Yesterday’s announcement that the election of delegates to a Native Hawaiian constitutional convention has been cancelled took me by surprise. Apparently there was just too much centrifugal force (of the political kind) to hold the election together as planned.
I wish that I could be optimistic about the idea of embracing all the registered candidates and proceeding with a much larger, but much shorter, convention. All of the nearly 200 candidates have been invited to take part, nearly five times the planned 40 delegates. And they’ll only have 20 days to tackle all the issues, rather than the planned 40 working days over two months.
And according to yesterday’s announcements, the first of the four weeks will be spent reviewing background materials.
The Star-Advertiser reported:
During the first week delegates will see presentations on constitution building, federal Indian law, international law regarding de-occupation, decolonization, the rights of indigenous people, constitutional issues that relate to Native Hawaiian self-governance, the ceded-lands claim, background on Hawaiian homelands, kingdom law and constitutions already drafted by sovereignty groups.
I don’t know about you, but that makes my head spin.
Let’s see. The state’s 1968 constitutional convention ran for 58 days. I haven’t found the actual data on 1978, but I expect it ran about the same length. And they weren’t starting from scratch, and were just looking at amendments to an existing constitution, rather than having to decide the most basic issues and directions, as the Hawaiian convention will have to do.
And the Honolulu Charter Commission, with just 13 members, is scheduled to take nearly 18 months to complete its review of the charter and to recommend amendments.
Twenty working days? It seems designed for failure, at least if concrete results are expected. The political free-for-all perhaps could, however, result in at least a general sense of common direction. No, I take that back. It could yield a majority view of what direction to move next, and leave the actual drafting of a founding document to a future political process.
But I also think Walter Ritte got it right on one point. Again, from the Star-Advertiser story:
Ritte and others contend that Na‘i Aupuni is part of a campaign to turn Native Hawaiians into a federally recognized American Indian tribe before President Barack Obama leaves office in early 2017.
I think that is certainly an accurate assessment, at least if you substitute “Hawaiian government entity” for “American Indian tribe.”
The question, though, is whether you think that’s a goal that will pay benefits for most Hawaiians. I’m with those who believe that it certainly will, and if most delegates to the convention agree, that will be an advance. Unfortunately, that agreement remains questionable, doesn’t it?
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ian, I think it’s very clear what’s happening. Many of the delegates to the tribal con-con are closely associated with OHA, the Hawaiian Civic Clubs, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, etc. OHA and/or CNHA has probably already written a Constitution designed to match the requirements for federal recognition already contained in the Department of Interior Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, so one of their shills will simply bring the document to the convention and it will be adopted. 4 weeks is plenty of time (3 weeks after all the praying, chanting, singing, and history lessons are done). They’ll be in Kailua which has a beautiful beach — maybe I’ll run into them at my Island Snow shave ice place.
The main reason for abandoning the Na’i Aupuni election is that the Grassroot lawsuit would take too much time; and everyone is afraid that if they don’t get federal recognition done while Obama is still President, then it will never happen for at least 4 or 8 years, by which time the courts will have ruled the racial entitlement programs unconstitutional. President Trump, or Cruz, or Rubio, takes office at noon on January 20, 2017; and his new leadership at Department of Interior will never tolerate the partitioning of Hawaii along racial lines.
So it’s rush-rush-rush for the tribalists, and I’m confident that the great attorneys at Judicial Watch, with help from Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, will figure out a strategy to shut them down with court action at the crucial moments when there’s a ratification election for the tribal constitution, or when the Department of Interior proclaims a regulation in the Federal Register ensuring recognition of a Hawaiian tribe, or when Obama simply proclaims an Executive Order on the morning of January 20 before flying off to become Secretary General of the United Nations.
One suggestion that William Meheula made in the media about the Constitutional Convention is that, on day one, if the delegates seated wanted to end the proceedings and go home, they can vote for that and, pau, the thing is done.
Considering how this is coming along, with a shortened time frame, with way more voices in the same room, I am predicting that at least someone of the 200 will file a motion to adjourn on day one.
Now it will be interesting to see if the community, regardless of how they feel about the process go get a convention going, will fight that urge to just “quit and walk away” and actually hold fast to seeing the convention through. Even a document of general principles coming from this convention will be a achievement.
At some point, it really is time to say the boon has been doggled.