HONOLULU -- A group of Native Hawaiians occupied Iolani Palace for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning to protest the Native Hawaiian Recognition Bill while the U.S. Senate debated the legislation.

Members of the Hawaiian group Hui Pu took turns making speeches against the so-called Akaka Bill saying, among other things, that it would prevent Hawaiian land and sovereignty claims.

"People say that it would give us the right to choose but really it puts us under the control of another office thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C.," Hinalei Moana Wong said.

"We don't want the Akaka Bill. The truth is, nobody knows what the Hawaiian community wants because no one ever asked the Hawaiian community. There has never been a vote or hearings on the Akaka Bill. It's a sham. It's a scam," Andre Perez said.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs backs the bill. However, protestors said that OHA is a state agency that does not represent all Hawaiians.

"We never had a vote. They are deciding our future for us and we are here to say, 'You don't decide our future for us. We decide our future for ourselves,'" Perez said.

"We are not Native American. We want to be recognized as our own indigenous people," Keala Norman said.

"I think it important that history knows that Hawaiians stood up against this bill despite the fact there is hundreds of thousands of dollars of propaganda by OHA and other organizations to promote this bill," Ikaika Hussey said.

It is standard operating procedure for the sheriff's department to arrest unauthorized groups occupying Iolani Palace grounds. However, the group left the area peacefully.