US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OBJECTS TO AKAKA BILL
Office of Hawaiian Affairs Forced To Admit Bill Is No Good
Honolulu Advertiser - By Derrick DePledge and Gordon Y.K. Pang
WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Department of Justice still has substantial concerns about whether a Native Hawaiian federal recognition bill is
constitutional, according to a statement releasedyesterday, which may fuel Republican oppositionand weaken the bill's chances in the U.S.Congress....
Rowena Akana, an OHA trustee, was already unhappy with the amendments and said the JusticeDepartment's statement is another blow.
"What the Bush administration has done is taken the lifeblood out of the bill," she said. "Now, they're attacking constitutionality when we thought long ago that was solved."
While all OHA trustees supported the original Akaka bill, Akana said she is not so sure she and others would do so now. "It seems like we're just going around and around with this," she said.
"Frankly, I think you can't trust this administration. It says one thing and then it does another thing."
Historian Tom Coffman, who has written about the Native Hawaiian movement, said the amendments are onerous to many Hawaiians, especially the agreement to bar any land claims in court, "which was the essence of the Hawaiian movement to begin with."
Under an amendment to the bill, claims would be negotiated between a new Native Hawaiian government and the United States.
Now, he said, "the Department of Justice is saying, 'That's nice, you just gave up on your land claims, but we're going to hold out for you to give up even more claims.' It's hard to project if the Bush administration's real goal is to emasculate the bill or to kill the bill, but it's one of the two...."
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