Although it is a relatively small portion of its overall budget, the money the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has spent to promote and lobby the idea of a Hawaiian nation poses a number of problems.

OHA was set up by the people of Hawaii to work for the “betterment” of Hawaiians after the 1978 Constitutional Convention. While some convention delegates and some voters may have had an independent Hawaiian political entity in mind, most folks were looking at a somewhat narrower picture. The idea was to create a dedicated agency that had the best interests of Hawaiians at heart and would do what it could to lift up a group of people who had among the worse social indicators (education, poverty, incarceration, health) in their native state.

Now it may be the surest way to cure those ills is to create an independent Hawaiian nation, which then could negotiate directly with the state and the federal government for what it believes is needed. That’s a political solution.

The other programs OHA is involved in seek to achieve the goal of bettering the condition of Hawaiians through functional means: Business grants, education, social services and the like.

If OHA is going to focus on a political solution, it needs to have a greater conversation with the rest of the state and its citizens about this approach. After all, everyone has a stake in the tax dollars and ceded lands money that is being spent on this important cause.

As is so often the case, it takes an outsider to help us see what is right before our face.

That’s the case of a brand-new article in The Nation magazine (read it on line, HERE) by Elinor Langer that tell’s the story of the sovereignty, or Hawaiian self-determination movement in substantial, and mostly quite accurate, detail.

Langer doesn’t tell us all that much we don’t already know, but it is interesting to see this historic and fascinating story viewed by an outsider with fresh eyes.

The article is quite sympathetic to Hawaiians , telling about the overthrow and the ongoing press for restitution for an event that many (including our Courts) believe was illegal. For the most part, it reads the way one would expect from a magazine described as the “flagship of the left.”

But opponents of the self-determination movement in general, and the Hawaiian recognition or Akaka bill in particular,  are also entranced by the article. That’s because it points out correctly that the Akaka bill is quite silent on what would happen if a Hawaiian entity is recognized — a concern central to many opponents of the measure. The article also recognizes the potentially “staggering” implications of the bill on the future of Ceded Lands in the Islands, another driving concern by those in opposition.

So read it for yourself and decide: If an uninvolved bystander read this article and it was the sum total of all he or she understood about the  sovereignty movement, would the reader come away marching with the Hawaiians or would he conclude this is too scary and divisive to contemplate?