Hawaiians at a crossroads

The two-week series of hearings aimed at giving the federal government guidance on the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty have ended, stirring many emotional, largely thoughtful responses to the questions posed by a panel of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI).

The department’s primary error was to convene these hearings with so little advance notice, which compounded the general sense of suspicion with which many in the Hawaiian community view the federal government. Ultimately, Interior needs to do a better job of communication, now and following the comment period that concludes Aug. 19.

On the whole, though, the series was a highly enlightening if incomplete measure of sentiment about sovereignty. The only way to gain certainty about what Hawaiians want in a relationship with the U.S. government is to ask them more definitively.

Before any final decisions are made, the community should have extensive discussions about their legal options, and then conduct a plebiscite that reaches the broadest Native Hawaiian electorate possible. Perhaps this can be done when the Hawaiians’ nation-building convention (‘aha) is held, as is planned for later this fall. In any case, the issue deserves a vote.

It’s clear that a lot has changed in the Native Hawaiian community in the 14 years since the last federal hearings convened in the islands. Primarily the difference is the level of opposition to "federal recognition" as a measure of self-governance and the degree of insistence on independence. At the 2000 hearings, that seemed a fringe idea.

That’s no longer the case. Each of the multiple hearings on Oahu as well as the neighbor islands were packed, and those who attended overwhelmingly took the position that DOI was the wrong federal agency to be broaching the subject.

Repeatedly, the takeaway impression was that Native Hawaiians rejected what Interior offered them — developing an administrative process through which the federal government would recognize a Native Hawaiian government.

Advocates for restoration of an independent nation, 121 years after the monarchy was overthrown, said a "nation within a nation" status, akin to what Native American and Native Alaskan governments have, does not right the wrong.

That was the dominant opinion expressed, but it wasn’t the only one.

Some said they feared that without federal recognition, various federal entitlements for Native Hawaiians, everything from homestead lands to educational programs, remain vulnerable to legal challenge. They sincerely doubt the U.S. would ever grant the independence-backers what they seek.

There are others who are satisfied with the status quo, even stating that U.S. citizenship for all residents of the former kingdom was the best outcome.

The one thing on which virtually all might agree is that this bitter chapter in Hawaiian history is not a dusty volume to be kept on the shelf. It’s a keenly felt, painful artifact of the past but a pain that persists today with many people, and it’s an issue to be given the most serious attention.

Some at the hearings pointed out that there are family records and photos to remind them that their forebears had signed the petition against annexation of Hawaii by the United States; some of them had been punished for practicing the culture or speaking their indigenous language.

Much of the spirit of the Native Hawaiian nation was reborn in the cultural renaissance of the 1970s. The language was revived in immersion schools, and in Hawaiian-focused charter schools where a new generation was steeped in their history, and in political thinking.

Certainly, that’s where much of the strengthened constituency for independence was generated.

But before tossing away the federal recognition option — whether delivered by legislation such as the so-called "Akaka Bill," or by the proposed administrative route — Hawaiians need a clear reading of community will.

And that’s something best delivered in the polling booth of a plebiscite.