Some Protest US Rule for Recognition of Native Hawaiian Government

After the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced a new administrative procedure Friday that would allow a unified Native Hawaiian government — if one is established in the future — to enter into a formal government-to-government relationship with the United States, some Native Hawaiian sovereignty activists spoke out in protest, arguing that Native Hawaiians are not a tribe but a sovereign nation and that the rule does not address the real issue — that the U.S. helped facilitate the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 and continues to illegally occupy Hawaii.

"In some ways it is monumental that after 123 years of systemic oppression and policies that attempted to sever our ancestral connections to ʻāina (ancestral lands and resources), illegitimize our language and culture, and erase the national history of a sovereign and independent state — that the Obama administration is the first since President Grover Cleveland to explore the restoration of Hawaiian governance," Kamanamaikalani Beamer, associate professor at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa Hawai'inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and the Richardson School of Law Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law, told NBC News.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/some-protest-us-rule-recognition-native-hawaiian-government-n654501