While immediately hailed as a breakthrough in negotiations between the federal government and the Native Hawaiian community, a careful reading of the proposed Department of Interior agreement is also opening a lot of questions.

The proposed rules issued last week by the Department of Interior would permit Native Hawaiians to structure a single, separate government that would then conduct negotiations with the United States.

Getting to that specific point is likely to be an exceedingly complex process.

Already the proposed rules have to go through a 90-day comment period and then the final rules would be adopted in Washington.

Here in Hawaii, a multi-step process is in place to allow Native Hawaiians to vote first for delegates to a state convention to come up with a proposed governmental structure, a new Hawaiian government.

Then the Native Hawaiian people would vote for or against that proposed government.

The catch is that the federal government already is proposing how that second round of voting would take place.

For instance, the rules, powers, holdings and those served by the existing Hawaiian Home Commission Act (HHCA) could not be touched. The new Hawaiian government, the federal government said, cannot "diminish any right, protection, or benefit granted to Native Hawaiians by the HHCA. The HHCA would be preserved regardless of whether a Native Hawaiian government is reorganized, regardless of whether it submits a request to the Secretary, and regardless of whether any such request is granted."

So a new Hawaiian government will not be snagging any valuable Hawaiian Home Land acreage.

If a new government is formed, however, one thing it would get is Kahoolawe. According to state law and noted in the proposal federal law, there is a line explaining that when the federal government returned jurisdiction of the former military target island to state control, it would eventually belong to a "sovereign Native Hawaiian entity."

Former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, a strong supporter of federal recognition, says the Interior Department proposal is complicated and likely to need extensive review.

"This thing is still fresh — you are going to have to read it four or five times and then you will find more questions," Hanabusa said in an interview. "There are major implications."

For instance, Hanabusa said, the federal proposal sets out two classes of Native Hawaiian voters who would be empowered to ratify a proposed national government. One class would be all Native Hawaiian voters and a second group would be Native Hawaiians who are Hawaiian Homes beneficiaries, that is, those who are at least 50 percent Hawaiian.

The federal government says there must be at least 50,000 yes votes among the Native Hawaiian voters and at least 15,000 from the 50 percent Hawaiian group.

The federal government says this is to ensure broad-based community support.

"Although they are saying this is going to be one separate Native Hawaiian entity, the vote is going to be by two separate voting groups. And the beneficiary group (the 50 percent group) also has veto power over the entire vote," Hanabusa said.

Because the voting is being restricted to Native Hawaiians, the conservative Grassroot Institute of Hawaii has filed suit in federal court; a request for a preliminary injunction is scheduled to be heard this month.

"OHA and the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission have used state authority and public funds for the upcoming race-based delegate election and planned constitutional convention to potentially establish a race-based government," charges Keli’i Akina, chairman and CEO of the Grassroot Institute and one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.

Both organizers of the election and the Department of Interior deny that the plans for a Native Hawaiian government would be race-based.

What is not in disagreement is the amount of uncertainty still facing the construction of a Native Hawaiian government.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.