Disinformation campaigns always depend on a Big Lie, and conservatives striving to derail the Akaka bill in Congress are getting mileage from the lie that recognizing Native Hawaiians as indigenous Americans could lead to Hawai'i's secession from the Union.

Akaka opponents have floated false issues before that never took with the public — gambling, depressed property values, diminished military readiness, a racially separated society.

But the secession scare, while dismissed by most Hawai'i residents, is an attention-grabber that has gotten good play among conservative media on the Mainland — and the notice of senators who will decide the bill's fate in a debate scheduled to start next week.

The Wall Street Journal, often an ally of the local right in spreading trash talk about Hawai'i on the Mainland, said in a July 16 editorial headlined "Goodbye Hawai'i" that passage of the Akaka bill would amount to endorsement of Hawai'i's secession.

"Jefferson Davis rides again," the editorial said, offensively comparing Native Hawaiian recognition to the Civil War Confederacy.

A month later, a Journal commentary attributed to former Republican Sens. Slade Gorton of Washington and Hank Brown of Colorado charged that "the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter."

The me-too chorus of conservative television and radio commentators also chimed in on the same theme.

The plain fact is, there is zero chance that the Akaka bill would result in restoration of a Hawaiian republic independent from the United States.

Hawai'i residents — including most Native Hawaiians — wouldn't stand for it, nor would the U.S. Interior Department or Congress.

It's telling that the minority of Hawaiians who support full independence oppose the Akaka bill precisely because they believe it would leave Hawaiians permanently under the thumb of the Interior Department with no possibility of an independent nation.

The legislation, as amended, limits the federal relationship with Hawaiians to the type the United States has had with American Indians for centuries and Alaskan natives for decades.

"The language now agreed to with the (Bush) administration makes crystal clear that the recognition does not go beyond the recognition afforded the other indigenous peoples of the United States," said Gov. Linda Lingle in an Aug. 23 letter to U.S. senators.

Neither Alaska nor any of the states with large Indian populations have seceded from the Union, and it's preposterous to suggest it would be any different in Hawai'i.

This bill is about protecting assets that Hawaiians have held for decades — ceded lands revenue managed by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaiian homesteads, Kamehameha Schools and hundreds of federal grants.

These Hawaiian-only programs have enjoyed broad support locally and never caused ethnic discord until it was stirred up by self-serving attorneys who found a way to pervert civil rights laws to strip Hawaiians of their rightful holdings.

The Akaka legislation primarily aims to head off these race-based lawsuits against Native Hawaiians by recognizing them as an indigenous people rather than a racial minority, just like the Indians and Alaskan natives whose lands were similarly settled by the United States.

The legislation could lead to some measure of autonomy for Hawaiians, like that granted other Native Americans, but this a matter of fairness and justice that poses no threat to the Union.

The most likely scenario for a Hawaiian sovereign entity is some kind of corporation they control to manage Hawaiian assets for the benefit of Hawaiians.

Fair-minded people have no quarrel with that, which is why Lingle says opponents have resorted to an "outrageous scare tactic."

In other words, a Big Lie.

Reach David Shapiro at dave@volcanicash.net.