The Department of Interior has announced their intention to publish their rule for an agreement between the federal government and any Native Hawaiian government.
The Department of Interior has announced their intention to publish their rule for an agreement between the federal government and any Native Hawaiian government.
“ … the Department of the Interior will propose a rule that establishes an administrative procedure that the Secretary would use if the Native Hawaiian community forms a unified government that then seeks a formal government-to-government relationship with the United States,” wrote Jessicca Kershaw, press secretary for the department.
The rule is largely speculative, as there is no active Hawaiian government.
“ … The proposed rule would not attempt to reorganize a Native Hawaiian government or dictate the form of structure of that government. The Native Hawaiian community would determine whether and how to reorganize its government,” Kershaw wrote.
She drew a parallel with the “Federal policy of indigenous self-determination and Native self-governance.”
The rule comes after a meeting tour with people in Hawaii and on mainland reservations in June and July of 2014. The tour collected more than 5,000 comments in person, by mail and online.
The goal is “a rule that would facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community, to more effectively implement the special political and trust relationship that Congress has established between that community and the United States,” the document says.
This comes as Native Hawaiians are preparing to vote on delegates to a convention to determine whatever self-governance they may take.
The attempt to hold an election has been challenged in court by Judicial Watch in Washington, D.C., a conservative group. The group says the fact it is exclusively for Native Hawaiians makes it a racial election. The requirement that participants agree with the “unrelinquished sovereignty of the Hawaiian people” and other elements also causes viewpoint discrimination, Judicial Watch wrote in a press release.
In the state, 21.3 percent of Hawaii residents reported in the 2010 census that they had some Hawaiian blood, and 5.9 percent said they were pure Hawaiian. Hawaii County has 29.7 percent of its residents with Hawaiian blood and 8.5 percent are pure Hawaiian. This leads the state in both categories.