Neil Abercrombie
You're talking serious money already in the bank, and millions of dollars coming in every year.
When there wasn't any money involved, for all intents and purposes, nobody gave a damn. But now the land, supposedly worthless, is seen for what it really is: an incredibly valuable asset.
When I was first elected to the state House of Representatives in 1974, one of the committees I was assigned to was Land, Water and Hawaiian Homes.
Western concepts of ownership and privatization came in and clashed with that. So land began to be exchanged.
We made stabs in the legislature to try to relieve the state of both the burden and obligation of administering lands that otherwise were construed as belonging to Native Hawaiians historically.
There's a series of benefits - educational, health, etc. - that benefit Native Hawaiians. The revenues are starting to mount into the millions.
There was a queen that was overthrown here. So I was affected by all of that and felt profoundly grateful for the opportunity to live in Hawaii, and I set out at once to try to fit in.
The thing that distinguishes them as Native Hawaiians is that Native Hawaiians were part of their racial and ethnic heritage.
The Iolani Palace is right downtown in Honolulu, the only palace in the country.
The ceded lands, or crown lands, were always seen as those which had previously been held in trust for the people and remained held in trust for them, but administered by whomever - the territory first, and now the state of Hawaii.
So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.
So as soon as the land was worth something and there was money in the bank, all of a sudden everybody got interested in non-discrimination, in who's really going to administer this stuff.
Land in Hawaii is money. What I'm talking about here is ceded land - land that belonged to the kingdom and was ceded to the republic and then to the state when we achieved statehood.
Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.
In this rainbow society that we have, it became very apparent to me after I entered into an electoral political life that the question of settling the issues on the assets of the Hawaiians is what the Akaka bill is about.
In highly affluent areas, between multi-million dollar estates, you'll see a right of way so that anybody can get their surfboard and walk between these estates and get down to the beach, which is public.
In 1920, a couple hundred thousand acres had been set aside called ''Hawaiian homelands.'' The idea was to rehabilitate Hawaiians by letting them homestead on acreage set aside for them.
I remember saying to the chairman after serving the first year, ''Why are we doing this? Why don't the Hawaiians have control?'' ''Well, we have no mechanism to do it,'' I was told.
I came to Hawaii in 1959 with statehood, and of course the whole foundation of this multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic society in Hawaii is the aloha spirit, the legacy of the Polynesian pioneers.
Fundamentally, the land was held in common and administered by a group of nobles called the alii on behalf of the common good.