| | |
|
MakalikaNaholowaa-SecondPaper 6 - 09 May 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="WebPreferences" |
|---|
| |
<
< | DRAFT READY FOR REVIEW | | |
Policing the Borders of Racially Exclusive Policies within the Kanaka Maoli Community:
The Recognition of Racially Non-Hawaiian Hanai Persons in Hawaiian Families | | | I. The Hanai System: A Background & Comparison to American Adoption Practices
| |
<
< | The common conception of a family entity in the United States is the nuclear family, and the term adoption refers to the movement of a child permanently and completely from its natural nuclear family to the adoptive one. Traditionally, Maoli people lived communally, and an ohana (a Maoli family) includes extended members of a family and friends in the community. Accordingly, the adoption traditions differed. _Hanai_ describes the permanent movement of a child’s primary care giving from the natural parents to someone usually within their ohana, although not necessarily a biological relative. The hanai child is always aware of its natural parentage, this information is not kept hidden from them, and they will very likely have a relationship with the natural parents. However the hanai relationship between child and adoptive parents is equal in recognition and substance to that of the adoptive parent’s natural children. | >
> | The common conception of a family entity in the United States is the nuclear family, and the term adoption refers to the movement of a child permanently and completely from its natural nuclear family to the adoptive one. Traditionally, Maoli people lived communally, and an ohana (a Maoli family) includes extended members of a family and friends in the community. Accordingly, the adoption traditions differed. Hanai describes the permanent movement of a child’s primary care giving from the natural parents to someone usually within their ohana, although not necessarily a biological relative. The hanai child is always aware of its natural parentage, this information is not kept hidden from them, and they will very likely have a relationship with the natural parents. However the hanai relationship between child and adoptive parents is equal in recognition and substance to that of the adoptive parent’s natural children. | | |
Hanai is common and not considered emotionally traumatizing for a child. The hanai system and extended ohana structure create an environment in which a hanai child has the benefit of his hanai parents and a relationship with his natural parents, instead of an experience associated with loss, abandonment, and confusion, feelings that seem to commonly result for children under western adoption practices. There is no stigma connected to being hanai within Maoli families. There is also no tradition of lessened recognition of a family member due to a hanai, versus a biological, connection. Hanai compared to natural children are equally loved, committed to permanently for care giving, and recognized as heirs.
| | | Appendix I: Illustration of RNH-Hanai Exclusion | |
<
< | Mohica-Cummings v. Kamehameha School illustrates this problem well. Kamehameha School is a prestigious K-12 private school providing services that include difficult to obtain Hawaiian cultural and language education courses. Their admission’s policy is racially preferential and it is effectively completely exclusive to persons with a Hawaiian ancestor. There is no language in their policy speaking to RNH-hanai children and the current interpretation denies admissions preference to this group. Braydon Mohica-Cummings is the son of a RNH-hanai woman. He was admitted to Kamehameha School, but his admission to the school was rescinded when it was discovered that his Hawaiian familial status was through his hanai grandfather, a Native Hawaiian man. After a court provided injunctory relief allowing Braydon to attend school while the suit challenging the lawfulness of Kamehameha’s racially preferential policies was in progress, the school settled the case with the family. The settlement included an agreement to allow Braydon an exception to their ancestor requirement, but no general exception for RNH-hanai persons has been instituted. | >
> | Mohica-Cummings v. Kamehameha School illustrates this problem well. Kamehameha School is a prestigious K-12 private school providing services that include difficult to obtain Hawaiian cultural and language education courses. Their admission’s policy is racially preferential and it is effectively completely exclusive to persons with a Hawaiian ancestor. There is no language in their policy speaking to RNH-hanai children and the current interpretation denies admissions preference to this group. Braydon Mohica-Cummings is the son of a RNH-hanai woman. He was admitted to Kamehameha School, but his admission to the school was rescinded when it was discovered that his Hawaiian familial status was through his hanai grandfather, a Native Hawaiian man. After a court provided injunctory relief allowing Braydon to attend school while the suit challenging the lawfulness of Kamehameha’s racially preferential policies was in progress, the school settled the case with the family. The settlement included an agreement to allow Braydon an exception to their ancestor requirement, but no general exception for RNH-hanai persons has been instituted.
- The word "injunctory" didn't exist. You wanted in fact to say "interim," rather than "injunctive."
| | | | |
>
> |
- I think the awkwardness of this analysis, Makalika, is that it begins from the assumption that there's a general problem in the treatment of traditional family-definition law, when in fact your data show that there's a problem in the administration of the local racial preference system. Without the preference system, there's no demonstrated incompatibility between traditional family definition and contemporary family law. The preference system's concern with distinguishing "native" from "non-native" may conflict with traditional understandings of "us" in many ways, of which some are more difficult to deal with than others. Analysis of that question would be as economical as your current mode of investigation, wasting no concepts or attention on irrelevant matters, and it needn't be ideological either for or against preference in order to provide a more straightforward and useful set of insights than what you can get with the present conceptual machinery.
| | | |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |