By Elizabeth Hoʻoipo Kalaenaʻauao Pa Nakea, Esq.
Our lāhui is once again under direct assault.
The proposed FY2027 federal budget is the most sweeping and aggressive attempt to dismantle Native Hawaiian programs since Rice v. Cayetano (2000), when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Hawaiian-only voting for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA).
Far beyond a fiscal adjustment, this staggering $1.36 billion cut is a calculated maneuver to starve the resources sustaining our families and erase our political identity.
The Blueprint of Erasure
The roots of today’s attacks lie with the missionary descendants who orchestrated the 1893 overthrow. Desperate to protect their sugar profits and suppress Queen Liliʻuokalani’s constitution, this oligarchy manufactured a moral panic, smearing a sovereign monarch to disguise an illegal coup.
The blueprint was set: Invent a false narrative to justify a theft.
That 1893 blueprint never disappeared; it simply changed vocabulary. For over a century, this apparatus has weaponized U.S. law to maintain settler colonial control – beginning with the 1896 outlawing of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and the criminalization of hula.
Today, this false narrative relies on hijacked “civil rights” language. By seeking to reclassify Kānaka Maoli as a “domestic racial group,” the government manufactures a legal loophole to use civil rights laws against us, framing resource theft as a pursuit of equality.
The June 2026 lawsuit, Ryan v. Watson, already weaponizes the 14th Amendment to dismantle the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, falsely framing our political trust rights as “racial discrimination.” Under this guise of “equality,” the calculated maneuver does not just cut “social programs” – it starves the mandatory trust pipelines that satisfy a federal fiduciary debt and protect our vested property rights.
By designating us a “racial group,” the administration legally locks Native Hawaiian health centers out of federal block grants, putting $27 million at risk.
Our educational foundation remains similarly targeted: although a fragile, one-year reprieve was just secured for the $46 million Native Hawaiian Education Program (NHEP), the budget still zeros out $25 million for Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and $3.6 million for Career & Technical Education.
This mirrors the exact theories weaponized against Kamehameha Schools and OHA.
The Human Cost: Exiled in Our Homelands
The most visible failure of this settler-colonial system is the severe housing crisis, forcing Kānaka ʻŌiwi onto the streets of their ancestral lands.
Instead of fulfilling its century-old Hawaiian Homes Commission Act obligations – where 29,000 languish, untold thousands have died waiting, and the Ryan lawsuit seeks to open leases to non-Hawaiians – the budget eliminates the $22.3 million Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant (NAHASDA), freezing development.
Slashes to the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) starve nonprofits, accelerating our people’s coercive departure to the continent.
This assault collapses the safety net for our beneficiaries. The sheer scale of this erasure is evident in the defunding of critical programs: slashing SNAP/Food Stamps ($221 million) and Medicaid ($360 million) ensures keiki go hungry and treatable illnesses become emergencies.
Essential lifelines face total elimination, including civil legal aid ($3.8 million), LIHEAP/utilities ($7.7 million), broadband ($8 million), Job Corps ($30 million), health screenings ($1.8 million), and education grants ($8 million).
Furthermore, an 82% cut to Clean Water funds costs working-poor families $2,100 each. Most distressingly, a $150 million FEMA cut threatens Lahaina’s rebuilding, leaving the ʻāina vulnerable to outside land-grabs, while a 40% cut to the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations suffocates our capacity to self-advocate.
The Glaring Disparity: Domestic Slashes vs. Military Increases
This budget deliberately transfers wealth from our safety nets into the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, slashing domestic spending by $1.36 billion while surging military funding by $2 billion. As 65-year leases expire, the military is digging in – preparing to use eminent domain to seize our national lands, stripping our survival funding to finance their permanent occupation.
Navigating the Sovereignty Trap
We operate as the rightful stewards of our national estate, guided by patriot Joseph Nāwahī: “We are a nation; we have not lost our nationality.”
Because the United States never acquired Hawaiʻi through a lawful international mechanism – that is, no treaty of annexation was ever ratified – seeking “federal recognition” as a Native American tribe is a dangerous trap.
Under the Constitution’s “Commerce Clause,” Congress exercises plenary power over recognized tribes, allowing it to legally cut off funding with a single vote, which is exactly what it is attempting now. Accepting this false compromise trades our unrelinquished ea (sovereignty) for a fragile protectorate status they can unilaterally revoke. It is a calculated step toward total erasure, forcing us to abandon our international standing.
Holding the Line
The true danger of the U.S. courts is exemplified by Justice Samuel Alito’s 2009 Supreme Court ruling (Hawaii v. OHA). Alito gutted the 1993 Apology Law by dismissing its recognition of our national sovereignty as merely “conciliatory” words, establishing the exact blueprint now being used to defund us: weaponizing courts to neutralize Hawaiian protections without addressing the underlying crime.
We are watching this predatory playbook unfold.
In January 2025, the Interior Department issued legal opinion M-37083, explicitly confirming an “ongoing political relationship with Native Hawaiians manifested in hundreds of federal statutes.”
Today, driven by Project 2025, political operatives like Ed Blum and the Pacific Legal Foundation are backing Ryan v. Watson, and the administration is aggressively attempting to revoke this document.
They are burying their own legal admission, falsely reducing our political nationhood to a “racial group” as a pretext to defund the $1.36 billion protecting our vested property interests.
By erasing this distinction, they strip our ability to claim fiduciary damages owed for over a century of occupation, stealing our future to fund current wars.
Our aliʻi did not build a charity. Our leaders voluntarily relinquished absolute power to secure the people’s rights and build a progressive constitutional monarchy. We were overthrown because our peaceful sovereignty threatened what American businessmen desperately coveted: our ʻāina momona – our abundant lands – and our advantageous geographic location.
We are being defunded today because our continued existence threatens their occupation.
As Queen Liliʻuokalani declared, “The cause of Hawaiʻi and independence is larger and dearer than the life of any man connected with it.” Her words remain our sovereign mandate to fiercely protect our ʻāina, our wai, and our kai.
Our ea is not a domestic racial preference; it is not a charitable gift, and it is not up for negotiation. It is our unbroken legal and ancestral inheritance.
Elizabeth Ann Hoʻoipo Kalaenaʻauao Pa Nakea, Esq., has spent her career contributing to the collective work of Kanaka ʻŌiwi Ea through education and law. Formerly the executive director of the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council and president of Hui Naʻauao, she continues her lifelong advocacy for our lāhui’s ea and the protection of our ʻāina, wai, and kai. A Kamehameha and Richardson Law graduate, Elizabeth grew up across Liliha, Kāneʻohe Bay, and Kalihiwai Bay.
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