 Aloha. Happy Friday. I'm Kaui Lucas with Toa'i is my mainland. Lots going on in the world of sovereignty and indigenous struggles of late, and so to explore those themes a little bit today, I have Heylani Sinodapalli, who is the founder of Protest Na'i'au Puni, and we'll just jump in and talk about the Na'i'au Puni. I have done shows exploring Na'i'au Puni with Katie Camelamela, who was a participant, and now we are in this uncomfortable and interesting situation where the Department of Interior has clearly defined these rather narrow parameters for if we want to have a nation-to-nation relationship, what it has to be, and it seems like there are certain pockets of the Hawaiian community that are trying to cut all the edges so we fit in that box, but it's terribly complicated. Heylani, please. Let's talk about the article that came out just a couple days ago in the Honolulu Star Advertiser. Radification of Hawaiian Constitution gains Kokua, from whom and not from everyone, right? Right, right. It's going to be the same. They're probably mostly homestead associations, and the Shah, CMHA. CMHA has a lot of member organizations. That's the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. It was founded by Robin Danner. It's now being head by Michel Calhane. This is all propaganda for their nation-building scam. Right now, the DOI rule has been finalized. It's a rule that provides for no lands for Hawaiians except for the island of Kau'olave. No restitution for Hawaiians for the overthrow, the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, and basically is a violation of our human right to self-determination as a people. That's been finalized in September, and what that does is create a pathway so that an entity can become a federally recognized nation, a.k.a. tribe. And what they're doing is they're taking Robin Danner, John Whitehead Sr., Michel Calhane, and all of their little cronies are taking this Na'i Aupuni Constitution that was drafted in February of this year by unelected delegates. It was funded totally by Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which is a state agency, and it was created and basically run by with state monies. And all of them got stipends, by the way. The Constitution was written in, and I got this straight from Brendan Lee, in 10 days. A Constitution was written in 10 days. That in itself tells you that Constitution is basically not even worth the paper it's written on. How can we use or push a Constitution that was written in 10 days behind locked gates? And not from people who are trained in constitutional law. Not at all. Somebody came in and gave some talks on what constitutions are and can be. I understand. And it was funny because their speaker who came and spoke on the Constitution said, first thing he said, the fact that there's people outside protesting this is a very bad sign. But, you know, and then eight Kanaka Maori, including myself, got arrested outside the gates when we tried to enter into the convention and share our concerns. So they're taking this Constitution that has, it's basically paid and brought by OHA, a state agency, and is supported by the Democratic Party. They're taking this Constitution and they're trying to push it out into the community. They're taking it into safe spaces in the community. A few days ago, they took it out to Kapolei. They had a Constitution workshop there. I've been to one myself. You know, it's not very enlightening. I can tell you that because that Constitution is really a piece of crap. And then they're also fundraising. They have a grant that they have been pushing to Native American nations, tribes, and also to nonprofit organizations that support these Native American movements. They're pushing this grant for two million dollars to ratify their Constitution. This Constitution that they're seeing in their grant represents a cross-section of the Kanaka Maori people and represents who we are. It represents Mana'o from the independence and federal recognition. It's really draw-dropping to claim that an unelected body. Exactly. It definitely does not represent us and it doesn't represent our Mana'o and the diversity of our people. We have, and they're running on the conclusion that there is, oh, what's the alternative? Right? And that's where Aha Aloha Aina comes in. We are the alternative. I am a member of the Aha Aloha Aina and a convener. We're kind of a leaderless organization. We're really from the grassroots. We work with the community. So I don't like to push myself out there as a leader, but I do work in the Aha Aloha Aina. We've convened over 30 AHAs in the community. We have a graphic on the attendance at these meetings. Oh, okay. Well, we don't have the graphic. Oh, well. It'll be up in some sort of social media. On my Facebook page at the very least. So there have been meetings. The Aha Aloha Aina is this very, very grassroots. They have refused to take money from anybody. From state or federal governments. Right. So it's just everybody really giving because they feel passionately about that and because it feels like it's the clean right thing to do. So not just on Oahu, meetings on five islands, I believe. And there was like over like 2,200 people as of October. I think it's up to 2,400 now. So we're continually going out into the communities. And the reason why we don't take any state or federal monies is because we do not... With money comes strings. With money comes certain things that we need to do in return. So we don't take any state or federal monies. So concrete big issues as far as the Na'i Alpuni Constitution for people who haven't actually read it or followed it. So it applies to ethnic Hawaiians or political Hawaiians? Ethnic Hawaiians, yes. Only. Okay. Let's be clear. So it does not address any of the overthrow. It does not address the citizens of the kingdom. It does not address the political Hawaiians. Political Hawaiians. Yes. Yeah. So it's a race-based basically process. But I can't say that I don't support Hawaiians coming first because I believe that with the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and with the colonization of the Hawaiian islands, Hawaiians have suffered the most. We have felt the brunt of the overthrow. And it's been 123 years. And we're still on the bottom of every statistic in Hawaii. So we are the people suffering. And you look at our situation today, it's pretty bleak. And which brings me to the point of all the monies that they spent on this whole federal recognition campaign, including their push for our caucus bill, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has spent over $33 million on their campaign for federal recognition, which has gone nowhere, absolutely nowhere. And you look at the people who got monies from these campaigns. It's usually the same. It's all their friends. It's all their supporters. And it's a very select group of people. Natya Pune got $2.6 million. And they had $200,000 left over at the end of it. I was there at the court case when Judicial Watch had sued the Natya Pune organization for creating a race-based vote. They wanted to stop it. And in that court case, the OHA lawyers said that Natya Pune was dissolved and that they were returning the $200,000 back to OHA. I have yet to, there's, I know Trustee Akana is trying to find out what happened to that $2,000 if it was ever returned. But what's interesting is that the Aloha, so Natya Pune is dissolved supposedly, right? And Aloha Lahue is in the new organization that they created. It's a group of people that came from the Natya Pune OHA that want to move the Natya Pune Constitution forward and want to ratify it. And so they created another organization. And they have an account with the Tides Foundation, which Emelah Luli, who is a Natya Pune delegate, sits on the board. So they created an account there. Who is the Tides Foundation though? Do you know what I mean? Is it a 501C3 or C4? Yeah, yeah. I believe it's, that's kind of like what they do is they help out organizations and they help them do fundraising and so forth. So they have about $265,000 in that account. And it looks very suspicious because where did that $200,000 come from? And then, you know, so we're thinking that, I mean, I don't want to say it, but it looks very suspicious. There's missing $200,000 from the Natya Pune OHA. And all of a sudden, the Tides Foundation has $265,000. I know $50,000 of it came from Pelotron, which is a company that works with the U.S. military. It's like they're taking military monies as well. They basically have no scruples in terms of who they take money from, what they say they will say and do anything to push this Constitution forward. What do you think is their driving? I mean, I've been on the other side so long. Good question. Like what? Yeah. Why are they doing that? I tried to get that forum, the AHA-Aloha-Aina forum. It was like, I'm not really, okay, we don't get any land. No. And it's race-based and there's no real political gain here that I can see, except that we're relinquishing the opportunity to redress historic rights. Right. Relinquishing. Forever. Right. So where's the game? Yeah. I think for them, it's obviously money with some kind of federally recognized nation, even though we're not going to have any land, there's going to be that opportunity to bypass state laws and city and county laws and basically kind of bypass all of them and just create their own kind of corporate partnerships. Without land, it just doesn't seem to make any sense. Yeah. Well, these guys are the guys that are making monies off the grants as we speak. Ah, off the grants. Yeah. So it's about grants. It's about monies. Okay. Let's take a little break and then come back and then maybe talk about some of the associations between the Hawaiian resistance and what's happening in North Dakota. Sure. Aloha, everybody. My name is Mark Shklav. I'd like you to join me for my program. Law Across the Sea on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Aloha. Hi, I'm Stacy Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on ThinkTechHawaii. Stacy to the rescue. See you then. Hi, this is Jane Sugimura. I'm the co-host for Condo Insider and we're on ThinkTechHawaii every Thursday at 3 o'clock. And we're here to talk about condominium living and issues that affect condominium residents and owners. And I hope you'll join us every week on Thursday. Aloha. Hello, this is Martin de Speng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on ThinkTechHawaii. Aloha, welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas and with me here today is Helani Sonoda-Pale, who is the founder of Protest Na'i Haupuni and one of the core members of the AHA Aloha Aina, which is a grassroots movement, really truly grassroots movement that is trying to infuse integrity into the process of Hawaiian nationhood, where a lot of other organizations seem to be willing to just sort of say, well, you know, nothing's going to happen. We just have to go ahead and be part of the U.S. system. So there is another way to think about it. Right, right. I think education is the key. And that's a big part of what the AHA Aloha Aina is as well. We do education in the community. We share with them that this is not the only path available to us. And we don't buy into that whole boogeyman. This is the last moment. We need to do it now or never, kind of explanation. I think the Hawaiian people need to be educated. We need to take the time to go out there and educate our people. And that's exactly what Ngai Aupuni and Kanai Olovalo has not done. They spent and wasted millions of dollars. And all they've done is propaganda and absolutely no education. And that is a travesty because that's all Hawaiian trust monies. Imagine if they took that $33 million that they wasted on this path to federal recognition and they went out and they actually educated Hawaiians on the overthrow, on what happened, on where we're going to go from here and what are our options. What really are our options? And if the option of independence is not one of the options, then we really don't have any options. Independence needs to be a choice as part of what that right to self-determination is. It's a human right recognized by the United Nations. It was basically a right given to indigenous peoples, 500 million indigenous peoples around the world in 2007 by the United Nations in something called UNDRIP, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And in that declaration specifically states that indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination to pursue their political, economic, cultural future. So, in that case, to have the choice of where we want to go, we need to have the choice of independence as a real choice and not as a choice as put on the table so that they can debunk it. And that's what happened at Ngāiāpuni. They said, oh well you know all these people are independents but they absolutely did not take the independence faction seriously. They didn't take the, they basically put them in a corner and they didn't take it seriously. Basically what the path that they're going on, and they were in denial, denial, denial from the beginning that this process is not being tailored towards federal recognition and now we know that it is because they're taking this constitution and tailoring it and getting it ready for ratification and set up for the Department of Interior rule. Independence was not something that was on the table, really on the table. It was just put out there to say, hey, you know, we're considering it but it wasn't really considered seriously. So at that forum when the Robin Donner and Michelle Kauhoney were talking about, oh well having a nation within a nation or a federal recognition doesn't extinguish the possibility of hewing independence and I didn't understand that. That is totally false. So there is not one example of one federally recognized tribe or nation that has achieved independence, not at all. And in fact, if they go to the UN, they're actually told, you know, the US won't basically say, hey, they're federally recognized, they're under the Department of Interior, you know, this is our business, you know. So it really does hinder any kind of pathway towards independence and when you look at our history, we were never really incorporated into the United States, legally, by the laws of the US or by any law, really. Where is the treaty? Yeah, there was no treaty of annexation. We were annexed via a joint resolution of the House and Senate, the New Orleans resolution and even that wasn't an illegal act by the US. We were supposed to be annexed as with a treaty of annexation, not a reso. A reso only requires a 50% majority vote or, you know, 51% vote or more to pass, whereas a treaty requires the three-fourths vote to pass Congress and they weren't able to get the three-fourths vote, so they passed the resolution. So in terms of are we even part of the United States, we're really not. And what this does, and there's another level to this whole Department of Interior rule, is it finally incorporates us into the United States. So that's the insidious layer that when you spend time really going through the documents you find out, but if I'm reading the Star Advertiser, I really don't get that, or even Civil Beat, I don't know, Civil Beat's done a better job actually, but it's those really big issues for Native Hawaiians that don't seem to be getting enough daylight. Right, right. Yeah, and that's unfortunate. I mean we need more writers, we need more people to put articles out there and tell our side of the story. And it all comes down, this whole push for the Department of Interior rule and the Yopuni Constitution comes down to the two million acres of land that the state currently holds in trust for us. And because in the U.S. Congress, recognized in 1993, we never relinquished our rights to those lands or sovereignty over those lands. And therefore, this is a way, this is a process where they will relinquish, where a group of sellout Hawaiians like Robin Danner and Michelle Kaohane, Brendan Lee, John Whitehead Sr. will take, will basically sign that paper and say, hey, we relinquish all of this for federal recognition of a paper nation with no lands. And I don't know how they can really honestly believe that we can survive on Ko'olave. There's no hospital, there's no schools. There's no water, what are we talking about? There's no water. Right, it's just mind-boggling to think that that's all we're entitled to. And the Department of Interior has released a memo, I think it was in 2014, that basically outlined, hey, Hawaiians, you guys aren't entitled to any federally held lands. All the bases are sits on stolen Hawaiian lands, right, all the U.S. bases. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, 88 million acres. Let's not start on that one. That's all federally held lands that we will not be entitled to. You know, that's off the table and they specifically state in that memo, all you'll be entitled to is the Ko'olave. So, hey, Allani, this week also some of the Kōrāhoi and activist group have been spending time in North Dakota and I've been seeing more and more sort of interactions. Can you talk about that and why is that important? Why are Hawaiians fair? It's really important, I think. We stand in solidarity with North Dakota, Lakota and Sioux tribes of Standing Rock. We both have similar histories in terms of being colonized by the United States. I think it serves a couple purposes, but really when you look at how they're being treated, they're a federally recognized nation with a land base that's shrinking. It really brings it home. This is what we want for our people. Is this really what we want for Hawaiians, for Kanaka Maui? Yeah, do we want to be treated like that? Right. And also it's important to be standing in solidarity with them. We need to support them and they have supported us. A lot of us have made connections and created networks with Native American tribes around the U.S. The reason why we know that the Ngāiāpunī Constitution grant, the Lohālāhui grant that Robin Donner, Waihe'e senior, and Norma Wong is pushing throughout the Native American tribes is because we're friends with them and so they come back and tell us, hey, I got this grant and what should I do with it? I got this request for monies. So we've been kind of building those connections and those networks with them and I think even more so standing in solidarity with them. So explain how that grant money works. So who is getting the grant and what are they using it for? They're asking for $2 million from Native American tribes and organizations that support these tribes. To make Hawai'i a tribe. To ratify their constitution. They have a whole timeline. I saw the grant. They're looking at ratifying the constitution in October of 2017 and so they're hoping to, you know, once they ratify that constitution, that's one of the, in the Department of Interior rule, that was one of the requirements that they need to have a constitution that was ratified by no less than 30,000 kanaka Māori of blood, right? 50% or? No, and 9,000 of them have to be 50% or more. 9,000, okay. So by going to Standing Rock and talking to the Native Americans there and explaining to them that this isn't a process that we actually want. Is there some hope that there will be some support for independence or? Yeah, I think we have already built, many of our leaders that have gone up there are building that momentum and support and those networks for our movement as well. And you can see that a lot. I mean, our people are up there, not just, I mean, they're on the ground working. You know, we had Dr. Kalamani Hale go up there and she started the Council for Healers, Healer Council. Andre Perez is another leader in our movement. He's up there, you know, doing whatever he can doing training. Hale, there is so much going on. I do hope that you will come back and give us more updates in the future. Sure, of course. Thank you so much for trying to bring a little more clarity and having the other side come up to the service a little bit. Of course, thank you for having me.