Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 24, Number 9, 1 September 2007 — Nutgrass network infiltrates cvil rights panel [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Nutgrass network infiltrates cvil rights panel

The following are excerpts of my verbal comments before the Hawai'i State Advisory Committee (HS AC ) of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) meeting on August 20 at the State Capitol regarding the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act (NHGRA): "I have served on a U.S. presidential advisory commission, with a nationwide focus on Asian and Pacific Islanders, and I have witnessed the 2006 work of the USCCR and the last two months of the USCCR work relating to HSAC. "I am appalled and want to register my complaint that the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and its staff director appear to be misusing commission powers, duties and responsibilities by conspiring to prevent enactment of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act through manipulation of the Hawai'i Advisory Committee and its leader, and positioning this advisory committee to further promote a biased agenda against the aboriginal, indigenous, native people of Hawai'i by aiding and abetting litigants seeking to end Native Hawaiian programs." In Ianuary 2006, the USCCR staff eonducted a biased, incomplete briefing for its commissioners on the Hawaiian recognition hill by citing misinformed eommentaries against NHGRA, excluding the favorable, published Reconciliation Report of the HSAC and excluding HSAC Chair David Forman and members from the briefing. This 2006 USCCR NHGRA report opposing Hawaiian recognition was fast tracked and posted to the USCCR website originally without inclusion of the minority dissenting report of USCCR commissioners, forcing Hawai'i's senators to enter the dissenting report into the congressional record. The Government Accounting Office ultimately discredited as flawed the USCCR NHGRA report, but it accomplished its strategic destructive mission for Senate opposition against cloture in lune 2006.

In 2007, Chairmen of the U.S House Iudiciary Committee and the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee are questioning of non-conformance by USCCR to applieahle rules and procedures governing advisory committee appointments. A 36-year experienced senior civil rights analyst with the USCCR retired rather than participate in the stacked process for appointing membership to the Hawai'i State Advisory Committee. Internet searches, along with a statement made by the USCCR staff director concerning the HSAC chairperson at a Iuly 13 puhlie meeting of USCCR, inform us that at least nine of the 17 seated members, constituting a majority, oppose the NHGRA. The Grassroot Institute of Hawai'i (GRIH), vocal opponent to the NHGRA, has one from its Board of Scholars in this majority. Two other advisory committee members are litigants in federal court action to end Native Hawaiian programs; one of these two is a member of GRIH. The USCCR staff published this August 20 meeting in the Federal Register even before the newly appointed HSAC met for the first time by teleconference on August 15. After voting in 2006 to oppose NHGRA absent of any HSAC input, the USCCR in D.C. now seems to view HSAC as a pawn to be manipulated toward some not yet publicly identified purpose. The Hawaiian recognition hill is not based on race. It is based on the fact that we, like the American Indians and Alaska Natives are the aboriginal, indigenous, native people whose ancestors settled and exercised sovereignty in these lands, predating the founding of the colonies and the United States. Authors of the U.S. Constitution acknowledged the existence of sovereign, indigenous nations of these lands, providing Congress with the authority to legislate for these native nations and indigenous people in eonstitutional language. Enactment of this federal policy codifies United States recognition of the special legal and poliīieal relationship with Native Hawaiians, as it has done previously with American Indians and Alaska Natives. It is time for U.S. policy toward the indigenous, native, aboriginal people of Hawai'i to reflect parity. He Hawai'i au, mau a mau. 34/48 E

LEO 'ELELE ■ TRUSTEE MESSAGES

Haunani Apuliuna. MSW Chairpersūn, TrustEE, At-large