Anger surges at Big Isle meeting

KAILUA-KONA » Hawaiians on Hawaii island sent federal officials off to Maui with the same message they’ve heard for the last 10 days: Let Native Hawaiians determine their own fate.

"Our queen said no to your annexation," Robert Freitas Jr. told the panel Thursday night at Kealakehe High School. "Our kupuna have said no and we are saying no. So what part of ‘no’ do you not understand? … Are you deaf? Don’t you understand English? … After 120 years of illegal occupation, it’s time for you, the United States of America, to de-occupy our islands. … Go back to the rock you crawled out from."

U.S. officials spent the last two days in Hilo, Waimea and Kailua-Kona listening to more than 400 speakers denounce a proposal to have the Department of the Interior begin a process that could lead to a government-to-government relationship with a future Native Hawaiian government.

Rather than discuss the details of such an idea, Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian speakers at the three sessions used the opportunity instead to excoriate the federal government’s ongoing presence in the islands following the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and to chronicle the subsequent 121 years of injustices and indignities in the islands for Hawaiians.

The tone for Thursday night’s session was set when the first speaker, 77-year-old Hannah Wahinemaikai o Kaahumanukeliiulawioleokalama Reeves, told the panel of representatives from the U.S. departments of Justice and the Interior that she will be watching their actions.

"I want our people to be free," she said. "I want America to respect us. I want America to let us be free like human beings. … We are fighting for our people, for thousands of people."

Thursday was a long day for the federal officials. In the morning, facilitator Dawn Chang told the overflow crowd at the Waimea Community Center that the series of three-hour sessions have left her "filled with an extreme heavy heart," adding, "I feel your pain. It affects all of us. We know we cannot take it away from you."

Rhea Suh, assistant secretary of the interior for policy, management and budget, has presided over similar hearings on the mainland involving American Indians.

But she called the Hawaii sessions "some of the most professionally intense meetings that we’ve ever been a part of," adding, "Many of you may not want to see us here, and I respect that."

Still, she reminded the speakers, "Your voices are being heard."

Ski Kwiatkowski of Kohala was among the many who was offended that federal officials plan to discuss the Hawaii proposal with Indian tribes from Connecticut to Washington between July 29 and Aug. 7.

"We are Hawaiians, not a tribe," Kwiatkowski told the panel in Waimea. "We are a people."

Kwiatkowski, who served two tours in Vietnam, where he was awarded two Purple Hearts, told the panel, "I bled for this country but I’m Hawaiian first. … It’s about our lands, our sovereignty."

Laura Lahilahi DeSoto McCollough of Waimea wept as she remembered the discrimination she faced growing up on the Leeward coast of Oahu.

As a student at Makaha Elementary School, DeSoto McCollough told the panel that she was "paddled by the teacher for speaking Hawaiian."

"We’re losing our lands now. We hardly got any," she said. "Give us back what belongs to us — and that’s Hawaii. You guys gotta give us back our lives."

Two weeks and 15 islandwide hearings that began at the state Capitol on June 23 resume Saturday at Hana High and Elementary School.

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CORRECTION: Ski Kwiatkowski, who attended the U.S. Department of Interior public meeting in Waimea on Thursday, calmly told the panel, "We Hawaiians are not a tribe; we are a people." An earlier version of this story and the article in Friday’s print edition mischaracterized Kwiatkowski as yelling at the panel.