A/HRC/21/47/Add.1 J. Hawaii 64. Also uniquely vulnerable are the indigenous people of Hawaii, having experienced a particular history of colonial onslaught and resulting economic, social and cultural upheaval. They benefit from some federal programmes available to Native Americans, but they have no recognized powers of self-government under federal law. And they have little by way of effective landholdings, their lands largely having passed to non-indigenous ownership and control with the aggressive patterns of colonization initiated with the arrival of the British explorer James Cook in 1778. Indigenous Hawaiians have diffuse interests in lands “ceded’ to the United States and then passed to the state of Hawaii, under a trust that is specified in the 1959 Statehood Admission Act and now managed by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. 65. Remarkably, the United States Congress in 1993 issued an apology “to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States.”15 The apology recognized that the overthrow resulted in the suppression of the “inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people” and called for “reconciliation” efforts. 66. The call for reconciliation, however, remains unfilled, while a growing movement of indigenous Hawaiians challenges the legitimacy and legality of the annexation of Hawaii following the overthrow, as well as the process by which Hawaii moved from its designation as a non-self-governing territory under United Nations supervision, to being incorporated into the United States as one of its federal states in 1959. In the meantime, indigenous Hawaiians see their sacred places under the domination of others, and they continue to fare worse than any other demographic group in Hawaii in terms of education, health, crime, and employment. IV. More needs to be done A. Welcomed, but still not sufficient, government initiatives 67. The Special Rapporteur acknowledges the high level of attention to indigenous peoples’ concerns that is represented by numerous acts of Congress and federal executive programmes (see paras. 25-29 above and appendix I). Such attention represents some acknowledgment of the historical debt acquired toward the country’s first peoples, and partially fulfils historical treaty commitments. 68. It is evident that the federal executive has taken steps in recent years to strengthen these programmes, in addition to its new initiatives to develop consultation policies and open spaces of dialogue with tribes; to strengthen support for the recovery of indigenous languages; to settle outstanding claims for mismanagement indigenous assets held in trust by the Government; to increase funding for federal programmes; to address the problem of violence against indigenous women; to clean up environmental pollution caused by natural resource extraction; to assist tribes with acquiring land to restore their land bases; and to enhance tribal capacity and cooperative arrangements in the area of law and order, among others. 15 16 Public Law 103-150, 103d Congress Joint Resolution 19 (1993).