HONOLULU — A long-sought federal law allowing Native Hawai‘ians to form their own government stands little chance of passing Congress before the end of the year, and its approval may be even less likely after a Republican House majority takes
HONOLULU — A long-sought federal law allowing Native Hawai‘ians to form their own government stands little chance of passing Congress before the end of the year, and its approval may be even less likely after a Republican House majority takes office in January.
Native Hawaiians are the last remaining indigenous people in the United States that haven’t been allowed to establish their own government, a right already extended to Alaska Natives and Native American tribes.
Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, for whom the legislation is named, said he will push to pass the bill during the Senate’s lame-duck session starting Monday, but the chamber also will be busy with tax cut extensions and a stop-gap spending measure to keep the government running.
“I think it’s as good as dead,” said outgoing U.S. Rep. Charles Djou, R-Hawai‘i, who supports the measure. “We had a situation where the president of the United States said he would sign the Akaka bill and the Democrats held overwhelming majorities in both chambers, and Sen. Akaka wasn’t able to get it through.”
More than 117 years have passed since the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown, and this measure is an effort to begin reconciling the federal government with the nation’s 400,000 Native Hawaiians.
The legislation passed the U.S. House 245-164 in February but stalled in the Senate, where it failed to get consideration in the months before last week’s election.
“The odds are bad,” U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawai‘i, told KGMB-TV. “I’m being very candid and upfront because I don’t want people to have their hopes unjustifiably raised, because at this stage I would say it’s not one of the so-called priority measures.”
Just a few months ago, the proposal for a Native Hawaiian “nation within a nation” looked like it could finally become law after more than a decade of attempts.
Hawai‘i-born President Barack Obama and the powerful Inouye supported the bill, and it had enough support to pass if it could have reached the Senate floor for a vote. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle reinstated her support following a deal to change the bill to clarify that a future Hawaiian government wouldn’t provide immunity from the state’s laws unless Congress agrees after negotiations.
But the bill never came up as the Senate occupied itself with extending unemployment insurance, approving a small business loan program and confirming Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I wouldn’t rule out the chance that it could be passed next year,” said state Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Rowena Akana. “This is the right thing to do. It doesn’t have anything to do with being a Democrat or a Republican.”
The Native Hawaiian legislation would start negotiations for a new Native Hawaiian government and the land, money and power that comes with it.
Several Republican senators have said they oppose the measure because they see it as race-based favoritism, and a minority of Native Hawaiians — including some who want complete independence — dislike the bill because they say it doesn’t go far enough to redress past wrongs.
The measure would racially segregate families and communities into groups with different rights based on whether or not they have Hawaiian blood, said Jere Krischel, a member of the Grassroot Institute of Hawai‘i, which opposes the bill.
“They’ll have a very difficult time making the case that this is important enough to do despite all the objections and problems people have with it,” said Krischel, a self-described volunteer historian and civil rights activist. “In a Congress, that was overwhelmingly voted out, it just wouldn’t play well.”
If the bill fails, its downfall will be partially attributed to amendments proposed by Hawai‘i’s Democratic congressional delegation last December in response to requests by the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior.
One of the proposed changes would have immediately given the Native Hawaiian governing entity many of the rights that Native American tribal governments enjoy before negotiations with the federal government.
Lingle opposed the changes until Hawai‘i’s senators agreed in July to again modify the bill. The time lost between December and July damaged the measure’s opportunity for receiving Senate approval.
