AKAKA BILL = FRAUD
Maui News - March 1, 2009
...a Kahului resident, whose great-great-grandfather helped draft 1839 documents of the Hawaiian kingdom, said he opposes the Akaka Bill "mind, body and soul."
"The Akaka Bill is a race-based bill," said Foster Ampong, an advocate for Hawaiian independence. "Because you're talking about Native Hawaiians, as defined by law - 50 percent or greater Hawaiian blood."
Ampong said the Akaka Bill does not address the most critical legal issue for Hawaiians - nationhood.
"The Akaka Bill is another attempt at creating a fraud or appearance that the Hawaiian Islands and people were acquired by the US lawfully - and in essence and in fact it wasn't," he said.
"For me, it's my passion. It's what I really, sincerely believe - We are Hawaiian nationals, not just Native Hawaiians by blood or ethnicity. . . . We have our very own bill of rights that formed our lahui, our nation," Ampong said.
Likewise, another Akaka Bill opponent points out that the kingdom of Hawai`i had a relationship as a co-equal with "England, France, Russia, Belgium, Netherlands, all the powers of the world."
Kaleikoa Ka`eo, Hawaiian studies instructor at Maui Community College, said of the Akaka Bill - "I am actively involved to organize against its passage" because the bill would diminish Hawai`i's international standing, making it "go to the back of the line" and give up a status it already had.
"It's like saying you attained citizenship - and now you give yourselves the right to attain a green card as an alien," he said.
For Ka`eo, a major issue "is that the so-called Akaka Bill provides no land, not one acre of land, and no access to water - that's not really self-determination," he said....
