Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 15, Number 10, 1 October 1998 — TRUSTEE MESSAGES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TRUSTEE MESSAGES

Chairperson's message

Hawaiian civil rights five years after the apology Editor's note: Following is a synopsis of Chair DeSoto 's presentation at the Aug. 22 factfinding meeting ofthe Hawai'i Advisory Committee ofthe U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. YOUR PROJECT proposal summarized my thoughts regarding the effect of the Apology Bill, Public Law 103-150: "In the minds of many Native Hawaiians, the Apology Resolution has accomplished little, except to serve as a painful reminder of the legislative limitations that have been placed on our future." The Native Hawaiians Study Commission reports of 1983 provides information gleaned from numerous sources on the culture, needs and concerns of Hawaiians. OHA's "Native Hawaiian Data Book - 1998" provides current social and eeonomie statistics on our people. Sadly, a comparison reveals virtually no improvement in the statistics on Hawaiians. Why? Because federal monitoring of our legally mandated rights, benefīts and entitlements, a goal of Public Law 103-

1 50, has been lacking, as has been enforcement. Aug. 21 marked eommemoration of our 'āina's statehood. The Admission Act, presumably with good intentions, made us wards of the state, and beneficiaries of a ceded land trust consisting of almost half the lands of Hawai'i.

But failure to monitor state eomplianee with its fiduciary duty to Hawaiians, or to demand an accounting, has crippled the system intended to compensate Hawaiians for past injustices and to prevent more of them. An unhappy result is the extensive and costly litigation OHA has been forced to undertake. In 1 994, a year after the apology, OHA took the state to court to resolve issues relating to the pro

rata share due Hawaiians from the ceded lands. With the apology among the legal authority cited, justice eame down on the side of Hawaiians. But the state appealed, and we are trying to negotiate this matter. 1 OHA is alarmed at the state's repeated efforts to diminish Hawaiian entitle-

ments. A recent example is the twoyear, $15.1 million eap imposed last year on the Hawaiian share of ceded land revenues. This was followed by an insidious, but unsuccessful, attempt to dispose of the state's debt to Hawaiians by eliminating OHA and the Department

of Hawaiian Home Lands. In addition, the fedI eral government itself I has contradicted the Admission Act. A portion of the revenues generated by Honolulu International Airport, is owed Hawaiians. But the U. S. Department of Transportation ruled airport revenues could not be used to pay the debt, despite a "grandfather"

clause in the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of 1982 whieh exempts "covenants or assurances in debt obligations issued before Sept. 3, 1982." State noneomplianee with federal law, and the absence of monitoring, promotes a further pattern of discrimination

against Hawaiians in federal programs. We have anecdotal evidence of an interruption in the federal "Meals-on-Wheels" program for the elderly in a predominantly Hawaiian neighborhood, because a non-Hawaiian contractor decided it was too dangerous for staff to service the area. We know millions of dollars of federal educational funds are available to benefit Hawaiians. Siphoned through the State Department of Education, however, the bulk of these funds cover administrative costs. In 1988, the state deleted the preference for "students of Hawaiian or Oriental ancestry" from the Hemenway Trust whieh funds University of Hawai'i scholarships. (Stating that, overwhelmingly, OHA's elforts to correct discrimination against Hawaiians are directed at the state, Chair DeSoto enumerated some of OHA's efforts in court and in the legislature, then concluded with specific recommendations to the panel before closing.) I am out of time. I hope you understand where Hawaiians stand today in respect to where they should be. Public Law 130-150 eame one hundred years after the fact. Five years after it was enacted, Hawaiians are no better off. ■

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