 look at. And diving into last week's Friday's announcement by the Department of the Interior with regard to the final rules, I have Leon Sioux, who many know as a composer and musician. Under all of that, or in addition to all of that, he is a very knowledgeable and seasoned activist and Hawaiian national. And this is such a crazy, convoluted story, very hard for people who don't spend a lot of time following this. My first show here a year ago was when the Department of Interior made the announcement about this. And so it's a year later, and they've made the final rule. Right. What the heck does that mean? It almost, it means that they run out of options. This is the last thing that they're trying. Now a little bit of background, of course, the United States is having to do something to try to quash the idea that Hawaii is so sovereign independent kingdom, independent nation. And so back 2000, they actually introduced the Akaka bill or Senator Akaka introduced it, he and Senator Inoue. And they were pushing at that time for this federal, federally recognized government-to-government relationship. And it was worded in all kinds of ways. But basically that's what it was. And the idea is to create or to put all Hawaiians into a tribal identity and then call, give that tribe a name and then give it a political position as an Indian tribe within the tribal framework of the United States within American Indian laws and the American Indian system. Which has worked so well. Yes. And every Native American I talked to said, don't do it. They're trying to get out. But anyway, so this is a top-down sort of a dictated solution because in 1993 the U.S. apologized for the wrong that they committed in assisting with the overthrow of our nation, actually the opposing of our queen and the taking over of our sovereignty. They didn't actually take our sovereignty, but basically that's what they pretended to do. And the fake annexation and the fake statehood and all those type of things. But then they're realizing that they forgot to really close the barn door because they don't have title to the lands. And this was the issue that was starting to crop up even more. And so they decided, and I'm just surmising how they were thinking, but this is the idea was to try to finish off the attempt of theft of our nation by having the Native Hawaiians cooperate by agreeing that they were part of the United States. Now how does agreeing to be part of the United States change the land title issues? Technically it doesn't. But if a Native Hawaiian says, I am a Native American Indian or Hawaiian American Indian, whatever tribal thing that they then they fall, he falls into the federal rules. He submitted himself into federal rules. And the federal rules actually when they recognize Native Americans in all the different tribes, they no longer are landowners. Now every Hawaiian actually has a claim to the lands of Hawai'i. It's an undivided interest. In all of the lands? In all the lands. Are these the seeded lands or is this something different? This is something different. This is all the lands. But then there's the seeded lands, so-called seeded lands, which are really crown lands. And without going into a lot of details, basically Hawaiian lands were put under private ownership by Commander III during the Great Mahele. And they're called different things, but basically it's private ownership of, and all of the lands, every Hawaiian has a one-third interest in all the lands. Every Hawaiian or every kingdom of the whole? Every national Hawaiian national. Well, you know, I don't know that part, but at the time it was basically Hawaiian descendants or Hawaiian blooded has a claim. But I don't know how that plays out now. But the thing is, so the United States realized that they haven't actually, they cannot prove a number of things, but one of the most vital things is the title to this land. They just assumed the title, and there's been a number of challenges where they come really close to having that fraud exposed. And so in order to try to make sure that they could claim these lands, they devised this system. Now the reason they did that, of course, was to try to prevent the return of the Hawaiian kingdom, that is the reinstatement of the lawful Hawaiian kingdom government, which, as you've talked about before, I'm sure with Keanu and others, that's Dr. Sai, that the Hawaiian kingdom was never exterminated, it was never extinguished. And so it still is here. And all it really needs is for its people to reclaim their membership or their citizenship or their nationality in that kingdom. And so by doing so, we actually reinforce and restart our nation. So the idea of the government to government is to substitute, instead of having a sovereign nation arise, is to substitute this Indian tribal nation as a means to say that we have now resolved the situation of the unlawful overthrow of the one kingdom and to try to get as many Hawaiians to sign on to that. Early on, you know, during the Kawinoma registration. That was in the 90s? No, no, it was in the 80s. No, 2004, 2006, somewhere around there. And then, of course, the Kanai Oluvalu recent role, all of these roles were designed in order to get people to sign up to say that they're Native to the United States, whether they're Indigenous people of the United States, although they're Hawaiian born. So that was the plot, and that's what we've been fighting for years and years. In Congress, the Akaka Bill was the one that was being pushed, and for 12 years, they tried to push that off. But Congress really utterly rejected it. It came close a few times, but eventually the Congress caught on to what was going on and basically... In what sense? What do you think were the most pressing reasons that it wasn't...? The issue became a constitutional issue. That is, can the United States create a Native Hawaiian tribe where there was none before? You cannot just create something and call it this, and then, worse yet, then encompass it into this tribal situation. So most of the people who were opposed to it began to oppose it on a constitutional level. And then, so after coincidentally, while Senator Akaka was designated that he was going to retire at a certain time, and a week before he retired, Senator Inouye passed away. So suddenly, the two major proponents of this bill, although the bill by that time had pretty much languished for a few years, it wasn't going anywhere. But now the main proponents were gone, and so they were left with nothing else. So the focus for those in Hawaii who were pushing for this federal recognition for their own purposes, different purposes than the United States was. But then they appealed to the administration, to Barack Obama, to then help them to get this deed done through the Department of the Interior. Actually, they were looking first for a presidential executive order directly from President Obama, but I don't think that was forthcoming because that was even more of an egregious violation of constitutional powers. And so they decided that they would try the Department of the Interior, which is the Department that is in charge of all the other Native American tribes. So the mechanism that the Department of the Interior is using is this sort of a complicated list of things that has to happen. That's right. Yes. So in order for them to do so, they realize they don't have the authority or the rules in place to do this. So then they propose these rules of which they then tried to get the public input from here to 2014, and they were just blasted out of the water. And it was very difficult for them at that point to justify moving forward. However, they created a way in which they then accepted written testimonies and many of those written testimonies were identical postcards, thousands of them, identical postcards saying that there were four federal recognition. So do we have any knowledge about who was responsible for printing those postcards that were then? You would have to ask other people who actually looked into it. Okay. So I think it's worth mentioning that they came here. This was the first time that the United States federally came to Hawaii and they went to six islands, I believe, and had listening sessions. I went to the first one at the Capitol, which was amazing. Yes. And the opposition was overwhelming. And in each place they went, people stood in line for hours to give testimony. Right. And only a few hundred could give. And only for two minutes, and yet they did. Yes. So in spite of this overwhelming, that somehow doesn't show up. Yes. Because? Because they don't want it to show up. Because it was too, it exposed the fact that the people themselves didn't want it. Actually, that was the second set of hearings. There was another one in 1999 in preparation for the Akaka bill, and they ran into the same buzzsaw back then, which is why they never... The Hawaiian Seventy Elections Council. Well, that's something slightly different. Okay. Yeah. But there was a, before Senator Akaka introduced his bill in Congress, he came to test the waters. And so they said, well, how about we put this bill saying you're a Native American tribe? And he ran into a huge buzzsaw, just like we saw in 2014. Okay. So they said, if it was oral testimony, it doesn't count. We're only going to count the written testimony, which happened to be these mysteriously similar... Which was a rule made later. After the fact. Yes. Okay. Yes. And mysteriously similar written or printed testimonies. Okay. And anyway, so what happened was that they used, they basically said, oh, we have a justification to have this rule change. And then all they needed then was for President Obama to then approve that they could make this rule change. And that's what President Obama did a couple of weeks ago. He approved the rule change to... To allow the Department of the Interior to accept a proposal for a federally recognized tribe, if the people of Hawaii sent them such a proposal. Okay. And that hasn't happened yet. That hasn't happened. Okay. Leah, we're going to take a short break and come right back and talk about what's happening elsewhere. All right. Hi, my name is Erin Wills. You are watching thinktechhawaii.com. I am the host of the show, Rehabilitation Coming Soon. You can catch us live on thinktechhawaii.com at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays. I will see you there. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi with the Think Tech Hawaii show, Stacey to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha. See you then. Aloha. My name is John Waihei. And I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today, served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Waihei every other Monday. Thank you. And I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Welcome back to Hawaii is my main land. I'm Kauai Lucas. And with me today is Leah and see you. Aloha. Hawaiian National. And it's so good to have you here. You're very good at digesting this complicated network of legal gamesmanship. So when we last left, you were explaining how this recent ruling by the Department of the Interior will acknowledge a native Hawaiian government if we... One was presented. One was presented. Okay. Now what's the next step? Okay. So to me, it's over that there's not going to be a native Hawaiian government that's presented that will meet the criteria that the Department of the Interior is looking for. The recent Naito Pune document that was issued doesn't come close to meeting the criteria of forming the nation. Oh, I can't tell you how I relieved Diane to hear that. And on top of that it's not been ratified. Right. And on top of that it can't be ratified because they don't have a voter base to ratify it because it's been proven that the voter list that they had is fraudulent. That they cannot certify that list. Great. So we can dispel that myth. Right. Okay. But they're going to try to push it anyway. The way I actually portray it is that you know, the game of football, there's this play called A Hail Mary Pass. And what it is, is a last desperate toss. They toss the football into the end zone hoping one of their guys will catch it and they'll have a touchdown and win the game. And this is what this is. They're throwing the ball all the way into the end zone hoping somebody on this side, on their side will catch it and then they will win the game. Of course it's a gamble. It's a desperate gamble because most of the time it fails. And then many of the times the opposition intercepts the pass and running back across for a touchdown. So this is what I'm proposing is that we just keep our heads up and watch. This is the pass. We need to grab that what the United States is offering and then run it the other direction. In other words, they're saying they're doing this for a government-to-government relationship to restore government-to-government relationship. We know that the relationship that they're talking about is the U.S. federal government with a subservient tribal government. But what if instead of the subservient tribal government, the one that catches that ball, is the Hawaiian kingdom? And the Hawaiian kingdom says, okay, here's our government-to-government relation. We're a government. You're a government. And we have treaties that prove that. And so let's talk and let's deal this. So this is what I'm saying. They're giving us an opportunity because they basically said they want a government-to-government relationship. They didn't specify what kind of government. And so we take over. So I remember reading last year that ruling that came out was about 79 pages. This new one, and there was a great essay written by Noe Gojir Kalpua. And I think at some point that that will appear on the bottom of the screen. And people can look at that. It's a great essay. And she's got the links to the original document, which was announced last week, which is 172 pages. So we've got a lot of pages of stuff. Yes. And I mentioned the pages because it is in that stuff that often the sand traps are. Right. Yes. However, much of or a good part of part of that document is trying to justify that the Department of the Interior has the authorities to do something like this. And that's where it's up a point that the Congress is taking issue with right now. There is a bill moving through Congress that actually is challenged or not challenging. It's claiming that the Department of the Interior is overstepping its boundaries. Because so what the bill does is it reserves the right, the constitutional right for the Congress to make the decision regarding federal recognition of any Indian tribe. Who is putting that point? It represented Bishop from Utah. And the bill was introduced last October. It had a hearing, a very fiery hearing in December. And then it made it out of committee. I believe about they're on the same time that the UI made their announcement about two, three weeks ago. Well, I guess the UI announcements about two weeks ago. But so around the same time, this bill made it out of committee and is now on the floor of the house. So meaning it can move forward on the floor of the house. So how has the Hawaii state are elected officials reacted to this? Do you know? I don't know. Because I don't know they're even aware of it yet. Oh, okay. So it's out of committee. It's going to come up for a vote. Do you happen to know when? I don't know when. Okay. Yeah. So we can look at this out. But what what this does is it helps to it muddies the water for the DUI. The DUI cannot go ahead and do this until the Congress is basically challenging the DUI's authority to do this. So that's going to take a while to sort out. And it most likely won't sort out before President Obama leaves office, which is one of the target dates to try to use. So anyway, so elsewhere in the world. Yes. So meanwhile, well, what's important when I talk about intercepting this Hail Mary pass is that this really important at this point that the Hawaiian nationals and those that identify themselves as those who belong to the wine kingdom, or even just from a national movement for the for Hawaiian independence, that we present a cohesive strong voice of our desire for a political sovereignty, right? That's good. On the international scene, because I've been working years in the international scene, and they're prepared now to accept something like that. That is, they're a receptive audience out there for us to... Well, who exactly can you tell us? Well, it's most of the members of the General Assembly. When I say most, it's because in theory, not in theory, in the principle is that they all want to see situations like ours solved or resolved in a peaceful way. And so, since we already have been a nation, we are a nation continuity, just the presentation of a strong voice and a unified voice or let's say a cohesive doesn't be unified, but cohesive voice saying that Hawaii needs to be an independent country once again will bring out support from a lot of these people. And I can't really name them specifically, but I've been working for years with a number of them who basically said, okay, we understand your situation, but you need to then precipitate an action in which we can then join in. But it has to be something we can join in peacefully as well. We don't want to come into... So this is the United Nations? The United Nations. Okay. And there was a designation, there was a list. Yes. And that list existed until Hawaii was on that list until a list of... Non-self-governing territories. Thank you. And so these were all the places that were still to use the vernacular colonized. Right. So Hawaii was on that list of colonized nations until shortly before statehood. Is that right in the 50s? It was statehood that changed it, yes. Because to be on that decolonized list, well, first of all, we didn't belong on that list. But nevertheless, we were on the list. And in order to get off that list, you had... The purpose of that list was to assist countries that were trying to exercise a right to self-determination, assist them to make a choice. And the choices that you had was to remain as a territory of the administrative country, or to become a state of the administrative country, or become absorbed into that country, or become an independent state. And so the idea of the United Nations had was that we want to make sure that the people would make a choice, an informed choice about what they wanted to do. So any one of those choices could be accepted as long as it was made in a free, informed consent. And so... But the U.S. then actually acted to activate this decolonization process, but they withheld two of the choices that we had, particularly the choice for independence. And with the implication that there was only one actual choice on the ballot, which was for statehood, which meant if you didn't vote for that, then you would have fallen back onto the second choice, which was to remain a territory. But they never mentioned independence. And that's where the flaw is in their referendum. And that's where the weak point is, that's the point that we can make with the United Nations, if we can get this issue raised again before them, that the United Nations approved the report of the referendum that basically they were lied to. They were given false information by the U.S. and they acted upon false information by removing Hawaii from that list. But like I said, we didn't belong in that list anyway. But what we would like to do is to use this opportunity of examining what happened in 1959 to destabilize and to actually discredit the United States' claim that there was a lawful plebiscite held. Once we can discredit that claim, the UN will no longer recognize the United States' claim of sovereignty over the Hawaiian Islands. We come forward and we say we're a sovereign nation and we deal with it that way. So we bypass the whole decolonization process. Is it possible to explain why Hawaii should not have been on that list? You've mentioned it. Yes, because we were not a territory of the United States. And so the annexation was illegal and it was a fraudulent annexation. We were actually in occupied territory but being presented to the UN as if we were under the territorial control of the United States. So Leanne, it's always amazing that the show, we have a minute left. So I am going to let you use that to the best. Okay. So the situation we're in right now is that the Hail Mary pass has been tossed. We need to be prepared to take it and run it back across the goal line. And at the same time we have to also be aware that there may be some people out there ready to catch that Hail Mary pass. So we don't want to let down our vigilance and make sure that we bat that ball down or we intercept it and prevent the federal recognition people from actually catching that ball and running with it. And I believe we can do that because they're very weak at this point. But we, who knows. The other thing about the United States is that they have a propensity for cheating. So I mean, they making up the rules as they go along as we can just see. Yeah. So, so... Oral testimony after we've taken two months worth of oral testimony. Yeah. So there's always a chance that they're going to cheat again there with that Hail Mary pass and say our interception was ruled out illegal or whatever. Anyway, just, I don't want to carry the metaphor too far. But we're... You have made a football fan out of me. And I'm not a football fan. Well, thank you so much. And I hope you will come back and talk with me some more about this. Okay. I hope you do that. Okay. Thank you very much. Aloha.