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Three guests with sharply different angles debate what the 1993 Congressional apology bill means for Hawaii in 1995. William Meheula, the attorney, argues that the apology's admission of an illegal overthrow creates a legal cloud on the state's 1.4 million acres of ceded lands — a cloud his lawsuit has already used to block a land sale in Lahaina — and that a sovereign Hawaiian entity could negotiate a land-for-clear-title deal with the state. Bob Midkiff, a fifth-generation descendant of American missionaries, prefers focusing on the Hawaiian Homes Commission settlement and education rather than larger sovereignty claims, and raises the specter of Bosnia-style violence if tensions escalate. Paul Carrington, visiting from Duke, cautions that the United States will not allow the union to dissolve and that 19th-century wrongs are hard to unpack a century later, though he concedes the public lands question has some analogy to Texas retaining its lands at statehood. Roth presses all three on whether the overthrow was "stolen" or merely "illegally obtained." Callers range from a caller urging full independence to one questioning the plebiscite's legal implications.
Transcript
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