An oversight

The Region

Hawaii

By Ed Rampell

HAWAII Senator Daniel Inouye calls August’s United States

Congressional meetings regard-

ing the Hawaiian Home Lands the state’s ‘‘most important hearings since statehood . These are the first such oversight hearings since Congress established the 192,000-acre Native Hawaiian Land Trust in 1920.

The Congressional panel looked into problems besetting the Hawaiian Home Lands, set aside for residential and agricultural use. In order to use the land, homesteaders must prove they are of at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood. Only about 60,000 of the State’s estimated 200,000 Hawaiians currently qualify. Recent efforts to establish a single definition Hawaiian with one beneficiary class has generated intense controversy.

Much of the earmarked property does not have any infrastructure, including water, power, and roads. There is an overall lack of funding for home build-

ing and other basic needs. The waiting list for Hawaiian Home Lands has about 18,000 names on it. Generally, each name represents a family, not an indi vidual.

Some Hawaiians claim some potential homesteaders have been on the waiting list for over 30 years, and that some na tives have died while waiting to receive their land. There frequently seems to be a Catch-22 situation, where the land ex ists but is often unavailable to eligible islanders.

The US Senators and Representatives will consider these problems, along with dissident demands to transfer control of the Hawaiian Home Lands from a State department to a sovereign Hawaiian organisation. Although not scheduled on the agenda, native activists used the hearings as a platform for their Hawaiian self determination movement.

Groups such as Ka Lahui Hawaii, the Sovereign Hawaiian Nation, seek the same tribal and reservation rights Amer ican Indians have in the continental Un ited States.

Senator Inouye, a Democrat, chairs the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, which held the hearings, along with its counterpart in the US House of

Representatives (Congress’ lower cham

ber). Most of the participants represent states such as Alaska and Arizona, where many native Americans live. The meet ings were held throughout August at Oahu, Kauai, Moloka’i, and the Big Is land, where homesteaders and potential land users aired their concerns. 1 he panel examined Hawaiian history, and how the overthrow of the Polynesian monarchy and American annexation of the Islands affected the Native people, who are now largely landless. The hear ing will also deal with how Washington can improve the Home Lands situation, as well as the trust relationship between the Federal trustee and the Hawaiian be neficiaries.

In a related development, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, (OHA) launched “Operation Ohana”, in an effort to regis ter all living Hawaiians on and off island. OHA, a State agency dedicated to bettering conditions for Hawaiians, is seeking enrolment of the estimated 270,000 Hawaiians living worldwide in order to upgrade their benefits and en titlement programmes. August marked Hawaii’s 30th anniversary of statehood, but some of the fiftieth state’s indige nous inhabitants still waiting for the re turn of their lands were not be celeb ing. □