Native Hawaiians Say Their Aloha Spirit Has Left Them Shortchanged : Islands: Groups seek $10 billion for use of ancestral lands by federal and local governments and for overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani.

The natives are getting restless.

It’s an awakening 100 years in the making for the native Hawaiians, whose aloha spirit of sharing and easygoing lifestyle left many of them at the bottom of the modern social ladder in the land of their ancestors.

Now they want to be recognized by the federal government as a separate nation. They want $10 billion in compensation for the past use of their lands by federal and local governments and for the overthrow of their queen.

And, they want huge federal grants to fulfill a neglected land trust program set up 70 years ago to give native Hawaiians homes and farms.

As next year’s centennial of the overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy approaches, about 30 Hawaiian civic and community groups and political organizations have formed a loose coalition to look into gaining sovereignty for 40,000 native Hawaiians and 160,000 part-Hawaiians.

Their key ally has been senior Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who has promised to introduce measures to create an independent Hawaiian government within the framework of the federal and state governments, allow Hawaiians to bring lawsuits against the federal government over the management of the major land trusts and provide compensation for past claims.

“I think the iron is hot. The time is right to strike,” Inouye, who is of Japanese descent, told Hawaiian leaders when they recently presented him with proposals for federal legislation.

Two huge land trusts that make up 41% of all land in the islands are the economic motive in the sovereignty issue and date to the 1893 bloodless overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani by a political faction made up primarily of white business leaders.

Proponents of sovereignty portray U.S. involvement in the overthrow as a coup backed by an armed U.S. military invasion.

Historical records, however, show that a force of 162 Marines from a Navy ship took up a positions near Iolani Palace on the pretext of guarding American property and preserving the peace between heated rallies being staged by the opposing political factions.

Upon annexation by the United States in 1898, about 1.75 million acres of crown and government lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii were ceded in a trust to the Territory of Hawaii.

Under the 1959 Admissions Act that made Hawaii the 50th state, revenues from the ceded lands trust were designated to benefit public schools, develop homes and farms, undertake public works projects and to provide for the betterment of native Hawaiians.

The second land trust was established in 1921 when Congress set aside 203,500 acres of the ceded lands for the Hawaiian Home Lands Program to provide homesteads to native Hawaiians.

Leaders in the Hawaiian community contend the federal government, which administered Hawaii as a U.S. territory until 1959, illegally took the trust lands for other purposes without compensation and failed to fulfill its obligation in making the Hawaiian Home Lands program work.

State records show that about 400,000 acres of ceded lands are now under federal control and used primarily for military bases, including Pearl Harbor, and national parks.

“The overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani did not mean the demise of sovereignty,” Inouye told the Hawaiian leaders.

The Hawaiians have to convince non-Hawaiians “that what you are seeking is justice, what you are seeking is legal and what you are seeking is constitutional. In essence, it is just redress,” he said.

Not all those in the Hawaiian community agree that sovereignty is the way to go or that native Hawaiians have any claim to the 1.75 million acres of ceded lands.

Rubellite Johnson, a University of Hawaii language professor and Hawaiian scholar, wrote:

“The sovereign government lands did not belong to any citizen then, nor are they properly claimed by any citizen now, aboriginal or otherwise, because the government lands had always been the property of the government since 1848, created in the division of the Great Mahele by Kamehameha III, the king for all citizens of the kingdom regardless of ethnic origin.

“The government property was, as the king put it, for ‘all of my subjects,’ including residents from aboard to whom the services of the kingdom also accrued.”

Johnson is a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Kamehameha the Great.

Retired federal Judge Samuel P. King, a part-Hawaiian, said failure of Hawaiians to reach agreement on goals and policies is a major problem.

“Hawaiians have so many interests in the whole community, so many stakes in conformist society, that seeking their rights as a people conflicts with their private interests as individuals,” King said.

Hui Na’auao, the coalition of Hawaiian groups, was created last year under a $364,061 grant from the federal Administration for Native Americans to promote awareness of Hawaiian sovereignty and self-determination.

The state administration has been seeking money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for homesteads for native Hawaiians on Hawaiian Home Lands.

A grant of $1.2 million was received in 1990, but the U.S. Justice Department ordered subsequent grants withheld.

The Bush Administration has balked at giving Hawaiians anything, arguing that it would be an unconstitutional benefit for a select racial class.

The stance of the Bush Administration, if carried to its “worst case scenario,” could see 6,000 native Hawaiians thrown off their homestead lands and an end to all native Hawaiian programs, said Gov. John Waihee, the state’s first governor of Hawaiian ancestry.

During a congressional hearing in February, representatives of the departments of Interior and Justice testified there was no federal obligation to the land trusts--past, present or future.

Faced with that tone from the Bush Administration, state Sen. Michael Crozier said gaining status for native Hawaiians as a native American group through congressional action is preferable to forcing the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court “because you can keep coming back day after day, year after year until you finally win.”

“But once you go to court, all you get is one roll . . . where it’s an all or nothing decision” by a conservative court that would be looking to serve the federal government’s interest, said Crozier, chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and Hawaiian Programs.

Waihee says the state government finally is fulfilling its obligations to native Hawaiians and the land trusts by funding $268 million to support the Hawaiian Home Lands program since statehood.

Meanwhile, OHA has negotiated a nearly $100-million payment from the state for 11 years back rent of ceded lands used for public purposes, such as parks, airports and schools. It also would get $8.5 million a year from ongoing leases. That settlement has to be approved by Hawaii’s Legislature.