Office of Hawaiian Affairs: State Supported Sedition
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is a department of the state government of Hawaii. OHA administers and draws revenue from 1.8 million acres of state land. OHA, and other Hawaiian activists, maintain that this acreage is “royal” Hawaiian land and is therefore “owned” by a particular ethnic group in perpetuity. Our Republican governor, Linda Lingle, agreed with this philosophy when her administration allowed OHA to acquire 26,000 acres of state land. As OHA trustee Haunani Apoliona stated in a speech last December:
Of particular note is our collaboration with the Pele Defense Fund, Trust for Public Land, State Department of Land and Natural Resources, and USDA Forest Legacy Program to purchase and protect 26,000 acres of conservation land, Wao Kele O Puna, the last lowland rainforest in all of Hawaii nei.
Of equal significance, is that when title to these lands is conveyed to the Office of Hawaiian of Affairs in 2006, it will be the first parcel of crown or kingdom land returned to Native Hawaiian control, since the 1893 overthrow of the kingdom.
According to OHA’s website their mandate is to represent all native Hawaiians, however defined, and to provide services and advocacy that benefit Hawaiians in education, health, economic development, culture, etc.
OHA also publishes a monthly paper Ka Wai Ola: The Living Water of OHA. It makes for interesting reading and is available at local libraries or online here in PDF format.
In the April issue of this paper trustee Boyd P. Mossman, in his monthly column, provides a list of OHA’s race based welfare projects. Mossman is rightfully concerned that the OHA empire will not stand constitutional scruntiny. He states:
In spite of the above, all will come to a dead stop should OHA be found in court to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. That will very likely occur if Congress fails to pass the Akaka Bill, since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in both Arakaki and John Doe v. Kamehameha Schools cases note the absense of a clear statement from Congress….
This is why OHA is pouring millions of dollars into Washington D.C. lobbying firms. Of course, anywhere else in the country such lobbying would be completely illegal, but not in Hawaii. In light of the United States Commission on Civil Rights recommendation that the Akaka Bill be rejected, OHA had better reserve more first-class tickets to Washington D.C.
However, OHA’s support is based not just on maintaining their money and power but also on ideology. The ideology in question is racial nationalism, an ugly phrase, but sadly accurate.
In the May 2006 issue of Ka Wai Ola, OHA administrator Clyde Namua wrote an “open letter” to the Native Hawaiian Coalition stating:
In February 2004, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs convened an advisory group later decided to call itself the Native Hawaiian Coalition. The group was tasked with determining the steps to form a nation.
Namua goes on to lament the Native Hawaiian Coalition’s inability to come to a concensus on how to go about nation building. Nevertheless, Namua states that nation building will remain a high priority with OHA.
The April 2006 issue has an article (pg. 17) stating that there are now approximately 400,000 Hawaiians with over 160,000 living on the mainland. These numbers are from a Kamehameha Schools study and OHA accepts these numbers as accurate.
In her monthly column trustee Haunani Apoliona notes (on pg. 22) that out of 400,000 only 50,000 Hawaiians have signed up with OHA’s “Registration of Native Hawaiians” or about 12% of those eligible according to OHA’s own figures.
This fact has not cooled Apoliona’s ardor, she states:
We have more than 400,000 Native Hawaiians in the 50 states who must and will believe, act and make a difference in all 50 states.
Who is this “we?” Someone should inform Apoliona that her Ein Volk-Ein Reich-Ein OHA rhetoric is extremely creepy.
Also in the April issue (pg. 23), trustee Dante Carpenter presents something called “A Hawaiian Well-Being Model.” For Carpenter improving the health of Hawaiians has a political payoff:
If we grow resilient Hawaiians [!?!], they will create strong, resilient ‘ohana; strong, resilient ‘ohana will support better working and living communities; strong, resilient, working and living communities can develop and support a nation that is self-determined and in control of its land and resources.
Carpenter’s agenda has no place for the individual who wishes to choose his own values and live his own life. The individual is a slave to his tribe and DNA. Carpenter’s militant collectivism appears little different than that of the Communitarians.
Hawaii’s Republican governor, Linda Lingle, supports the Akaka Bill. Last year she also came out in support of the Kamehameha Schools’ policy of race based admissions. Governor Lingle stated that the Ninth Circuit’s decision on the Kamehameha Schools’ case was “unjust.” Lingle’s supporters have also written the Hawaiian Sovereignty agenda into the state party platform:
Hawaii’s Republicans advocate…Encouraging Hawaiians to support initiatives leading to implementation of Hawaiian self-determination by popular vote of the Hawaiian people.
How are Hawaii’s best and brightest being educated at this elite private school? OHA trustee Donald B. Cataluna provides an answer in his May column on page 19. Cataluna’s monthly column was devoted to a poem written by a fourteen-year-old girl who attends the Kamehameha School on Maui. Here are some excerpts:
We did no wrong,
We minded our own business,
Yet still they purloin from us like
greedy manu,
Devouring all the fish, dominating the sea.
We did no wrong,
Yet our sick are dying from the
haoles’ bullets
To defend identities of a distinct race,
A race that is always plagued with trouble [Jews?]
We did no wrong,
Yet we possess memories
Of the savage, bloodthirsty,
inhumane beings
Who treated us with the most disrepect
It continues in a similar vein through many more verses. The Kamehameha Schools and OHA must be proud that this fourteen-year-old child’s head is already filled with anger, hate, victimhood and lies. If this is an example of what students learn at the Kam Schools, I’ll take the disfunctional Hawaii public schools over it any day.
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