Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 5, 1 May 2000 — Rice fallout: Reactions, no resolution [ARTICLE]

Rice fallout: Reactions, no resolution

By Manu Boyd f INCE THE United States Supreme § Court issued its decision in Rice v.v. Cayetano on Feb. 23, the status of leight of the nine trustees of the W Office of Hawaiian Affairs has been in limbo. The trustees' fate is currently in the hands of the Hawai'i Supreme Court whieh has been asked to decide whether Rice has put them out of office. According to Governor Cayetano, it has. If the court agrees with him, of the sitting trustees, only Donald Cataluna, whom Cayetano recently appointed to fill the Kaua'i/Ni'ihau seat opened after Trustee Moses Keale retired, would remain. In Rice, the court stru<ik down Hawai'i laws restricting participation in elections of OHA trustees to voters of Hawaiian ancestry. As originally received, the decision went on for 15 single-spaced pages of small print, and it aeknowledged many historical facts. The court's narrow ruling, however,

invalidated only OHA's election process. It is silent as to the status of the current trustees. It does not state whether future candidates for trustee positions must be of Hawaiian ancestry. It does not question OHA's existence, its accumulated assets based on a constitutionally mandated share of public land trust revenues, or the continued payment of a portion of that ineome to OHA for the betterment of native Hawaiians, as defined by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, and Hawaiians, as defined in Chapter 10 of the Hawai'i Revised Statutes. The court's opinion lends itself to the interpretation that formal federal recognition of Native Hawaiians might have made a difference in the ouīeome of Rice, and suggests that OHA's status as a state agency was key to the ruling. While the narrowness of the decision has been constantly stressed, the underlying rationale for that decision has broad implications. Consequently, other related issues have eome to the forefront as reactions to Rice and its rationale unfolded ov'er the past two months. ■