MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
FOCUS ON HEALING AND RECONCILIATION

by
Susan K. Serrano


January 2008. The Hawai‘i Supreme Court proclaimed that “Congress, the Hawai‘i state legislature, the parties, and the trial court all recognize … that future reconciliation between the state and the native Hawaiian people is contemplated.”1

February 2008. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to Aborigines “for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss.”2

The Hawai‘i Supreme Court’s recognition of the state’s commitment to reconciliation and the Australian government’s expressions of apology and regret are part of a growing worldwide movement toward reconciliation between governments and Indigenous communities. What potential do these reconciliation efforts hold? Will they lead to concrete restructuring of relationships or are they “simply masks for continuing status quo oppression?”3 These are questions currently being addressed by legal scholars and others.4

In this issue of Ka He‘e, we highlight ongoing reconciliation efforts between governments and Indigenous communities. Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie’s Director’s Column and Moani Crowell’s Ho‘oholo I Mua - Towards Reconciliation? explain the Hawai‘i Supreme Court’s recent Office of Hawaiian Affairs v. Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawai‘i decision and its aftermath. The landmark decision holds that the United States’ 1993 Apology Resolution and related State legislation committing the State to reconciliation with Native Hawaiians – giving rise to the state’s fiduciary duty to preserve the public lands trust – prohibits the state from alienating ceded lands until Native Hawaiians’ unrelinquished claims to those lands are resolved.

In Ashley Obrey's Yalangu: The “True Spirit Of Reconciliation” for Australia’s Indigenous Peoples, Obrey explores Australia’s apology to and attempted reconciliation with the tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait children who were taken from their families as part of Australia’s assimilation policy beginning in the late 1800s and continuing through the 1970s. In analyzing the Australian government’s efforts to reconcile, Obrey ponders whether Australia will set an example for the United States’ reconciliation process with Native Hawaiians.

In the last issue of Ka He‘e (Issue Four), we also addressed healing and reconciliation for both Native Hawaiians and Native Americans. In Ashley Obrey's Broken Promise? A Brief Update on the U.S. Role in Native Hawaiian Reconciliation Since the 1993 Apology, Obrey outlined and analyzed the efficacy of the United States’ recent reconciliation efforts with Native Hawaiians since the 1993 Apology Resolution.5 In Sarah Wong's Virginia’s Apology to Native Americans: Steps Toward Reconciliation and Social Healing?, Wong described the State of Virginia’s 2007 apology to African Americans for the harms of slavery and to Native Americans for “maltreatment and exploitation,” and asked whether the apology offers a concrete step towards reconciliation with Virginia’s Native peoples.6

Last semester, the Center also hosted events focused on reconciliation and social healing for Indigenous peoples. On March 6, 2008, the Center’s monthly “Maoli Thursday” forum centered on Reconciliation for Native Hawaiians?: OHA v. HCDCH, featuring OHA attorneys Sherry Broder and William Meheula and House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell (see “Center Events” in this issue of Ka He‘e). In the fall of 2007, we also hosted Reconciliatory Justice: Addressing Historic Injustices Against Indigenous Peoples, featuring Dr. Robert Joseph, a Māori legal scholar from the University of Waikato and a Research Fellow with the Te Mātāhauariki Institute.

For more in-depth explorations of the theoretical concepts and practical implications of social healing and reconciliation between groups, the Center recommends publications by Center Professor Eric Yamamoto, who has written extensively about reconciliation, reparations, and social healing through justice. In ERIC K. YAMAMOTO'S INTERRACIAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT AND RECONCILIATION IN POST-CIVIL RIGHTS AMERICA (1999), Yamamoto draws out commonalities about social healing from various disciplines, and introduces an interracial justice framework of Recognition, Responsibility, Reconstruction, and Reparation to guide and assess reconciliation efforts. In Eric K. Yamamoto, Sandra Hye Yun Kim & Abigail M. Holden's American Reparations Theory and Practice at the Crossroads, 44 CAL. W. L. REV. 1 (2007), the authors build on the interracial justice framework and recommend a “social healing through justice” strategic framework “that draws deeply from multidisciplinary understandings of social healing and multifaceted global reparations attempts at symbolic and practical justice.”7


1 Office of Hawaiian Affairs v. HCDCH, 117 Hawai‘i 174, 213, 177 P.3d 884, 923 (2008).

2 Prime Minister of Australia, Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra, Feb. 13, 2008, available at http://www.pm.gov.au/media/speech/2008/speech_0073.cfm.

3 Eric K. Yamamoto, Race Apologies, 1 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 47, 49 (1997).

4 See generally ERIC K. YAMAMOTO, INTERRACIAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT AND RECONCILIATION IN POST-CIVIL RIGHTS AMERICA (1999); MARTHA MINOW, BETWEEN VENGEANCE AND FORGIVENESS: FACING HISTORY AFTER GENOCIDE AND MASS VIOLENCE (1998); WHEN SORRY ISN’T ENOUGH: THE CONTROVERSY OVER APOLOGIES AND REPARATIONS FOR HUMAN INJUSTICE (Roy L. Brooks ed., 1999).

5 Available at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nhlawctr/article3-6.htm.

6 Available at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nhlawctr/article3-7.htm.

7 Eric K. Yamamoto, Sandra Hye Yun Kim & Abigail M. Holden, American Reparations Theory and Practice at the Crossroads, 44 CAL. W. L. REV. 1, 3 (2007).