On the eve of the last day of the Native Hawaiian constitutional convention, foes held their own aha on Oahu on Thursday night to speak out against the Maunawili gathering.
A couple hundred or so supporters of Hawaiian independence attended the “Aha Aloha Aina” at Windward Community College in Kaneohe, organized by a coalition of 25 community organizations and sovereignty groups.
“Independence cannot be stopped,” said veteran Hawaiian activist Walter Ritte, who last year renounced his candidacy for the Na‘i Aupuni convention. “We cannot accept small little steps staying under America. We have our nation. We have all the facts why we have our nation. We just have to act like it.”
Ritte and other speakers blasted the Maunawili aha as a predetermined tool of the state designed to impose on the Hawaiian people a status similar to that of an Indian tribe. In the process, they said, the state intends to seize the 1.8 million acres of ceded lands that rightly belong to Native Hawaiians.
They emphasized that the convention was conceived by the Legislature’s Act 195 in 2011, signed into law by former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and engineered by the Abercrombie-appointed Kanaiolowalu (Native Hawaiian Roll Commission) and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which created an “independent” Na‘i Aupuni board to organize the event.
“This was manipulated, controlled and politicized from the very beginning without our involvement whatsoever,” veteran Hawaiian activist Andre Perez said.
Speakers called for a “pono” nation-building process designed by Native Hawaiians and independent of the forces who created Na‘i Aupuni. Such a process, they said, would have a more realistic time frame than the one imposed on the monthlong Maunawili convention.
Thursday’s meeting was part of a series of meetings held this week on three different islands. At least two more meetings are scheduled: in Kona on Friday and Kau on Sunday.
The week started with eight protesters being arrested for trespassing Monday after blocking the front gate of the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club, site of the Maunawili aha.
Among the arrested were Kahookahi Kanuha, Perez and Kaeo; all three also were arrested on Mauna Kea in June during protests blocking workers from reaching the Thirty Meter Telescope construction site.
