526
Breyer, J., concurring in result
ing, health, culture, economic development, and nonprofit organizations). As the majority makes clear, OHA is simply a special purpose department of Hawaii's state government. Ante, at 520-521.
As importantly, the statute defines the electorate in a way that is not analogous to membership in an Indian tribe. Native Hawaiians, considered as a group, may be analogous to tribes of other Native Americans. But the statute does not limit the electorate to native Hawaiians. Rather it adds to approximately 80,000 native Hawaiians about 130,000 additional "Hawaiians," defined as including anyone with one ancestor who lived in Hawaii prior to 1778, thereby including individuals who are less than one five-hundredth original Hawaiian (assuming nine generations between 1778 and the present). See Native Hawaiian Data Book 39 (1998). Approximately 10% to 15% of OHA's funds are spent specifically to benefit this latter group, see Annual Report 38, which now constitutes about 60% of the OHA electorate.
I have been unable to find any Native American tribal definition that is so broad. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, for example, defines a "Native" as "a person of one-fourth degree or more Alaska Indian" or one "who is regarded as an Alaska Native by the Native village or Native group of which he claims to be a member and whose father or mother is . . . regarded as Native by any village or group" (a classification perhaps more likely to reflect real group membership than any blood quantum requirement). 43 U. S. C. § 1602(b). Many tribal constitutions define membership in terms of having had an ancestor whose name appeared on a tribal roll—but in the far less distant past. See, e. g., Constitution of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Art. II (membership consists of persons on final rolls approved in 1906 and their lineal descendants); Constitution of the Sac and Fox Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, Art. II (membership consists of persons on official roll of 1937, children since born to two members of the Tribe, and children born to one mem-
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