Talk:Hawaiian sovereignty movement

Rewrite
A rewrite of this article is being discussed at Talk:Hawaiian sovereignty movement/Temp. Viriditas (talk) 03:56, 9 October 2008‎ (UTC)

A fixation on ethnicity
I have been following this article and talk page for some time and while it has previously been my intention to remain silent, that is no longer a tenable position when there are certain elements to this article that are so impartial, so factually untrue, and so obviously propagandistic. In specific, the most apparent problem is the all too familiar, desperate fixation on ethnicity that seems to be the desired tool employed by US occupationists. As a disclaimer, I am fully aware that both the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 and (of course) the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are explicitly ethnically-based.

My specific complaint re:ethnicity focuses on the following statement taken from the article:

"Among those who advocate for complete independence, proposals range from a reinstatement of a racial hereditary monarchy, to constitutional democracies with tiered citizenship based on race, to governments exclusively controlled only by members with the correct racial background."

The preceding statement describes three alternatives – all wildly inaccurate for a variety of reasons – though my chief complaint is the insistence that each "proposal" has at its core an ethnic quantum. To cursorily evaluate each of the three asserted "proposals":

". . . a reinstatement of a racial hereditary monarchy," I can only assume that this implies some sort of indignation that the sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawai'i would be a Hawaiian. If that is the case, then the author should be outraged that the UK or the Netherlands have a "European" racial hereditary monarchy, or that the emperors of Japan have been "racially" Japanese.

". . . to constitutional democracies with tiered citizenship based on race," It is difficult to argue with assertions conspicuously missing citations, but I would like to point out that the Kingdom of Hawai'i was recognized as a functioning constitutional democracy – with successive constitutions modeled on the contemporary constitution of the United Kingdom and not unlike the current constitutions of Canada or New Zealand - before the hostile occupation by the United States began.

On January 21, 1868, the Minister of the Interior for the Hawaiian Kingdom, His Excellency Ferdinand Hutchison, stated the criteria for Hawaiian nationality:

“In the judgment of His Majesty’s Government, no one acquires citizenship in this Kingdom unless he is born here, or born abroad of Hawaiian parents, (either native or naturalized) during their temporary absence from the kingdom, or unless having been the subject of another power, he becomes a subject of this kingdom by taking the oath of allegiance.”

The position of His Majesty’s Government was founded upon Hawaiian statute. Section III, Art. I, Chap. V of an Act to Organize the Executive Departments, 1845 and 1846, provided that:

“All persons born within the jurisdiction of this kingdom, whether of alien foreigners, of naturalized or of native parents, and all persons born abroad of a parent native of this kingdom, and afterwards coming to reside in this kingdom, shall be deemed to owe native allegiance to His Majesty. All such persons shall be amenable to the laws of this kingdom as native subjects. All persons born abroad of foreign parents, shall unless duly naturalized, as in this article pre-scribed, be deemed aliens, and treated as such, pursuant to the laws.”

There exists no mention of an ethnic quantum necessary for citizenship in the Kingdom of Hawai'i. While not monolithic, the mainstream movement advocating the recognition of Hawai'i as a sovereign state, wholly separate from the United States, generally recognizes the constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai'i as a valid document and as such would continue to use the same criteria for bestowing Hawaiian nationality.

". . . to governments exclusively controlled only by members with the correct racial background." Again, with no citation and nebulous language ("correct racial background"), one struggles to conclude the exact meaning of this statement, but I would assume that this is an admonition to readers who are not ethnically Hawaiian to be trepidatious at the idea of an apartheid government ruled only by ethnic Hawaiians. Despite continued best efforts at historical revisionism by Americans, we are the inheritors of a rich historical record which is easily accessible and is incontrovertible. Anyone even remotely familiar with the history of the Kingdom of Hawaii's government should be aware of the ethnic composition of the cabinet was diverse, and included many ethnic Europeans. Also, anyone who is today familiar with the sovereignty movement should know that it is in no way an "ethnic" issue; there are a diverse number of opinions supported by a diverse populace.

These unending assertions of a coming apartheid state or ethnic-warfare are patently outlandish, but they are the tool most often employed by American occupationists as part of a well-funded and organized public relations campaign because they are so effective at scaring the general population. These are the tactics of any tenth-rate attorney who realizes that they have a flimsy case; they know that they cannot argue the facts so they must resort to vilification and misrepresentation of the opposition. When one tries to engage in a civilized debate on the future of Hawai'i and even when one uses the historical record coming only from the United States government, a very clear picture emerges of a simple, hostile takeover of one nation by a much larger emerging superpower through armed aggression. The record from the US may speak for itself, but the debate nearly always goes in a similar direction; those in favor of the continued US occupation at some point realize that they aren't going to be able to convince through either refutation of the historical record or the contemporary law of the United States of International Law, so the must return to the tactics of misrepresentation in a desperate effort to distract and create fear.

For the sake of clarity, I will reiterate that both the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs imply an ethnic-quantum, and a great many within the sovereignty movement are vehemently opposed to both the Akaka Bill and OHA. The component of ethnic-quantum is justifiably worrisome, however, both the Akaka Bill and OHA are nothing more than subterfuge and a distraction from the correct course of action - the recognition of the continued sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

With the foregoing having been said, this article is urgently in need of a drastic re-write to conform to Wikipedia's own rules of impartiality and, especially, verifiability. I will be the first to concede that fundamental questions about the future of Hawai'i remain unanswered and that important debates remain unresolved, but this article's sophistry and blatant use of propaganda do not help to create the environment for civilized debate, and ultimately do not engender much sympathy to the claims of the US' "virtuous" annexation of Hawai'i.

Moananui (talk) 20:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC) Moananui


 * Hi Moananui. Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your comments. I am not very active here anymore and I just check in from time to time on articles I have an interest in. Somehow, long ago, I got involved in edit disputes around Hawaiian issues and these are some of the articles I still keep an eye on. Unfortunately, these articles are never liked by Hawaiian activists who see the articles as biased because they fail to acknowledge what they see is the obvious fact Hawaii is illegally occupied while pro-annexation people see this as a settled issue and get annoyed that the "fringe" position is being considered at all. This results in few liking the articles that develop by consensus. These are difficult articles to edit.


 * There may well be a fixation on race in this article. Some sovereignty groups are fixated on it of course. US law is also fixated on race. Like it or not, Hawaii is subject to US law and this is unlikely to change in either of our lifetimes. According to a 9-0 Supreme Court decision, decision of the U.S. Supreme Court of March 31, 2009, the Apology Resolution has no binding legal effect and the state of Hawaii has title to all ceded landed. This means the Supremes (liberal and conservative) have ruled that the US legally acquired Hawaii. Unless the International Court of Justice steps in, this now seems like a deadend legal issue. Hence, the fixation on race will be hard to end as things like the US Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 and the US Office of Hawaiian Affairs are explicitly ethnically-based as you noted.


 * I would suggest making good faith efforts to edit this article. Are there ways you can make the fixation on race less prominent while still acknowleding that it is an issue? You don't need permission to do this. Just edit. If you are too point of view, you will likely get reverted. How can you edit the article to make it better while keeping it from sounding like propaganda for one side or the other? One sided editing works sometimes in the short term but rarely works long term. The Hawaiian sovereignty related articles are littered with editors from differing views who finally gave up and left in digust. This does not have to be you. Assume good faith from those who disagree with you. They have good reasons for what they believe too. You can work with some of them.


 * Good luck. Feel free to leave me a note if you want to talk about something. As I noted, I am not very active so be patient if it takes me a few days to get back to you. LarryQ (talk) 03:16, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Those are fair points: it is rather unfair to paint the whole independent movement as 'racism'. As you point out: by that metric pretty much every indepence movement in the world is highly racist just for giving some power back to broadly-defined 'natives' at the expense of potential future arrivals. And connecting the mere existence of a royal family with 'promoting ethnic superiority' is indeed stupid fearmongering of people who will do anything to prevent a signal of national unity (a king, whom everyone can rally around) to gain power.Selena1981 (talk) 23:07, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Sovereignty opinions of Native Hawaiians?
Have there been any polls of Native Hawaiians (or of Hawaiian residents in general, with responses broken down by ethnic group) that show what percentage of Native Hawaiians favor independence, this or that version of sovereignty short of independence, and the status quo? This would be relevant information for the article. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * If there was, what would determine who was a Native Hawaiian? I could see the carrying out of this task as disputable as its results. Quash-asia (talk) 07:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Please research Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, a state entity, who is uniting Hawaiians to form their on sovereign Government. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.116.71 (talk) 20:19, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

To be quite honest I believe the United States of America has already tried and unfortunately has been successful in the determining of whether or not someone should be seen as Native Hawaiian or not. As stated by the insulting way that they've tried to give Native Hawaiians their land back or attempted to do so by enacting the Hawaiian Homestead Act. It states that the United States set aside approximately 200,000 acres for NATIVE HAWAIIANS as this was also a controversial definition in it's own. It states that a person of 50% or more Hawaiian blood is to be considered Native Hawaiian even though the Queen herself stated that the blood quantum should be no more than 1/32. The problem is the United States see's this as more of a solution with no answer when in fact it's just a solution the United States doesn't recognize as important. The fact that Native Hawaiians even have to prove their Hawaiian shows a problem with the system as no other race seems to have to define who they are. And yet people argue "Well you could have someone with no connection to Hawaii but have Hawaiian blood decide to want to own land, how does that problem become resolved"? What people don't realize is Native Hawaiians have a very rich and very deep culture and those families who have stayed true to this idea will be able to trace their roots back to times even before the overthrow. TokoUso6Tree (talk) 07:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon Chauvinism (NPOV)
As stated many times before in this article, it is a minefield of biased NPOV views in favor of the Anglo-Saxon pro-liberal/pro-democratic positions used to justify the US takeover of Hawaii and discredit indigenous sovereignty activists. It is actually quite a blatant display of bias that seems to have been tolerated by other wikipedia moderators in the past (see: the previous comments in this talk section), that it really reeks of biased anglo-saxon chauvinism towards indigenous or aboriginal groups.

For example, in the last section, it reads:

"The Hawaiian Kingdom Government lands in 1893 were controlled ultimately by the Legislature. Private individuals had no powers, rights or privileges to use government land without Government authorization or to decide how it was to be used. If Hawaiians had any rights or powers regarding Government land, they had only the political right and power to participate in controlling the Government. Most ethnic Hawaiians then had no power to lose; they were a minority in Hawaii and most of them could not even vote. As the term "sovereignty" suggests, what was at stake in 1893 was political power over the government and hence over the Government Lands and the Crown Lands (which had come under control of a government commission in 1865). Legally, the land belonging to the Hawaiian Government in 1898 has passed to the U.S. Government and back to the State of Hawaii.[39]"

I don't know about anyone else, but this does not read like a neutral paragraph whatsoever. Surely, my allegations of chauvinism on part of some of the previous wikipedia editors might elicit claims that I have my own personal "bias" (although I am not of Hawaiian, indigenous, and/or aboriginal ancestry myself; nor do I subscribe to any explicit "leftist" political leanings, as more naive individuals might be inclined to believe), yet nearly all of the previous edits espousing this kind of implicit pro-US/pro-colonial worldview seems to have elicited no comment from wikipedia staff regarding any "NPOV", with some of the comments by authors/staff on this talk page arguing as if the "neutral perspective" on the issue of Hawaiian/indigenous sovereignty lies within a narrative of "liberal-democratic civic/human rights". Also, these same authors above seemingly only attached labels of NPOV to cases in which it appeared that pro-Hawaiian sovereignty activists were editing the article, thus ignoring the real issue of pro-liberal/pro-colonial slanted rhetoric that continues on in this article as of June 2015.

We need more neutral perspectives, rather than this weird parroting of US court rulings/opinions that the majority of this article tends to advocate (implicitly) in favor of.

Anyway, tl;dr, if anyone can fix it up and document this issue in a more neutral and evenhanded perspective (rather than basically taking "sides" against indigenous peoples by the authors in their implicit biases regarding the legitimacy of Hawaiian sovereignty movements), that would be nice. Transnational Capitalists (talk) 00:25, 24 June 2015 (UTC)


 * yeah, that whole section reads like the usual 'we are not oppressors, we are liberators' nonsense that conquerors use to excuse their conquering behavior now that they can't pin it on 'god' anymore. By misrepresenting the legal situation such that *any* type of outside intervention is a good idea and certainly a big helping of 'democracy-in-name-only' will make the poor and downtrodden happy.Selena1981 (talk) 23:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Uhhh.... Hi people!--Sandstorm120 (talk) 01:09, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Calling it "Anglo-Saxon" bias is about as racist a comment as there is and speaks to the racial bias of the person who created this talk section. Not all "white people" are Anglo-Saxons not even in Europe.

Hawaiian sovereignty activists and advocates { {Expand section} } notice
Do we still need the Expand section notice? There was nine entries when you placed it, we are now at thirteen. Not a great increase, but what is the criteria for being complete enough? Mahalo! Peaceray (talk) 05:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Removed.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:18, 8 October 2019 (UTC)