President Bush has now signed the omnibus $373
billion appropriations bill HR 2673 which includes a
small section establishing a U.S. Office of Native
Hawaiian Relations and appropriating $100,000 to fund
the operations of that office. This article will
provide the exact language of the legislation, explain
why the new bureaucracy was created, and discuss its
implications for the future. A quick introduction is
provided for citizens who would like to learn how to
use the Library of Congress Web site to read current
bills and historic documents (your tax dollars at
work!)
Throughout their long careers in the Senate,
Hawaii Senators Dan Inouye and Dan Akaka have served
as members of the Indian Affairs Committee. Whenever
the Democrats are in power, Inouye is chairman of that
committee; otherwise his friend, “Republican” Ben
Nighthorse Campbell (an Indian and formerly a
Democrat) is in power and gives Inouye free rein to
handle Hawaiian issues.
One might wonder why both Hawaii Senators have
invested their careers sitting on the Indian Affairs
committee when there are no Indian tribes in Hawaii.
Senators can only serve on a limited number of
committees. Why did they “waste” one committee choice
instead of serving on a different committee with
relevance for all Hawaii’s people? The answer is:
pork, and the racial spoils system. The Office of
Hawaiian Affairs frequently brags that there are over
160 programs providing benefits to “Native Hawaiians.”
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/listhawnentitlements.html
Those programs got established and funded because
Inouye and Akaka, as members of the Indian Affairs
committee, were able to insert the words “Native
Hawaiians” virtually unnoticed into legislation
intended to provide benefits to real Indian tribes and
Native Alaskans.
Now that so many federal programs have been
established that benefit “Native Hawaiians,” it seems
to make sense that there should be a special office in
the Department of Interior to coordinate all those
programs and provide liaison between ethnic Hawaiian
beneficiary institutions and the various federal
agencies that administer these programs.
Setting up an office funded with $100,000 will
perhaps provide one administrator, one secretary, a
telephone and some paper clips. But the language
establishing this office is closely similar to part of
Section 5 of the Akaka bill, and thus might be seen as
the beginning of an attempt to pass the Akaka bill
piece by piece, embedding individual pieces deep
inside other bills, much as a bitter pill may be
broken into pieces and hidden inside bowls of ice
cream. The Hawaiian office inside the Department of
Interior will also be heavily used as a lobbying
headquarters for state politicians trying to pass the
Akaka bill and for ethnic Hawaiians seeking additional
race-based programs at the expense of taxpayers from
California to Maine.
The Akaka bill has a long history of stealth and
deception in the way it was created and the way
efforts have been made to pass it. In 2000 and 2001
there were extreme stealth maneuvers in both the House
and Senate designed to pass the entire Akaka bill all
at once by hiding it among a collection of
non-controversial bills to be passed by unanimous
consent on a voice vote at dinner time, and by hiding
it “by reference” in the form of a single sentence
buried deep inside a huge appropriations bill. For
details, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/StealthDeception.html
As opposition grew stronger, the bill lay dormant
throughout 2002. In the new 108th Congress starting
2003, the amended bill S.344 was passed out of its
Senate committee and then lay dormant, while the House
version H.R.665 remained unamended and never even got
a committee hearing. Gov. Lingle’s personal
lobbying for the bill both in Washington and during
President Bush’s October 2003 visit to Hawaii yielded
negligible results. See:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/AkakaHist108thCong.html
While Gov. Lingle has announced she will
continue to aggressively lobby U.S. Senators and
members of the Bush administration for the Akaka bill
(including a February 2004 trip to Washington), a new
strategy has emerged. Opposition to the Akaka bill
may be so great that the bill cannot be passed intact
in its totality. Therefore bits and pieces of the
bill might be inserted into other “must-pass” bills,
such as the gigantic omnibus appropriations bill just
signed into law.
There are two stealth strategies simultaneously
at work here. (1) A terrorist might know he cannot
successfully smuggle an entire nuclear bomb into the
U.S., so he cleverly smuggles individual pieces of the
bomb and then reassembles the pieces at the target
location. Thus, one small piece of the Akaka bill has
now been passed. (2) A general might send a few real
tanks into battle accompanied by larger-than-life
decoys whose job is to divert or distract the
defenders so the real tanks can get through. A
magician might make large gestures with one hand, and
have his pretty assistant wave colored handkerchiefs
attracting the audience’s attention, while using his
unwatched hand to get the “magic” accomplished. Thus,
the complete but unpassable Akaka bill might be used
as a decoy even while bits and pieces of it get passed
as embedded in other bills.
In fact, the whole concept of the Akaka bill is
apartheid by stealth. It would allow Hawaii to be
carved up along racial lines without any vote of
approval either by ethnic Hawaiians as a group or by
Hawaii’s people as a whole. Those ethnic Hawaiians
who like the idea of setting up a race-based
government can sign up for the “tribe” and elect
delegates to a “constitutional convention.” But the
probably large majority of ethnic Hawaiians who hate
the concept of racial separatism have no way to vote
against it, since any vote to “ratify” the
constitution can be participated in only by those who
signed up for the tribe. And there will never be any
vote by Hawaii’s people as a whole. For extensive
information on what’s wrong with the Akaka bill, see:
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/OpposeAkakaBill.html
The language setting up the U.S. Office for
Native Hawaiian Relations is short. It is contained
in the very last subsection of the omnibus
appropriations bill, where miscellaneous pork
provisions or Christmas tree ornaments are added at
the last minute. Below is the complete text of the
4-paragraph Hawaiian “Section 148,” and a brief
description of how to find it in the context of the
entire bill. Following that, sections 146 through
the start of 149 are provided so that readers can
easily “turn over the rock” to see the deep dark place
where the Hawaiian office was created and the
hodgepodge of unrelated topics surrounding it. In all
likelihood the only Senators and Representatives who
were aware of what they were voting for were Inouye,
Akaka, Abercrombie and Case. We get a chance to vote
three of them out of office this coming November.
The omnibus appropriations bill is H.R.2673 of
the 108th Congress. The entire appropriations bill,
leading to the small Hawaiian section, can be viewed
at the website of the Library of Congress as follows.
Note that your search through this huge website always
uses temporary links, so that after ten minutes you
cannot backup but must start all over.
(1) Go to https://thomas.loc.gov/
(2) On the front page of that Web site, put H.R.2673
into the bill-number search window.
(3) Then choose the final version #6, “Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2004 (Enrolled as Agreed to or
Passed by Both House and Senate).”
(4) Scroll all the way down to the bottom, below
DIVISION H–MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATIONS AND OFFSETS
and click on the very last link offered: ‘SEC. 9.
TERMINATION OF COMMISSION.
(5) Scroll down to Section 148. Here’s what you’ll
find, in its entirety:
SEC. 148. UNITED STATES OFFICE FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN
RELATIONS.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT — The sum of $100,000 is
appropriated, to remain available until expended, for
the establishment of the Office of Native Hawaiian
Relations within the Office of the Secretary of the
Interior.
(b) DUTIES — The Office shall —
(1) effectuate and implement the special legal
relationship between the Native Hawaiian people and
the United States;
(2) continue the process of reconciliation with the
Native Hawaiian people; and
(3) fully integrate the principle and practice of
meaningful, regular, and appropriate consultation with
the Native Hawaiian people by assuring timely
notification of and prior consultation with the Native
Hawaiian people before any Federal agency takes any
actions that may have the potential to significantly
affect Native Hawaiian resources, rights, or lands.
We might note in passing that despite the
language of item (3) there are no “Native Hawaiian
resources, rights, or lands.” For example, OHA is an
agency of the State of Hawaii and, thanks to Rice v.
Cayetano and Arakaki #1 all Hawaii voters get to vote
for and run for OHA trustee without racial exclusion.
And the lands of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands
are owned by the State of Hawaii. Native Hawaiians
have the same rights as all other Hawaii citizens
under the state and federal Constitutions, although
the Akaka bill would take away some of those
Constitutional rights from tribal members while
purporting to give them special rights within the
tribe.
Here are sections 146 through the first part of
149, so that readers can see the hodgepodge of
unrelated topics in which the Akaka-bill piece
(section 148) is hidden:
SEC. 146. For the purposes described in section 386 of
the Energy Policy Act of 2003 there is authorized to
be appropriated $1,000,000, except that upon that Act
becoming law, section 386 is amended through this Act:
(1) in subsection (a) by inserting before the term `to
issue’ the phrase `or with an entity the Secretary
determines is qualified to construct and operate a
liquefied natural gas project to transport liquefied
natural gas from Southcentral Alaska to West Coast
States,’;
(2) at the end of paragraph 386(b)(1) by striking the
period and inserting `, or after the Secretary
certifies there exists a qualified entity to construct
and operate a liquefied natural gas project to
transport liquefied natural gas from Southcentral
Alaska to West Coast States. In no case shall loan
guarantees be issued for more than one qualified
project.’;
(3) at the end of paragraph 386(c)(2) by striking the
period and inserting `, except that the total amount
of principal that may be guaranteed for a qualified
liquefied natural gas project may not exceed a
principal amount in which the cost of loan guarantees,
as defined by section 502(5) of the Federal Credit
Reform Act of 1990 (2 U.S.C. 661a(5)), exceeds
$2,000,000,000.’; and
(4) at paragraph 386(g)(4): (A) by inserting before the term `consisting’ the new term `or system’; and (B) by inserting between the term `plants’ and the `)’ the phrase `liquification plants and liquefied natural gas tankers for transportation of liquefied natural gas from Southcentral Alaska to the West Coast’.
SEC. 147. PAYMENT OF EXPENSES AFTER THE DEATH OF
CERTAIN FEDERAL EMPLOYEES IN THE STATE OF ALASKA.
Section 1308 of the Alaska National Interest Lands
Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 3198) is amended —
(1) by redesignating subsection (c) as subsection (d);
and
(2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following:
`(c) PAYMENT OF EXPENSES AFTER DEATH OF AN EMPLOYEE-
`(1) DEFINITION OF IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBER — In this
subsection, the term `immediate family member’ means a
person related to a deceased employee that was a
member of the household of the deceased employee at
the time of death.
`(2) PAYMENTS — If an employee appointed under the
program established by subsection (a) dies in the
performance of any assigned duties on or after October
1, 2002, the Secretary may — `(A) pay or reimburse reasonable expenses, regardless of when those expenses are incurred, for the
preparation and transportation of the remains of the
deceased employee to a location in the State of Alaska
which is selected by the surviving head of household
of the deceased employee; `(B) pay or reimburse reasonable expenses, regardless
of when those expenses are incurred, for transporting immediate family members and the baggage and household goods of the deceased employee and immediate family members to a community in the State of Alaska which is selected by the surviving head of household of the deceased employee.’.
SEC. 148. UNITED STATES OFFICE FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN
RELATIONS.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT- The sum of $100,000 is
appropriated, to remain available until expended, for
the establishment of the Office of Native Hawaiian
Relations within the Office of the Secretary of the
Interior.
(b) DUTIES- The Office shall — (1) effectuate and implement the special legal
relationship between the Native Hawaiian people and
the United States; (2) continue the process of reconciliation with the
Native Hawaiian people; and (3) fully integrate the principle and practice of
meaningful, regular, and appropriate consultation with the Native Hawaiian people by assuring timely notification of and prior consultation with the Native Hawaiian people before any Federal agency takes any actions that may have the potential to significantly affect Native Hawaiian resources, rights, or lands.
SEC. 149. LEASE OF TRIBALLY-OWNED LAND BY ASSINIBOINE
AND SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK RESERVATION. The
first section of the Act of August 9, 1955 (25 U.S.C.
415), is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(g) LEASE OF TRIBALLY-OWNED LAND BY ASSINIBOINE AND
SIOUX TRIBES OF THE FORT PECK RESERVATION —
`(1) IN GENERAL — Notwithstanding subsection (a) and
any regulations under part 162 of title 25, Code of
Federal Regulations (or any successor regulation),
subject to paragraph (2), the Assiniboine and Sioux
Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation may lease to the
Northern Border Pipeline Company tribally-owned land
on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation for 1 or more
interstate gas pipelines.
`(2) CONDITIONS — A lease entered into under paragraph
(1) — `(A) shall commence during fiscal year 2011 for an
initial term of 25 years; `(B) may be renewed for an additional term of 25
years; and `(C) shall specify in the terms of the lease an annual
rental rate — … ”'[section 149 continues substantially longer]”’
”’Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D., is an independent scholar in Kaneohe, Hawaii. His Web site on Hawaiian Sovereignty is at:”’ https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty ”’He can be contacted at:”’ mailto:Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com
”’HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to”’ mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com