Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 10, 1 October 2005 — Akaka Bill protects Hawaiian culture, traditions [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Akaka Bill protects Hawaiian culture, traditions

Bnyd P. Mūssman TrustEE, Maui

Aloha kakou. Hawaiians have now lost two cases in the 9th

Circuit, and as we wait another month to see the results of the U.S. Senate vote on the Akaka Bill, we have time to reflect further on who we are and why so many of us are determined to preserve what Hawaiians have today rather than lose it all in the name of "equality" or "independence." I continue to hear from both sides opposing the hill, the race-based group and the independents, that neither is

interested so mueh in allowing our culture to continue on but instead both want to remove our identity as an indigenous people of the United States. The Amkaki plaintiffs with their charges of racial discrimination have no feeling for a group of people who have done no wrong to others except perhaps to have allowed the overthrow of their own nation through the trust their Queen had in the United States. They focus only on racial discrimination alleging that Hawaiians, if left to their own as they say Akaka would potentially do, would secede and create their own country to the detriment of the 80 percent

non-Hawaiians who live here and to the United States. Well, sure, if the independents had their way. But the independents don't speak for the vast majority of Hawaiians or non-Hawaiians, and to argue against Akaka by using the threats and claims of the independents, the race-based equal rights group continues to score in the national media. That is indeed a devious and misleading means of using one group of Hawaiians against another and achieving, in the end, their demise. Most Hawaiians including me are descendants of other nationalities too. Our looks ean be deceiving, with a blondie actual-

ly having more Hawaiian blood than a brownie depending on the mix. Ultimately, race really eannot be the determining factor in arguing for the continued identity of Hawaiians so mueh as the culture both past and future. My Portuguese, English, and German ancestors eame from homelands and cultures whieh that brought to these shores, where they met my Hawaiian ancestors and here, a part Hawaiian, I am today. In the future, our posterity may heeome further diluted in blood but not necessarily in culture unless we are forced to give it up because we are not recognized by Congress and thereby fortified against further attacks on our continued existence. For

the independents, they will be able to continue to argue at the United Nations all they want. So why bring down the Akaka Bill and play into the hands of the Twigg-Smith and Amkaki crew to the detriment of all Hawaiians? Native Hawaiians are a culture probably more than a blood. To be divided because we don't like the wording of the Akaka Bill is to bet all we have as Hawaiians today on the U.N. or maybe some more favorable future administration. To do this is to lose Amkaki and to deny our posperity, our homeland, our traditions, our identity and mueh more. The time is now for Akaka! S

LEO 'ELELE • TRUSTEE M ESSAGES