Email This to a Friend
Hawaii Braces as Obama Talks Apologies for Natives
Citing "our tragic history," Obama clears the way for even more corruption in the Aloha State.
In practice apologies create obligations which must be paid — “reparations.” And the Hawaii State Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is funded in part by revenues from state-owned lands. These lands were previously owned by the Hawaiian Kingdom government before it was overthrown in 1893 by the forces which created the Hawaii Republic, which was in turn annexed by the United States in 1898. Negotiations to fix the amount of revenue OHA receives collapsed during the 2008 Hawaii legislative session.
In the midst of the legislative debate on the proposed OHA settlement, the Hawaii State Supreme Court blocked the state from selling or transferring most of its massive land holdings. Its decision was based largely on the 1993 Apology Resolution. State Attorney General Mark Bennett is asking to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hawaii’s writ of certiatori on June 5 drew the support of 29 other state attorneys general.
According to Hawaii’s Supreme Court petition, the issue is “whether this symbolic resolution strips Hawaii of its sovereign authority to sell, exchange, or transfer 1.2 million acres of state land — 29 percent of the total land area of the state and almost all the land owned by the state — unless and until it reaches a political settlement with native Hawaiians about the status of that land.”
Many Indian tribes also have old claims on lands now outside their tribal reservations. But there is a larger question: sovereignty. Some highly sovereign tribal governments have their own president, legislature, judiciary, and police. Crimes — including white-collar crimes — committed on tribal lands must go through tribal courts.
The more “sovereign” a tribe, the less oversight there is from state and federal regulators or law enforcement. The rights and freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution often do not apply to tribal members on the reservation. In an indication of the direction debate would take if the Akaka Bill is passed, OHA provides financial and administrative assistance to numerous “pro-sovereignty” groups whom some researchers indicate are intimidating other native Hawaiians into silence.
There are also campaign contributions. Elaine Willman of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance writes about the roots of the tribe-connected scandals engulfing lobbyist Jack Abramoff:
Indian tribes are governments when in need of federal funds or special preferences, but for the American election process, they are not governments or federal contractors, so revenue from tribal government general funds and casinos are available for unreported, unaccountable, and unlimited influence in local, state, and federal elections.
Until tribal governments are restricted in the same manner as all other American and foreign governments respecting lobbying and elections, it is not enough to just throw out one “baby,” Abramoff; we must also throw out the corrupt “bathtub” that bred and fed him.
But instead of reform, Obama is moving to create more, larger, and wealthier tribes involved in activities far beyond mere gaming. If Hawaiians can become a tribe without having ever been a tribe in the past, the precedent will be created for tribes to be created for almost any group so inclined.
Contrary to popular opinion, Indian reservations have a history in Hawaii. An Oct. 12, 1999, article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin describes the efforts of Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate (KSBE) trustees in 1995 to evade oversight of their corrupt doings. The trustees’ self-serving investments caused losses of over $264 million in 1994 alone.
In hopes of shielding themselves from scrutiny, they paid Washington, DC-based law firm Verner Liipfert, whose Honolulu office was headed by former Governor John Waihe`e, to look into moving KSBE corporate headquarters out of Hawaii. After evaluating all of the other 49 states, Waihe`e’s firm proposed a move to the desolate Cheyenne River Sioux Indian reservation in South Dakota. Of all the reservations, Cheyenne River is the most highly “sovereign.”
Set up under terms of the 19th-century will of Hawaiian Princess Beatrice Pauahi Bishop, KSBE is a private trust intended to support the private K-12 Kamehameha School. KSBE is also Hawaii’s largest private landowner, with holdings currently valued at about $9 billion.
As the “Broken Trust” scandal broke, the trustees were raking in about $1 million per year in salaries, but their greed did not end there. Leading estate attorney Alexander A. Bove describes Broken Trust as follows: “the true story of a multi-billion-dollar charitable trust established by a Hawaiian princess and looted by its trustees — [it has] all the ingredients of a promising morality tale. For years, terrible wrongs were done: trustees, lawyers, and even justices of the Hawaiian Supreme Court openly committed unethical, underhanded, and often illegal acts.”
The KSBE trustees’ efforts to relocate to a reservation are also described in The Cheating of America by Charles Lewis and Bill Allison. Lewis and Allison quote former Hawaii Attorney General Margery Bronster explaining KSBE’s actions: “Their main motivation was to avoid oversight from the state attorney general and the IRS.”
KSBE was completely intertwined with the state government. Trustees were appointed by the State Supreme Court until the scandal broke. KSBE funds were used to back candidates and control the legislative process. When news of the KSBE scandals began breaking, both the Honolulu Advertiser and Star-Bulletin had difficulty finding reporters who were not afraid to cover the story.
KSBE was, for a while, able to buy a state, but it was not able to buy the IRS. In December 1999, the IRS threatened to yank KSBE’s non-profit status, finally forcing the resignation of the five KSBE trustees.
Eight months later, the first version of the Akaka Bill was introduced before Congress, sponsored in the House by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), who had been years earlier a close college friend of Barack Obama’s biological father.
Unable to move to a reservation, the trustees and their political backers are trying to create a reservation around themselves. If an apology is issued by Congress to American Indians, “Broken Trust” will only be the first of many attempts to shield illegal activities behind tribal law.
<- Prev Page 2 of 2
Andrew Walden is editor of the Hawai`i Free Press in Hilo, HI, and may be reached at andrewwalden@email.com.
 |
 |
 |
Podcasts |  PJM Home |
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
23 Comments
1. Roark:Ah yes, non-white Hawaiian’s looking for an apology from the “man” for bringing their waring and savage culture a better standard of life and civilization. First, I would never apologize for some incident that I wasn’t involved in, and second I would never apologize for turning a wild and savage culture into a modern paradise where war isn’t a daily occurrence.
Jul 30, 2008 - 8:28 am 2. John Moore:The Hawaii situation is especially pernicious, because Hawaii doesn’t have reservations, per se – the whole state would become a reservation, with special rights for natives including taxation of non-natives unable to vote.
It is one of the most dangerous manifestations of the sick theology of multiculturalism.
Jul 30, 2008 - 9:45 am 3. rao:re “..the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.” -
Does the Messiah deem the Civil Rights Acts, Equal Opportunty/Afirmative Action, racial quotas, lowered admission thresholds, government-mandated minority hiring, etc. to be just words, not deeds?
Jul 30, 2008 - 9:50 am 4. TomJW:My parents were out in Hawaii a couple decades ago when my brother was stationed there. The Hawains and Samoans were the biggist racists my mother ever meet and she was from New Jersey. They can kiss mine before they hear from me.
Jul 30, 2008 - 10:02 am 5. pappy:there is a remedy for hawaii’s discontentment, cecession. if you don’t like the U.S.A., get out. this idea that everyone is a victim is assinine. my great grandfather to the fifth power was killed by pirates on the cheasepeke bay, thats no skin off my ass. do i deserve reparations? only if you can prove in court that you are some how affected, and have proof of it’s your ancestor. who knows, my pappy may be your pappy too.
Jul 30, 2008 - 10:27 am 6. Fat Man:If we elect Hussein. The Reparations bill will be right around the corner. Get your checkbook out.
Jul 30, 2008 - 12:17 pm 7. heather:“land claims” has been going on for a generation in Canada, providing great jobs for people like Obama: lawyers and bureaucrats. It never stops, this process of righting the wrongs of generations ago.
In Canada, the most recent action has been to pay people who spent time in the evil residential schools. In fact, the way these were run (cold baths and corporal discipline) were not unlike the schools attended by CS Lewis, Churchill and David Niven. However, they did make the Indian children ashamed of their parents, and their culture, so I have some sympathy in this respect.
However, 2 facts: my cousin’s husband, a blond Irish Canadian retired engineer, received $16,000 non taxable dollars because he attended one of these schools, back in the day when his family lived in the Canadian hinterlands.
And up here, a lot of the money flowed into the local bars (one friend told me that the bell ringing for a ’round on the house’ never stopped), leading to some 37 deaths from alcohol poisoning. Oh well.
My other friend, an Indian (now they are ‘First Nations’), who was left bereft as a child, and who would have died of TB and starvation if not for the evil residential schools, received $30,000, and in her case, she has paid her debts and gone on with her respectable life.
After Hawaii, of course, and under the coming Obama presidency, there will be steps to ‘repay’ African Americans for slavery.
Good times.
Jul 30, 2008 - 12:40 pm 8. Ed Wallis:I think we all just gotta get a little perspective on things here, folks.
I think The Obamboozler – err…I mean – Pre-Chosen-One Candidate Obama is right on this one…in one sense:
Let us all Americans be generous, open-hearted and full of charity, as we inherently are…let’s all pitch in and buy a couple million statuettes of some innocuous, generic, suffering person all crumpled up ‘n’ stuff…and caption it with a plaque saying: ““We whites folks sho’ do regret our reeeeeeaaaal baddnessss, so we be givin’ yous all dis priddy li’l thang for sho’ to know we be soooooo sorry!”
In case of Sarcasm Deficiency Disorder due to reading the above, please take MASSIVE doses of REALITY.
Jul 30, 2008 - 1:00 pm 9. retro:Great… More perpetual “victims”. Hey, remember the Law of Nature and how “only the strong survive”? You got beat, deal with it.
No apologies – for Native Americans, dependents of slavery, oppressed Hawaiians or any other professional victims group.
Jul 30, 2008 - 3:03 pm 10. rocketeer:I would like to issue a blanket apology for every group that has ever been the victim of another group. Whew, glad we got that out of the way.
Jul 30, 2008 - 3:32 pm 11. Akatsukami:What the heck is wrong with everyone with these “reparations”? Who is paying and who is being paid and for what exactly? This is liberal insanity at it’s height.
Retro – you’re correct. No apologies, no money, no nothing for the distant relatives of some nebulous victim group. We all have the same opportunities to succeed or fail in this country. Pull yourself up, you worthless losers.
“there is a remedy for hawaii’s discontentment, cecession. if you don’t like the U.S.A., get out.”
That argument was pretty definitely setlled in the contrary in 1865.
Of course, that does offer a precedent: the rest of the U.S. secedes from Hawaii. When the Army of Honolulu sweeps down on the California beaches, we may tremble.
Jul 30, 2008 - 5:48 pm 12. fred:I would rather see Hawai’i secede rather than have my pocket picked. My wife and I have vacationed in that state five times during the last 15 years and have always been polite and low-key in how we moved around the people there. We never, ever experienced any hostility from the true Hawaiians. But, if they truly do hate us behind our backs, well I’m all in favor of letting them leave the country. Be glad to sign off on their independence. It is far better for them to be independent than dependent upon the Jesse Jackson shakedown in order to make a ‘livin.
Let them go back to the kapu practices of strangling people and bashing their heads in, if it makes them happy. As long as we are long gone, they can do whatever they like to each other.
I just don’t have patience with politicians who posture and try to play the morally outraged shuck and jive artists who want to take our money, but first make us feel morally clean first. Let them be the first ones to let their shadow pass in front of the ali’i.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:00 pm 13. DeadCenter:If my white percentage apologizes to my native American percentage but my NA part doesn’t accept the apology, will the spotted owl forgive me and can I get some carbon credits for the effort???
I’ve about had it with all the historically ignorant, clueless, touchy-feely, multi-cultural morons in this country.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:15 pm 14. barrybarryquitecontrary.com:Remember folks… REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH!
It doesn’t matter how you do it peoples, you juss gotta get it done – Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rev. Wright
Typical White Person (read taxpayer)
Jul 30, 2008 - 9:00 pm 15. Spider79:My ancestors were Cajun. Forced to leave Nova Scotia. Settled into the swamps in South Louisiana. Forbidden to speak the language in schools in the early 20th century. It’s all the fault of your ancestors. I will be seeking reperations from both Canada and the USA. I will post later after I come up with a dollar amount……..Why did you people do this to me?
Jul 31, 2008 - 6:48 am 16. Chip:My ancestors never held slaves. In fact one half of my family were slaves at various times, of Arab raiders. Obama’s Arab ancestors in Africa were some of the most brutal slave traders in history. And Islamic scholars still justify slavery to this day.
Obama will be cutting my check, right?
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:31 am 17. Morton Doodslag:These preposterous apologies don’t rectify anything, nor do they satiate the myriad racist grievance industries behind them. In fact, such behavior on Obama’s part serves to inflame those racist rejectionist grievances upon which these various anti-American groups are based. These groups often rely on a fictional narrative wherein their past was one of bucolic bliss before the evil white man showed up with his evil ways. Never mind the fact that “citizens” of ancient Hawaii were often banned from owning personal property, and were possessions of local kings and chieftans. Never mind that their society subsisted in a near perpetual state of simmerong tribal warfare among their factions, or that justice was often meted out with a stone club by the strong guy against the weak. Even today there is still a palpable tribal gangster presence in Hawaii, vestige of the way that Island once was administered.
According to these shake-down victim pimps, their stone-aged culture was all lightness and perfection, a veritable Garden of Eden until the white snake invaded and took it all away. Apologies to this sort will only encourage them to grasp for more handouts in the guise of reclaiming their lost nirvana, that state of perfection which only exists in their seething racist minds.
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:32 am 18. Chip:So any mention of Obama’s Arab slave-trading ancestors is forbidden at PJM? Could you maybe put that in a policy statement.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:09 am 19. ken:I want a blanket apology from God for kicking us out of that garden.
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:27 pm 20. Grace Farmer:Hawaii..where racism is alive and well…if you are one of the unfortunate non natives….
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:57 pm 21. Frank:Some one p;ease tell me, how many generations does it take to be considered a Native American? If I were to go back to where I came from, I’d be on Long Island.
Aug 2, 2008 - 7:45 pm 22. tomora:wow
Aug 20, 2008 - 11:46 am 23. Where's the Liberal Outcry? Obama/Biden voted for Hawaii Secession - US Message Board:[...] it continues: Hawaii Braces as Obama Talks Apologies for Natives Pajamas Media
Sep 7, 2008 - 12:13 pm