Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Wednesday the Obama administration is exploring possible administrative options for pursuing federal recognition of Native Hawaiians. But she stopped short of saying the president supports going that route if it’s doable.
"It would be preferable to go through the process congressionally because that’s a clear path forward," Jewell said after an address to the 12th annual Native Hawaiian Convention. "Other paths forward are less clear, and that’s what we are assessing."
Jewell, the first Interior secretary to come to Hawaii to meet with Native Hawaiians in more than 40 years, noted that President Barack Obama strongly supported recognition legislation that former Sen. Daniel Akaka and other Hawaii lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to get through Congress for more than a decade.
With the chances of passing such a measure still slim, Obama has been asked by some Native Hawaiian leaders and Hawaii’s congressional delegation to consider pursuing recognition through executive-branch action.
If Native Hawaiians gain federal recognition, it would pave the way for a government-to-government relationship similar to the status held by American Indians and Native Alaskans.
But Jewell told the Star-Advertiser that legal factors make that path "trickier" and "somewhat complicated" for Hawaiians, who are excluded from some federal regulations that apply to other Native Americans.
"That’s just something that needs to be understood and worked through," she added, acknowledging that she wasn’t sure what the possible administrative options for Native Hawaiians are.
Jewell used her roughly 15-minute address to the convention to reiterate the Obama administration’s support for Native Hawaiian recognition and to address calls for greater oversight of the federally created land trust for Native Hawaiian beneficiaries.
The Star-Advertiser has published a string of stories in recent months revealing lax oversight and other problems involving the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which administers the trust and issues homestead leases to eligible Native Hawaiians.
In acknowledging the newspaper coverage, Jewell said the state and Interior Department need to work together to assess the condition of the trust and where they envision it will be in eight years, the centennial anniversary of the passage of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act.
She noted that Congress gave the Interior Department an oversight role, while the state’s role is trust administrator.
"We’re mindful of the balance struck by Congress and the continuing need for Interior and the state to work together collaboratively," Jewell said in her convention speech.
After the speech, Jewell told the Star-Advertiser that the state and federal governments could have done a better job overseeing the trust in recent years.
"That’s why we’re taking a new look at what that relationship should be so that we can do the work that’s expected of us for the Native Hawaiian people," Jewell said.
The federal agency will soon publish proposed rules that will help clarify Interior’s oversight role.
Once adopted, the regulations would be the first at the federal level in the nearly 100-year history of the trust. Advocates say rules are needed to more effectively hold the state accountable for its trust obligations.
While Jewell’s remarks about the Hawaiian trust were seen as significant, they were made at a convention in which DHHL for the first time was not a sponsor.
In the 11 prior years that the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement organized the convention, considered one of the largest annual gatherings to discuss Hawaiian issues, the state agency was a major sponsor, helping underwrite the cost of neighbor island beneficiaries to attend the conference on Oahu.
A DHHL representative could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, who also addressed the convention Wednesday, told the audience that federal recognition for Native Hawaiians will be achieved.
"A government-to-government relationship is overdue," he said.
During a brief interview after his speech, Schatz said Obama did not commit to the Hawaii delegation to pursue recognition administratively, but "he is taking it seriously."
Schatz said the delegation presented the Obama administration with what he described as a legally sound way to achieve recognition. "We think we’ve made the best possible case."
In her post-speech remarks, Jewell said the U.S. government has not had a proud track record in dealing with Native Hawaiians and the nation’s other "first people" and that Obama is working hard to rectify that record.
"You can’t right the wrongs that may have been done over hundreds of years, but we certainly want to make sure we’re taking positive steps forward," she said.
The three-day convention at the Hawai‘i Convention Center ends today.
