1. Print Name in gray box & Sign Name in white box below.

2. Island/District – print island in gray box & district in white box below.

3. Phone Number – print phone number in gray box, second number in white box below.

4. All Ages Eligible – Print age in gray box, if Hawaiian ancestry place check √ by name.

REFLECTIONS OF OUR PAST

"1897 Petition Against Annexation ~ 1945 United Nations Decolonization Process ~ 1996 Native Hawaiian Constitutional Convention"

I. Ku'e Petition Against Annexation 1897 - 1898 (A Petition Drive)

• 38,000 petition signatures against annexation stopped the Treaty of Annexation

• President McKinley signed the Newlands Joint Resolution that provided for the annexation of Hawaii. Through the Newlands Resolution, the self declared Republic of Hawaii ceded sovereignty over the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.

II. 1945 to 1959 – U. N. Political Process (United Nations Decolonization process)

• United Nations Decolonization Document of 1985 PDF

• U.S. Public Law 86-3 Regarding Statehood

  
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• United Nations Charter – Article 73 Non Self-Governing Territories

  Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:

  a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;

• A Non-Self-governing territory can be said to have reached a full measure of self-government by: (a) emergence as a sovereign independent state, (b) free association with an independent state; or (c) integration with an independent state.

• August 1959 – The Admissions Act - A plebiscite for Statehood; Question posed - "Shall Hawaii immediately be admitted into the Union as a State?"

• In July of 1993, Governor Waihee created the Hawaiian Sovereignty Advisory Commission (HSAC) and appointed 21 members to this commission. The responsibility of HSAC in a nutshell was for the commissioners to get educated first, then present, inform and educate the native Hawaiian community including bringing in political, economic, social and cultural expertise to us. After most of the work was done by HSAC, it became the Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council (HESC).

• In 1995, a question was posed to the Hawaiian community, "Shall we send delegates to a Native Hawaiian Constitutional Convention", well, over 25,000 Hawaiian voters said yes. Elections were set-up and 8,900 Hawaiian voters elected over 70 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Two years later, majority of the delegates see, Independence as the form of government. Senator comes into the picture.

• Senator Inouye appoints 20 or more Delegates of the NHCC, to sit on his newly created federal task force. Out of that task force came the birth of the Akaka Bill. At the same time OHA stops funding the Native Hawaiian Constitutional Convention. Remaining delegates try to keep the political process moving forward, but to no avail. Native Hawaiian Constitutional Convention dissolves.

IMPACT OF THE APOLOGY RESOLUTION 1993 – 2008

"Hawaii State Supreme Court Injunction Forces Native Hawaiians to Form a Government"

1. The Apology Resolution, United States Public law 103-150 – November 23, 1993

• Reversal of the 1898 Newlands Joint Resolution

• Whereas clauses – Findings of fact and law by U.S. Congress

2. Hawaii State Supreme Court Injunction – January 31, 2008

• Apology Resolution, Force of Law

• Ceded lands (crown, government and public) cannot be sold, exchanged or transferred until native Hawaiian claims are resolved through a "political process."

3. Appeal to the United States Supreme Court – April 2008

• It bars the State from prudently managing more than 1.2 million acres of state owned land – 29% of the total land area of the state and almost all the land owned by the state.

• By basing its decision primarily on federal law (Apology) the Hawaii Supreme Court improperly insulated its decision from any state-level political check.

• The federal Apology Resolution would trump any new state legislation to restore the state's land transfer authority

• The injunction will continue to hold the state hostage to the Hawaii Supreme Court's deeply flawed analysis of the federal Apology Resolution.

The Hawaiian Constitutional Convention Petition Drive is to inform the citizens of Hawaii that a free, fair, and impartial political process is underway. The petition drive will determine when we convene the Hawaiian Constitutional Convention, hold elections and begin the activities to debate, discuss and educate ourselves on the form of government we choose.

As we continue to build support and participation through the Hawaiian Constitutional Convention Petition Drive, the out of pocket expenses of this endeavor will be costly. Therefore, we humbly ask for your prayers, volunteers, petition signatures, and any type or amount of financial assistance possible.

Pu'uhonua D. K. Bumpy Kanahele, for the "Love of Country"

Please send your contribution by check or money order payable to:

Aloha First - Hawaiian Constitutional Convention 2008
P.O. Box 701
Waimanalo, Hawaii 96795

Aloha First is a Hawaii community-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

"I never knew what this was."

Colonialism, as the Tribunal Komike states, "is foreign domination, subjugation and exploitation of another people's country. It undermines a people's national identity, traditions, and culture." (1998) Hawaii has undoubtedly been dominated by the United States for a century and a half, our people and resources subjugated and exploited. An important part of that subjugation was the taking away of our 'olelo maoli – our real language.

Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o explains that, "economic and political control can never be complete without mental control." (Ngugi 1986, 16) This mental control is achieved through, "the destruction or deliberate undervaluing of a people's culture, their arts, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature (oral traditions), and literature, with the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer." (Ngugi 1986, 16)

When the U.S.-identified oligarchy ended Hawaiian language public schools in 1896, they ripped out the bridge to our kupuna, the bridge of our understanding of ourselves as a people with a proud past. A generation then grew up for the first time ignorant of the language and mo'olelo of their grandparents who lived through the devastating losses in epidemics, denigration of all their customs, and loss of their Nation. Ngugi has called this experience a cultural bomb. "The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland." (1986, 3)

Compiled by Nalani Minton and Noenoe Silva