Bill Text: HI HR62 | 2017 | Regular Session | Introduced

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Bill Title: Expressing The Support Of The State Of Hawaii For The Rights Of The Indigenous People Of North Dakota To Preserve Their Cultural Heritage And Access To Clean Water.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 7-0)

Status: (Passed) 2017-03-29 - Resolution adopted in final form. [HR62 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2017-HR62-Introduced.html

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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	H.R. NO.	62
TWENTY-NINTH LEGISLATURE, 2017
STATE OF HAWAII

HOUSE RESOLUTION

 

 

expressing the support of the state of hawaii for the rights of the indigenous people of north dakota to preserve their cultural heritage and access to clean water.

 

 

 

     WHEREAS, the Dakota Access Pipeline, known in the popular press as DAPL, is a nearly 1,200-mile long pipeline designed to transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil daily across four states, from North Dakota to Illinois, where it links to another pipeline that transports crude to terminals and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico; and

 

     WHEREAS, the Pipeline's developer, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, asserts that this is a more cost-effective, efficient means of transporting crude oil than the usual method of train transport; and

 

     WHEREAS, it is projected that transport via the Pipeline would allow oil drilling and refinery interests to claim increased profit margins, even when other economic factors would otherwise keep crude prices low; and

 

     WHEREAS, a section of the Dakota Access Pipeline is designed to cross lands claimed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe which contain both sacred sites and Lake Oahe, the primary source of clean drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation land; and

 

     WHEREAS, construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline according to this design requires that a portion of the Pipeline be situated underneath Lake Oahe and cross the Missouri River; and

 

     WHEREAS, the construction, maintenance, and operation of the Dakota Access Pipeline are projected to have major disruptive effects on both the supply of clean water and the preservation and use of lands and sites that are historically and culturally important to indigenous peoples located on or originating from the areas surrounding the Pipeline's route; and

 

     WHEREAS, the critical importance of access to clean water, for both practical and spiritual reasons, is a value that is shared between the indigenous peoples of the American West and Native Hawaiians; and

 

     WHEREAS, historical Hawaiian tradition and the jurisprudence of the contemporary State of Hawaii both recognize the right to access clean water as fundamental and subject to the highest standards of protection for present and future uses; and

 

     WHEREAS, in Robinson v. Ariyoshi, 65 Haw. 641 (1982), a seminal decision that set the course of Hawaii's water law, the State Supreme Court found that, by the reservation to the King of ownership of the surface waters in the Hawaiian kingdom, "a public trust was imposed upon all the waters of the kingdom" and "the public interest in the waters of the kingdom was understood to necessitate a retention of authority and the imposition of a concomitant duty to maintain the purity and flow of our waters for future generations and to assure that the waters of our land are put to reasonable and beneficial uses.  This is not ownership in the corporeal sense where the State may do with the property as it pleases; rather, we comprehend the nature of the State's ownership as a retention of such authority to assure the continued existence and beneficial application of the resource for the common good."; and

 

     WHEREAS, in recognition of the kinship and shared essential cultural value of the protection of water between the indigenous peoples of North America and the Hawaiian archipelago; now, therefore,

 

     BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-ninth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2017, that the Legislature expresses its support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its opposition to any actions, including the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, that threaten the Tribe, its access to clean water, the preservation of its sacred and important lands, and the continued existence of its culture, people, and nation; and

 

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council, President of the United States, Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior, Omaha District Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, and members of Hawaii's Congressional delegation.

 

 

 

	OFFERED BY:	_____________________________

Report Title: 

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Dakota Access Pipeline