/* Written 10:54 PM Jul 5, 1994 by pfoc in igc:reg.pacific */
Stolen Islands: Hawai`i Demands Sovereignty
by Kekuni Blaisdell
[This article originally appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of Breakthrough,
a political journal published by Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. To
respond to the article, to order a copy of the publication, or to subscribe,
please send mail to pfoc@igc.apc.org.]
The year 1993 marked the centennial of the 1893 U.S. armed invasion of
Hawai`i. On January 17 more than 12,000 indigenous Hawaiians, or Kanaka
Maoli, joined a sovereignty rally expressing their outrage at the U.S. armed
invasion and the lawless occupation and theft of our government and lands
beginning a century earlier.
The current Kanaka Maoli independence movement began about 30 years ago in
the 1960s, but as early as the 1893 invasion and 1898 annexation of Ka
Pae`aina (the Hawaiian Archipelago), Kanaka Maoli vigorously resisted the
takeover. The 1895 indigenous armed revolt against the haole (Western)
usurpers, however, was squelched, with more than 200 rebels tried for
treason and our Queen for misprision of treason. Well aware of the
indigenous opposition, the haole annexationists would not agree to an
island-wide plebiscite on the political status of the islands.
Once annexation was in force under the U.S.-imposed Territory of Hawai`i,
the official policy toward us Kanaka Maoli was assimilation. Our indigenous
language had already been banned in the schools in 1896. Under U.S. haole
colonial domination, we Kanaka Maoli were taught to be ashamed to live the
"primitive" ways of our ancestors. We were told that we were fortunate to be
Americans first and then, unfortunately, Hawaiians. In earlier years, we
learned to be afraid to be Kanaka, a term of derision usually associated
with adjectives such as "dumb," "lazy," "drunk," and "dirty." Only in
certain rural kipuka--isolated pockets of self-reliant Kanaka Maoli who were
able to remain on, and gain livelihood from, the land and the sea--were
remnants of the traditional culture and resistance to foreign domination
maintained.
The 1959 U.S. imposition of statehood brought an economic boom. Later the
U.S. military began to use Hawai`i as a mid- Pacific base for the Vietnam
War. When the rural kipuka were besieged in the 1960s and 1970s by
commercial, government and military developments, resistance to the
establishment, especially by organized Kanaka Maoli, became overt.
Indigenous people began to claim ownership of their land to protest tourist,
military, and government-driven encroachments on island residents. In the
1970s, mostly rural Kanaka Maoli affected by the land dislocations joined
with university activists to learn of and assert our special legal rights as
the indigenous people of Ka Pae`aina.
This new empowerment was strengthened by the incorporation of our
traditional Kanaka Maoli beliefs, language, and practices. These include
aloha`aina (love the land), malama`aina (care for the land), malama kai
(care for the sea), and spiritual ceremonies at gatherings.
Land occupations, evictions, jailings, court trials--mostly losses but
occasional wins--continued. Numerous taro-roots organizations sprouted. Two
causes in the 1970s gained special prominence. The ALOHA (Aboriginal Lands
of Hawai`ian Ancestry) reparations proposal went all the way to the U.S.
Congress in 1973. Then, in 1976, the occupation of the island of Kaho`olawe
eventually succeeded in halting the U.S. military's bombing of that
island.
>From 1978 to 1980, the state of Hawai`i reacted to contain the spreading
restlessness. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) was created as an agency
of the state to "better the conditions of Native Hawaiians...and to serve as
a receptacle for reparations" [from the U.S. government].
In 1984, the first Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Conference convened with two
of the five main speakers advocating independence from the U.S. Three years
later 250 Kanaka Maoli delegates, attending a convention in Hilo, drafted a
constitution for Ka Lahui, a separate nation within the U.S. following the
American Indian tribal nation model. A turning point came in August 1988. At
a reparations hearing conducted by U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on the
University of Hawai`i Manoa campus, a demonstration for "sovereignty, not
reparations" attracted the TV news cameras. Caught off-guard, Inouye
publicly acknowledged, for the first time, our Kanaka Maoli people's right
to sovereignty.
Alarmed, state of Hawai`i and U.S. officials began to co-opt the sovereignty
movement in order to maintain their control over the ultimate prize--the
almost two million acres of our stolen Kanaka Maoli lands and the over one
billion dollars in annual revenues from their natural resources. Since 1988,
the term "sovereignty" has been co-opted by U.S. and state officials,
including Senators Inouye and Daniel Akaka, Governor John Waihee, the OHA
trustees, and native legislators. Their definition of "sovereignty,"
however, is continued U.S. and state control of our stolen Kanaka Maoli
lands.
Three main models of "sovereignty" are now apparent, with multiple minor
variations:
(1) A "sovereign Hawaiian nation as a political subdivision of the state of
Hawai`i," with the Hawaiian Home Lands as the land base. This model is
promoted, but not yet openly, by the congressional delegation, the governor,
the legislature, the OHA, and the State Council on Hawaiian Homestead
Associations. All of these parties support the governor-appointed 19-member
Sovereignty Advisory Commission, recently created by the state legislature,
that will advise on a state plebiscite for a "convention to propose an
organic document for governance of a Hawaiian sovereign nation."
(2) A Hawaiian nation within the U.S. as proposed by Ka Lahui. This
arrangement would be guided by U.S. policy toward American Indians and
Alaskan Natives. It would require petitioning the U.S. Congress. If
approved, the U.S. Department of the Interior would oversee the new native
government, perhaps through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Presumably the
Hawaiian Home Lands and some negotiated "ceded" (stolen) Kanaka Maoli lands
would constitute the new nation's land base.
(3) A restored independent Kanaka Maoli nation, with, evenually, complete
withdrawal of the U.S., is favored by Ka Pakaukau, the Institute for the
Advancement of Hawaiian Affairs and, perhaps, the `Ohana Council of the
Hawaiian Kingdom. Ka Pakaukau proposes a series of negotiated treaties,
between the two nations as equals, with incremental progression toward
establishing total Kanaka Maoli control over our entire Ka Pae`aina, as
prior to 1893.
All three elements of the sovereignty movement are united by cultural pride,
the desire to relieve the painful plight of our people, and control of our
land. On the other hand, some aspects of all three of these issues also
divide us.
Too many modern Kanaka Maoli, like the tourists, have been seduced by the
Hawai`i Visitors Bureau to believe that our culture is the Hollywood hula,
hapa-haole songs, and lei-making. We have been so Westernized, Americanized,
Christianized and de-Kanaka Maoli-ized that most of us are not aware of our
ancestors' basic belief--that like all in the cosmos, we Kanaka Maoli
originate from the mating of Wakea, our sky father, with Papa, our earth
mother. Therefore, all in the cosmos are living, conscious, and
communicating siblings. Thus, our spiritual as well as physical and
biological attachment to our sacred `aina, the environment.
Many Kanaka Maoli are still not aware that we natives in our homeland have
the worst health, economic, educational, and social indices of all ethnic
peoples in our homeland. Many of our own people are not aware that
self-government and land and its resources are the two essentials for
nationhood, and that we Kanaka Maoli have continued to be denied both by the
U.S. since 1893-1898. Because of this deprivation, we, like other exploited
indigenous people, continue to decline. The projection is that by the year
2044 there will be no more piha Kanaka Maoli, that is, pure indigenous
Hawaiians.
Some of us, however, refuse to accept that prediction and are determined to
reverse the five main factors responsible for our grim status: (1)
depopulation, because of foreign illnesses and displacement from our lands,
and Kanaka Maoli minority status because of continuing foreign
transmigration; (2) foreign economic exploitation; (3) cultural conflict;
(4) our too eager adoption of harmful foreign ways, such as the use of
tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs and the U.S. high-saturated fat, high-
cholesterol, high-salt and low-fiber diet; and (5) neglect and malice by
the colonial establishment.
Our commitment to the survival of our endangered people is the basis for the
Kanaka Maoli movement.
Ka Ho`okolokolnui Kanaka Maoli, the People's International Tribunal Hawai`i,
which was held August 12-21 in the centennial year of 1993, marking the U.S.
invasion of 1893, exposed and documented the long-suppressed truth of the
U.S. theft of our nation in the context of international law, and, thus,
laid the historical, moral, and legal basis for the required remedies. The
Tribunal also brought our indigenous sisters and brothers from abroad to our
homeland as expert witnesses, official international observers and cultural
participants, thereby providing the basis for further solidarity against
the dominant superpower--the U.S.--during the 1993 UN International Year of
the World's Indigenous Peoples.
[Testimony from the Tribunal]
My name is Puanani Battad Rogers. I belong to a unique race, a unique race
among all other races of indigenous people of the earth, our mother. The
blood of my Hawaiian ancestors flows through my veins. I am 53 years old,
and I was born and grew up in a little town of Kapa`a, Kaua`i.
One of the points on Kaua`i is called the leina, the place from which the
souls of the dead took their departure into the setting sun. According to
tradition, the priests of this temple have uttered the prayers which sped
the departing souls upon their way. There is said to be a sacred spring in
this cliff behind the heiau. That area is a missile launch zone for the
Pacific Missile Range Facility or PMRF. And PMRF is only one of many
military installations using large parcels of our Hawaiian lands.
-- Nani Rogers
Cultural cannibalism is an insidious and hideous part of colonialism, as it
is part of the process of assimilation, what I would call a deliberate
attempt to eradicate those beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors, language,
religion and practices of a culture that are in contradiction or in conflict
with the dominant culture.
The worst example of cultural cannibalism is what is happening at Kilauea
volcano in the exploitation of it by the Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park,
which, of course, is a branch of the U.S. government. It begins from the
very moment one enters the park, with the payment of fees. We are all
required, all of us, whether or not we are Hawaiian, whether or not we are
American, whether or not we are human, we are all required to pay these
fees.
This is a tax to enter someone else's church, because the Kilauea volcano is
considered sacred to those who practice the Pele religion. So this cultural
exploitation of another person's religion by requiring you to pay a fee is
the grossest example I can think of of the eating, the consumption and
commodification of the sacred.
-- Lehua Lopez
We have taken the state and the U.S. government to court on the grounds of
desecration, of digging up geothermal resources in sacred areas and ignoring
the rights of religious practice and respect for the deity called Pele.
Geothermal development is drilling into what we thought was sacred
geography. Sacred geography is something that Christianity cannot
understand. They want "site specific" religion. Our religion starts from the
top of the mountain to the sea. We do not have religion as Christians do,
right around a church or a shrine. Ours is sacred geography. The resources
and the elements that surround these islands are our Gods.
--Palikapu Dedman
[Kekuni Blaisdell is the convenor of the Pro-Hawaiian Sovereignty Working
Group and the coordinator of JKa Pakaukau, a Hawaiian sovereignty
organization advocating a restored independent Kanaka Maoli (indigenous
Hawaiian) nation. He prepared this article for Breakthrough immediately
before the convening of JKa Ho`okolokolnui Kanaka Maoli --The People's
International Tribunal Hawai`i -- in August of 1993. The testimony of Nani
Rogers, Lehua Lopez and Palikapu Dedman were taken from the transcripts of
the Tribunal.]