Aloha Readers!
It's been a while since our last post, which announced that I was taking a break after a successful year of persuading over a dozen underrepresented minority scholarships and fellowships to allow Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders to apply.
We've been talking to a number of people and organizations as we determine our next steps. We hope to have more to share in the near future.
In the meantime, I wanted to share how we weighed in on an important potential action by the federal government. First some background:
Native Hawaiians are the indigenous people of Hawaii. They are the only major indigenous groups (the others being American Indians and Alaska Natives) that lack a government to government relationship with the United States. Worse yet, there isn't even a process by which Native Hawaiians can enter into a government to government relationship, if that's what they want. Even more troubling, this lack of a clear federal policy leaves Native Hawaiian serving programs under constant legal and political attacks.
The Obama Administration recently announced that it is considering ending this inequity through the federal rule making process. Native Hawaiians and and non-Hawaiians have given passionate comments on both sides of the issue. The P.I.A. project thought that it was important enough for us to weigh in on our reasons for strongly supporting ending this disparity, protecting existing rights and resources, and paving the way for greater self-determination in a manner consistent with existing law.
For those interested, here is a link to our comment: link
Malama Pono,
Kawika
Monday, September 08, 2014
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