Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 3, 1 March 1995 — More sovereignty education needed [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

More sovereignty education needed

by Samuel L. Kealoha, Jr. Trustee, Moloka'i and Lāna'i The need for more educational forums concerning sovereignty is clear when looking at the sovereignty survey printed in the January 1995 issue of the Ka Wai Oia O OHA. According to the survey, 24.3 percent of the readers understand a little about the issues, but don't have a position while

another 22.6 percent have heard/read about it, but are totally confused. In other words, 46.9 percent of the readers, a little less than half, need more education about sovereignty. This education needs to eome prior to any plebiscite in order for the majority of Hawaiians to m;ike an informed decision about a process for sovereignty. The official position of the Board on the issue of sovereignty was declared on August 9, 1994, when we adopted

and affirmed that OHA should be "supporting and providing both the information and the opportunity for the Native Hawaiian people to consider and to discuss the nature of sovereignty and the choices for self-government." Therefore, the educational strategy I would like to propose conforms with OHA's position on sovereignty. With this educational strategy, I would like to provide an opportunity to surface discussion of a wider range of sovereignty models and philosophies by including smaller, less well-known sovereignty advocacy groups than are routinely given exposure in public fomms. Also, supporting sovereignty proponents for greater exposure of their ideas and recommendations. Moreover, the different ways the

Office of Hawaiian Affairs ean create a stalewide fomm for discussion of these issues need to be clarified so that OHA would augment and complement existing efforts by other sovereignty education initiatives already underway in the State. The proposed educationaI strategy will be stretched out over a period of five phases. The first phase will include identifying prospective sovereignty advocacy participants, inviting

participants who respond affirmatively to the opportunity to be involved in this campaign to prepare presentations before an OHA organized panel, and the OHA organized analysts would detennine how many and whieh specific groups could be incorporated into a statewide public meeting. The second phase would include developing a structured presentation fonnat to insure that similar topics are addressed by all groups. The next

phase would need to handle logisticaI planning for dates, times, and sites for meetings. The fourth phase would attempt to assess the effectiveness of the strategy by collecting evaluation comments by participants and presenters for analysis and synthesis into a report. Finally, the strategy would end with an assembly thal will coordinate with other sovereignty proponents and education groups to plan large group meetings to discuss themes eontained in the report and to contemplate strategy for future action. In conclusion, this strategy will be a mueh more viable, open, conducive, and self-determining process on the part of Native Hawaiians as opposed to the process currently being pushed by the HSEC.