Posted on: Sunday, August 9, 2009

Pride in Hawaiian culture reawakened

Seeds of sovereignty movement sown during 1960s-70s renaissance

By Michael Tsai

For five electric days in 1993, tens of thousands of Native Hawaiians and others sympathetic to Native Hawaiian causes marked the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy with a series of marches, demonstrations and historical re-enactments culminating in a dramatic march from Aloha Tower to ‘Iolani Palace, a journey meant to symbolize the rebirth of Hawaiian culture.

The commemoration, organized by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in cooperation with an array of Native Hawaiian organizations from around the state, was one of the largest gatherings of Native Hawaiians in modern times, stunning not just for its implications heading forward, but for what it represented given the experience of Native Hawaiians since statehood in 1959.

Participants in the events rallied under the motto “Onipa’a,” the Hawaiian word for “steadfast” famously invoked by Queen Lili’uokalani a hundred years earlier as she abdicated her throne to U.S. forces working in concert with American businessmen.

“Hold yourselves up high and be proud,” the queen told her subjects. “For each and every one of you has much to be proud of in yourselves and in your people. Hold fast to that pride and love you have for your heritage and your country. Yes, your country. For you nation, onipa’a. Hold fast.”

By the time of the statehood plebiscite in 1959, pride in country had withered to what John Whitehead, retired University of Alaska history professor and author of “Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii and the Battles for Statehood,” characterized as “nostalgia for what had been lost with no real belief that it could be restored.”

Perhaps worse, pride in Hawaiian identity had been undermined by social, political and educational systems calibrated to de-emphasize, even suppress, ethnic identity in favor of full Americanization.

Scared of questions

Lilikala Kama’eleihiwa, former director of the University of Hawai’i’s Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, was still a child when Hawai’i joined the union. She said the first decade of statehood did nothing to undo the years of disempowerment and shame many Native Hawaiians felt.

“I graduated from Kamehameha High School in 1970, and we never even heard of the 1893 overthrow,” she said. “In school, we learned that one minute we were a kingdom with ali’i and the next minute we were Americans. It was only after I graduated that I read (“Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen”). Then I asked my mother what had happened in 1893, and in 1959.

“She told me not to ask such questions because the Americans would put me in jail,” she said. “She was terrified of my political awakening. And I can only imagine that Hawaiians her age were equally scared about their children’s questions.”

Kama’eleihiwa’s mother recounted the infamous Massie case, in which Grace Fortescue, son-in-law Thomas Massie and two accomplices spent an hour with Gov. Lawrence Judd as punishment for kidnapping and murdering a Hawaiian man accused of raping Massie’s wife Thalia. (A report by the Pinkerton Detective Agency later concluded that Thalia Massie had not been raped; charges against other defendants in the rape case were eventually dropped.)

But while Kama’eleihiwa understood her mother’s fears, they did not deter her investigations of Hawaiian history. Indeed, for a generation of Hawaiians coming of age in the tumultuous 1960s and ’70s, a cultural and political awakening was just brewing.

Renaissance ignited

The first Hawaiian Renaissance occurred during the reign of King David Kalakaua, who spearheaded a revival of hula, fresh examination of Hawaiian myth and legend, and a renewed interest in Hawaiian music.

The Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1960s and ’70s, which was ignited, appropriately, with the establishment of the Merrie Monarch Festival, was far broader in scope, encompassing not just renewed interest and study of Hawaiian music, language (both Hawaiian and Hawaiian creole/pidgin), hula, agriculture and navigation, but also political activism on the part of young Native Hawaiians. For Kihei Soli Niheu, whose efforts on behalf of Kalama Valley farmers helped lead to a series of highly influential land battles in the 1970s and 1980s, the climate of political discontent percolating on college campuses across the United States in the 1960s provided a viable medium for personal political growth.

Niheu attended San Jose State College, where he befriended the school’s Black Student Union and was exposed to the revolutionary ideas of sociology professor Harry Edwards, who is best known for inspiring Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ famous Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympic Games.

In those formative years, Niheu read Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung and Karl Marx, followed the Angela Davis trial and participated in protests against American involvement in Vietnam.

Like other Native Hawaiians of his generation, Niheu said he knew little about his own history.

“I didn’t learn much about Hawaiian history at Kamehameha,” he said. “After eighth grade, they cut out Hawaiian language. They wouldn’t teach us Hawaiian because they said we had to become American. I remember thinking, ‘What? Who the hell are they?’ ”

Yet, as Niheu witnessed firsthand the struggles that African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, women and other groups undertook to assert their civil rights on the Mainland, Niheu said he couldn’t help but reflect on the state of Native Hawaiians like himself.

In 1970, Niheu returned to Hawai’i and quickly got involved in antiwar protests on the University of Hawai’i-Manoa campus.

activists organize

Soon after, UH ethnic studies professor Larry Kamakawiwo’ole tapped Niheu for a talk-story session with fellow activists Pete Thompson, Kalani Ohelo and Kehau Lee.

The talk revolved around the worsening situation in Kalama Valley, where some 150 families – most of them Native Hawaiian, many of them previously displaced by development projects – were being evicted to make way for further Hawai’i Kai development.

The group resolved to do what it could to support the displaced families, a decision that would prove a milestone moment in the evolution of modern Native Hawaiian activism.

Despite a yearlong “occupation,” the arrest of dozens of activists and subsequent protracted legal battle, the movement could not ultimately prevent the displacement of the farmers and the development of the land.

It did, however, provide the impetus for the formation of several Native Hawaiian-led community groups that would wage similar battles across the state. It also inspired an emerging generation of Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian activists to resist the rapid development of traditionally rural and agricultural lands brought about by the state’s increased economic reliance on tourism and the island’s fast-growing population, and to begin to build a case for independence from the United States.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Source:  http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090809/NEWS23/908090366/Pride+in+Hawaiian+culture+reawakened

Posted on: Monday, August 10, 2009

Some Hawaiian activists reject statehood, saying it’s a ‘crime’

Activists point to illegal acts, starting with the overthrow

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

In 1959, what opposition there was to Hawai’i statehood was based on a variety of factors, from fears that communists had infiltrated the territory’s labor unions to concerns that statehood would further disenfranchise its Native Hawaiian population.

Fifty years later, Hawaiian activists are calling for an end to the statehood era, not as a goal unto itself but as a necessary step in remediating a series of illegal acts through which, they say, the United States robbed Hawai’i of its rightful status as a sovereign nation.

Contemporary opposition to statehood, and by extension the larger Hawaiian sovereignty movement, is largely the result of a re-examination of Hawaiian history sparked by the so-called second Hawaiian renaissance.

As Native Hawaiian political activism flourished throughout the 1970s and ’80s – notably with the hard-fought success of the Protect Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana – a new generation of Native Hawaiian scholars turned a critical eye to the circumstances that surrounded the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, the U.S. annexation of Hawai’i in 1898, and Hawai’i’s entry to the union in 1959, and began to formulate legal bases for Hawaiian independence.

The cause of Hawaiian self-determination has been taken up by myriad organizations large and small, from the state-affiliated but largely autonomous Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to grassroots organizations like Ka Lahui Hawai’i and Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Komike, to the estimated 20 or more individuals and groups that have claimed status as independent Hawaiian kingdoms, republics or other governmental forms.

U.S. Apology

While the specific terms of independence each group advocates may vary widely, the justifications are typically predicated on the grounds that the overthrow, annexation and statehood were all achieved via illegal means.

The Apology Resolution of 1993 – introduced by U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, passed by both houses of Congress, and signed by then President Clinton – acknowledged “that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and … that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum.”

Though the resolution did not directly provide for or require any redress for Native Hawaiians, the fact of its very existence has served to bolster Hawaiian sovereignty claims.

“Because of onipa’a (the massive demonstration of Native Hawaiian sovereignty advocates in observance of the 100th anniversary of the overthrow) in 1993, because of that pressure, Sen. Akaka felt compelled to investigate and that’s why they drafted the apology,” said physician and noted Hawaiian activist Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell. “They apologized for their role in the overthrow. They admitted it was a violation of treaties and international law and that they have violated the sovereignty of Native Hawaiian people and their right to self-determination.

“Now they have to apologize for annexation and statehood,” he said. “These are major crimes.”

No formal treaty

Native Hawaiian scholars argue that annexation was illegal both in relation to the overthrow and in the way in which it was approved by Congress by resolution (requiring a simple majority vote) versus formal treaty, which would have required a two-thirds majority vote.

As Lilikala Kama’eleihiwa, former director of the University of Hawai’i’s Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, argues: “Because of the queen’s restraint (in ordering no military resistance to the overthrow) and because there was no Hawaiian conflict with the American military, the taking of Hawai’i as an American territory in 1900, without a vote of the citizens of Hawai’i, and against the anti-annexation petitions signed by 95 percent of the Native Hawaiian population, continues to be illegal today.”

The argument against statehood seemed less clear until the 1990s, when Hawaiian scholars learned of Hawai’i’s theretofore little-known inclusion on the United Nations’ 1946 list of “non-self-governing territories.”

In 1953, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 742, which held that inhabitants of non-self-governing territories were entitled to various options for self-government, including statehood, free association, commonwealth status or independence, with preference given to independence.

In 1960, a year after statehood was accepted by Hawai’i voters, the U.N. General Assembly reviewed the list and adopted a declaration stating that all non-self-governing territories were entitled to independence and self-determination.

Hawaiian sovereignty advocates argue that the “yes or no” options on the statehood ballot unfairly limited voters’ options to immediately accept statehood or remain a territory (the default assumption for a “no” vote), thereby denying them the opportunity to pursue options for self-governance.

Blaisdell said he and other kupuna are working to bring the issue to the attention of U.N. member nations in hopes of having the matter brought before the U.N. General Assembly.

“Our Hawaiian nation does not have a seat in the U.N., so we have to go through a member nation that is willing to help us. To do that, we have to properly inform them.”

Blaisdell and a coalition of Hawaiian leaders and community activists have also written to President Obama asking for a meeting to address Native Hawaiian grievances and requesting his help in suspending action on the controversial Akaka bill.

‘legally dubious’

Richard Falk, an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University and U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the 1959 plebiscite was “legally dubious because it did not allow Hawaiians to exercise their full sovereign and inalienable right of self determination.”

“Of course, the long passage of time and the absence of effective opposition in 1959 could be argued to amount to a waiver,” Falk said. “However, if Hawai’i was once a sovereign entity, and if the right of self-determination remains operative, then the people of Hawai’i remain entitled to some sort of assessment of their preferences as to status.”

Falk added that while the limited options on the ballot do not necessarily invalidate the plebiscite, “it is easier to suggest that changing circumstances and the improper limitation of options in 1959 mean that the plebiscite was defective and needs to be superseded by a new more authoritative expression of the will of the Hawaiian people.”

Yet, sovereignty advocates remain steadfast in their efforts to attain self-determination.

For scholar-activists like Kama’eleihiwa, the urgency of the mission is evident in the appalling demographic profile of Native Hawaiians: low life expectancy and high infant mortality; increasing homelessness; disproportionately high numbers of Native Hawaiians in prison; disproportionately low numbers of Hawaiians in higher education, whether as students, faculty or administrators.

“Of course, the most galling issue is lack of access to our ancestral lands,” Kama’eleihiwa said. “We are a sea-going people, but lucky if 1 percent of us can afford land on the ocean anymore. We want land upon which to live and raise our children, upon which to build our houses and schools, where we can speak our ancestral language, and upon which we can plant our kalo and ‘uala, and practice our culture. We are the only natives in the Pacific that do not control a land base.”

And for those problems to begin to be resolved, Kama’eleihiwa, Blaisdell, Niheu and a growing number of others argue, the era of statehood must give way to something new.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090810/STATEHOOD/908100347/Some+Hawaiian+activists+reject+statehood++saying+it%E2%80%99s+a++crime+

August 9, 2009

Hawaii’s move into statehood traumatic for many Hawaiians

Illegal overthrow still stung for many Native Hawaiians

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Manny Fernandez was in Fort Bliss, Texas, when he and his fellow National Guard officers from back home heard the news that Hawai’i had officially joined the United States.

“We were all in one room,” Fernandez recalled. “When the announcement came, it was very solemn. There was no rejoicing. We just all stood together, joined hands and sang ‘Hawai’i Pono’i.’ A lot of us had tears in our eyes.”

Fernandez would serve in the Guard for 25 years. He took pride in his position as a chief warrant officer. But as a Native Hawaiian, Fernandez said the realization of Hawai’i’s long march to statehood was nothing to celebrate.

“Even though I was an officer in the military, the fact remained that I still had loyalty to my heritage,” he said. “It just felt like we had lost another thing.”

The historical record shows that an overwhelming majority of those who voted in the 1959 statehood plebiscite – 94 percent (or roughly 35 percent of all eligible voters) – favored Hawai’i’s inclusion in the union. The only precinct to reject the invitation was Ni’ihau, the restricted island whose population is almost entirely Native Hawaiian.

To be sure, there was ample justification for the seeming consensus. As a territory, Hawai’i lacked official representation in Congress, its governor and judges were appointed by the president, voting rights were restricted, and its social, political and economic fortunes were governed by a de facto oligarchy of concentrated business interests. Statehood, it was exhaustively argued, would allow the population at large to partake in the liberties and opportunities guaranteed to full citizens of the United States.

Even those among the entrenched power structure of the territory came to support the statehood movement as their vulnerabilities were gradually exposed through the federal government’s heavy-handed reactions to threats real or perceived.

Sugar planters who initially opposed the move from territory to state largely fell in line after the passage of the Jones-Costigan Act of 1934, which set limits on the amount of sugar that could be exported tariff-free from “off-shore” producers, as Hawai’i was then deemed. While the guidelines were later changed to minimize the impact on Hawai’i growers, local plantation owners were left to ponder how easily such seemingly arbitrary decisions could affect their future.

On a broader scale, the threat of martial law during the notorious Massie/Kahahawai case of 1931 and the actual imposition of military rule during World War II affirmed to many Hawai’i residents the difference between ownership by the United States and membership in the union.

The stage was amply set by the dogged efforts of such territorial delegates as Samuel Wilder King, Joseph and Elizabeth Farrington and John A. Burns, who established the case for Hawai’i statehood with key allies in Washington.

Further, the distinguished service of Hawai’i nisei in World War II continued to be an effective umbrella retort to those who argued – often spuriously – that Hawai’i’s multi-ethnic population and supposed vulnerability to communist influences (via its labor unions) posed a threat to national interests.

By the time the statehood plebiscite was put before Hawai’i voters, the outcome seemed virtually assured.

Still, as many historians now concede, support for statehood within the local community was hardly unanimous.

against statehood

Retired University of Alaska history professor John Whitehead noted in his book, “Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii and the Battles for Statehood,” that the main opposition to statehood was posed by Native Hawaiians still stinging from the illegal overthrow of their monarchy and the subsequent annexation of Hawai’i by the United States, and by the territory’s white elite, who feared that statehood might compromise their standing.

“The gossip in the 1950s was that statehood was opposed by Native Hawaiians and old-line haoles,” Whitehead said in a phone interview from his home in Georgia. “In Statehood Commission minutes, there are mentions of gossip that taxi drivers were telling tourists that statehood was no good for Hawai’i. That was the chit chat.”

Yet there is no evidence of any organized attempt by Native Hawaiians to turn the tide of public opinion regarding statehood. As Fernandez and others note, whatever dissent may have existed was typically expressed within the safety of private conversation among like-minded individuals.

Such caution, Native Hawaiian scholars argue, was bred in part from years of political and cultural oppression.

“By 1959, there were very few Hawaiians, if any, who knew that we had any rights,” said Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa, professor of Hawaiian studies and former director of the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. “Beaten for speaking our language since 1896, defined as a Stone Age culture, and denigrated in a most racist manner for even having Hawaiian names, Hawaiians had been raised for three generations to believe that it was bad to be Hawaiian. Moreover, we were raised in ignorance of our human rights by the American school system.”

Kame’eleihiwa said her mother, like other Native Hawaiians, did not vote in the plebiscite, partially out of fear but also as a form of resistance.

“When it came to the statehood vote, as a Hawaiian she was scared to say no, and most of her friends were, too,” she said. “So she, like them, didn’t vote. It was her small way of protesting. Some Hawaiians argued that we would be safer under statehood because martial law could no longer be declared. The funny thing is that my mother never felt any safer under statehood, and she was really afraid that my speaking out would get me put in jail.”

campbell testimony

Then there was Alice Kamokila Campbell, daughter of sugar mogul James Campbell and the former Abigail Kuaihelani Mai-pinepine.

Campbell, a territorial senator widely regarded as the richest woman in Hawai’i, was a figure of intense local interest and her appearance before a Congressional hearing on statehood in 1949 provided one of the only public testimonies against statehood by someone of Native Hawaiian ancestry.

The hearing was orchestrated by Joseph Farrington as an opportunity to make a positive impression on undecided lawmakers back in Washington. Campbell’s heartfelt, if at times confusing, testimony did nothing to help the cause. The Honolulu Record printed much of Campbell’s testimony in a series of excerpts starting in January 1950.

“I naturally am jealous of (Hawaiian land) being in the hands of any alien influence,” Campbell said in her introductory comments. “It took us quite a while to get used to being Americans – from a Hawaiian to an American – but I am very proud today of being an American. I don’t want to be ashamed of being an American. But I think that in the last 10 years, I have lost a sense of balance here in Hawai’i as to the future safety of my land.”

Campbell would go on to accuse local Japanese citizens of providing intelligence to Japan in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and criticize the “stranglehold” that Chinese and Japanese businesses had on the local economy, a condition she said made it plausible for Chinese and Japanese citizens of the territory to conspire with Russia for control of Hawai’i.

“I don’t want to have a Japanese judge tell me how to act in my own country, no more than you Americans over on the other side would want an Indian to overrule you, or a Negro, which are among your American people,” she testified.

Whitehead said Farrington was “humiliated” by Campbell’s testimony even though the general public “didn’t take her seriously.”

Campbell, whose larger legacy involves her efforts to promote Hawaiian music and culture, would express shifting takes on the statehood issue over the years. However, her primary interest in protecting her native people remained constant, according to her granddaughter Mary Philpotts McGrath.

“She was opposed to statehood but her primary reason was that she felt it would further disenfranchise Hawaiian people,” McGrath said.

Campbell’s claim that disloyalty among certain ethnic groups in Hawai’i would jeopardize the rest of the nation should Hawai’i gain statehood was an established tactic used by “old-line haoles” who were ever cognizant of the chilling effect such suggestions would have on Mainland lawmakers.

on communism

Walter Dillingham, by general acknowledgement the most powerful businessman in the territory, was one of the first to posit Hawai’i’s vulnerability to communism as a reason to put aside talk of statehood.

Ingram Stainback, the presidentially appointed governor of the territory from 1942 to 1951, was perhaps the most prominent anticommunist crusader in Hawai’i during his time and enjoyed the support of the leaders of the Big Five companies, who sought to discredit the territory’s increasingly powerful organized labor movement.

Honolulu Advertiser publisher Lorrin Potter Thurston also was initially opposed to statehood, and he used the front page of the newspaper to reinforce fears that Hawai’i’s labor unions represented an internal communist threat to the nation with his infamous “Dear Joe” letters, fake correspondence from supposed union officials to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Ultimately, the various positions taken by those opposed to statehood proved no match for the mass of public opinion, which held that statehood would correct social, economic and political imbalances and allow Hawai’i residents to assert their beliefs in Congress.

Yet, while the communist trope was quickly discarded after statehood was achieved, Campbell’s concern that statehood would continue the disenfranchisement of her Native Hawaiian people would prove somewhat prescient.

“The Native Hawaiian view was that while they may not have been for statehood, it was better than territorial status because haoles controlled the appointment process for the governor and judges,” Whitehead said. “With democratic elections, Hawaiians could gain more power back. They felt they could achieve more through statehood than through continuing as a territory. I think it was a decade after that that they started to feel disillusionment (with statehood).”

That disillusionment would eventually lead to a dramatic re-examination of Native Hawaiian history and culture – the second Hawaiian Renaissance – which in turn would pave the way for Hawaiian sovereignty movements that today seek to redefine Hawaiian’s relationship to the United States.

Additional Facts

Tomorrow: Hawaiian sovereignty and the modern case against statehood.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090809/STATEHOOD/908090365/Hawaii+s+move+into+statehood+traumatic+for+many+Hawaiians