In a handful of hours, the US House will vote on the Akaka Bill, without a hearing in Hawaii on the current version of the bill. In spite of the recalcitrance of powerful politicians, the taroroots continue to speak out.

In that spirit, here’s testimony I wrote for last month’s Civil Rights Commission hearings.

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Aloha kakou, members of the committee, and comrades in the struggle for Hawaiian justice. Thank you for the opportunity to testify in person on this important legislation.

We are gathered here in the wake of great civil rights leaders such as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to mourn the death of his dream. Under our watch, we have allowed his words to be contorted and disfigured, with meanings swapped for their antonyms, and the historical trajectory of an expanding of rights replaced by an attempt to foreclose on us.

I say this because we are confronted with a profound contradiction. The long-standing opponents of Kanaka Maoli human rights, including the fundamental right to self-determination, have ascended to a committee which has the ostensible mission to protect our basic civil rights. This is a tragedy for all peoples, particularly citizens of the United States who cherish social justice and who believe in the rights of man. The selection of these individuals should be met with the strongest denunciation and condemnation as an affront to the legacy and life on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, and all those who fought for human and civil rights.

When men and women such as Dr. King and Rosa Parks walked with us, they enunciated a dream that always one step beyond, pushing us forward to ever-widening visions of justice and humanity. Those ideas, first proposed by a group of nobles confronting King John, were expanded by the prisoners freed from the Bastille. The vision of a just society has expanded with each generation, from Runnymeade to the March on Washington, from the abolitionists to the suffragettes, from the trade unionists to the the the freedom riders, to Queer pride, and from Wounded Knee in 1890 to Wounded Knee in 1973. Rights – both human and civil, is about opening up the conditions and possibilities of being human.

I stand in solidarity with all peoples who support our fundamental right to self-determination. We may disagree about the ultimate expression of that right, but we concur that such a right exists. And we also agree that the legal and political attacks on the Hawaiian people must end, and we stand here today in unity to make that statement.

The United States is perched on a narrow precipice, between its own revolutionary rhetoric, and the actual violences that it has inflicted on millions of people. In Hawaii, we cannot consider the question of racial justice, without confronting the question of imperialism and occuption.

And parenthetically, for those who say that civil rights should be limited to the narrow domain of racial equality and segregation, I must remind you that Dr. King himself opposed imperialism and militarism in Southeast Asia, in his historic address at the Riverside Church in 1968. Remember that Dr. King’s own community of faith urged him to cool off, to go slow, because he was stepping out of the comfortable conversation about race, and was beginning to talk about race and imperialism. He may as well have been talking about Hawaii, which is today governed by those same giant triplets of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism.

Members of the committee, I oppose the Akaka Bill. I oppose it because the Hawaiian people, as well as the indigenous peoples of North America, deserve better than to be mistreated at the hands of the Department of the Interior and the fickle proceedings of congressional plenary power. I oppose the bill because it contains specific language to exempt the US military from its responsibility as Hawaii’s largest and most toxic polluter, and as a voracious machine which is turning our sacred land into a single vehicle for militarism and war. That is not our calling – we are people of aloha, which demands of us an orientation towards justice and peace.

I also oppose the Akaka Bill because it will not protect our institutions against the people who attack us; they will find other avenues to do so. If we want to understand their strategy, we should give the microphone to them today, for they are in the seats of honor right now. And to the contrary, the Akaka Bill will be used to sweep one hundred and fourteen years of illegal actions and deeds under the rug, hidden under the first paragraph of the bill which says that “Native Hawaiians are indigenous peoples of the United States.”

Reconciliation

Members of the committee, the people of Hawaii do not need this bill. We do need to resume the conversation that began with the passage of the Apology Bill in 1993. We need to discuss what a real process for reconciliation would entail. At a minimum, the United States must stop any further actions to increase the militarization of our homeland, which is a corporeal threat to our legitimate quest for self-determination. The US should institute a commission to return lands and resources which were stolen from individuals and families in the previous century, taken to make plantations and military bases. The US must also not stand in the way of a UN decolonization process here.

This body must stand in solidarity with the indigneous peoples of our land, who are fighting against tremendous odds to defend our birthright from the vociferous attacks of a small, but potent, political minority. This body is investigating the wrong topic. The problem is not the Akaka Bill: the problem is the men and women, motivated by a misplaced sense of white victimhood, who are lashing out at the Hawaiian people, and at peoples of color throughout the United States. They are the intellectual descendents of Jim Crow and the colorline, and they must be stopped. If the civil rights commission cannot muster the spiritual fortitude to confront these foes, then the dream has truly died.

Mahalo.

The Japanese American Citizens League is circulating the following email to garner support for the Akaka Bill, coming up for vote in the US House tomorrow.

The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2007 (NHGRA) is scheduled for a vote before the House of Representatives tomorrow! (Wednesday, Octover 24) The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) is calling on your support to contact your Congress Member before the vote tomorrow morning and urge passage of this bill.

[...]

JACL, the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights and human rights organization, fully supports the right of the indigenous people of Hawai’i to seek federal recognition. Native Hawaiians should have a say in how to best address issues in their own community.

The gesture of support for Kanaka Maoli is correct and is appreciated. But the JACL should not be deciding for Kanaka Maoli – and for Hawaii as a whole – about the form or content of Hawaiian sovereignty. Doing so violates two important ethical principles: self-determination and solidarity.

Self-determination is the human right for a people to decide their relationship with another country, in particular a colonizing empire. All peoples have that right – it is the basis by which the peoples of Africa, Asia, and most of the Pacific achieved political independence in the last five decades.

That right should also be available to the peoples of Hawaii. It is a complex and sometimes uncomfortable topic, but it should be discussed (and should not be predetermined or occluded).

By solidarity I mean an unprejudiced and fraternal support for another person or peoples. Solidarity requires a subscription to a higher value than that heard in the halls of day-to-day politics. It is a trusting commitment to the other, and an affirmation of the need for peoples to come together across difference and diversity.

I urge the membership and leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League to engage in a selfless solidarity with the Hawaiian people, and to allow self-determination to run its course. Have the courage to stand with us, and to stand for the higher principle of self-determination.

Mahalo nui.

Honorable Representative Mazie Hirono
Member of the US House of Representatives

October 23, 2007

Dear Madame Representative:

It has come to my attention that the full House will be voting on the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act tomorrow, Wednesday the 24th. I must ask that you insist that the vote be delayed until hearings are held in Hawaii. This is a minimum expectation in a democratic society; and even without democracy, we still demand to be heard. The “Akaka Bill” is a serious measure, with drastic consequences for the Kanaka Maoli people and for all people of Hawaii.

You are of course aware that hearings were only held once in Hawaii, at the beginning of this decade, and on a completely different iteration of this bill. The current draft decimates any possibility of an honest reconciliation process between Hawaii and the United States by rendering it impossible to sue on historic breaches of domestic trust and international law. It contains specific exemptions for the US military, which is the single largest polluter in Hawaii (and the US), and controls more than 25% of the island of Oahu. It also weakens current federal Indian law, by forcing the Hawaiian Governing Entity to enter into a three-way negotiation process with the state and federal governments, instead of the customary federal-Indian negotiations that are common in Indian Country.

Honorable Representative, the people of our shared homeland should not be ignored on this measure. We have legitimate concerns which deserve a hearing.

Please uphold the spirit of democracy – convene hearings in Hawaii now.

Respectfully,

Ikaika Hussey