PATH 1: TOWARD FEDERAL RECOGNITION
This is the path of Jus sanguinis (Latin: right of blood) and is a principle of nationality law by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state.

Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka tried for eleven years to get congressional approval for a native Hawaiian government organization, but it was dropped because one member of the Foreign Relations Committee objected that it violated the prohibition of racial discrimination in the14th Amendment. Then in 2011, Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie put Act 195 though the state legislature. It states that "Native Hawaiians are the only indigenous race in Hawaii", excluding descendants from the other Asian countries. By this definition Native Hawaiians are the ones who were living on the Hawaiian islands before Captain Cook's arrival (even though a Japanese fishing boat had crashed on Kauai sometime between 1400 -1600, positing Japanese inhabitants in Hawaii before Cook.

The majority of convention attendees voted for a proposal seeking federal recognition to be approved by the Department of the Interior to establish native Hawaiians as an Indian tribe. This government would be like those of native Americans on the mainland, regulated by the federal Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian affairs as well as the state. It would allow people to hold both state and native tribal citizenship. This proposal was compiled by law students from internet searches of national and tribal constitutions around the world, and is affectionately referred to as the Frankenstein constitution. Keoki said that a negative consequence if this proposal became law, is that many native Hawaiian land right and cultural practice litigations with A&B, DLNR and the U.S. military and others would be quashed and become moot. The in addition to Pearl Harbor, the military controls 200,000 large parcels of Hawaiian real estate, which it began simply taking over after the 1893 insurgency and then by the 1898 annexation of Hawaii. 

PATH 2: RESTORATION OF THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM (INDEPENDENCE)
This is the path of Jus soli, meaning 'right of the soil', commonly referred to as birthright citizenship, is the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship. 

23 of the 105 participants at the Aha voted to form the Independence Committee (Aha) to reinstate the constitutions of 1864 (which was denied by the "Bayonet Constitution" of 1887, which stripped king David Kalakaua of authority), and the constitution of 1893 (the one Queen Liliuokalani proposed to restore authority to the monarchy and earlier constitution, but which was abrogated by American insurgents who had heard about it and deposed the queen).

This path (jus soli) is supported by the International Court of Justice and many scholars. It was the way the Hawaiian Kingdom determined citizenship. It also would allow dual US and Hawaiian citizenship and require study and testing to become an Hawaiian citizen. The Hawaiian constitutions also had established an executive branch (the monarch) and a legislative body (the House of Chiefs) and laws of succession. After the Kamehameha lineage ended, the monarch selected his successor. When he was unable to do that, an election was held by the legislature, the House of the Chiefs. If the legislature was not able to fulfill this responsibility, a general election was held to elect a provisional government, The population at the time of the insurrection was 50,000 and there were voting rolls, including women, who could vote, but the voting records were buried.  Now, determining who is eligible to vote is a sticky part of setting up a new government. The current population of Hawaii is about 1.5 million, of which 250,000 are native Hawaiian.

So, for the 120 years since the insurrection, Hawaii has been in a "state of interregnum", a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order.

Another part of the native Hawaiian legal claims is  based on the way the islands were annexed. When, in 1898, President McKinley couldn't get the 2/3 senate majority required to ratify a treaty with the Hawaiian Kingdom, he was able to get a joint resolution with the senate and house for annexation instead, but technically, joint resolutions only apply to the 48 contingent mainland states and paints the insurgency with another violation of the U.S. constitution. 

More information is available at the following websites:  www.Hawaiiankingdom.org and www.hawaii-nation.org    You can contact Keoki by email at Keoki@maui.net