U.S. Senate FY 2013 Department of the Interior Appropriations Draft has Native Hawaiian recognition as a bill rider

by Danny DeGracia, Grassroot Institute October 1, 2012

Last week, the Senate Appropriations committee released a draft of the Fiscal Year 2013 Interior appropriations that included on page 129, line 19 a bill rider which provides for Native Hawaiian recognition:

"the Secretary shall consider for recognition the self-governing community that may include individuals enrolled under Act 195 (26th Haw. Leg. Sess. (2011))."

Hawaii's Act 195 (2011) specifically states, "The Native Hawaiian people are hereby recognized as the only indigenous, aboriginal, maoli people of Hawaii." Should the Interior budget bill pass, the United States Government would be in effect ratifying the language of the State of Hawaii. Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) responded with alarm in a press release, saying "That is a race-based definition and it is contrary to our constitutional principles."

ANALYSIS: The issue of Native Hawaiian sovereignty remains an incendiary matter for many individuals, both Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian. However the fairest and most equitable solution to the Hawaiian people cannot come from creating a new system of Federally administered funding and recognition. As we have seen in America's Declaration of Independence, real freedom and liberty comes not from recognition of a people by a state but rather the recognition of a state by the people.

A state is legitimate so long as the people recognize it as advancing their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but the minute it becomes destructive to those ends, the people have the right to alter or abolish that state. The belief that more government is needed to correct an injury inflicted by government upon the Hawaiian people is dangerous. More spending and more taxation to give benefits based on race is indeed contrary to liberty and sets up a dependency relationship between man and state.

We will continue to monitor the development of this bill rider closely, but it is definitely a DOWN to less freedom and more government.

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