Today, we continue with the third part of our guest series on the development of Indian casino gaming in California, by Jim Marino. (This series originally ran in the Santa Ynez Valley Journal.) Sometimes it seems as though the issue of gaming is an unspoken controversy that advocates of the Akaka Bill are desperately trying [...]
I am not a Native Hawaiian, nor do I play one on TV. But, let’s say for the sake of argument that there was a proposal to create a new tribal government for us Hapa Filipinos. There’s one or two of us in the islands, right? And now, let’s say that there was a substantial [...]
Jul 092010
When you’re Hapa, you get used to people playing, “guess the ethnicity” with you. Especially on the mainland. (In Hawaii, the game is generally much shorter. In part because one of your cousins will inevitably walk by and put an end to things.) I actually don’t mind it though. I’ve always liked the way that [...]
June 11 was Kamehameha Day. Kamehameha’s greatest accomplishment 200 years ago was to unify all the Hawaiian islands under a single government. But now once again the Akaka bill in Congress threatens to rip us apart along racial lines. The Kingdom founded by Kamehameha was multiracial in all aspects. John Young (Englishman) was so important [...]
May 212010
Don’t think that I haven’t noticed a certain . . . cynicism coming from many of our analyses of the grants on our site. I swear that it’s not because I’m a curmudgeon with a skeptical nature. Well, let’s say that it’s not entirely because of the skeptic/curmudgeon thing. To be clear: I think that [...]
May 192010
So, if you’ve been living in a cave on Mars, with your fingers in your ears, going, “La, la, la, la, la” over and over again, you’ll probably be glad to hear that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has launched an “informational” page to help people truly understand the implications of the Akaka Bill. Of [...]
Sometimes, I really have to wonder about the thinking behind some of these grant programs. Take, for example, the $444,500 granted in 2009 to the Ali’i Pauahi Hawaiian Civic Club from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Yep, federal funds.) The grant is being given for Ka Mahi’ ai ‘Ihi o Wailea (The [...]
May 072010
Interesting things are happening in Hawaii politics when it comes to support for the Akaka Bill. Actively opposing it still takes a measure of political courage. (Which, believe it or not, is not necessarily an oxymoron.) But slowly, enough concerns have been raised about its effect on the Islands that some of those aspirants to [...]
In his Honolulu Advertiserletter of April 15, OHA administrator Clyde Namuo talks about “reestablishing self-determination and self-governance for Native Hawaiian people.” But the Hawaiian Kingdom was not a “Native Hawaiian” government. Most cabinet ministers, nearly all department heads, and about 1/4 of the Legislature were Caucasians. Thousands of people with zero native blood, including Asians, [...]
Mar 262010
It’s Aloha Friday. So we should start things with a picture of a surfing squirrel.
