Civil Rights Organizations File Brief in Lawsuit Over Lands Held in Trust for Native Hawaiians
EJS and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) today filed a legal brief (download PDF here) with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that will determine whether the State of Hawai‘i can fulfill its constitutional responsibility as trustee of lands meant to serve Hawai‘i’s indigenous people.
The case, State of Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, revolves around attempts by the Hawai‘i state government to sell land that by the state constitution and federal law must be managed and used partly for the benefit of Native Hawaiians.
At the heart of the case is the State’s longstanding commitment to reconciliation with its Native peoples for historic injustice and continuing modern-day harms. Integral to that commitment is a process for the partial return of certain Hawaiian lands to a representative of the Native Hawaiian people.
The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court because the Hawai‘i state Supreme Court ruled against the state government’s intended sale of the lands in question and the state government is appealing that decision.
The brief says that the U.S. Supreme Court should affirm the state supreme court’s decision because the dispute over the lands is a state matter and is rooted in the State’s reconciliation commitment to Native Hawaiians.
“The governor’s attempted sale of ceded lands undermines the will of the Hawai‘i citizenry and its policymakers,” said brief co-author Eric Yamamoto, a professor of law at the University of Hawai‘i and a board member of the Equal Justice Society. “And by reneging on a key aspect of the State’s reconciliation commitment, the attempted sale would breach the State’s trust obligation to hold those unique lands until the Hawaiian peoples’ unrelinquished claims are mutually resolved.”
Eva Paterson on NPR This Morning
EJS President Eva Paterson is scheduled to be on NPR’s “News & Notes” program today at approximately 1:05 p.m. ET/10:05 a.m. PT. You can listen online at npr.org.
Eva will be sharing her thoughts on the Obama Administration and civil rights – and how the movement of the ’50s and ’60s might have some lessons for us today.
We’ll post a link to the audio archive as soon as that’s available.
UPDATE: The NPR page is here. Audio expected around 1 p.m. Pacific.
Visit the New WhiteHouse.gov
All of us here at the Equal Justice Society congratulate our new President, Barack Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, and their families on this historic day. Our president, Eva Paterson, is somewhere near the Capitol watching the ceremonies! (And here’s the text of President Obama’s inauguration speech.)
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Leah Garchik mentions Eva in her inauguration day diary:
Civil rights activist Eva Paterson passed “a guy in the street” hawking his wares: “O.K., get your Obama air freshener. This is what change smells like.”
As soon as President Obama finished taking the oath of office, whitehouse.gov turned into a brand new site.
Barack Obama Speaks at Dr. King’s Church in 2008
Prof. Ogletree Quoted in WashPo Article on Obama and Race
Harvard Law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Equal Justice Society board chair emeritus, is quoted in a Washington Post article, “President-Elect Sees His Race as An Opportunity,” written by Michael A. Fletcher and slated to appear on the front page of Monday’s paper:
Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard University professor who mentored Obama in law school, said his protege “has always confidently declared himself an African American. He is the last to say we are in a post-racial period. He has reminded people that we still have to think about race and address race issues.”
Obama the ‘omnipresent icebreaker’ for talking about race
The New York Times just posted a story on how Barack Obama’s election may have changed the way that we talk about race. Curiously, the Sarah Kershaw story is posted in the Fashion & Style section of the nytimes.com website.
In “Talk About Race? Relax, It’s O.K.” Kershaw relates the views of several 30- and 40-somethings on Obama’s impact on race discussions. Here’s one of the examples cited in the story:
Christophe E. Jackson, 28, a black Ph.D. candidate in biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who is also pursuing a medical degree, recalled that in the past he had uneasy conversations with white students and colleagues about affirmative action. He believed that many whites thought he had an edge, and were sometimes blunt about saying so. But Mr. Obama’s campaign and election seem to have changed those perceptions.
EJS President Eva Paterson blogged last March about “Putting Race Back on the Table in the Presidential Campaign,” in which she includes an article by Tim Wise, “Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth.” Eva received many great comments on that post.
Both Eva and Tim will be the featured speakers in a SpeakOut event titled ”Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama” taking place Thursday, February 19, from 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison Street.
Buy tickets to the Feb. 19 event here.
NAACP: An African American President. What’s Next in Your Lifetime?
Our friend Ben Jealous emailed today about a very cool web viral campaign from the NAACP where you upload your photo and your hopes for the next “in my lifetime” event. The photos and text get added to a virtual collage. The site is here and Ben’s email below: Read more
