Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 14, Number 4, 1 April 1997 — U.S. should address Pacific human rights [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

U.S. should address Pacific human rights

Mueh high-profile applause for Secretary of State Madeline Albright in her quest to make an American statement on human rights in Asia. Truly many oppressive conditions exist in China, and the annexation of Tibet is nothing short of systematic genocide, deserving punishment. However, before Secretary Albright ean remove the shards of freedom from a bloodied empire across the Pacific, the world would expect an address of the obvious inequities here on American territorial - claims. Although many First Nations/Native struggles within United States territory deserve recognition and resolution, the American imperial conquest of the Hawaiian Kingdom sets a significant example for the current Congress and constituents of the U.S. federal institution. No significant redress (or even apology)* has been made for these events of a century ago, whieh enabled the U.S. to elaim Hawai'i as its territory all these hurtful years, now a state being flown over by DEA hehcopters, whieh, incidently, were used in the federal operation against the Pai family to move them from their ancestral five acres. My fellow haoles/ foreigners, don't you see that what we have allowed to be done to the defenseless among us this government will be willing to do to us? Consider this historical truth: Hitler and the Third Reich used the models established by the U.S. Government in its dealings with First Nations as inspiration for their ghettoes and death camps. I contend that the Hawaiian

Nation has been subject to genocide for over a century, as have the Lakota, the Navajo, the Shoshone and almost every other First Nation where the U.S. has set its flag. I am also inferring that every American citizen who is here in Hawai'i benefitting from this illegal and injurious oeeupahon of a sovereign Kingdom is, as Article III states, complicity in the act of ongoing genocide. As I said, the whole world is watching our eolonial white faces to gauge our sincerity and awareness. , | generations surround us in spirit and in deed. I offer this letter as evidence of the protest of (we) the people, of these Sovereign States of the Americas, against the oppressive actions of the U.S. federal institution in relation to First Nations peoples. I also urge all good readers of this letter to write your protest, using these references, to Secretary Albright, President Clinton, and the U.S. Congress. An invitation is given to all of you, especially the kama'āina, to send copies of your letters and testimony to me for my research project and book: "Mana for Hungry Ghosts: America's Hidden Hawaiian Holocaust." Sugarthorn Studios, P. O. Box 1519, Pāhoa, Hawai'i 96778. Mahalo nui. Bryan Craig Evans Puna, Hawai'i *Editor's note: In 1993 Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, Puhlie Law 103-150, whieh apologizes to the Native Hawaiian people on behalfof the United States government, for the wrongful overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom.

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