The Sovereign Nation of Hawai'i: Come Again?
By Bill Weinberg

Congress apologizes to the Native Hawai ians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai i on January 17, 1893 ... and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawai ians to self-determination." So reads Public Law 103-150, the Hawai i Apology Act of 1993. That was the centennial year of the overthrow of the independent Kingdom of Hawai i. When arch-conservative Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) lambasted the bill on the Senate floor, he invoked the carnage in former Yugoslavia and decried "radicals who wish independence."

The Sovereignty Movement A movement for sovereignty is, in fact, fast gaining ground among the 220,000 Native Hawai ians, with two groups the Nation of Hawai i and Ka LaHui Hawai i (Gathering of the Hawai ian People) the most prominent. Only the most uncompromising call for actual secession from the United States, and even they adhere to principles of nonviolence. The real issue is control of the vast Ceded Lands taken after the U.S.-backed coup d etat of 1893 and now under the control of commercial interests, real estate developers and the U.S. military.

Pu uhonua Bumpy Kanahele is one of those advocating actual separatism. Not surprisingly, he is in big legal trouble with the federal government, facing multiple felony charges of harboring a Native Hawai ian tax resister. "Kamehameha I was my sixth grandfather," says Bumpy of the legendary warrior-chief who founded the Hawai ian Kingdom in 1810.

In 1993, Bumpy was appointed to the Governor s Sovereignty Advisory Commission created for the 100th anniversary. Now he is on the short leash of the federal justice system, with an electronic monitor on his left ankle. "It ll come off when the Big Man Upstairs decides it s time," says the burly, tattooed former reggae producer, who does not recognize U.S. jurisdiction and calls his arrests "illegal kidnappings." But the charges could land him in prison for nine years. The tax resister, Nathan Brown, remains a fugitive. "He never lived at my house," says Bumpy. "I m a political prisoner."

Supporters of Bumpy s sovereignty organization, the Nation of Hawai i (formerly te Ohana Council), have been arrested for driving cars with license plates reading only "HAWAI IAN SOVEREIGN." Bumpy was arrested on the harboring charges in 1995. Federal Judge Helen Gillmore denied bail after the prosecution portrayed Bumpy as "a danger to the community." Kanahele protested that his movement is nonviolent, but the prosecution claimed that "warrants" printed by the Nation of Hawai i charging local judges with crimes against the people under the U.N. Genocide Convention were threatening. Gillmore forbade the defense from making political statements in court or disputing the facts of Kanahele s 1987 "terroristic threatening" conviction in connection with an Ohana Council land occupation where Bumpy reportedly wielded a shotgun. Bumpy says that since then he has realized that change must come through nonviolence.

The trial ended in a mistrial; a retrial which Bumpy has challenged is scheduled. For the moment, Bumpy is free save for the electronic monitor and restrictions of his movements.

The Ohana Council became the Nation of Hawai i and declared independence from the United States on January 16, 1994. Kupunas, or traditional Native elders, are the Nation s provisional government. At a March 1994 meeting on Maui of 300 kupunas from throughout the islands, Bumpy says he was unanimously selected as provisional head of state.

Kanahele claims the 1959 plebiscite that made Hawai i a state was invalid because independence was not an option on the ballot. This November, the state will hold a Native Hawai ian vote to determine if a state constitutional convention will be convened to address the issue of sovereignty, and the Nation of Hawai i is urging a "yes" vote.

"If we vote yes, then the education becomes more intense," explains Bumpy. "We move the debate to the independence view."

Within the sovereignty movement there is a creative tension between its two most visible figures, Bumpy Kanahele and attorney Mililani Trask, Ki aina (prime minister) of Ka LaHui Hawai i (Gathering of the Hawai ian People). While Bumpy s Nation of Hawai i seeks actual secession from the United States, Ka LaHui seeks Native sovereignty within the United States. Ka LaHui held a Constitutional Convention in Hilo, on the "Big Island" the island of Hawai i in 1987 and now claims 25,000 officially registered citizens.

Says Prime Minister Trask, "There s a great proliferation of sovereignty groups, ranging from those who want to pick up the gun and secede from America to those of us the majority, I believe who want Native self-determination as defined by the United Nations." The United Nations defines self-determination as either independence as a sovereign state, integration with a sovereign state or free association with a sovereign state (like Micronesia and the former U.S. Trust Territories.

Ka LaHui parts with the Nation of Hawai i on the issue of separatism. "Independence does not really say anything," Mililani argues. "There s a lot of independent nations. But the independent nations of the South are shackled by their foreign debt to the North, so they are really dependent nations. If you secede from the union it doesn t answer the question. You still have people who need to eat. We have the highest prenatal and post-natal death rate in the United States. Native Hawai ian women have the highest rate of breast cancer in the world. DDT by the ton was brought here. They don t just dump banned pesticides and chemicals in Ecuador and Nicaragua. They ve been dumping it here for years. Lowering the U.S. flag is not going to change this."

"We ve got business with America," she sums up. "America is the primary antagonist we have to settle with. This is not the time to break ties with America. This is the time to engage America."

Ka LaHui is calling for a boycott of the November plebiscite. "If we say yes," notes Mililani, "we approve a paper government with no land. If we say no, we legitimize the staus quo." She points out that, while officially only those of Native Hawai ian descent can vote, nobody is checking for the fifty-percent "blood quantum" that makes a person a Native Hawai ian in the eyes of the law.

This February, the various sovereignty groups including the Nation of Hawai i and Ka LaHui held a puwalo (discussion or gathering) at Kona on the Big Island to try to work out their differences. One agreement came out of the meeting: to focus on Native Hawai ian land and water rights.

The Struggle for the Land
Tensions on the Hawai ian islands are escalating. Recent incidents of hostage-taking in Honolulu made national media, but were not portrayed in ethnic or political context. Hawai i has the land structure of a Third World country. Seventy-four of the state s largest landowners control 95 percent of Hawai ian territory. These include the federal and state governments, which appropriated the so-called Ceded Lands of the monarchy, and the "Big Five" sugar and pineapple interests.

Before the transition to Western land ownership, Hawai i s lands were organized in ahupua as divisions that stretched from the coast to the mountaintops, following the watersheds. Areas within the ahupua a were under the kuleana, or responsibility, of an ohana, extended family.

In the 1893 revolt backed up by U.S. warships, the haole (white) militias of the sugar oligarchy removed Queen Liliuokalani from power after she tried to change the Constitution to restore Native Hawai ian voting rights which had been eroded in a "Bayonet Constitution" imposed by the haole militias before her reign. The new sugar-planter Republic claimed the monarchy s 1.5 million acres as "Ceded Lands." An investigation by President Grover Cleveland found the overthrow "a lawless occupation," but his successor William McKinley accepted the Republic s annexation offer and Hawai i became a U.S. Territory. The Ceded Lands came under federal control.

In 1920, royal Hawai ian territorial delegate Prince Jonah Kuhio proposed that Congress open the Ceded Lands to Native homesteaders. The oligarchy won a "compromise" in which 200,000 acres were put aside as Hawai ian Home Lands for settlement by the Natives. The Department of Hawai ian Home Lands with an executive board known as the Hawai ian Homes Commission assumed responsibility for distributing and developing the lands. But today most of the Home Lands are leased out to commercial interests, and tens of thousands of Hawai ian families are on the waiting list for settlement.

Some 20 percent of Ceded Lands are under Uncle Sam s direct control mostly for the complex of military bases that make up the seat of the Pentagon s Pacific Command. The Island of Kaho olawe off Maui was taken for bombing practice in World War II. In the 1970s it became the site of a groundbreaking sovereignty struggle, and in 1976, Hawai ian activists staged landings on the island to reclaim it from the Navy. After court decisions allowed Native Hawai ian access to Kaho olawe for religious purposes, the military ceased operations there and Congress authorized $400 million for environmental restoration, to be coordinated with the Native Hawai ian-led Kaho olawe Island Reserve Commission.

Many of the training operations at Kaho olawe were moved to the U.S. Army s 295-acre Pohakuloa base, in the saddle between the Big Island s twin snow-capped peaks Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The Army leases Pohakuloa from the Hawai ian Homes Commssion at a bargain-basement one dollar for the full 65-year lease.

Patrick Kahawaiola a is director of Aupuni O Hawai i (Kingdom of Hawai i), an organization that defends Hawai ian Home Lands rights. He calls the commercial leasing of Home Lands illegal, and is involved in a local struggle against a WalMart development near Hilo on the Big Island. WalMart has a 65-year lease from the Hawai ian Homes Commission. From January 5 to 15 Aupuni O Hawai i occupied the WalMart construction site, blockading the bulldozers. Twenty-two were arrested, including Patrick. "I m not anti-WalMart," says Patrick. "I m anti-development."

The blockade ended when the local developer brokering the WalMart lease got a temporary injunction. "If we set foot on the property we are arrested for contempt of court," says Patrick. "The developers get sovereignty, but the Home Lands beneficiaries get dragged away and handcuffed."

Native ahupua a rights gained credibility following the August 1995 state Supreme Court decision regarding North Kona s Kohana Iki ahupua a on the Big Island. The extended family Pai Ohana and Native Hawai ian man Angel Pilago brought suit against the Japanese Nansay Corporation, which planned a $325 million marina/hotel/golf complex at the site. Nansay and the county kept appealing until the state s highest court ruled that agencies must consider Native rights in the permitting process, and that such rights do not constitute an illegal "taking" of private property.

Ka LaHui, the Nation of Hawai i and other groups all filed briefs in support of Pai and Pilago. While Nansay launches an appeal to the federal Supreme Court, Pai Ohana and the community continue to have access and gather at the disputed beach.

Mahealani Pai of Pai Ohana is now in a new dispute with the federal government at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park, adjacent to the Nansay site. The U.S. Interior Department took the land over from the oligarchy s Greenwell family in the 70s. The feds asked the Pai family to sign a five-year lease, intending to incorporate their ahupua a caretaking into the "living historic park." The Pais signed, and established Hawai ian language and fishing schools on site. But when the Pais got fined for maintaining the ancient heiau stone temple on the site, they refused to sign a renewal lease. In 1993, Pai Ohana took the U.S. government to court, claiming aboriginal rights, and lost. Interior sent a "notice to vacate." This April 1, Interior s deadline for Pai to vacate, over 100 supporters from Ka LaHui and other groups were gathered at Kaloko-Honokohau, prepared for mass arrests to stop the eviction. Following two days of tense talks with Pai supporters at the Kona Hilton, the feds extended the eviction and entered into negotiations.

Natives resist rockets
Another crucial sovereignty struggle concerned a private spaceport planned for the Big Island in the 1980s, based on earlier Air Force plans. The spaceport was slated for Hawai ian Home Lands at South Point, which had been taken by the military during World War II. Military operations continued there even after South Point became Kalae National Historic Landmark in 1963. The spaceport scheme languished as local Natives challenged military operations, erecting roadblocks to stop Marine maneuvers in 1984. The military hasn t been back since.

In 1989 and 90, hundreds were arrested protesting a giant 6,000-megawatt geothermal project planned for the Big Island's Puna district with U.S. Energy Department backing. In 1992, the Pele Defense Fund named for Hawai'ian fire goddess associated with the island's volcano won ahupua'a access rights to the rainforest lands slated for the project in state Supreme Court.

The scaled-down 30-megawatt plant now operating in Puna is a disaster. Deadly hydrogen sulfide leaks have killed and sparked evacuations. Millions have been paid to local residents in damages, and a relocation program is in negotiation.

Palikapu Dedman is a veteran of both the spaceport and geothermal campaigns. He blockaded the military at South Point in '84. He is now curator of the park there, where he educates visiting young Hawai'ians on its ecological and historical significance.

"We aren't going to wait for a piece of paper to start to be Hawai'ian again," says Palikapu. "Just go out and do it today. Start practicing the traditional ways and do what you have to to protect the resources. With land, we don't have to be Third World people. Let the oil ships pass we know how to make our own food and generate our own energy. We can be the leaders in developing an island economy."

For more information: Nation of Hawai'i, PO Box 80, Waimanalo, Oahu, HI; (808)259-5049; e-mail: exec@hawaii-nation.org.

Ka La Huie Hawai'i (Gathering of the Hawai'ian People), PO Box 4964, Hilo, HI 96720; (808)961-2888, (808)942-7607.

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
MAY-JUNE 1996: [Conspiring to Commit Nonviolence] [The Sovereign Nation of Hawai'i: Come Again?] [Tax Day USA ]

The Nonviolent Activist is published bi-monthly by:
WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. (212) 228-0450, fax (212) 228-6193, e-mail:wrl@warresisters.org.

EDITOR: Judith Mahoney Pasternak. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE: Virginia Baron, David McReynolds, John M. Miller (production), Judith Mahoney Pasternak (editor), Mary Jane Sullivan, Lisa Vives. NVA ADVISORY BOARD: Robert Cooney, Kate Donnelly, Larry Gara, Carol Jahnkow, Andy Mager, Matt Meyer, Craig Simpson. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Free to members, individual non-members of WRL $15 per year; institutions $25 per year; overseas airmail add $15 per year. Send check or money order to WRL. MANUSCRIPTS: Inquiries welcome via postal or e-mail. Paper manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a SASE; poetry by assignment only. Letters to the editor, inquiries, advertising rates, etc. to the address above.