Opening Day at the Legislature

Today was a busy day at the legislature for the Kupu'aina coalition organizers. The place was crowded with a lot of different people trying to talk with every legislator and eating lunch.

I want to highlight some language from Colleen Hanabusa's speech. "As well, we know we must address the sense of betrayal that many in our Native Hawaiian community feel on the issue of ceded lands, and in particular the case now pending before the United States Supreme Court. We will not turn a deaf ear to these questions, as difficult as they may be. We have heard the call of the people and we must respond."

Colleen Hanabusa, if you didn't know, is the State Senate President. The text of her entire speech is available at http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090121/BREAKING01/90121051

It is encouraging to know that Colleen Hanabusa wants to address the ceded lands issue. Now, we have to focus on the State House of Representatives. It may be necessary to organize something at the capitol to let the House of Representatives know that this is a serious issue and that we want them to protect the ceded lands.

We just found out today that there is an important Hawaiian Caucus meeting happening tomorrow at the State Capitol in Room 423 at 4pm. The Hawaiian Caucus will explore the "ceded" lands issue by listening to three panelists, the Attorney General Mark Bennett, Attorney Sherry Broder, and Attorney Bill Meheula.

All three panelists are involved in the "ceded" lands litigation. Sherry Broder is the lead attorney representing the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Bill Meheula represents the four individual plaintiffs and Mark Bennett represents the State of Hawai'i as the attorney general.

This caucus meeting is open to the public. The importance of this meeting is to provide information to the caucus members who are also legislators working at the capitol.

We encourage people to attend the caucus meeting which is scheduled to last 90 minutes.

Last night's webcast, t-shirts, and Postcards to Politicians

Aloha mai kakou,

Kupu‘āina Live!
Last night we did our fifth live-streaming webcast. Our viewers may have noticed that the last several webcasts, we've had a delayed start. We haven't quite nailed down yet what the issue is, but now we're leaning towards pre-recording those webcasts by about an hour and then playing them "live" over ustream and mogulus. We don't like having to start the webcasts late, even if it is only by a few minutes, because that's a good way to start losing viewers.

We got an e-mail from Keahi on the big island who let us know that she experienced a brief pause where there was no sound or video. My parents e-mailed me personally and said they experienced a five minute period of no sound or actual video. We'll continue to work on it.

Kū I Ka Pono T-SHIRTS!
Since Saturday's rally, we've been getting e-mails from people asking about t-shirts.

The best thing to do, is probably to go to https://paifoundation.ejoinme.org/MyPages/ProtectHawaiianRights/tabid/123495/Default.aspx

Kupu‘āina wasn't selling the shirts from our website, but we did provide a link that connected people to a site that was selling the shirts. You can also call Kaho'onei Panoke at 224-8068.

POSTCARDS TO POLITICIANS
Mahalo nui to all those who signed our postcards. We're continuing to sort through the post cards we received. We still haven't finished counting, but in my conservative estimate, I believe we have well over 1,000 signed postcards. We will start to mail these out soon and we're going to continue to get more signed. If you didn't know already, the purpose of the postcards is to convey a message to the politicians at the capitol building. That message basically is, that "as your constituents, we want you to protect the "ceded" lands by supporting and passing laws that protect the ceded lands and that may also re-affirm the Hawai'i Supreme Court's landmark January 31, 2008 ruling.

For any of you out there who would like to help out with this effort, please let us know by e-mailing us at kupuaina@gmail.com