A bill passed in February by the House of Representatives could change the U.S. policy of recognizing tribes with a long history of self-governance to instead creating new tribes based on ethnicity.
The bill proposes that indigenous Hawaiians gain federal recognition similar to an American Indian tribe, but prohibits them from gaming. The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, commonly known as the “Akaka bill” after Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, seeks to group together a race, but not a tribe, since the Kingdom of Hawaii was a multiracial society made up of warring islands that were united in 1810, according to The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section.
In 2006 the United States Commission on Civil Rights conducted hearings about an earlier version of the bill and reported: “The Commission recommends against … legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.”
This bill could set a precedent for some scenarios where other racial groups might lobby to become their own tribes throughout the United States, such as Mexican Americans of Indian descent or Orthodox Jews, according to the Journal.
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