to stand up for the restoration of the unrelinquished sovereignty of Native Hawaiians. Whether they’re Hawaiian or not, we want to invite them into that crusade. … That’s our cultural connection. Our cultural connection is a belief in, an affinity to the idea of unrelinquished Hawaiian sovereignty.

Q: OK, but you do need to have the Hawaiian blood, right?

A: Yeah. And so the second question is: “What’s your ancestry?” … Those people who meet the ancestral qualification obviously will be submitted as the potential electorate for the restorational government. The other individuals who say “I support this” will be also collected as supporters of this.

Q: What would their role be?

A: What their role would be is to be part of the support group for this movement. And then at some point in time, the electorate can then define its membership.

What we’re trying to do, our model for doing this would be the Ku‘e Petitions (opposing U.S. annexation in 1898). … It was very interesting, if you read about that era and how they approached it, is they got everybody involved. And then they — by longhand, by the way — put the people who signed up in different categories to be used for different purposes. …

So you had all these people supporting the idea, but when they actually submitted the names to Congress, they knew Congress would only accept people who were males, owning property, who were over 21 years old. So those were the names they gave Congress.

But meanwhile they had all of these other people — mostly Native Hawaiians, but also Hawaiian nationals, foreigners living in Hawaii, anybody — and those were put into the particular categories, to say, “These are the foreigners that support us, these are the subjects of non-native blood, these are the women.”

The most important category in the petition were the women, who were not recognized in the United States as being legitimate voices of political action. This was all pre-suffrage. But nevertheless, the women were some of the strongest supporters of the anti-annexation movement. All of these people were kept as part of the movement.

How they would be used strategically was up to the people back then, and what they needed to do. And a similar thing would happen hopefully in our effort, that the electorate putting together the government would also realize that they have these supporters, they have these people, some of whom, for example, might have actually been descendants of the subjects of the kingdom. They should be somehow involved in the movement.

Now, how is really a question for the next group of people. I mean, that’s the way I look at it.

Q: So, the roll would be created, and it would be up to the people of the nation to decide how everyone is going to be involved?

A: Right. The actual, certified roll will have to meet the qualifications of Act 195. So that’s our base.

But then, in reality, this whole exercise is really a political question. And one thing I’ve learned about politics is that it’s a game of addition and not subtraction. To the extent that you can get as many people as possible standing with you, those that are Native Hawaiians and those that are not, your political dynamic is that much stronger.

So the real question for us, the base question, before even asking if you’re Native Hawaiian, is whether or not you support the restoration of the unrelinquished sovereignty of the Hawaiian nation. And if you do, come and join us. And the next question is: “Some of you are going to have to vote for this government; which of you are Native Hawaiian?” Then you get to decide how all of this dynamic fits together. …

I don’t look at this as a kind of an exercise of developing a census. What we are really doing is developing a political movement.

Q: Is this about recapturing the virtue of sovereignty that may have been diminished in the conflicts over the Akaka Bill and other proposals?

A: I don’t think this is about recapturing anything. I think it is about moving forward. The Akaka Bill and all of these other attempts were that. They were: How do you deal with an issue that, at least for Native Hawaiians, had no precedent? It may be that all those other attempts were necessary predecessors to where we are today.

What we discovered with the Akaka Bill and the other efforts … is that there was a missing ingredient. There was no governing entity. So it was like putting the cart before the horse.

Q: What do you say to people who argue that Hawaiians voted for statehood and thus relinquished sovereignty?

A: For me, anyway, that makes no sense, … because Hawaiians were never asked the question regarding their sovereignty in relationship with statehood.

Q: It wasn’t presented like one of the options?

A: No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t, “Look, if you choose statehood, you’re giving up any relationship to your history or your past or your sovereignty.” What the choice was, was to keep the terrible situation that existed here of direct federal management — for all people, including Native Hawaiians — or have a chance to manage our own affairs — for all people, including Native Hawaiians. You would have been hard-pressed not to say, “I want a better situation than existed in the territory.”

So that was the choice. … The trouble with that false premise is that we get sucked into it. We start then arguing why statehood really was bad, and to that extent we’re accepting the claim that it took away our sovereignty. No. statehood was positive; people who premise it as a relinquishment of Hawaiian sovereignty really don’t do justice to all the people who worked so hard to improve the situation here in Hawaii that existed under the territory.

That’s what it was about. It was about the fact that you could get fired when you got injured on the job. It was about the fact that we had two different levels of school system and not equal funding for poor areas of the state. … We wanted those things to happen, and statehood was the way to achieve it.

People think that’s a cute argument. It’s not. It’s a trap, and it’s nonsense.