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Eighty-five years after the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the theft of 2 million acres of Hawaiian national lands by the U.S., the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was established at the 1978 Constitutional Convention in a poor attempt at rectifying the injustice of the overthrow and land theft.

Article XII, Section 5 of the State Constitution provides that OHA shall “hold title to all the real and personal property now or hereafter set aside or conveyed to it which shall be held in trust for native Hawaiians and Hawaiians.”

According to OHA’s 2019 Annual Report, these assets total over $670 million.

The State Constitution originally provided that OHA trustees shall be Hawaiians voted in by Hawaiians. However, the “Hawaiian only” qualification for OHA was struck down in 2000 and 2002 by rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Arakaki v. State. The rulings allowed all Hawaii residents to serve as and vote for OHA trustees.

Only 20 years after OHA was formed, Asian and haole settlers had used the post-civil war 15th amendment to say they were being discriminated against based on race, as a means of taking away the Hawaiian people’s right to represent ourselves and determine for ourselves who should stand as our trustees in OHA. They were supported and financed by conservative organizations like the Campaign for a Color-Blind America, the Center for Equal Opportunity, and the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Their efforts to dismantle Native Hawaiian rights, entitlements and programs continue to today.

Learn The Issues

In order for Hawaiians to maximize our collective political power and combat efforts to eliminate Native Hawaiian rights, entitlements, and programs, we must vote for OHA trustees with a track record of preserving native lands or encourage Hawaiians who share our cultural values to run as a candidate. Despite the courts’ ruling in the Rice and Arakaki cases, your vote can ensure that OHA trustees are held accountable and continue to make decisions for Hawaiians by Hawaiians.

While we may disagree on who is the best candidate, actively informing ourselves on the issues that are important to Hawaiian communities is key. These issues include the transfer, sale or lease of 2 million acres of stolen Hawaiian national lands also known as “ceded lands,” legal protections for kuleana land owners, federal recognition, the protection of Mauna Kea, and using OHA resources for affordable housing.

Find out where current OHA candidates stand on these issues at kalahuihawaii.net.

We understand that the OHA voting process has its shortcomings. Although some trustees are elected to represent specific islands (Hawaii, Kauai, and Molokai-Lanai), Oahu outnumbers the total number of neighbor island registered voters by over 2 to 1.

As a result, Oahu’s residents frequently end up choosing the trustees representing neighbor islands, undermining neighbor island residents’ ability to choose their own OHA representatives.

Still, we must make our vote count to preserve the trust for our keiki and their keiki.

If you are not Hawaiian and intend to cast a vote for an OHA trustee, that decision should be taken very seriously. Uninformed votes will undercut the voices of Hawaii’s native people.

Just because everyone can vote for OHA doesn’t mean everyone should.

At the very minimum, educate yourselves on how the candidate will advance the interests of Hawaiians and protect the trust. Voting based solely on name recognition or some other arbitrary elimination process is unacceptable.

If you have no clue who to vote for, especially if you aren’t Hawaiian, then please consider leaving your ballot blank rather than run the risk of supporting a candidate who is not committed to fulfilling OHA’s mandate. Just because everyone can vote for OHA doesn’t mean everyone should.