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United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Chairman Byron Dorgan August 6, 2009 – 2:15 pm Dirksen Senate Office Building Testimony of Robin Puanani Danner President & Chief Executive Officer Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement S. 1011 - Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 1 Aloha Chairman Dorgan, Vice Chairman Barrasso, Senator Inouye, Senator Akaka and other Members of the Committee. Thank you for your invitation to provide testimony on behalf of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement regarding the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009, S.1011. My name is Robin Puanani Danner. I am native Hawaiian and a resident of Hawaiian Home Lands, the trust lands created under the enactment of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920. I submit this testimony in my capacity as President of the Council, founded to unify Native Hawaiian groups and organizations to promote the cultural, economic and community development of Native Hawaiians. Similar in purpose to the Alaska Federation of Natives and the National Congress of American Indians, CNHA achieves its mission through a strong policy voice, capacity building and connecting resources to the challenges in our communities. Today, CNHA has a membership of 102 Native Hawaiian organizations. We are governed by a 15- member board of directors elected by our member organizations. I would like to express CNHA’s strong support for S. 1011 with revisions. As President of CNHA, I have worked for many years with extraordinary Native leaders and others to improve the opportunities and resolve challenges faced by Native Hawaiians. This legislation, first introduced in 2000 is perhaps the single most important piece of public policy to advance solutions from within our communities and in partnership with the federal government and state of Hawaii. The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act is important legislation that recognizes the economic, cultural, and political rights and interests of Native Hawaiians. The Act is intended to facilitate the Native Hawaiian people’s efforts to reorganize our native government to promote our best interests. This legislation has been before Congress for almost 10 years, and it is particularly appropriate that Congress enact this legislation in 2009, the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. Since Hawaii’s overthrow as an independent nation and subsequent annexation to the United States, our Native Hawaiian people have sought justice. While Queen Liliuokalani, our last reigning monarch prior to the overthrow, was alive, she maintained our claims and passed the torch to Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole. One of his most significant achievements was the enactment of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 (HHCA). Modeled after the 1906 Native Allotment Act for Alaska Natives and American Indians enacted by Congress, the HHCA established trust lands for residential, agricultural and pastoral homesteading by native Hawaiians. Yet the HHCA was only a partial solution. A Native Hawaiian government, recognized by the federal government and accountable to Native Hawaiians, represents the full measure of the federal policy of self-determination and self-governance, which is achieved in S. 1011. The state agencies, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and Office of Hawaiian Affairs, are vital partners yet cannot fulfill this role. As the Supreme Court pointed out in Rice v. Cayetano, these agencies are state government agencies founded in state law. Passage of S. 1011 authorizes a 2 process by which the Native Hawaiian people are able to reorganize a Native Hawaiian government to speak on our behalf as native people and to work in a government to government relationship with the state of Hawaii and our federal government. Background I would like to include in the record, background information relevant to S. 1011 and the historical context which makes clear that passage of S. 1011 is exactly the next step in the journey of Native Hawaiians with the federal government. Original People of the Hawaiian Islands The Hawaiian Islands form the apex of the Polynesian triangle that extends from New Zealand (Aotearoa) to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and north to Hawaii. The Polynesian triangle includes eight distinct cultures: Hawaiian, Maori, Rapa Nui, Marquesan, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan and Tokelauan. Our people settled the Hawaiian Islands approximately 2,000 years ago, arriving from the South Pacific through extraordinary feats of navigation. Our early Native Hawaiian ancestors established a complex society based on agriculture and aquaculture. By farming taro, breadfruit and sweet potatoes, raising animals, and using fish traps and harvesting seafood, our people had a self-sufficient, sustainable economy. As Congress recognized, the Native Hawaiian people “lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistence social system based on a communal land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture, and religion.” Apology Resolution, Public Law No. 103-150, 107 Stat. 510. We had a complex system of ali’i (chiefs), laws that governed the conduct of our people and all of us had an interest in the land. Hawaii’s State Motto, Ua mau ke` ea o ka `aina i ka pono ~ “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness” reflects the respect that all people of the State of Hawaii have for the cultural traditions and values of Hawaii’s indigenous people. In the same sense as other Native Americans are native to the other 49 states, Native Hawaiians are the “aboriginal, indigenous, native people of Hawaii.” The Kingdom of Hawaii By 1810, King Kamehameha had consolidated the rule of the Hawaiian Islands into the Kingdom of Hawaii. Many foreign nations recognized and promulgated treaties with the Kingdom of Hawaii as an independent sovereign nation, and the United States entered into treaties with the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1826, 1849, 1875, and 1887. In the 1849 Treaty with the Kingdom of Hawaii, the United States pledged “perpetual peace and amity.” In 1840, the Kingdom of Hawaii became a constitutional monarchy, which confirmed that the lands of Hawaii belonged to the chiefs and the Native Hawaiian people subject to the management of the land by the King. From 1845 to 1848, the Hawaiian lands were divided between the ali’i (1,690,000 acres), King Kamehameha III (984,000 acres), and the Government (1,523,000 acres). It was recognized that the King held the Government lands in trust for benefit of the Native Hawaiian people. 3 The Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii The first foreigners to come to Hawaii beginning in 1778 came as explorers and missionaries. The next generation began sugar and pineapple plantations. In 1892, when Queen Liliuokalani sought to restore the place of the Monarchy through a constitutional revision, foreign business interests organized against her. In 1893, armed with assistance of the U.S. government minister and the support of the U.S. naval forces, the American and European plantation owners overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii in violation of the United States’ treaties of friendship and commerce. Queen Liliuokalani sought to avoid bloodshed and rather than rally armed forces, filed diplomatic protests with the United States. Although President Cleveland agreed that the U.S. forces had acted in violation of international law and called for the restoration of the Kingdom, the Provisional Government refused to yield, declaring itself the Republic of Hawaii. In 1898, the McKinley Administration accepted the annexation of Hawaii through a joint resolution of Congress, although the Native Hawaiian people sent petitions objecting to annexation. The Kingdom of Hawaii’s Crown lands and Government lands were transferred to the United States as the “ceded lands,” by the Republic of Hawaii. The Hawaii Organic Act of 1900 formally made the Hawaiian Islands a territory of the United States and retained most of the laws created by the Kingdom of Hawaii, including ahupua’a tenant land rights, and the recognition of “Hawaiian tradition and custom”. Ref: U.S. Department of the Interior and Justice Report: “From Mauka to Makai: The River of Justice Must Flow Freely,” (2000), explaining Hawaii Organic Act, 31 Stat. 141, 56th Cong. 1st Sess. (April 30, 1900). Queen Liliuokalani continued to seek justice for the Native Hawaiian people until her death in 1917. She never voluntarily relinquished her claims to sovereignty on behalf of the Native Hawaiian people. In addition, she actively continued to seek the return of the Crown lands for the Native Hawaiian people. The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, the Kingdom of Hawaii’s heir to the throne, participated in a rebellion against the Republic of Hawaii in 1895 and was jailed for a year. After his release, he travelled widely in Europe and served in the British Army in Africa, returning to Hawaii in 1901 to take up his duties as an advocate for our Native Hawaiian people. He was elected to Congress and served from 1903 until his death in 1922. One of his most singular achievements was the enactment of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, which set aside approximately 200,000 acres of the ceded lands for homesteading by native Hawaiians (½ or more Hawaiian blood). Prior to the overthrow, our people were devastated by foreign diseases and our suffering increased after the overthrow. Our difficult situation was made plain in the hearings before Congress. Before the House Committee on Territories, Territorial Senator John Wise testified: The Hawaiian people are a farming people and fishermen, out-of-door people, and when they were frozen out of their lands and driven into the big cities they had to live in the cheapest places, the tenements. That is one of the big reasons the Hawaiian people are 4 dying. Now, the only way to save them, I contend, is to take them back to the lands and give them the mode of living that their ancestors were accustomed to and in that way rehabilitate them.