United States federal recognition of Native Hawaiians

[6] In the first one hundred years of contact with western civilization, due to disease and sickness, the Hawaiian population dropped by ninety percent with only 53,900 people in 1876.

Though enactment of 183 federal laws over 90 years, the US has entered into an implicit, rather than explicit trust relationship that does not give formal recognition of a sovereign people the right of self-determination.

Without an explicit law, Native Hawaiians may not be eligible for entitlements, funds and benefits afforded to other US Indigenous peoples.

In the US Supreme court case Rice v. Cayetano, OHA was accused of violating the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution with voting provisions that were race-based.

American opponents argue that congress is disregarding US citizens for special interests and sovereignty activists believe this will further erode their rights as the 1921 blood quantum rule of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act had done.

[12] In June 2014, the US Department of the Interior announced plans to hold hearings to establish the possibility of federal recognition of Native Hawaiians as an Indian tribe.

[13][14] The year of hearings found most speakers with strong opposition to the United States government's involvement in the Hawaiian sovereignty issue.

Kelii Akina, Chief Executive Officer of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, filed suit to see the names on the roll and won, finding serious flaws.

The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission has since purged the list of names of deceased persons as well as those whose address or e-mails could not be verified.

[citation needed] On an earlier United States Supreme Court case Rice v. Cayetano in 2000, Kennedy wrote, "Ancestry can be a proxy for race".