Henry Noa in Honolulu Weekly
Atlhough there's no sign of it on the
Honolulu
Weekly website, I was sent this PDF scan of
the July 11-17 issue with a cover story about Henry Noa and the Reinstated
Hawaiian Government. Their website is hawaii-gov.net.HNL Wkly re Henry Noa.pdfUpdate
7/19: The article
is now up on the
Weekly
website. BTW, I wanted to add one
thought on the idea of "inherent sovereignty" that he talks about. "Inherent
sovereignty" doesn't really have any meaning in international law, it is a term
invented by the United States to qualify the term sovereignty so it doesn' t
mean actual sovereignty (the
supreme lawmaking authority, which is more or less synonymous with independence)
but instead applies only to domestic dependent nations that are not truly
sovereign. This is why the apology refers to “the indigenous Hawaiian
people" having never directly relinquished their claims to their "inherent
sovereignty", defining it within the indigenous/domestic realm rather than the
international nation-state realm. If you do a google
search on "inherent sovereignty" you'll see that it is always used in
the context of tribal issues within federal Indian law, with references to
federal case law, but not international
law.I have used this language myself
from the apology bill somewhat loosely at times, so I don't mean to be critical
just of Henry, but I do think it is important to understand this perspective. If
you're basing your legal argument on "inherent sovereignty" as per the apology,
you're playing into federal recognition and the Akaka bill path, not restoration
of Hawaii's de
facto status as a sovereign
nation-state.
Posted: Sun - July 15, 2007 at 10:53 AM