Dear Mr. Lewis: After reading your letter (TGI, Jan. 5), I am encouraged that you have taken an interest in the grievances of Native Hawaiian people. However, I would like to set the record straight on a number of your
Dear Mr. Lewis:
After reading your letter (TGI, Jan. 5), I am encouraged
that you have taken an interest in the grievances of Native Hawaiian people.
However, I would like to set the record straight on a number of your assertions
and offer a different perspective on what kinds of considerations are necessary
in seeking a solution to these grievances.
In truth, the heart of the
Hawaiian Sovereignty issue is comprised of two major issues: 1) Rightful
ownership of these islands and all its resources, and 2) preservation of the
Hawaiian people as a people.
It is not accurate that the Hawaiian monarchy
never gave Hawaiians land. In fact, our civilization could not have functioned
without ali’i yielding land to the common people. For Hawaiians, like Native
American Indians, land ownership was an unfathomable concept prior to contact
with the western world. You could no sooner own land as own the air we
breathe.
The relationship between the ali’i and the maka’ainana (common
people) was a reciprocal one — the ali’i were responsible to lead the people,
provide for their welfare and maintain law and order, and the maka’ainana were
responsible to care for the land and feed the ali’i. Each was accountable to
the other. Each person, ali’i or maka’ainana, had his or her own kuleana — or
right and responsibility — and the society flourished.
In your letter, you
state that the “typical Native Hawaiian lived in poverty performing menial
agricultural labor, and had a limited voice in governmental affairs because the
monarchy was not an elective office.”
The Hawaiian agrarian society has
been dubbed the most highly developed in its time. The average Hawaiian worked
the land for an estimated four hours per day in an environment filled with
everything he loved. All were fed, clothed and sheltered. None lacked the basic
human needs and there was ample time for sports and leisure.
While it is
true that Hawaiians did not “elect” their leaders in these times, they did
elect to live in that region or not. They were free to move from area to area.
In fact, the maka’ainana had the largest voice in government affairs because
the ali’i’s very existence was dependent upon the health, welfare and
contentment of the maka’ainana.
You note that in 1920 the United States
gave Native Hawaiians 200,000 acres, or roughly 5 percent of all lands. The
Great Mahele of 1848 provided one third of all lands to the common people
outright, and allowed them access on all the lands.
Furthermore, it was
not the changing times that undermined the Hawaiian Home Commission Act. From
the beginning it has been undermined by inadequate funding, long-term leases to
big business and mismanagement.
Your negative characterization of the
“plight” of Native Hawaiian people under the monarchy is based solely on value
judgments. The question is whose values — yours or the Hawaiians’?
The
period of Hawaiian history you focus on most is the missionary-to-overthrow era
— scarcely 70 years. During that period, the United States and other western
countries were making government sanctioned and funded efforts to “colonize”
the rest of the globe, which included providing funds to churches for their
missions.
The first missionaries to land in Hawai’i were American, and it
was America who felt it was their manifest destiny to control Hawai’i’s lands,
particularly in light of its prime location for military and trade purposes.
Hawaiians were considered about as much as American Indians were at time, where
the sentiment was “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
The United
States Congress and the President agreed in 1993 that the overthrow of Hawai’i
in 1893 was an illegal act participated in by the United States. So all lands
and jurisdiction acquired by the United States in Hawai’i as a result of the
overthrow were acquired illegally.
Still at issue, then, is the legitimacy
of the United States’ claims to owning any land or jurisdiction in Hawai’i.
Even American law states that property illegally gained belongs to the rightful
owner. I could no sooner steal your car and expect it to be legitimately
mine.
It is true that the last constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai’i,
signed in 1887, did not provide women the right to vote. What constitution in
the whole world did allow that right, at that time? Certainly not the United
States, where it was passed in 1920.
Furthermore, that “last constitution,”
known as the “Bayonet Constitution,” was signed by King Kalakaua while held at
gunpoint by mercenaries hired by American businessmen; a constitution that not
only disenfranchised Hawaiians—both men and women—but stripped the King of
much of his governmental powers.
The overthrow occurred one day after Queen
Lili’uokalani announced that she would be signing a new constitution. At this
time the actions and desires of American businessmen became sanctioned and
enforced by the United States government.
While formal educational
opportunities may have been “meager for Hawaiian people under the Kingdom,” at
the time of the overthrow Hawaiian people were considered the most literate
people in the world—in both English and Hawaiian.
The second issue central
to Hawaiian Sovereignty is the very existence of the Hawaiian people, culture
and language. This is the thing that is most difficult for Americans to
understand.
The United States is populated with two kinds of
people-indigenous and immigrant. Each person in the United States has one or
more homelands, the place(s) where their race, culture and original language
comes from.
For indigenous people, that place happens to be the soil that
the United States sits upon. If you are German-American, there is a place where
the German language and culture continues to thrive—Germany. If you are
Japanese-American, the same is true in Japan.
But for the Hawaiian people,
there is no other place where our culture and language lives and thrives. The
presence of the United States put our language, culture and very existence on
the endangered species list. Just like the Indians before us.
Many of the
distinct peoples, cultures and languages that used to exist on the North
American continent are now extinct-gone from this earth forever.
It is not
about how best to assimilate indigenous peoples into the American fabric. It is
a matter of how to insure that they are able to exist as distinct threads in
the fabric of humanity.
To that end, it will take more than American
programs to alleviate the symptoms of our loss. It will take a bold step in
returning to Hawaiian people a place and the authority to insure that our
culture, our ways and our very lives continue to exist. That is what
sovereignty is about.
To indigenous peoples, America is an immigrant’s
experiment; one that we have made room for and allowed to exist. America is
founded on the principal that ethnicity (not to be confused with race) is not
important. The fact is, however, that ethnicity binds people and holds them
together, creating distinct threads in the human fabric.
All we are asking
for, when you get righdown to it, is that while this experiment continues, it
not do so at the expense of any more Indigenous peoples.
Jade Leialoha
Danner
Anahola
