Despite being unable to get the Akaka Bill included in a $1 trillion-plus spending bill, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye vows to continue pursuing other avenues toward gaining federal recognition for Native Hawaiians.
Enabling language that would have been the first step toward federal recognition for Native Hawaiians was left out of the omnibus spending bill approved Friday by the House and expected to be approved by the Senate today.
The broadly worded provision would have recognized Native Hawaiians as an indigenous people of the United States, allowing them to begin a process of self-determination and recognition at the federal level similar to state legislation adopted earlier this year.
"I will work with the other members of the Hawaii delegation to plan our next move," Inouye said in a statement Friday.
Inouye said the provision was a point of bargaining until the very end.
"Unfortunately, it was opposed by members of the House, who wanted a variety of devastating anti-environmental riders which, if the Senate accepted, would have set back our nation’s air and water protections for many years to come," he said.
Negotiators reached an agreement late Thursday on the omnibus budget package that pays for day-to-day budgets of 10 Cabinet departments and averts a government shutdown.
House members approved the budget by a 296-121 vote, sending it to the Senate.
The language for Native Hawaiians was being sought in the budget for the Department of the Interior.
U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa said the bill still contains more than $500 million for military construction around the state, as well as funding for community services, primary health care services and facilities, and Native Hawaiian education.
"Nobody got everything they wanted, which is probably an indication that this is a fair bill," Hanabusa said in a statement. "I would have liked to see Native Hawaiian recognition stay in the bill to the end, but we are going to keep working on that until we get it through."
The most recent version of the Akaka Bill, a proposal to grant Native Hawaiians federal recognition similar to that of American Indians and Alaska Natives, advanced from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in April.
Since it was first introduced in 1999, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act has never faced a straight up-or-down vote in the Senate, something its chief sponsor, U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, aims to change.
"As chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Sen. Akaka is pursuing all available options to bring federal recognition to a Native Hawaiian governing entity during this 112th Congress, before he retires in 2013," said Jesse Broder Van Dyke, a spokesman for Akaka.
