Suit Would End Aid for Ethnic Hawaiians

The state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs has struggled for years with a legal and financial quandary.

Its mission is to serve all islanders with any Hawaiian blood at all. But nearly all of its money must by law go to just one-third of them--those with 50% or more Hawaiian blood.

Now, such issues could become moot as a racial discrimination lawsuit heads to the U.S. Supreme Court. It could wipe out all state and federal programs specifically favoring the 208,000 ethnic Hawaiians, according to attorneys on both sides.

“If the Supreme Court decided that Hawaiians don’t have special rights as indigenous people, I think the Hawaiians would be forced to rise up in outrage,” said Jonathan Osorio, a Hawaiian and assistant professor at the University of Hawaii.

The lawsuit was brought by Harold “Freddy” Rice, a Caucasian rancher on Hawaii Island and a descendant of two Kingdom of Hawaii legislators who supported Queen Lili’uokalani during her overthrow by white business leaders in 1893. He sued the state in 1996, contending that the exclusion of all but ethnic Hawaiians from voting and candidacy on the nine-member board of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was discriminatory.

If he wins, it could mean an end to special programs benefiting Hawaiians, he said, but he added that it would “validate the Hawaiians” as full-fledged citizens able to stand on their own.

“By having preferences, you create a welfare system. If you are promised something you tend to wait around until [you] get it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be in this if I thought it was going to hurt Hawaiians.”

Rice lost in U.S. District Court. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that, assuming the trust that the agency oversees is valid, the state can conclude that the Hawaiian beneficiaries of the trust should decide whom the trustees should be.

The agency has a $270-million trust fund from its 20% share of revenues generated from 1.2 million acres of state-owned lands. A provision of the 1959 statehood act lists “the betterment of conditions of native Hawaiians” as one of five purposes for those revenues. In a separate legal action, the agency is in state court claiming that its fair share since statehood is at least $500 million more.

But who is a “native Hawaiian”?

The definition is drawn from the 1920 Hawaiian Home Lands Act, which set aside 205,000 acres of land for home and farm lots for people of 50% or more Hawaiian blood.

Congress’ selection of that criterion was “devious” and “intentionally divisive,” said agency board Chairwoman Adelaide “Frenchy” DeSoto. “It was in the back of their minds in Congress that we were a dying race and they hoped we would go away,” agreed Kina’u Kamali’i, a former state legislator and onetime board member.

“This is a reason for us to move forward and reestablish our nation of Hawaii,” said Kamali’i, leader of Ho’omalu Ma Kualoa, a group working to unite the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement.

One of the movement’s goals is to establish a government-to-government relationship like the ones American Indian tribes have with the federal government.