The Native Hawaiian constitutional convention on Monday enters its final week with the aim of completing one or more governing documents that will go out for a ratification vote.
More than 110 participants are “making history” at the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club in Maunawili, the convention, or aha, announced in a news release Friday.
“I’m surprised,” said Adrian Kamalii, an Oahu participant originally from Maui. “We’re a lot farther along than I thought we were going to be in the beginning. But we are coming along. It’s exciting.”
A drafting committee has already begun writing the first sections of the governing document and was expected to work through the weekend so that it could present initial drafts on Monday.
“Everyone there is grinding really hard and getting great work done,” Zuri Aki, a drafting committee member from Mililani, wrote on his public Facebook account Thursday. “In my opinion, we are on track to completing this governing document.”
While demonstrators opposing the convention have been gone for a couple of weeks, the aha continues to take plenty of darts on social media and has endured a few disgruntled dropouts, the most notable being veteran Hawaiian activist Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele on Monday.
But for the most part, factions supporting federal recognition and independence have worked well together, in part by working through broad concepts and concentrating on a final product that could function either way.
The final week could still draw some friction, though. Kamalii said it’s uncertain whether the aha will produce one document, two documents or even a third in an effort to satisfy different viewpoints.
“The last week will certainly make us work the hardest,” he said.
But not everything was plumerias and poi last week, either. There was an attempt on the convention floor to kick out one member accused of treating elders disrespectfully.
Bronson Kaahui, who admitted to calling someone “delusional” and a “simpleton,” said the move to oust him was less about his behavior and more about his offending advocates of independence.
Kaahui, who recently moved from Maui to Vietnam, has been an aggressive critic of the aha’s “separatists,” saying flatly that the current political realities make forming an independent nation impossible.
During its third week, the body formed five committees — preamble, rights, executive authorities, legislative authorities and judicial authorities — that identified issues needing to be addressed in a Native Hawaiian governing document.
All but one committee on Thursday gave the product of their deliberations to the drafting committee, which spent Friday writing the initial parts of the governing document.
According to committee reports presented on the convention floor:
>>> The Preamble Committee decided on language that does not preclude independence or federal recognition and “neither blocks future possibilities nor relinquishes any claims.”
>>> The Rights Committee examined 228 different individual rights and narrowed the list to 77, recommending, among other things, that citizenship be reserved for Native Hawaiians while allowing the government the latitude to redefine citizenship in the future.
>>> The Executive Committee discussed the possibility of establishing Island Councils.
Kamalii said in Hawaiian culture, home rule and kupuna (elder) wisdom were part of most, if not all, the committee discussions.
“We’re finding a way to find common ground,” he said.
Mandated by a 2011 act of the state Legislature and funded through the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the aha was originally planned to take place over eight weeks with 40 delegates elected by nearly 90,000 Native Hawaiians registered by the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission.
But when litigation threatened to stall the event, the Na‘i Aupuni board canceled the election and offered all 196 candidates a seat at the aha. The move allowed the group to sidestep a U.S. Supreme Court injunction alleging that the balloting violated constitutional restrictions on public elections.
Aha participants range in age from their 20s to their 90s and come from as far away as Sweden.
Participant Hollace Anne Teuber, a University of Wisconsin-Stout communications professor who was born on Oahu, said she suspects there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s going on in Maunawili.
“No one is here for any other purpose than to increase the knowledge base of collective wisdom and expertise to create a document that can be distributed to the general public for their approval or denial,” she said in an email. “Speaking only for myself, I would not have left my home, family and professional career for over a month unless I knew this opportunity is an imperative and may even be the final chance to enforce our self-determination and self-governance.”