In the wake of last month’s attempted takeover of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs headquarters by a dozen men claiming to represent the Kauai-based “Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi,” Hawaii Public Radio broadcast a follow-up story under the headline, “Who Speaks for Native Hawaiians?”

HPR explained:

Last week’s arrest of members of a Hawaiian sovereignty group brought up an often asked question in the Hawaiian community, “Who exactly speaks for native Hawaiians?”

But am I the only one who thinks this was a very poor question to pose?

Would you ask this same question about other ethnic groups?

“Who exactly speaks for Haoles?” Or “Who speaks for Japanese?”

For a variety of reasons, those questions wouldn’t fly.

And when the questions were put to Hawaiians by HPR, it led nowhere, except that the question is hard to answer. As the leader of one organization told HPR, “…there are oftentimes challenges to any one entity’s ability to adequately represent such a diverse native Hawaiian community.”

Exactly.

My sense is that the question only seemed appropriate because there’s so little reporting on the Hawaiian community that the public doesn’t really know much at all about the influential institutions, organizations, and individuals, the issues at play, and the dynamics within and between interest groups. It’s all opaque, as far as the media, and the public, are concerned.

It might have been more useful, from the public’s perspective, to begin with the Kingdom of Atooi and the other ten or more organizations claiming to speak on behalf of some form of a resurrected or reestablished Hawaiian Kingdom. What are the groups? What’s the basis for their claims to legitimacy, their claim to fame and following? Who are their leaders and what are their qualifications? What are their beliefs? What policies do they advocate? Who listens to them, if anyone at all outside their respective inner circles? How large is their audience? And then, as good reporters should be doing, we need to put those claims to the test. Are they basically products of the fertile imaginations of charismatic leaders? If they are hereditary claims, again they must be tested. At this point in time, if someone claims to be descended from an alii family, what’s the evidence to support the claim? And if it seems to hold up, is there anything to separate that self-appointed leader from the many hundreds or thousands of people able to claim similar ancestral roots? And why should it be assumed that a modern reincarnation of a sovereign Hawaiian governing entity would be based on a hereditary model anyway? That seems quite unlikely in this modern world.

Alternately, it would be helpful to return to the list of organizations and individuals who joined in a statement criticizing the “Kingdom of Atooi” for its actions at OHA, and also criticizing authorities for not appearing to take the violent actions and threats seriously. How about ongoing reporting of what’s going on within those groups, the work they do, the actions they are taking every day, the issues and debates within and between them, etc. The kinds of things we need to know to understand the fascinating complexity of the social world we find ourselves in.

Of course, Hawaiian organizations are not the only ones that aren’t getting any news coverage these days. Government reporting has also declined dramatically. Business reporting has mostly disappeared. Labor unions have long been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Most news media have cut back so much they can no longer sustain traditional “beats,” where reporters would build up the contacts and experience necessary to report meaningfully on events.

Fewer reporters, lots of issues to cover, minimal resources, and continuing news cutbacks.