Below is a portion of the DOI press release about these meetings (second document below).
"In response to requests from the Native Hawaiian community, Hawaii's congressional delegation and state leaders, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced today a first step to consider reestablishing a government-to-government relationship between the United States and the Native Hawaiian community.
"The purpose of such a relationship would be to more effectively implement the special political and trust relationship that currently exists between the Federal government and the Native Hawaiian community. Today's action... provides for an extensive series of public meetings and consultations in Hawaii... to solicit comments that could help determine whether the Department develops a formal, administrative procedure for reestablishing an official government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community and if so, what that procedure should be."
Here's a very brief capsule of what I understand about this (and I apologize for any omissions or missing points about this situation). The "Native Hawaiian community" they are referring to is (represented by) OHA (Office of Hawaiian Affairs), a State of Hawai'i entity.
[from Wikipedia] "The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is a semi-autonomous department of the State of Hawaii created by the 1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention."
[from OHA website] "As part of its mandate to advocate for Native Hawaiians, each year OHA submits a package of proposed bills to the Hawaiians State Legislature, and the agency's Board of Trustees also votes to take positions on a wide variety of legislation impacting the Hawaiian community."
From my conversations with Ali'i Nui Mo'i (King) Edmund K. Silva, Jr., this process, and the public meetings, are centered around eventually forming a Hawai'ian government within the government of the U.S.A. A "nation within nation".
There is nothing in these documents about re-establishing a recognition of the "Kingdom of Hawai'i" (which was never legally ended (see this post)), except to reference the fact that it (the Kingdom) was indeed overthrown in 1893, with the cooperation of the U.S. government.
Click to see the full DOI documents...
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