Social Cohesion and Conflict
Hawai‘i has been called a “laboratory of race relations” based on its carefully cultivated image as a place where people of different cultures have historically lived together and “fused.”[1] This image has a certain amount of validity when Hawaii’s racial “fusion” is contrasted to that found in most of the continental United States. For Native Hawaiians,[2] the fusion has been forced at times and cultural domination is a reality etched in daily existence. In 1933, one scholar observed:
Hawai‘i offers opportunity to the people of all races on terms that approach uncommonly close to equality. Responding to opportunity, the peoples are entering upon a larger social inheritance, and one may look forward to an enrichment of this heritage through the achievement of men and women of all races.[3]
This observation is in sharp contrast to the conclusion reached nearly 70 years later after a series of public dialogues on race and culture in Hawai‘i:
In our community there is more pain than we admit and more than we tend to show the outside world. Hawaiians mourn the loss of their culture and their land. New immigrants—Filipinos, Samoans, Southeast Asians, African-Americans—suffer daily indignities. The Japanese remember the bitterness of their plantation days and their internment on the West Coast. Haoles speak of being held accountable and demonized for events not of their making such as the 1893 overthrow.[4]
Neither observation negates the fact that Hawaii’s first people welcomed with considerable aloha those who were once outsiders. It is both ironic and tragic that most Native Hawaiians have become increasingly marginalized and culturally dominated in their own land. The domination and suppression, most Native Hawaiians believe, have had a devastating effect on their culture. Although the root cultures of Hawaii’s immigrants continue in their lands of origin, this is the only homeland for the indigenous people of these islands.
Hawai‘i is now in a state of social conflict between preserving the status quo, returning to historical roots, and pushing the civil rights of indigenous people forward to a new level. As the movement for change in Hawai‘i has gained momentum, several factions have emerged representing the broad spectrum of interests. They include those who desire nation-within-a-nation recognition, a status similar to that of American Indians and Alaska Natives; those who desire secession from the United States and independent nationhood status; and those who desire the abolishment of any Native Hawaiian entitlement programs. The basic divisive force at work is disagreement about what the relationship between the United States and Native Hawaiians is and should be.
The history of the United States’ wrongdoing and subsequent failure to assist Native Hawaiians is well documented and widely acknowledged. For more than a century, the U.S. relationship with Hawai‘i has been the subject of inquiry by historians, legal scholars, and civil rights advocates. Because of the unique history of the state’s annexation, the legal issues are complex. Ever since the overthrow and annexation of their nation, Native Hawaiians have been engaged in the struggle to regain their culture and lands and, for some, to restore their sovereign nation status.[5]
Attempts to remedy the effects of past government actions have been the subject of ongoing political and judicial scrutiny, leading to the issuance of the 1993 Apology Resolution[6] and, more recently, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rice v. Cayetano.[7] While the former appeared to be a positive step in the reconciliation process in its acknowledgment of the United States’ wrongdoing, the latter has once again fueled the debate about race, ideology, and Hawaiian nationalism. In a split decision, the Supreme Court decided that a voting procedure whereby only Native Hawaiians could vote for members of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs violated the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits race-based exclusion from voting.[8] The Rice decision has occurred against the backdrop of a burgeoning movement for self-determination, fueling the feelings of anger and frustration within the Native Hawaiian community. The Court’s decision has brought to the forefront the legal distinctions between equal protection and race-based favoritism and has called into question the status of Native Hawaiians. Indeed, the very definition of who is Hawaiian has become more intangible.
The plight of Native Hawaiians raises important and difficult questions about the concepts of civil rights and self-determination in the United States. Despite the legal and political discussions, a very human element lies at the core of the debate as Native Hawaiians struggle for the preservation of identity and culture.
Cultural Identity
Native Hawaiian identity is derived from the Kumulipo, or Creation Chant, which teaches that Native Hawaiians are genealogically related to the Hawaiian islands.[9] Dr. Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa,[10] director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, provided the following succinct history of the Native Hawaiian people:
From time immemorial, Native Hawaiians have had a special genealogical relationship to the Hawaiian islands. Born from the mating of Earth Mother Papa and Sky Father Wakea, we’re the Hawaiian islands and the Hawaiian people. That’s the definition of native. We are from the land 100 generations ago. As such we have an ancient duty to love, cherish, and cultivate our beloved grandmother, the land. The study of stewardship is called malama ‘aina, where land is not for buying and selling, but for the privilege of living upon. And in the reciprocal relationship, when we Native Hawaiians care for and cultivate the land, she feeds and protects us. . . .
Even after the Native Hawaiians were converted to Christianity and countless notions of capitalism, which required pride of ownership of land, the King insisted upon the right of native tenants. The rights of native tenants include the right to enter into and live upon any unoccupied land. Since land was an important source of food, denial to land was tantamount to starvation and death.
And, as you know, crown lands and government lands, once taken over by America, became lands that America controlled and denied Native Hawaiians the right to live upon. . . .
[M]any Hawaiians have tried to move onto those lands to provide housing for their people, for their children, . . . those people have been arrested, evicted, their houses and possessions bulldozed. You’re going to hear from people today who will say those things who have been there and through that.
A majority of the homeless in Hawaii are Hawaiians, Native Hawaiians. We have thousands of children every day who are Native Hawaiian going to school from situations of homelessness, from tents, from cars, from caves. This is a terrible thing that has been done to our people. It is a great wrong by America.[11]
According to the Kumulipo, the main staple of the Native Hawaiian diet is kalo (or taro), their elder brother.[12] The genealogical sequence also includes creatures of the sea and land.[13] Commoners and chiefs alike were “descended from the same ancestors, Wakea and Papa.”[14] Native Hawaiians are also linked to Polynesians who sailed their double-hulled canoes to the Hawaiian archipelago, navigating by ocean currents, winds, and the stars.[15] Before Wakea and Papa, there existed approximately 800 generations of Polynesians.[16]
For centuries, the primary social unit for Native Hawaiians was the ‘ohana, or extended family. A system of reciprocal obligation and support later developed between the chiefs and the people in response to the needs encountered by an expanding population. At the time of European contact, the Native Hawaiian people “lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistent society based on a system of communal land tenure with a highly sophisticated language, religion, and culture.”[17]
The Past that Haunts: A History of Hawaiian Annexation
Hawaii is ours. As I look back upon the first steps in this miserable business, and as I contemplate the means used to complete the outrage, I am ashamed of the whole affair.[18]
— President Grover Cleveland
To fully understand the implications of the reconciliation process, the Supreme Court’s decision in Rice v. Cayetano, and the subsequent legal, political, and social fallout, it is necessary to appreciate the historical context in which Native Hawaiians are situated. The history of Hawaii’s overthrow, annexation, and eventual statehood, in some ways, parallels how other native inhabitants of now-American lands have been treated. However, while the U.S. government has a history of dissolving and displacing many indigenous peoples, such as American Indians and other Native Americans, the case in Hawai‘i is somewhat unique. The details of Hawaii’s history are often disputed.
There are some who continue to believe that Hawai‘i was not “stolen,” but rather that the people made a conscientious decision to become a part of the United States and to adopt the religious and cultural beliefs of Western settlers. William Burgess, retired attorney, stated during the 2000 forum:
[T]he fact is, historically, there is simply no justification for the argument that the lands of Hawai‘i were stolen by the United States. The lands of Hawai‘i under the kingdom were held for the benefit of all the subjects of the kingdom, not just for those of Hawaiian ancestry.[19]
However, by the U.S. government’s own admission, the accepted account of Hawaii’s journey to statehood reveals the unlawful violation of a trust between nations and the forced cultural domination of Hawaiians.
Political and Cultural Transformation
In 1778–1779, there were between 400,000 and 1 million Native Hawaiians living in the islands.[20] At that time, control over the islands was divided among four high chiefs.[21] Later, in 1810, a unified monarchy of the Hawaiian islands was established under the rule of Kamehameha I, the first king of Hawai‘i. During the 1800s, the Kingdom of Hawaii was recognized as a sovereign and independent nation. The Hawaiian nation entered into treaties with more than 15 other nations, including the United States.[22] From 1826 to 1893, the United States extended full diplomatic recognition to the kingdom and entered into various treaties and conventions involving commerce and navigation. Despite this recognition, or perhaps because of it, there were proactive attempts to colonize the people of Hawai‘i, if not through government actions, through social and religious intervention. Between 1820 and 1850, more than 100 missionaries from the Congregational Church were sent to the Kingdom of Hawaii.[23]
During that same period, the Kingdom of Hawaii underwent many changes to its culture, population, economy, religion, health practices, and land tenure system that would alter Hawaiian culture permanently. Eventually, pressures from Americans and Europeans influenced the privatization of the land and the dissolution of complete monarchy. In 1848, the land was divided among the main chiefs (1.5 million acres), King Kamehameha III (1 million acres), and the government (1.5 million acres). All lands were granted subject to the rights of tenants, as was the case in the traditional land tenure system.[24] Despite this, many Hawaiians were never given the land to which they were entitled, and many were cut off from their means of livelihood as their lands were sold to foreigners. This trend in land loss was heightened by the passage of an act in 1850 that allowed all residents, regardless of national citizenship, to own land.[25] In the period following the division of the land, only 28,600 acres—out of more than 4 million total acres—were given to approximately 8,000 farmers; yet 2,000 Westerners who resided on the islands were able to obtain large plots of land, and by the end of the 19th century Westerners had taken over most of Hawaii’s privately held land.[26] The Native Hawaiian population dwindled to approximately 40,000 inhabitants.[27] In response to the demand of the sugar industry for arduous labor in the cane fields, more than 400,000 immigrants from China, Portugal, Japan, and the Philippines were drawn to Hawai‘i.[28]
International Domination and Overthrow
During the 1880s, as Hawai‘i witnessed significant changes internally, it also faced changing demands and threats to its independence from the international arena. The United States clearly viewed Hawai‘i as important to its needs, including economic development and military defense, and as a result sought to establish political dominance. According to the Tyler Doctrine of 1842:
Considering, therefore, that the United States possesses so very large a share of the intercourse with those islands, it is deemed not unfit to make the declaration that their Government seeks nevertheless no peculiar advantages, no exclusive control over the Hawaiian Government, but is content with its independent existence, and anxiously wishes for its security and prosperity. Its forbearance in this respect, under the circumstances of the very large intercourse of their citizens with the islands, would justify the Government, should events hereafter arise, to require it, in making a decided remonstrance against the adoption of an opposite policy by any other power.[29]
In addition to Friendship Treaties negotiated in 1826 and 1849, the United States entered into a Reciprocity Treaty in 1875 providing for sale of duty-free goods in both directions and lifting the tariff on Hawaiian sugar.[30] Congress later sought exclusive use of Pearl Harbor in exchange for renewing the treaty, but King Kalakaua—who had been duly elected to that position after King Lunalilo failed to name an heir—refused.[31] Supported by an all-Caucasian 500-man militia, American and European sugar planters and business interests responded by forcing Kalakaua to accept major changes in the governmental structure of the kingdom.[32] The resulting “Bayonet Constitution” gave practical control over the executive and legislative branches of government to Western business interests and property owners.
Under the new regime: (1) voting rights were extended to American and European males, regardless of citizenship; (2) new property requirements effectively excluded Native Hawaiians from voting for the newly formed House of Nobles;[33] and (3) exclusive use of Pearl Harbor was ceded to the United States under the 1887 Reciprocity Treaty in exchange for lifting the tariff on Hawaiian sugar.[34] Within two years, King Kalakaua died and his sister, Queen Lili‘uokalani, succeeded to the throne pursuant to the kingdom’s constitution.[35] American and European residents soon formed a “Committee of Public Safety”—whose goal was to gain full control of the government—in response to two developments: (1) the Queen’s efforts to develop a new constitution (as requested in petitions by her Native Hawaiian subjects); and (2) passage of the McKinley Tariff Act of 1891 by the U.S. Congress.[36] Annexation-friendly President Benjamin Harrison reported through channels to the conspirators that “if conditions in Hawaii compel you people to act as you have indicated, and you come to Washington with an annexation proposition, you will find an exceedingly sympathetic administration here.”[37]
In 1893, the U.S. Minister to Hawai‘i, John Stevens, conspired with a small group of non-Hawaiian residents of the islands to overthrow the indigenous government of Hawai‘i. U.S. naval forces invaded the sovereign Hawaiian nation on January 16, 1893, with the intent to intimidate the government and Queen Lili‘uokalani. The following day, representatives of American and European settlers deposed the Queen and proclaimed the establishment of a provisional government without the consent of the Hawaiian people or the Hawaiian government that had been in place at the time. Many contend that these acts were in violation of the treaties that were in place and in violation of international law. Queen Lili‘uokalani, in an attempt to avoid the bloodshed of resistance, yielded her authority to the U.S. government rather than the provisional government.[38] She made the following statement:
I Lili‘uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this kingdom.
That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government.
Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.[39]
On February 1, 1893, the U.S. Minister raised the American flag and proclaimed Hawai‘i to be a protectorate of the United States.[40]
Following the events that occurred in Hawai‘i, President Grover Cleveland assigned former Congressman James Blount to investigate the insurrection and overthrow of the Hawaiian government. His investigation concluded that U.S. diplomatic and military representatives had abused their authority and conspired to provoke the change in government.[41] On December 18, 1893, President Cleveland, in a message to Congress, called the overthrow an unconstitutional “act of war” and called for restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy.[42] Although early annexation efforts were unsuccessful, President Cleveland’s plea went unheard, and on July 4, 1894, the Provisional Government declared itself to be the Republic of Hawai‘i. Six months later, while imprisoned at Iolani Palace, Queen Lili‘uokalani was forced to officially abdicate her throne. She would later reflect on the incidents that occurred and write:
It had not entered our hearts to believe that these friends and allies from the United States . . . would ever . . . seize our nation by the throat, and pass it over to an alien power. Perhaps there is a kind of right . . . known as the “Right of Conquest” under which robbers and marauders may establish themselves in possession of whatsoever they are strong enough to ravish from their fellows. If we have nourished in our bosom those who have sought our ruin, it has been because they were of the people whom we believed to be our dearest friends and allies. . . . [T]he people of the Islands have no voice in determining their future, but are virtually relegated to the condition of the aborigines of [the] American Continent.[43]
In 1896, President Cleveland left office and, under his successor President William McKinley, the United States annexed Hawai‘i as a territory (over the express objections of Native Hawaiians[44]) with the signing of the Newlands Joint Resolution. The self-declared Republic of Hawai‘i ceded sovereignty over the islands to the United States and further ceded 1.8 million acres (nearly half of the total lands) of Hawaiian lands, without the consent of, or compensation to, the Native Hawaiian people or their government.[45] This is an important point that would serve as a catalyst for later resentment and opposition to the U.S. annexation of Hawai‘i. The indigenous people of Hawai‘i never directly relinquished their claims to their sovereignty as a people or over their lands. In fact, petitions were signed by more than 21,000 people, more than half of the Native Hawaiian population, objecting to the annexation.[46]
On April 30, 1900, President McKinley signed the Organic Act for the Territory of Hawaii, which provided a government whose leaders were appointed by the United States, and otherwise defined the political structure and powers of the newly established government, as well as its relationship to the United States.[47] It was not until 20 years later that Congress would address an issue critical to Hawaiian subsistence: land ownership and trust responsibilities. In 1921, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) was signed into law in an attempt to preserve the declining economic and social conditions of Native Hawaiians. It set aside 200,000 acres of land in the federal territory that was later to become the state of Hawai‘i, in an attempt to establish a homeland for the native people of Hawai‘i.[48] People of 50 percent or more Hawaiian blood were to be the beneficiaries of the act (although the original proposal would have included persons with any Hawaiian blood). Congress designed the program to authorize the leasing of lands for residences, farms, and ranches to Native Hawaiians for 99 years at $1 per year.
On August 21, 1959, Hawai‘i became the 50th state of the Union, but not without both active and passive opposition from Native Hawaiians. Any American citizen who had resided in Hawai‘i for one year was eligible to vote to determine whether Hawai‘i would become a state,[49] thus overshadowing the wishes of many Native Hawaiians. After statehood, public lands were transferred to the state to manage, with the exception of those held by the federal government.[50] One of the conditions for land management was the betterment of conditions for Native Hawaiians. In addition, the new state had to agree to administer the HHCA as a trustee for the benefit of Native Hawaiian beneficiaries and incorporate the HHCA into the state’s constitution.[51] To this day, however, many argue that the state and federal governments have not met the established trust obligations, and many people who were scheduled to receive lands have not been given their rightful lot.[52]
Hawai‘i Today: Diversity and Disparity
The fantasy of happy, healthy natives living a life of ease and security, in a bountiful and lush paradise contrasts sharply with the realities of existence for many Hawaiian-Americans: they have been alienated from their land, their numbers diminished by disease, they have lost political power, they are economically insecure, and are troubled by health, education, and social problems out of proportion to their numbers in the population.[53]
The islands of Hawai‘i are an amalgam of immigrants of diverse backgrounds, including Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, and mainland-born Americans. Some argue that this diverse population has not hindered the ability of individual cultures to coexist. In testimony before the Hawaii Advisory Committee, Dr. Kenneth Conklin, a retired high school mathematics teacher and former university professor from Massachusetts, argued that despite the influx of immigrants to Hawai‘i and the westernization of the islands, Native Hawaiians have been successful at preserving their culture. He stated:
[O]ver the last 20 years or so, there has been a powerful resurgence of Hawaiian culture and that has taken place under the auspices of the existing governmental system where all people have equal rights under the law.
There are many, many different cultures in Hawai‘i. All of us are in the minority here. The various cultures of immigrants have done quite well in maintaining and preserving their culture, and the Hawaiian renaissance of the last 20 years has been extraordinarily powerful.[54]
Others argue, however, that the result of the influx of immigrants has been the alienation of Native Hawaiians who have become outsiders in their own land, losing economic and political power to the more affluent immigrant inhabitants. The U.S. government acknowledged in the Apology Resolution of 1993 that the long-range economic and social changes in Hawai‘i during the 19th and early 20th centuries have been devastating to the population, health, and well-being of the Hawaiian people. The question of how to remedy the situation, however, remains a difficult one to answer.
Who Is Hawaiian?
The history of Hawaiian annexation and the subsequent cultural domination of the island’s people have resulted in a painful search for identity and self-realization for many in the Native Hawaiian community. By many accounts, the colonization deprived Native Hawaiians of their fundamental human right to identify as an independent indigenous group through cultural practices. According to Dr. Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa:
When we look at all of the people who were citizens in the Kingdom of Hawaii, who was most deprived of rights and who was most targeted with racism after the overthrow and with the taking of Hawai‘i as an American territory? And I submit to you that was Native Hawaiians.
First of all, Native Hawaiians refused to . . . swear an oath of allegiance to the Republic of Hawai‘i, refused to speak English even though Hawaiian language was banned, and in the territorial legislatures, spoke Hawaiian. They refused. They were breaking the law. They refused to agree that America had a right to be in the country. These are important facts to look at because what happens then, of course, is that they don’t get jobs, they don’t get opportunities for economic advancement. . . .
So who suffered? Whose identity suffered? Who had to give up their Hawaiian names, the names of their ancestors who shaped our own character? It was [Native] Hawaiians. That kind of anti-Hawaiian behavior that we saw with America saying everybody should be American and no one in Hawai‘i, in the territory, no one was supposed to have a Hawaiian name, that impacted us the most.[55]
It is not surprising, then, that there is much disagreement about how to define who is Native Hawaiian, adding to the tensions between factions. Interestingly, foreigners in Hawai‘i a century ago were classified according to cultural groups (such as American, British, and Chinese) and not by racial terms. It is speculated that the concept of race was not introduced until the annexation of the islands.[56] The term “Hawaiian” is itself non-Hawaiian. Early Hawaiians referred to themselves as Kanaka Maoli, which translates to mean true or real person.[57]
Annexation of Hawai‘i by the United States brought with it an awareness of the racial practices of the mainland, which were then emulated, as in the population census. After Hawai‘i became a state, census classifications of race that were used in the continental United States were arbitrarily applied to Hawaiians. The unfamiliar connection between race and color was formally introduced in Hawai‘i with the 1960 census.[58] Because of unfamiliarity with the imposed definitions and the lack of specificity in earlier census counts, it would seem impossible to know with any degree of certainty, based on census data alone, the true number of Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians inhabiting the islands at that time.
Today, there is a more specific, and in many ways more divisive, method for categorizing Hawaiian people. As defined by the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and consistent with modern federal definitions, “Native Hawaiian” (with a capital “N”) refers to all persons of Hawaiian ancestry, regardless of blood quantum; “native Hawaiian” (with a lower case “n”) refers to those with 50 percent or more Hawaiian blood.[59] However, who qualifies as a beneficiary of programs for Native Hawaiians depends on the guidelines of the agency or enabling statute responsible for the program. For example, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands must follow the definition provided by the 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act: “The term ‘native Hawaiian’ means any descendant of not less than one-half of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.”[60] Some state programs use either “Hawaiian” or “Part Hawaiian” for classification purposes. Still others use lower blood requirements for categorization. For example, the State of Hawai‘i Department of Health’s Health Surveillance Program includes in its counts individuals with any measure of Hawaiian blood, making its estimate of the number of Hawaiians inhabiting the islands significantly higher than even the self-identified count of the census.[61]
In 1960, the year after Hawaii’s statehood, the U.S. Census Bureau listed Hawaiians under the category of “Others.”[62] In subsequent years, Native Hawaiians fell within the census category of “Asian or Pacific Islander.” Many Hawaiians felt that including them in this category resulted in inadequate data for monitoring their social and economic conditions because they were overwhelmed by the aggregate data of much larger Asian groups. Thus, in the 2000 census “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” was made a separate category for the first time.[63] Based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directives, this category includes persons “having origins in any of the original people of Hawai‘i, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.” The directives clearly state that the term “Native Hawaiian” does not include individuals who are native to the state of Hawai‘i by virtue of being born there.[64] No established criteria or qualifications (such as blood quantum levels) are used to determine an individual’s race or ethnic classification for census purposes.[65] (These will be important points for the following discussions surrounding programs benefiting Native Hawaiians and the implications of the Rice decision.)
The classification of who is N(n)ative Hawaiian for programmatic, policy, and census purposes lies in conflict with how many of Hawaii’s people self-identify. Many who consider themselves direct descendents of Hawaii’s indigenous people feel strongly about self-identification, which is seen as an important validation of their heritage. Those Native Hawaiians who spoke before the Hawaii Advisory Committee were passionate in their expressions of identity, as expressed by A‘o Pohaku Rodenhurst, a Native Hawaiian kupuna:
[W]e are proud to be Hawaiians. We have always been proud to be Hawaiians. There is no place we can go to be Hawaiians but here. We take pride in the sacredness of this land that was built by our forefathers and the gods of our land that have taught people healing called ho‘oponopono. . . .
[W]e live in peace. But nobody of the American government has made peace for us . . . , but [they] want to force us to be Americans, force us to share everything, even our ethnicity. They tried to steal our identity by claiming they are Hawaiians. They are not Hawaiians. We will never give this up.
People who do not have culture cannot understand this. People who are raised just colonized cannot begin to understand the pain and the suffering of what our ancestors went through, losing their lands, their identity, and being kicked to the curb by colonization and foreign laws and rules.[66]
The testimony of Dr. Richard Kekuni Akana Blaisdell, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of Hawai‘i, further illustrated the importance of self-identification and the frustration of being labeled by outsiders:
We are Kanaka Maoli. In a very important sense, we are not Hawaiian. We are not Native Hawaiian with a lowercase nor an uppercase capital “N.” We are not Americans. We are not Native Americans. We are Kanaka Maoli. That is a name by which our ancestors identified themselves. That is the way and the manner in which we identify ourselves. So every time one of us, one of you, uses any of these other terms, these colonial and colonized terms for us, you are, in a sense, demeaning us.[67]
Even among Hawaiians, however, there is disagreement over who is truly Native Hawaiian. Some take a more inclusive approach. For example, in her statement before the Hawaii Advisory Committee at the 2000 forum, Dr. Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa, director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, cited to the United Nation’s Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which states that “indigenous peoples have [the] collective and individual right to maintain and develop distinct ethnic and cultural characteristics and identities, including the right to self-identification.”[68] According to Dr. Kame‘eleihiwa, this right has been abrogated by the American government’s requirement that Native Hawaiians be 50 percent blood quantum. She stated that her people believe Native Hawaiians are any blood quantum.[69]
On the other end of the spectrum, however, are those who believe that individuals with only “one drop” of Hawaiian blood are not Native Hawaiians, as expressed by Emmett Lee Loy, a Native Hawaiian attorney who spoke at the 2000 forum. He believes that attempts to lower the blood requirement are strategically designed to support the interests of those who want recognition legislation passed. “What they’re trying to do is broaden the class so much that the State of Hawai‘i is allowed to shirk its obligations to the 50-percent-plus blood quantum.”[70] He contends that the requirements established by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act are the ones that should remain in effect.
Others spoke out in the 2000 forum saying that the practice of defining who is Hawaiian by blood quantum pits Hawaiians against each other, in effect causing them to compete for both recognition and the limited available resources. William Lawson, a Hawai‘i resident, spoke to this issue by stating that the existence of a blood quantum level:
is a blatant discriminatory mandate whereby those of Hawaiian ancestry with 50 percent or higher blood quantum have been pitted against those of less than 49 percent quantum or less of the qualifying mandate. What blood quantum makes a Caucasian a Caucasian or what quantum makes a Filipino a Filipino or an Afro-American an Afro-American, and so on and so forth?[71]
Demographics
As has been discussed, the once-robust Hawaiian population faced a severe reduction in the years following European contact. In fact, after the first official census of the islands in 1853, it was estimated that the population of Native Hawaiians was approximately 71,000 people.[72] One century after European contact, the population of Native Hawaiians had declined nearly 80 percent. In the period between 1853 and 1896, the percentage of inhabitants who were Native Hawaiian decreased from 95.8 percent to 28.5 percent of the total population. During that same period, the percentage of inhabitants who were part Hawaiian increased from 1.3 percent to 7.8 percent.[73] Much of the population decrease was the result of diseases brought by European settlers and was accelerated by low fertility rates, high infant mortality, poor housing, inadequate medical care, inferior sanitation, hunger and malnutrition, and alcohol and tobacco use. Many of these unfortunate realities still exist today, more than two centuries since European contact.[74]
