The Akaka Bill

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Why should Native Hawaiians who have never relinquished their inherent sovereignty settle for the lesser status of federal recognition that is being put forward in the ''Akaka Bill''?

They shouldn't, says J. Kehaulani Kauanui.

Kauanui, a Native Hawaiian and an assistant professor of anthropology and American studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, presented a short history of Hawaii/U.S. relations and her views of the Akaka Bill in a talk called ''The Politics of Native Hawaiian Self-Determination: U.S. Federal Policy v. International law'' at Yale University on April 4.

She began with thanks to the event sponsors - the Yale Group for the Study of Native America and the Program in Ethnicity, Race and Migration - and acknowledged the land now known as New Haven as the original homeland of the Quinnipiac people.

A heated debate about Hawaiian sovereignty now centers on the proposed Hawaiian federal recognition bill reintroduced into Congress by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, in January after six years of defeat in the Senate, Kauanui said.

The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is split between those who support federal recognition and those who want full independence from the United States based on decolonization and de-occupation under international law, Kauanui said.

''At the heart of this division between federal recognition and independence is the debate as to whether or not, and if so, how Native Hawaiians fit into U.S. policy on Native American governing entities,'' Kauanui said.

A compelling argument against federal recognition is how federally recognized tribes are treated now,

Kauanui said.

''You have a backlash against tribal nations in this area who are absolutely entitled to

federal recognition and you have the state bearing down on them, and the courts continue to erode tribal sovereignty. So the challenge for me, intellectually, legally and politically, has been how to formulate my critique of federal recognition for Hawaiians without it ever being misinterpreted as something that can be used against tribes here, because I support the federal recognition of tribes here,'' Kauanui said.

But the central argument against federal recognition rests on ''the particularity of the Hawaiian claims given the legal history of the Hawaiian kingdom,'' Kauanui said.

Those particularities are embedded as facts in Public Law 103-150 - an apology to the Hawaiian people that was signed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton.

The apology acknowledges the illegality of the U.S. government's military-backed regime change of ''the sovereign Hawaii nation'' in 1893 and its support for the illegally created ''provisional government'' in violation of treaties and international law. The insurgents were wealthy American and European financiers and colonists who owned sugar plantations.

The key statement in the apology reiterates Hawaii's continuing independence: ''The indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national lands to the United States, either through their monarchy or through a plebiscite or referendum.

''This legal genealogy makes the current push for federal recognition as reflected in the Akaka Bill extremely problematic,'' Kauanui said.

The word ''people'' itself puts Hawaiians in line with international law that says all

peoples have the right to determine their political structures.

''When you say 'people,' you're saying a nation. A people is not an ethnic group,'' Kauanui said, quoting Lumbee legal scholar David Wilkins, who outlined four elements that set American Indians apart from racial minorities.

''Indians are nations, not minorities,'' Wilkins said, because they were the original inhabitants of the land; their pre-existence necessitated the negotiation of political compacts, treaties and alliances with European nations and the United States. As treaty-recognized sovereigns, Indian peoples are subject to U.S. trust doctrine, which is supposed to be a unique legal relationship with the federal government that entails protection; and, stemming from the trust relationship, the United States asserts plenary power of tribal nations, which it deems exclusive and pre-emptive.

Native Hawaiians who want to pursue self-determination through international law contest this U.S. use of the ''doctrine of discovery'' to indigenous peoples' lands and U.S. assertion to legal title to those lands while only recognizing tribal nations' use of the land, Kauanui said.

The ''provisional government'' ceded 1.8 million acres of Hawaiian lands to the United States in 1898, but those lands have never fallen into private hands.

''These are lands the U.S. government accepted from the people that stole them from the Hawaiian monarchy. Never has a penny exchanged hands and never has a case about the legal title of these lands ever been adjudicated so this is a major outstanding land claim - 1.8 million acres of some of the most expensive real estate in the world and one of the most militarized place in the world,'' Kauanui said, referring to the massive U.S. nuclear base in Honolulu, which is the central command for U.S. military interests in the Pacific Ocean.

Supporters of federal recognition say there is nothing in the Akaka Bill that would compromise or foreclose Hawaiian national claims under international law, but U.S. actions in asserting its plenary power to keep tribal nations both domestic and dependent belie that claim, Kauanui said.

Hawaiians may not be able to realize their independence right now, ''but just because you can't see it come to fruition right now doesn't mean you throw it down the toilet. You protect the claims. I'd rather stick with the status quo for the moment and work on cultural sovereignty, get the people stronger and work on educating people about their political rights,'' Kauanui said.

Under the Akaka Bill, Hawaii could never have casinos, never have criminal and civil jurisdiction, never petition the secretary of the Interior Department to take land into trust and never be able to make land claims under the 1790 Non-Intercourse Act, which would mean ''there goes those 1.8 million acres,'' Kauanui said.

No competing Hawaiian sovereignty group would have legal standing in any domestic court or at the United Nations. The Native Hawaiian government would be formed by a commission appointed by and answerable to the Interior secretary, unlike federally recognized Indian tribes who determine their own leadership and membership. And Hawaiians could not have their own civil or criminal jurisdiction.

''Why should we do that? It seems a more critical time than ever for Hawaiians and all U.S. citizens to critically question why there should not be a Hawaiian embassy in Washington, D.C. Instead of negotiating with the Department of the Interior, Hawaiians have the un-extinguished right to negotiate instead with the U.S. Department of State,'' Kauanui said.

Indigeneity and Militarism

Check out the speech below given by Kanak Maoli activist Ikaika Hussey, a student at the University of Hawai'i. Here are two articles about a seven-day protest he organized in 2005 against the intrusion of the United States Navy into the University of Hawai'i.

"Students and faculty oppose Navy research," Friday, April 29, 2005
http://starbulletin.com/2005/04/29/news/story4.html

"UH protesters declare victory as sit-in ends," Thursday, May 5, 2005
http://starbulletin.com/2005/05/05/news/story6.html

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Indigeneity and militarism: aloha aina contra empire

In his book “Imperial Grunts,” U.S. conservative writer Robert Kaplan notes the historic interrelationship between the US wars with the first nations of North America and the modern US imperial experience from Indochina to the present: “Injun Country” is the term which he hears from soldiers abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq, a reference to the undomesticated world which the US aims to tame.

The term is important in two respects. First, it signals the American tendency to see the world outside of North America as subject to its assimiliating tendencies, just as it attempted to do with Turtle Island. In this manner, the anti-Indian wars of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries are the template for the new Indian wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly Iran, North Korea, the Mindanao, and China. From this perspective, the unique identities and soveriegnties of the world’s peoples are just open spaces for the projection of US military force, to make way for WalMart, McDonalds, and MTV.

But in another way, the term is important, for it a sign of the resilience and resistance of the world’s peoples against US expansion. In North America, Indian Country has become a way of talking about the places where the US assumes it has control and domination, but the first peoples do not agree. Indian Country is free country – under the jurisdiction of the gun, but still fighting. And so I derive both a sobering appreciation for the power of military power from this term, but also a deeply-rooted faith in the ability for the first peoples of this world, the peoples of the eagle, the condor, and the frigate bird, to sustain our fight against empire, and be victorious in time.

The experiences of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis the militarized empire are multiple and unique. That is, in fact, one of the foundational ideas that indigenous peoples bring to the world: we are not singular, but plural; we obtain our life and very existence from the specificities of our particular ancestors, our particular gods, our named and worshipped sacred sites. As a indigenous person of Hawaii, I can really only speak for myself and my immediate ancestors; I couldn’t casually speak for my next-door neighbors, let alone the peoples of other Oceanic nations, or of the Americas. So in making these remarks, I will try to speak from our own experience in Hawaii, and only by extension refer to other indigenous experiences.

My country, Hawaii, has been under US occupation since the end of the 19th century. US interest in Hawaii is primarily geostrategic. We have the dubious distinction of being used as the headquarters of the Pacific Command, the largest of the U.S. unified commands. In the 161 military installations throughout Hawaii, every aspect of U.S. military activity takes place, including ocean, land, air, and space operations; training; storage; command & control; research; housing; and even specialized rest & recreation facilities for the military. The military-connected population is 17% of the population; by comparison, Native Hawaiians comprise barely 20% of the island population.

On my home island of O‘ahu, the metropolitan island of Hawaii, the US military controls one-quarter of the land in terms of base territory and formal military jurisdiction. Much of the remaining three-quarters is also injected with militarization, with federal highways connecting the bases, discounts for servicepersons in restaurants and theatres, military bases used as place names, military service projects in public schools, and servicepersons living in our communities because of a cost-of-living-adjustment which allows them to outprice local people from the rental market. Oahu is one of the most militarized places in the world, together with fellow Pacific nations such as Guam.

By contrast, to bring out the impact of the military presence on the indigneous economy and culture of Hawaii, let us focus on a place that we have all heard of: Ke Awalau o Puuloa. Many know this place as Pearl Harbor. In our history, Puuloa is known as the food-basket of our islands, with a remarkable series of 36 stone and coral fishponds built along the shore, allowing our people to maintain and replenish a steady supply of fish protein, all within walking distance. In the traditional land apportionment system, each district along the shore of Ke Awalau o Puuloa had access to this incredible resource, because we recognized that this wealth should be shared. Puuloa is also known as the dwelling for our spiritual protector Kaahupahau, a benevolent shark who protected the people of the surrounding Ewa district from other predators.

Juxtaposed against the current (mis)use of Puuloa, we can see how native subsistence wealth has been damaged to make way for US imperial ambitions. Today, Puuloa is a Superfund site, meaning that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared it one of the most polluted areas in the United States. The shared access to the economy of the oceanic resource has also been interrupted, with barbed walls and military police preventing entry to our fishponds.

This story isn’t unique to Puuloa, nor is it unique to Hawaii. At the most recent meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigneous Populations, the indigneous delegates considered the impact of militarism on their territories and peoples. Below is a portion of a longer conference report covering a variety of issues; this excerpt is the full text concerning militarism.

[According to indigneous participants,] militarization often involved the use of weapons and vehicles that polluted ancestral and sacred lands, forests and water, and harmed wildlife. Participants expressed their strong opposition to the dumping of toxic military waste, and even nuclear waste, on their lands, which rendered them unproductive and forced people from their traditional lands. Unexploded ordnance and landmines from conflicts or training exercises also contaminated indigenous peoples’ lands and caused injuries, ill-health and even death to the civilian indigenous population.

One issue that was raised frequently by indigenous people during the session was the use of militarization as a pretext to gain control over the natural resources in indigenous traditional lands without adequate compensation. A large number of participants from many different countries and regions cited cases of the use of the military to ensure access to land, minerals, oil and other resources on their ancestral lands.

Indigenous representatives also voiced their opposition to development projects, which they said were used as a justification for controlling areas that belong to their communities, as well as a justification for the presence of large numbers of soldiers on those lands. Many indigenous representatives spoke of long histories of forced resettlement for military use of their lands. Often this was done with neither consultation nor redress.

A number of participants cited the war on terror as a pretext for militarization, in particular in Arab regions. It was noted that a large military presence was often accompanied by human rights abuses by the military, including rape and sexual harassment that disproportionately affected women and children in indigenous communities. Indigenous representatives gave examples of the resulting climate of violence and fear. They cited a number of cases of military forces committing human rights abuses with impunity. Several indigenous participants expressed their concern about military recruitment of indigenous youth, which, they said, was a threat to their way of life. Whilst in some cases, recruitment might appear to be voluntary, indigenous youth who were living in poverty might see military service as their only option to earn a living.

As you see, the themes raised by indigneous nations are familiar to many of us in this conference. Clearly, many nation-states regard indigneous rights as a lesser right to the interests of developers or the military – this tendency is an example of a recurring problem that indigenous peoples face, which is the reluctance and often outright refusal for states to recognize indigneous land and sovereignty claims. The international law doctrine of self-determination, enshrined in the United Nations charter and in human rights instruments, is poorly applied, if at all, to indigneous peoples. Our movement for demilitarization and peace must be cognizant if this fact. It would also be appropriate to remind the body of the lessons learned in the Pacific, where some in the Nuclear Free Pacific movement objected to the tendency for the Pacific Islanders themselves to raise the issue of decolonization and independence. The natives demanded that demilitarization be coupled with a push for sovereignty, thus the name Nuclear Free & Independent Pacific was born. But this was indeed a line struggle, painful yet necessary.

Aloha Aina

In closing, I’d like to share our indigenous term for describing our movement in Hawaii. We use the words “aloha aina,” literally “love of land,” but also meaning patriotism. It is a word that was born out of the late-19th century struggle against annexation, and was also reinvigorated with meaning in the 1970s movement to stop the bombing of Kahoolawe island. The term also incorporates a vision for ecological sustainability, for community, and shared responsibility for our island homeland. We could never accept the harming of the land which have so much “aloha” for. Nor could we countenance the use of our land, which is the source of all life, to perpetrate violence on others. Our vision is for an independent Hawaii and a demilitarized Pacific that opposes all empires.

Mahalo nui, aloha aina.