BY JERE HIROSHI KRISHEL – Present on the Great Seal of the United States since 1782, its meaning is both simple and profound – “Out of many, one.”
Originally it may have been but a literal acknowledgement of the Union of the thirteen colonies, but as the years have gone by it has become a philosophical premise which we apply as a standard of morality.
It is today a clarion call for the respect of diversity, an acknowledgement that while we may have our differences, we are one people, under one law. Each citizen of the United States takes for granted that regardless of their racial background, cultural background, or family history, they are endowed by their Creator, the same unalienable rights as all their other fellow citizens.
The startling truth, however, is that we have a lot further to go before our laws and our country are aligned with this noble motto. Just as the institution of slavery stood as a stain against the noble ideals upon which our constitution was based, today we live under a government which has yet to make good on the motto, ‘E Pluribus Unum.’
While our constitution expressly prohibits denying people equal treatment under the law with the fourteenth amendment, our government has often both willfully and woefully ignored this basic guarantee.
The race-based quota system of affirmative action is perhaps the most visible example of this violation of constitutional rights (with a low point in Grutter v. Bollinger, and some progress recently with Ricci v. DeStefano).
The idea of treating people differently because of their racial background is anathema to the concept of civil rights, and the “fighting fire with fire” philosophy of fixing racial discrimination by using more racial discrimination is hypocrisy at its worst.
However, an even more egregious violation of the principle of equal treatment exists in current Indian law, and an even greater danger is presented to us with the Akaka Bill that has been proposed in various forms for the past ten years.
As it stands today, we have three distinct classes of citizenry in the United States – tribal leaders, tribal members, and non-tribal citizens. Tribal leaders stand generally above the law, with no constitutional checks on their power.
The Supreme Court in its Nevada v. Hicks (2001) case stated, “it has been understood for more than a century that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment do not of their own force apply to Indian tribes.”
This exemption from the basic protections afforded to other citizens places tribal members in the most disparaged class of the three, leaving them at the whim of their tribal governments.
While under tribal jurisdiction, non-tribal citizens fare just as poorly, but they at least have the wherewithal to escape from the reservation, while tribal members face the threat of tribal expulsion, confiscation of the lands their family may have lived on for generations, and even loss of custody of their own children.
Today, there are 565 federally recognized tribes which may freely violate the constitutional rights of their members. The Shinnecock Nation, backed by Gateway Casino Resorts, with only 1,292 members, became number 565 on October 1, 2010, after all appeals to their recognition (including objections from other already established casino tribes) were exhausted.
The Shinnecock, and the other 564 federally recognized tribes, are granted exemptions from state and local jurisdictions, creating a special class of citizenry not subject to the rights and laws of their peers.
These federally recognized tribes also have access to lucrative federal assistance programs (regardless of any tribal casino income), funded by non-tribal taxpayers and controlled exclusively by tribal leaders. So instead of ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ the truth is that today we live in a country governed by ‘E Pluribus Pluribus,’ with a constant, yet often overlooked, division of people into different strata of citizenship.
The Akaka Bill serves as yet another continuation of that deplorable trend, promising to “reorganize” everyone with the smallest drop of native Hawaiian blood into an Indian tribe, with all the equal protection problems that come with it.
Specifically constructed to protect current race-based programs targeted at native Hawaiians, the Akaka Bill is a headlong dive into the constitutional loophole provided by Indian Law, and promises to divide the State of Hawaii in the most wrongheaded manner imaginable.
From a purely self-interested point of view, it’s no wonder that future Akaka Tribe leaders want to get in on the Indian Tribe game – between the casino money, and the federal dollars appropriated (regardless of whether or not a tribe is economically self-sufficient), even the most reasonable and rational person might be sorely tempted.
An investigation into recent native Hawaiian grants handed out by the government at https://4hawaiiansonly.com has already identified over 766 grants totaling over $273 million.
While only a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 4 billion spent on Indian tribes every year (the BIA is unable to give any exact number), there is no question that we’re talking a lot of money, and a lot of temptation. It will be a long road for our country, to repair the self-inflicted wounds of ‘E Pluribus Pluribus.’
Ending the second and third class citizenship status of existing Tribal Law, and preventing the enactment of further injustices like the Akaka Bill will not be easy – the forces arrayed against a nation of one people, under one law, have resources common citizens simply cannot match.
But in the end, no matter how long or difficult the struggle, the United States will one day live up to its noble ideals of its founding – E Pluribus Unum.
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Speaking of America’s noble ideas. What about no interventionism, no expansion, and no protectorate? There are dozens of laws that the United States broke in order to confiscate Hawaii. Your lovely motto’s have done nothing to keep Congress from stealing our country and oppressing our people. I beg you constitutional guru’s give me the noble legal redress I know your country can extend to our long over due plea for reconciliation and justice. America was doing unto Hawaii what they loathed in European countries who they denounced for their Imperialism. In the mid 1800’s many prominent Americans had gone to Washington to denounced what they believed would be the beginning of more unconstitutional, unjust, Imperial expansions over course of time. Grover President Cleveland made the case that with Hawaii America had violated its constitutional traditions. You can point to the Akaka bill to make a case that such entitlements go against Americas best practices, and I am in total agreement that this ill conceived bill should not pass into law, but where is your legal solutions? Do you ignore the fact that the State of Hawaii is now illegal? Or do you offer a manufactured justice that ignores both the history and the law? Hawaii was a Christian country at the time of the 1893 overthrow, which makes it really hard to justify intervention. Congress perverted its authority when it ignored the treaties and interjected itself into and over a foreign people. How does your constitution make it possible for native Hawaiians who never stepped foot on the U.S continent to be called the native or indigoes peoples of the United States?
I’ll grant you, Noa, that the Empire that Lincoln built did in fact presage the whole “Manifest Destiny” meme, which was of a distinctly different flavor than the founding fathers ever intended. That being said, Grover Cleveland admitted his error with the Blount Report by commissioning the Morgan Report, which definitively established the neutrality of US forces during the Hawaiian Revolution of 1893, and the universally internationally recognized sovereign independent Republic of Hawaii had every right to sue for, and achieve, Union with the United States. The overwhelming 94% vote in favor of Statehood was the final say on the matter, of course.
So you just gloss over the mountain of facts that even Congress admitted to in order to sanitize Statehood which was a total fraud? Hawaii was seduced by a system that ran a fowl of its own laws just as you say. Congress definitely treated Hawaii in ways that where contrary to Americas values, you can’t have it both ways here! Not only did statehood make native Americans out of a people who could not possibly be native to the U.S. continent, but it corrupted Congress just as American’s had feared would happen if Congress acted unilaterally in Hawaii, which it did beginning with Annexation in 1898. Every effort conceived within or between the “conspirators” (thieves) we’ll call the Republic of Hawaii, was totally immoral. One day God almighty will honor the plea of our Queen for divine justice against the next generations of Americans who refuse to set this right. America is cursed today because of what it did here in Hawaii, which means that U.S. boarders will continue to be a problem until or unless the U.S. rectifies it crimes against our people. Where do I get that you ask? The Holy Scriptures! So you think its a done deal? In the Bible we learn that a curse comes to a people who remove their neighbors land marks with the approval of “all the people” (Deut 27:17). If the United States refuses to correct this, it will become what it does not want to be. This awful subversion will come both from within and from without. Its called the law of sowing and reaping and no politician or group of people can prevent your utter demise where you refuse to do justice!! The Morgan report is irrelevant here as is your despicable explanation about the Republic of Hawaii being recognized. So because it was universally recognized somehow this sanitizes an immoral act? It’s lawful just because it was recognized? What kind of mind bending logic is this? Hawaiian subjects protested American expansion at every stage, conceding only under duress. By your logic all those who recognized the Republic of Hawaii as lawful became corrupted as well. God is sovereign, which means he enforces laws where man refuses to. You are a revisionist of the worst kind but I don’t say that to be irritating just to state a fact. You ignored the specific questions I asked and you give me the white lie version of history only? You seem just as indifferent to real liberty as Akaka supporters are. Funny how investments in power makes one ignore facts. I’m a real conservative who doesn’t mangle history to fit my social agenda. They sued to achieve Union because they broke the law! States don’t come into the Union this way! Do you even know what the standard way of entering the Union was both before and after the revolution? Can you explain this to me sir? Give me the specific provision in American law that says your Congress can annex, or make into a state, a foreign country that does not want to be annexed? Countless Americans protested annexation using standard laws that otherwise would have protected its own citizens. Protected from what you ask? DHHL and a unlawful entry of a foreign state into the Union!!
As for the “admission”, I’m assuming you’re referring to PL103-150, whose whereas clauses were rendered moot and inapplicable by the Supreme Court. The “Apology Resolution”, as it was called, was stealth legislation at its worst, passed without any investigation, and pulled almost verbatim from Davianna McGregor’s graduate work. It was an embarrassment to the Congress that such a pack of lies ever got written into law.
Regardless of whether or not you consider the Republic of Hawaii “thieves”, you cannot deny that the Republic was an independent, sovereign, and internationally recognized nation that had every right to sue for annexation. As for the Queen you speak of, she lived out the rest of her live after annexation as a proud American, and to imagine that it would be her will to return to monarchy, when annexation and the Organic Act empowered native Hawaiians to dominate the Territorial legislature for decades, is short sighted at best.
As for “moral” acts and international recognition, you simply can’t have it both ways – the Kingdom of Hawaii was created by force of arms, and the loss of life required to unite the islands was much more significant than the one policeman who was wounded during the 1893 Hawaiian Revolution.
Regarding “protesting American expansion”, I refer you to Robert Wilcox, the Unconquerable Rebel, who actually took up arms against the Republic of Hawaii, but reconciled the previously anti-annexation parties into the Hawaii Independent Party, and became our first congressional representative. Our second representative? Prince Kuhio. Even the royalists finally admitted that Union was the best thing for the Hawaiian people, of all ancestry – why this is not the case with modern day sovereignty activists is a real mystery.
Your argument, put bluntly, relies on a faulty basis. Asserting that the Republic of Hawaii was somehow illegal, without specifying either a body of law, or a tribunal which would have had jurisdiction at the time, is simply sour grapes. Pretending that annexation didn’t happen as the voluntary union of two nations, simply doesn’t make it so.
Americans seem to have retreated to the desert in rout back to Egypt as far as what might have once been the promise land of “justice and liberty for all.” Hawaii is a reflection of this because while real reconciliation could have happened, and still can happen, historical revisionism on both sides of the political divide prevents this always. Conservatives who could otherwise help with making the constitutional argument for legal redress with Native Hawaiians are unable to do this because they are stuck in this huge moral contradiction just the same as Akaka proponents are. With this you have a HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF! And for good reasons I sometimes think. Otherwise we would have Statehood, with its provisions defining native Hawaiians relationship to the unlawful state, permanently intrenched into law (so they think anyway). This is the real reason the Bill is being pushed, which makes all of your arguments about the state being legal seem not only moot but dare I say contrived. How on Gods earth can you miss the fact that Statehood and DHHL are given as a package deal? Everything you claim to dread about the Akaka bill, came with the same Statehood Act you insist was constitutional!! This is why I question how you think you are standing for E pluribus unum and statehood at the same time without contradiction? Especially since the 1959 Statehood Act was crafted precisely to reaffirm a trust obligation towards “native Hawaiians.” Numerous articles and studies have been done that clearly show how Congress had repeatedly acted on behalf of native Hawaiians, defining a trust obligation etc., where it had no authority to do so. Few things highlight this fact more than my challenge on how a people who never stepped foot on the American continent, a contiguous territory, can be defined as “indigenous peoples of America?” Congress was confined not just to a specific territory but by a Bill of Rights which we know had been ignored throughout. This is no different than the Government take over of health care where Congress manufactures these crisis in order to grow its power. Applying this argument to Hawaii is easy to do if you understand how the founders saw their particular statecraft. Americans refer to this affectionately as limited government. Applying it this way I think precludes everything you might still assume was constitutionally permissible in defending Statehood. The real issue here just as it always had been was all about legitimacy, which makes your point about 95% of Hawaii voting for statehood, and E Pluribus unum confusing.
The Apology Reso is totally irrelevant to the actual Congressional Acts I’m talking about. It doesn’t erase the moral problem.
The Apology Reso is totally irrelevant to the actual Congressional Acts I’m talking about. It doesn’t erase the moral problem of intrusion and bastardization which you seem to ignore? But I see by your remarks that you are trying to portray the historical events in virtually the same conspiratorial vacuum, where you see only one side of the story like a bias reporter who has it in for a particular candidate, who might be willing to shield his man from scrutiny or help smear his rivals at some fortunate moment. We just have so much original and now infamous data about the illegal Republic confirming that you are so wrong! I could very easily take on all that you have asserted here!! Given the few comments you’ve offered I’m sure you’ve missed my points entirely and that you will continue to reject everything I will have offered anyway. Read the debates that occurred in Congress during and well after the revolution you misrepresented. Remove yourself from the specific incidences you are always citing, and look only at the way annexation was debated and framed. Once you look past Grover Cleveland and start making excuses or equivocations you lose me right there. I know you will do this always so what s the use? You are civil, this I give you. You don’t attack me like most liberals do.
“The real issue here just as it always had been was all about legitimacy, which makes your point about 95% of Hawaii voting for statehood, and E Pluribus unum confusing.”
If one accepts that the Kingdom of Hawaii was a legitimate, sovereign, and independent nation because of the international recognition it received, one must also accept that the Republic of Hawaii was also legitimate, sovereign and independent.
While I’ll admit that Hawaii’s entry into the United States was part of a general expansive trend (just as the inclusion of Kauai in the Kingdom of Hawaii was part of a general expansive trend), the simple fact of the matter is this – the evolution from a Kingdom, to a Republic, to a Territory, to a State, has represented a continuous arc of history that has been increasing the rights of the people of Hawaii. This is something to be proud of, not something to denigrate or deny. For all the problems we still face in Hawaii today, a return to a Kingdom would be a poor remedy.
“I could very easily take on all that you have asserted here!!”
Then take on this assertion – the Republic of Hawaii was a legitimate, independent and sovereign nation that was internationally recognized by all nations who ever had any dealings with the Republic. They took over Kingdom treaty obligations, and diplomatic ties with their founding. For all the consternation you may read about on Hawaii’s path to annexation (which actually started in 1854 with the noble Kamehameha III), *everyone* in the world at the time recognized it as legitimate, including the ex-royalists Liliuokalani and Kuhio, who both lived out their lives as proud Americans.
If anything, it was the noble ideal of ‘E Pluribus Unum’ that inspired the ex-royalists to reconcile their personal loss against the union of Hawaii and the United States – as the 50th state, Hawaii has far exceeded any other pacific island nation in living conditions, freedoms and economic growth, and today.
Jere, I see you cannot answer any of questions I posed to you? Read Annexation Hawaii by Thomas Osborne. Doing this will help you see the motives of American Businessmen where they used propaganda to smear our otherwise civil minded Queen. The committee of safety was not interested in civics at all, rather they had sinister motives for dethroning the Queen. These facts came out over the course of the debates in Congress, culminating in a illegal annexation. That process was totally illegal as was everything the Republic did. I notice you don’t quote the Constitution all you do is cite historical events without asking was this constitutional. Its the end justifies the means sort of logic you use. The quote about one law comes from the Bible, did you know that? The same Bible also demands justice where theft is concerned. “Framing mischief by law” is what the Republic did to our country and it is what liberals are doing to your country!! See how that works!
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