Native Hawaiians and their supporters have been frustrated with the pace of progress toward self-governance, expressed that frustration in increasingly adamant ways for more than a year. Just when an election run by Na‘i Aupuni, the nonprofit ostensibly independent of
Native Hawaiians and their supporters have been frustrated with the pace of progress toward self-governance, expressed that frustration in increasingly adamant ways for more than a year.
Just when an election run by Na‘i Aupuni, the nonprofit ostensibly independent of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, was in the final stages of balloting to determine who would participate in a quasi-constitutional convention, a fresh obstacle was thrown in the way. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy enjoined counting of the ballots (the full court subsequently concurred) in response to litigation filed by challengers who said the election was unlawful race-based voting.
Na‘i Aupuni complied with the injunction, but then announced that every candidate who had been running for the 40 seats originally envisioned in the convention would serve, anyway —196 people representing an unbridgeable disparity of views. It means that, instead of the election acting as a filter of sorts, the gathering now envisioned will doubtless become an exercise in frustration as the process bogs down in the politics of Hawaiian sovereignty.
Many Kanaka Maoli see Kennedy’s ruling as another example of sabotage to a process that could lead to self-determination perpetrated by a political system that has repressed Native Hawaiians for 115 years. But, although the injunction was one brief paragraph that did not elaborate on Kennedy’s reasoning, it seems clear that he saw the issue presented as much more fundamental than that.
Kennedy’s ruling, in effect, posed this question: Can a public agency (in this case OHA), which would not be permitted to have an election with racial eligibility, outsource the election to an ostensibly private nonprofit formed for the express purpose of conducting the election and argue that the nonprofit is “independent” of OHA? If that is the question, the answer is clearly no. Na‘i Aupuni was too obviously a surrogate for OHA.
But the controversy over the election has, again, glossed over an issue that proponents of sovereignty or restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom conveniently ignore. There is an enormous amount of rhetoric out there about the legal theories that may underlie the contention that the kingdom did not cease to exist after the U.S. takeover in 1893; the recitation of the international recognition of the Hawaiian nation, and even the entirely unrealistic expectation that the International Court of Justice in The Hague will order the U.S. to restore Hawaii’s independence.
All of it ignores a more fundamental political reality: the U.S. government simply is not going to release Hawaii from the union and wish it well as a re-formed independent country. This cannot happen for a few pragmatic political reasons:
w Although the Hawaiian sovereignty movement is hopelessly splintered, a consensus of sorts exists that a reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom would be ruled by Native Hawaiians, with citizenship and even the right to vote or own property denied to non-Hawaiians. Releasing Hawaii from its obligations as a state would require such an extreme level of political acceptance of this principle as to be almost unimaginable.
w A lot has happened in Hawaii since 1893, not least of which is the undeniable fact that people of ancestry other than Native Hawaiian now constitute an overwhelming majority of the population of Hawaii. U.S. Census data reports about 80,000 full Native Hawaiians in the state. Even if Native Hawaiians who live elsewhere are counted in the equation, the fact remains that they can claim to be only a small fraction of Hawaii’s population of 1.2 million. It is difficult to imagine that the U.S. Congress, the United Nations or the International Court of Justice would countenance independence without the concurrence of a majority of the present day residents of Hawaii. It is difficult to imagine that population would go along with independence as many Native Hawaiian groups envision it.
The situation in Hawaii cries out for creative answers to issues of poverty, disenfranchisement and discrimination that afflict Native Hawaiians, but restoration of full independence is a political impossibility.
But something must finally be done to address the hardships and perceived injustices Native Hawaiians face. Although the U.S. Department of Interior has proposed what would be, essentially, a system of recognition for Hawaiians analogous to governance among Native American tribes, many Native Hawaiian people find this to be no solution at all and designed to ensure what they perceive as the continued illegal occupation of Hawaii.
Yet there must be ground for compromise here somewhere. That compromise might entail creation of an entirely new political vocabulary that addresses the needs of indigenous people and respects their history. It would require a concept of governance that does not yet exist in the American system and tradition.
Such a governance model would have to find a way to ensure that there is far more local control of Hawaii’s destiny than is now the case. It would have to find ways to avoid further antagonism and marginalization of Native Hawaiians. It would have to find ways to, legally, provide for Native Hawaiian electoral self-determination within a framework in which Hawaii remains part of the U.S.
To say that inventing this new concept will be a herculean task is to understate, but finding this conceptual middle ground is the only way Hawaii will be able to get past the bitterness that now pervades the sovereignty and independence movements. As unlikely it may be that the unwieldy process that Na‘i Aupuni established for the impending constitutional convention will be successful, riding on this process may well be responsibility to invent a variant on the American system that can unify Hawaii in ways that are now impossible.
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Allan Parachini writes a monthly column for The Garden Island. He is a former journalist and PR executive who lives and makes furniture in Kilauea.
