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You thereby restricted participation in this latest effort to those willing to sign up with an
organization that has been trying to destroy the Kingdom for decades. In doing so, you
compromised the integrity of the new organization before its work ever began. Certainly, those
who did not support your reservation model did not bother signing up for your latest version of
that proposal.
You ignore the fact that the United States Supreme Court treats Hawaiians as a race. That Court
struck down the requirement that voters who elected OHA trustees be of Hawaiian descent because
that electorate was racially discriminatory.
Now you would have everyone believe that a process that involves only a limited number of people
of one race is going to be found constitutional. That limited group will be allowed to elect a body
to make recommendations on whether to set up a nation-within-a-nation composed of one race
that will be given public lands as their exclusive jurisdiction (or at least semi-autonomous
jurisdiction).
Since people who support restoration of the Kingdom would never have signed up on your rolls, the
recommendation that will come from the convention is easy to predict.
Those who thrive on challenging anything providing compensation at all to Hawaiians (nationality)
for the illegal overthrow of their government are like sharks waiting for your racially
discriminatory nation to try claiming public lands. At a minimum, they will tie you up in the courts
for years. At worst, the occupying courts will rule the creation of the race-based nation
unconstitutional. That you would set up a process with such an expected outcome is one measure
of how your agency lacks the freedom to do what is right, so it pursues what is wrong in order to at
least appear relevant.
Too many years of pursuing policies contrary to the best interests of the people have corrupted
your agency to the point that it has even abandoned the people trying to protect Mauna a Wkea.
First, on July 30, 2009, OHA passed a resolution supporting the construction of the Thirty Meter
Telescope on the sacred mountain despite numerous objections raised by your staff and others.
Then when the uprising took place this year, OHA rescinded that support so as not to appear to be
totally a slave to the State masters.
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Yet OHA could not bring itself to oppose the project. You chose to be more irrelevant than you
already were.
The DLNR sought to enact new rules allowing closure of large areas where hunting takes place. In
testimony filed, OHA said such closures could severely impact constitutionally-protected Native
Hawaiian traditional and customary rights, the perpetuation of Native Hawaiian cultural values, as
well as a major means of providing food for Native Hawaiian families and communities.
Subsequent to the DLNR adopting the rules, OHAs attorney told the Trustees that the rules are
unconstitutional. Yet OHA did nothing to challenge the rules legally.
Of course such a challenge might well have ended up proving that the rules have nothing to do with
hunting and everything to do with shutting down opposition to the TMT. OHA could not risk that
outcome, given its current position of neutrality regarding the desecration of the sacred Mountain.
How long will you participate in the charade that OHA speaks for the Hawaiian people. What use is
a voice that goes silent when the need is critical?
In closing
Historical Note:
Our Kupunas were divinely guided to organize the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in the 1970s, to right
past wrongs. In 1978, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs became a reality; the people were jubilant, filled
with hope that a voice of the people could be heard. My parents and tutu were part of this campaign
that helped create OHA. They along with many others had high hopes for our future as Kanaka
Maolis that one day, we would emerge a Free, independent Nation.
As trustees, you held the trust of the people in every aspect of Common law, compassion, intelligence,
good-will, integrity, truth and honor. A trustee's duties to the trust beneficiaries (Kanaka Maoli
Hawaiian of blood) are one of the law's highest duties in improving the well-being of Native Hawaiians
throughout the Hawaiian Islands Archipelago.
Unfortunately, what was created in love for the people became a catalyst to destroy the very fabric of
our cultural and traditional beliefs held sacred in the hearts of us all. Alii Nui Mi Kelii
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