Hawaiian Sovereignty
...ity ratification required under the Unites States Constitution, the United States managed to annex Hawaii in 1898 by a joint resolution of Congress under President McKinley. The Republic of Hawaii, or Provisional Government, then ceded “1,800,000 acres of crown, government, and public lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii, without the consent of or compensation to the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaii or their sovereign government” (United States Public Law 103-150). The annexation and statehood of Hawaii are both acts that are strongly contested by indigenous Hawaiians today. In 1893, the nation of Hawaii was subject to an illegal act by the United States which violated bilateral treaties between the two nations and international law, which should make annexation and statehood invalid. Hawaiian sovereignty develops through these argument of the prior existence of Hawaii, the loss of Hawaiian lands through forced annexation, and the unrecognized right of the Hawaiians as indigenous people with a right to self-determination. Since Native Hawaiians are not considered a minority, but by definition indigenous peoples, then under international law they have a right to self-determination. Martinez Cobo states that “indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those which having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or part of them.” Therefore, by this definition, Native Hawaiians are indigenous peoples. Self-determination is a right of peoples, and these peoples are the Native Hawaiians. The Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples strengthens the claims of Native peoples. The Draft allows indigenous peoples to determine their political status, regain their ceded lands, and have the right to self-government. According to Trask, “documents like the Draft Declaration are used to transform and clarify public discussion and agitation.” Therefore the Draft Declaration essentially broadens the “Apology Bill” (Public Law 103-150) as not only an acknowledgement of the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, but allows the Native Hawaiian people the right to restore Hawaii to the nation that it was before 1893. This type of justice is expressed in Ka Lahui Hawaii. Ka Lahui Hawaii is the product of Hawaiians who have sought to regain their Native lands and to re-establish themselves as a self-governing people. Ka Lahui Hawaii Master Plan is based on principles and an agenda for political action. According to Trask, “this justice would mean a “federally-recognized” Native Hawaiian land base and government that would establish a nation-to-nation relationship with the American government as is the case today with nearly 500 American Indian nations…At the least, Native power means no more free access by non-Natives to Native resources.” The U.S. government treats indigenous Hawaiians today as merely “wards” of the State of Hawaii. The State of Hawaii maintained a policy which fails to recognize the rights of the indigenous people and created an extensive record of neglect and mismanagement of the native trusts. Because of this Ka Lahui Hawaii seeks to transfer lands to the sovereign entity so that Native Hawaiians can build homes and build a nation. Another essential part of Ka Lahui Hawaii is its call for a record of civil and human rights abuses of Hawaiians by the state and federal governments. Self-determination follows the resolution of these claims. Hawaii is a settler society dominated by whites and Asians, and a place where Japanese settlers dominate state institutions and apparatuses. Therefore, Japanese have political power to control the direction and process of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and creating a new issue, “race.” Trask states, “The Japanese know that they have, as a group, benefited from the dispossession of Hawaiians…substantive Hawaiian sovereignty requires that Japanese power b...