TheViewPoint.org

Ever since Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States, native Hawaiian issues, primarily concerning their rights, have been a major topic in Hawaii politics. Many native Hawaiians feel that Hawaii should be sovereign and that Hawaii was wrongfully taken from the Hawaiian people when it became a state.

For these reasons, there have long been negotiations and legislations that have been made in an attempt to provide native Hawaiians with more rights in a way to compensate for the land they feel was illegally taken from them.

Since its proposal in 2000, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009, commonly known as the Akaka Bill after Senator Daniel Akaka who proposed it, has been one of the most influential bills that would propose more rights for the Hawaiian people by the federal government. The bill basically proposes that the Hawaiian people would be recognized by the US government in a fashion similar to that of the Native Americans. Although the Akaka Bill has undergone numerous revisions and has been meet with both great support and opposition, the bill proposes to provide a process in which the native Hawaiian population can reorganize to create a Native Hawaiian governing entity with a special political and legal relationship between the United States and the Native Hawaiian governing entity.