United States federal recognition of Native Hawaiians
Native Hawaiians are the Indigenous peoples of the Hawaiian Islands. Since the involvement of the United States in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, federal statutes have been enacted to address conditions of Native Hawaiians, with some feeling these should be formalized in the same manner of sovereignty as other Indigenous populations in the United States and Alaska Natives.[2][3] However, some controversy surrounds the proposal for formal recognition – many Native Hawaiian political organizations believe recognition might interfere with Hawaiian claims to independence as a constitutional monarchy through international law.[4][5]
Department of Interior procedure[edit]
The year of hearings found most speakers with strong opposition to the United States government's involvement in the Hawaiian sovereignty issue.[15]
On September 29, 2015, the United States Department of the Interior announced a procedure to recognize a Native Hawaiian government.[15][16] The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission was created to find and register Native Hawaiians.[17] The nine member commission with the needed expertise for verifying Native Hawaiian ancestry has prepared a roll of registered individuals of Hawaiian heritage.[18]
The nonprofit organization Na'i Aupuni will organize the constitutional convention and election of delegates using the roll which began collecting names in 2011. Kelii Akina, Chief Executive Officer of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, filed suit to see the names on the roll and won, finding serious flaws. The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission has since purged the list of names of deceased persons as well as those whose address or e-mails could not be verified.
Akina again filed suit to stop the election because funding of the project comes from a grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and citing a United States Supreme Court case prohibiting the states from conducting race-based elections.[19]
In October 2015, a federal judge declined to stop the process from proceeding. The case was appealed with a formal emergency request to stop the voting until the appeal was heard but the request was denied.[20]
On November 24, the emergency request was made again to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.[21] On November 27, Justice Kennedy stopped the election tallying or naming of any delegates. On an earlier United States Supreme Court case Rice v. Cayetano in 2000, Kennedy had wrote, "Ancestry can be a proxy for race".
The decision did not stop the voting itself, and a spokesman for the Na'i Aupuni continued to encourage those eligible to vote before the end of the set deadline of November 30, 2015.[22]
The election was expected to have a cost of about $150,000, and voting was carried out by Elections America, a firm based in Washington D.C. The constitutional convention itself has an estimated cost of $2.6 million.[19]
Used multiple times as overarching referencing for the subject or section