A contentious but interesting dialog about Hawaiian sovereignty took place in late February and early March 2014 between two men, Ian Lind and Mark 'Umi Perkins, who both have some degree of Hawaiian native blood. The substantive issues in the dialog are important, but the theatrics grab most of the attention.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The dialog illustrates how Hawaiian independence activists hide inside venues they control to snipe at people they perceive as heretics or opponents, while refusing to engage in honest debate in venues which are neutral.
2. Who are Ian Lind and Umi Perkins? How do their personal backgrounds shape their dialog on Hawaiian sovereignty?
3. Democrats, and people on the left of the political spectrum, have almost always favored Hawaiian sovereignty (either independence or tribal recognition); while Republicans, and people on the right of the political spectrum, have almost always favored annexation and statehood for Hawaii and opposed creation of a Hawaiian tribe and racial entitlement programs. This fundamental quarrel has been pervasive in American politics continuously from 1890 to now.
4. Oh, did I mention the substantive topic of the dialog? Perhaps that's almost as interesting as the theatrics! Here's a timeline and extremely brief summary of each essay, followed by full text of them all and a lengthy comment I wrote demolishing Perkins' second essay but which was suppressed by the Hawaii Independent online newspaper.
5. Ian Lind, Honolulu Civil Beat, Wednesday February 26, 2014. "Some Laughable Royalty Claims". Lind pokes fun at "Wannabe Royals" and "cult-like groups" asserting sovereign rulership of Hawaii, with marshals carrying badges claiming authority to enforce the king's orders. Lind spent considerable time analyzing the 1994 Hawaii Supreme Court's ruling in State v. Armitage which concluded that it's a political question whether any sovereignty group will be recognized by the state and federal governments, and in the meantime the courts are entitled to regulate everyone's behavior.
6. Umi Perkins, Hawaii Independent, Wednesday February 26, 2014. "Sovereignty not a laughing matter: A response to Ian lind". Perkins says "Lind's mockery of sovereignty groups who claim to be the legitimate government misses the historical and political context that drives these groups." Perkins cites his own academic credentials as a reason why he can put Lind's statements in perspective; and cites Keanu Sai's case presented at an arbitration hearing in the Hague as recognition by an international entity that Hawaii remains a sovereign nation. Perkins then launches a lengthy discussion of President Cleveland's response to the Hawaiian revolution of 1893, the alleged illegality of the joint resolution of annexation, etc. Perkins concludes that various [so-called] governments have conflicting claims to represent the "occupied state" which, he says, is "universally recognized as having been illegally overthrown." And that's "no laughing matter."
7. Ian Lind's own blog, Saturday March 1, 2014. "Drawn into a battle royal." Briefly takes note of the Lind and Perkins essays, provides links to both of them, says "It's interesting to note that most comments attack me for my supposed views of 'sovereignty,' although the column addressed only the claims of those using sovereignty arguments as background for asserting their own personal royal prerogatives", and promises to write a response to Perkins soon.
8. Ian Lind, Honolulu Civil Beat, Wednesday March 5, 2014. "Is Part of the Sovereignty Debate Just a Matter of Faith?" Lind notes that Perkins had called Keanu Sai's arbitration at the Hague one of the most credible current approaches to sovereignty. Lind then cites the decision of the arbitral tribunal dismissing the case on the grounds that there was not any dispute between the two participants and that the tribunal cannot adjudicate purely historical claims. "Contrary to Perkins' assertion, the arbitrators made clear in their award that they gave no 'tacit recognition' to the sovereignty claims of Sai and his Hawaiian Kingdom." Lind then cites a Supreme Court decision in 1901 to rebut Perkins' claim that joint resolution is not acceptable as a means of annexation. Lind notes that ethnic Hawaiians have greatly improved their standard of living since annexation, but perhaps have not kept up with even greater improvements by other ethnic groups. Lind concludes that sovereignty would matter only if it would improve the problems afflicting Hawaiians today, and those challenges are more worthy of discussion than "the infighting of would-be royals or pseudo-legal academic studies of times and events long past."
9. Ian Lind's own blog, Thursday March 6, 2014. "Questioning matters of faith can be dangerous territory." Links to the March 5 Civil Beat article. Lind quotes his Civil Beat essay: "
trying to talk about sovereignty has become much like attempting to debate religion. It can be very difficult to get past points of disagreement. In both cases, believers are united by certain core articles of faith, beliefs that are not subject to rational testing and are not open to critical and skeptical examination. Those who don't share the faith are looked upon as non-believers who are fit to be cast down to the nether-regions or, in the case of sovereignty, dismissed as ignorant and presumably anti-Hawaiian." Lind concludes "There hasn't been anything said so far that would undercut this thesis." Major online comments by Ken Conklin, Scott Crawford, and a lengthy anonymous rebuttal to Crawford showing that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Jones v. United States (1890) that precedent is not necessary for the method of annexation, because recognition of sovereignty is a political issue and not for the courts to decide.
10. Umi Perkins, Hawaii Independent March 6, 2014, 3:40 PM. "Facts, not faith, support sovereignty: What we have is a subjugated history, one that is exacerbated by focusing on the claims of one part of the larger sovereignty movement with whose claims one disagrees." Perkins reasserts the activist pillar of faith that "Congressional authority [joint resolution of annexation] is restricted to US territory and simply does not extend to a foreign country" and international law requires a treaty. Perkins characterizes the majority (although perhaps not lind) as defending an illegal annexation following an illegal overthrow of the monarchy. Perkins concludes "What we have is a subjugated history, one that is exacerbated by focusing on the claims of one part of the larger sovereignty movement with whose claims one disagrees. The larger movement itself is based not on faith, but on historically and legally sound reasoning."
11. Ken Conklin attempted to post a comment to Perkins' article, on the Hawaii Independent webpage, later the same day of Thursday March 6. But it failed to get posted, perhaps because Hawaii Independent, and also Civil Beat, require log-in through Facebook. For several months in both venues my name and photo appear as though I have successfully logged in, and my attempted comment shows up in my browser as though it got posted, but is not really there when viewed through a different browser. I sent the comment directly to editor Ikaika Hussey with request that he post it. He acknowledged receiving it but then never posted it. The comment provides letters from foreign governments of de facto recognition of the Provisional Government, and letters of de jure recognition of the Republic; so the Republic had sovereignty recognized by the family of nations and was therefore able to speak for Hawaii to offer the Treaty of Annexation. I also explained that after Hawaii offered a Treaty of Annexation, the method used by the U.S. to ratify a Treaty of Annexation is entirely an internal matter for the U.S. alone to decide, and it chose joint resolution which no person outside the U.S. has any right to challenge.
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1. The dialog illustrates how Hawaiian independence activists hide inside venues they control to snipe at people they perceive as heretics or opponents, while refusing to engage in honest debate in venues which are neutral.
One of the interesting things about the dialog was that Ian Lind wrote two essays a week apart in a major Hawaii online newspaper (Honolulu Civil Beat), while Umi Perkins (who has dropped his American first name in favor of his Hawaiian middle name) used a different and little-known online newspaper (Hawaii Independent) to publish each of his articles attacking Lind's essays just a few hours later.
Was it really a dialog? Yes, sort of. Both of Perkins' essays directly criticized what Lind had said and made only tangential mention of other people. Lind's second essay a week later acknowledged Perkins' first essay that had focused on Lind's first essay that had been published just a few hours earlier. Perkins' second essay directly attacked Lind's second essay that had been published just a few hours earlier. Meanwhile, from the sidelines, some sovereignty activists behaved like partisan spectators at a bar fight, cheering Perkins and trashing Lind by posting emotional but low-information online comments to essays by both Lind and Perkins in both venues.
Nearly all the comments were ad-hominem -- most were hostile to Lind, and the few that were favorable to him referred to Lind's Hawaiian ancestry and long-ago activism as reasons to excuse him for poking fun at some ridiculous behavior by recent claimants to Hawaii's throne that now exists only as wood and fabric in a museum. There were no personal attacks against Perkins, because he is a knight defending what the activists regard as the "true faith."
Another interesting thing about the dialog is that it illustrates the psychology of Hawaiian independence activists who feel a need to behave as propagandists rather than scholars honestly debating facts and values. The activists with academic credentials like to create an appearance of scholarliness, but they do not cite or try to refute evidence contrary to their views [move on, nothing to see here] and they refuse to engage in debates with opponents where facts and logic would be decisive. The activists' allies with lesser credentials behave like thugs both online and in-person, using bullying tactics, vituperation, character assassination, and vile language. Both the scholars and the thugs use almost entirely venues which they control and where they can easily exclude or drown out opponents -- venues such as the University of Hawaii, a tightly controlled online newspaper, a blog, a website, or Iolani Palace.
Umi Perkins chose not to publish his rebuttals to Ian Lind through the widely-read and somewhat more neutral Honolulu Civil Beat, which was the venue where Lind's essays were published. Instead, Perkins published his rebuttals through a completely different venue where nearly all the readers and commenters are supporters of Perkins' viewpoint.
The Hawaii Independent online newspaper is owned and edited by Ikaika Hussey, an independence activist. It has never published an essay opposed to Hawaiian independence or presenting facts and interpretations of history contrary to the independence narrative. It previously allowed online comments from anyone who wished to comment. But after a rare opposing comment was occasionally made, the Hawaii Independent began requiring commenters to log on through a Facebook account so that comments and their authors can be monitored. Ikaika Hussey, who owns and edits the Hawaii Independent, is also the owner and editor of an older very large highly interactive blog whose name clearly displays its racialist content: "Maoliworld" at
http://maoliworld.ning.com
Hussey previously was a writer for the student newspaper at the University of Hawaii, was a candidate for the state legislature, and an elected delegate to the state-funded "Native Hawaiian Convention" campaigning for independence. He has led numerous independence rallies. Hussey was an organizer of the semi-violent disruption of Statehood Day celebration in August 2006
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/statehoodday2006.html
and Hussey was the primary organizer of a street protest and attempted takeover of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii office in June 2007 which included participation by the CEO of Kamehameha Schools, students and faculty from one of the ethnic-Hawaiian-focus charter schools, printing facilities donated by the Democratic Party, etc.
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/GRIH060807.html
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2. Who are Ian Lind and Umi Perkins? How do their personal backgrounds shape their dialog on Hawaiian sovereignty?
It's important to know that Perkins is about 42, with a background focused almost entirely on Hawaiian racialism and the independence movement, including a masters in Government from Harvard (2002) and Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Hawaii (2013), recent or current teaching positions at 'Anuenue Hawaiian language immersion school, Kamehameha School, and Windward Community College. As a newcomer to the vastly overcrowded field of Hawaiian independence activists seeking academic sinecures, he needs to grab attention and "make his bones" [a pun of special significance to ethnic Hawaiian activists] by attacking opponents of the independence movement or ethnic Hawaiians who dare to step out of line to disagree with aspects of it.
By contrast, Lind is decades older, having retired in 2001 as investigative reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and, before that, a broad range of leftwing political activism as a community organizer for Quaker peace groups and staffer for far-left politicians. His low-key involvement in ethnic Hawaiian affairs was mostly an aspect of his broader political activism rather than the racialist activism of Perkins. As an investigative journalist, and an older man who has learned to be temperate and to probe deeply before spouting half-formed conclusions, Lind is cautious about the historical claims of the activists and the various types of sovereignty demanded by different groups. His hesitancy and attention to detail, in a man of his age and experience, is viewed by the activists as a sign of disloyalty; placing him in a position similar to a member of a church who asks too many questions about theology. His less than perfect knowledge on some obscure topics dear to their hearts makes him an easy target for activists who want to display their prowess.
Mark 'Umi Perkins describes himself on his blog
http://theumiverse.wordpress.com/about/
"I was born in Boston, Massachusetts [apparently in 1972] to a Hawaiian mother and a father whose family had been in Massachusetts since 1631."
Came to Hawaii at age 2. "I grew up in Kapahulu and Waikiki, attending a Montessori school and later Noelani Elementary, but spent much of my time in the gardens behind Imin Hall at the East-West Center, and surrounded by intellectuals. In 1981, at age 9, my parents took academic positions at the fledgling Atenisi University in Tonga. The six years I spent there proved to be formative in many ways. I saw the contrast between Tongans, who forbade foreigners to own property, and Hawaiians, who even then made up a large proportion of the homeless. ... In 1986, I was sent to Lahainaluna as a boarder, where my focus shifted to 'the local.' Lahaina was my mother's home as a child and ancestral home of my family."
** Hey, wait a minute! Half of Perkins' ancestry comes from his Caucasian "father whose family had been in Massachusetts since 1631." But now he says Lahaina was the ancestral home of his family? Perkins is doing what many Hawaiian activists do, not only dropping his Euro-American name Mark in favor of his Hawaiian name Umi, but suppressing more than half of his ancestry (assuming his mother had less than 100% Hawaiian blood) to portray himself as primarily or completely Hawaiian.
According to his blog, Perkins then attended Lahainaluna school (Maui) as a boarding student.
B.A. from Whittier College (California) 1994 in Physical Education and Geology. [Perkins in his blog laments the fact that Whittier was President Nixon's college and that Perkins was exposed to a conservative campus orientation. Somehow he escaped being corrupted by it!]
Drifted for a few years including teaching science at Wai'anae High school and working as a dorm counselor at Lahainaluna.
M.A. from Harvard University in Government in 2002, with a master's thesis comparing Hawaiian and Maori land claims [Not Tongan drawing on his 6 years of residency there, but New Zealand Maori despite apparently never having visited there] entitled "O ka 'Āina ke Ea: Land is Sovereignty."
Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Hawaii in May 2013, with a dissertation entitled "Kuleana: A Genealogy of Native Tenant Rights."
Most recently he has been a teacher at 'Anuenue School (Hawaiian language immersion), a teacher at Kamehameha (where the board of trustees allows admission only to students who have at least one drop of Hawaiian blood), and part-time lecturer in Political Science at Windward Community College (of ten campuses in the UH system, WCC is the one with the highest percentage of ethnic Hawaiian students).
Ian Lind describes himself on his blog
http://www.ilind.net/about/
"I've been blogging at www.iLind.net (and its predecessor site) for nearly 10 years. I've previously worked as an investigative reporter, newsletter publisher, public interest lobbyist and advocate, legislative staffer, peace activist, and more. I wrote for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from 1993-2001. Before joining the Star-Bulletlin, I was editor and publisher of Hawaii Monitor, a monthly newsletter covering Hawaii politics from 1990-1993. I was senior aide to Honolulu City Council Member Neil Abercrombie (1988-90), executive director of Common Cause in Hawaii (1983-87), and director of the Hawaii Area Program of the American Friends Service Committee
(1974-80). I am a past chairman of the Honolulu Community-Media Council, and former chair of the American Friends Service Committee's National Peace Education Division Executive Committee in Philadelphia."
Lind is decades older than Perkins, and in recent years has been fairly quiet on the sovereignty topic, with the result that some of the younger hotheads are unaware of Lind's far-left orientation in general and his involvement in the 1976 Kaho'olawe occupation. From the tone of the dialog, and especially the online comments, some activists seem to think Lind is a "haole" [Caucasian with no Hawaiian blood], which in itself would make the hotheads feel especially free to exhibit hostility toward him and characterize him as having no right to intrude into Hawaiian affairs. And if he failed to be politically liberal, that would be another black mark against him. That's how it goes in these days of political correctness when ad hominem attacks, bloodlines, and "laying your body on the line" crowd out logic and facts. Some of the comments got so hostile toward Lind that "Lana Ulu" [the racialist Lana Ululani Robbins] felt compelled to point out at 12:36 in the comments to Lind's March 5 Civil Beat column that "Actually Ian Lind has the koko [Hawaiian blood] and iwi [Hawaiian ancestral bones] and was on the frontline taking pictures of the takeover of Kaho'olawe" and she provided a link to photos Lind took in 1976 posted on Lind's blog at
http://ilind.net/gallery_old/kahoolawe1976/
Indeed, Lind has a long history of far-left activism -- a fact which some of his detractors in the Hawaiian independence movement seem unaware of. The American Friends Service Committee is the well-funded national political arm of the Quakers. In the mid to late 20th Century they were known for their anti-war, anti-military efforts and counseling of draft resisters and conscientious objectors during the Viet Nam war when Lind was working for them, both in Philadelphia and Honolulu.
Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie has decades of far-left activism (enthusiastically displayed by excessively long hair and beard) prompting some commentators to call him a hippie and a Communist.
http://tinyurl.com/nyg3hgg
He still had the hippie appearance (beard and ponytail) when Ian Lind was working as his senior aide at City Council and when Abercrombie won election to Congress.
Further evidence of Lind's leftwing orientation and political correctness is shown in his lifestyle. He has a lifelong marriage to Meda Chesney-Lind, who is Professor of Women's Studies at University of Hawaii (Manoa), specializing in feminist criminology (Look it up on Google!). Ian fulfills the stereotype of a feminist dream-husband. He serves as house-husband in support of his wife and occasionally accompanies her to academic conventions or speeches she gives. They have seven cats who came to their door as strays from time to time over the years and were taken in, most of whom sleep with them in their bed, and some of whom have serious medical problems accompanied by large veterinarian bills. He blogs about himself and his wife taking long walks on the beach at dawn nearly every morning. He blogs about himself cooking dinner, caring for the cats, and many posts about Hawaii politics, ethics and transparency in government, conflicts of interest, campaign spending, and other topics that might be seen as a continuation of his previous job as an investigative reporter. He has blogged in support of the far-left concept that Republicans are engaged in a "war on women" and that "whiteness studies" [trashing Caucasian attitudes, "white privilege", and oppression of minorities] is a legitimate academic discipline. He has also published a weekly column in Honolulu Civil Beat online newspaper since October 2012, and several articles before that.
The point of these descriptions of the backgrounds of Umi Perkins and Ian Lind is that Ian Lind has distinguished credentials as an investigative journalist, and considerable "street cred" as a leftwing political activist who should be respected by the independence activists. But Lind's sarcastic humor directed against ridiculous pretenders to the non-existent throne of Hawaii outraged the independence activists and provoked them to make personal attacks on Lind and also to defend their dogma that Hawaii still has sovereignty as an independent nation (even though Lind did not directly attack that notion).
The situation is reminiscent of how Muslim activists reacted when a newspaper in Holland published a cartoon depicting the face of the Prophet Mohammed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
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3. Democrats, and people on the left of the political spectrum, have almost always favored Hawaiian sovereignty (either independence or tribal recognition); while Republicans, and people on the right of the political spectrum, have almost always favored annexation and statehood for Hawaii and opposed creation of a Hawaiian tribe and racial entitlement programs. This fundamental quarrel has been pervasive in American politics continuously from 1890 to now.
It's important for understanding the Lind/Perkins dialog to know that both men have Hawaiian blood and both are politically quite far to the left on the political spectrum. Lind's lifelong leftwing activism and "politically correct" lifestyle would normally give him a lot of "street cred" with Hawaiian independence activists. But the activists behave like religious zealots who cannot tolerate any hesitancy in support or skeptical questioning of their dogmas.
Nearly all political liberals support Hawaiian independence; and nearly all independence activists are quite far to the left on most other issues such as favoring communal property, socialist redistribution of wealth over unbridled capitalist aggregation of wealth, and group rights over individual rights. This has been true for more than a century, as can be seen in the battles between Republicans and Democrats from the 1890s to now regarding Hawaiian sovereignty.
Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, was President at the time of the Hawaiian revolution of January 17, 1893. His close advisors had let it be known that the President would be favorable to annexation if there were a revolution in Hawaii resulting in Hawaii then offering a treaty. Harrison was succeeded by Democrat President Grover Cleveland, a personal friend of Queen Lili'uokalani.
Cleveland took office in March of 1893. He immediately withdrew the Hawaii government's proposed Treaty of Annexation from the Senate and on his sixth day in office he sent a political hack to Hawaii (James Blount) as his personal representative to write a report calling the revolution illegitimate and to try to destabilize the provisional government. In mid-December 1893 Cleveland's new minister to Hawaii, Albert Willis, ordered President Dole to step down and restore the Queen, while U.S. Navy ships staged noisy war games within sight of shore; but Dole stood firm. In January 1895 an attempted counterrevolution failed (using guns smuggled from California, probably with the connivance of the U.S.) and Lili'uokalani was placed under house arrest in the Palace for 7 months. Cleveland continued blocking annexation for the remainder of his 4 year term.
Republican President William McKinley took office in March 1897 and helped with ratification of a Treaty of Annexation in 1898.
Hawaii Statehood was approved in 1959 during the 7th year of the administration of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.
After a couple decades of ethnic Hawaiian grievance-mongering, the Native Hawaiians Study Commission was authorized by both chambers of Congress in 1980 and produced a Republican-dominated majority report in 1983 under Republican President Ronald Reagan, which concluded the U.S. had done nothing wrong in the Hawaiian revolution of 1893 and that there should be no race-based government welfare programs for ethnic Hawaiians -- a report that was so distressing to Hawaiian activists and Democrats that a separate minority report was written.
Following the election of Democrat President Bill Clinton in 1992, the (in)famous apology resolution was passed by Congress and signed in 1993.
The Democrat-sponsored Akaka bill was introduced in Congress in summer of 2000, and remained active through 2012. It passed the House of Representatives three times, led on all three occasions by Hawaii radical Democrat Neil Abercrombie, with every Democrat voting in favor (except 4 of them on the final occasion), and almost all Republicans opposed. Republicans in the Senate blocked the bill by placing holds and filibustering.
In the Senate during 2006, and during his campaign for president in 2007, and during his term from 2008 to 2012 Democrat President Barack Obama spoke in favor of the Akaka bill several times. Currently, in 2013 to 2014 Obama's Secretary of Interior and Attorney General have been working on developing an administrative process, or Executive Order, to grant federal recognition to a phony ethnic Hawaiian tribe being created by a Democrat Governor and Democrat-dominated state legislature.
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4. Oh, did I mention the substantive topic of the dialog? Here's the full text of each essay by Lind and Perkins, plus a lengthy comment I wrote demolishing Perkins' second essay but which was suppressed by the Hawaii Independent online newspaper. They simply cannot tolerate an opposing viewpoint containing strong factual and logical arguments.
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5. Ian Lind, Honolulu Civil Beat, Wednesday February 26, 2014. "Some Laughable Royalty Claims".
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2014/02/26/21292-hawaii-monitor-some-laughable-royalty-claims/
** Photo:
https://civilbeat_production.s3.amazonaws.com/media_files/photos/21293-959d6952fa80b55941baf01b297dcd9a67ea8dedb38065f473002464_w%3A1024_px.jpg
** Photo caption:
This screen capture from the absurd comedy "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" depicts King Arthur and his men riding imaginary horses and making the clippety-clap sound of hooves by banging two coconut shells together.
Suddenly it seems we've got a bumper crop of Wannabe Royals staking their claims, however questionable, to wield power on behalf of what each says is a sovereign Hawaiian government tracing its roots back prior to the 1893 "overthrow" of the kingdom.
It seems like everywhere you turn, there's another cult-like group formed around a charismatic central figure claiming sovereign rights and asserting that they and their followers are above the laws that apply to the rest of us. Pretenders, some might call them.
Their claims, of course, are conflicting and overlapping, leading to repeated attempts by certain sovereigns to undercut the claims of others, and vice versa.
Timid news coverage and a reluctance among many Hawaiians to publicly criticize these royal claimants for fear of hurting other more mainstream sovereignty initiatives that are also underway has resulted in the Wannabe Royals getting more respect and deference than they would otherwise merit.
Although far from politically correct, especially in an island state where the sovereignty narrative has been gathering steam, there's a wonderfully instructive scene at the beginning of the classic 1975 British comedy, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" that says a lot about claims to royal status.
Swirling mist fills the screen immediately following the film's credits, and out of the mist come what sounds like the clippety-clop of horses slowly approaching. Two riders then emerge over a rise, appearing to be bouncing atop their trusty steeds. But as they get closer, the two -- introduced as King Arthur and a trusty servant -- are revealed to be on foot, skipping along in a child's play version of a horseback ride, while the sound of horses hooves turn out to be the servant tapping out the rhythm by banging two coconut shells together.
A few minutes later, the pair "ride" up to several peasants working in a field, and Arthur announces boldly, "I am your King."
A woman in the field replies: "Well, I didn't vote for you!"
"You don't vote for kings!" Arthur responds indignantly, and then turns to the question of just how one does get to be a king.
Monty Python's Arthur, like the rival Hawaiian sovereigns, harkens back to a legitimizing myth, a historical narrative that claims to prove -- to believers at least -- their right to power.
In Python's Holy Grail, it leads to a farcical back-and-forth with the peasants, members of a self-proclaimed "anarchist-syndicalist commune," who are not about to bow down before the equally self-proclaimed "King of the Britains."
"Who are the Britains?" the woman asks, and off they go to deconstruct Arthur's claim to political legitimacy.
Sometimes claims of sovereignty in the "real" world don't play out so humorously.
The Garden Island newspaper described how a meeting scheduled last month to discuss the possibility of a new 12,000-foot well tapped high into Kauai's Mount Kahili was disrupted by angry opponents of the project.
According to the newspaper, a heavyweight role was played by Dayne "Aipoalani" Gonzalves, who has claimed the title of Alii Nui, or king, of what he calls the Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi. Some accounts credit Gonzalves and his appointed "federal marshals" for shutting down the meeting.
"Aipoalani" at one point left his seat and challenged the meeting facilitator and county water officials present, according to the newspaper's account.
"I don't recognize you guys on this land," he said. "We in charge of this land, not you guys. You know who I am? I'm Alii Nui
You guys don't have our permission. OK? We going to protect this, whatever it takes. You guys can call you guys' police, you guys' DLNR. But they gonna have to come see me, and us. We are the federal marshals of Hawaii."
There appear to be legitimate problems with the proposed well, including dramatically escalating cost estimates and, as I understand, a less than full understanding of the impact of the new well on water flows in nearby streams and rivers. But these are dwarfed by the many levels of problems with Gonzalves' claim that state and county officials have to "come see me" -- the king -- in order to do anything on his part of Kauai.
Let's see. His right to grab the "Alii Nui" title appears to rest on his untested claim to be the "great-great-great-grandson of King Kamehameha I."
Of course, even if his untested genealogical claim is true, it fails to address exactly why Gonzalves should be considered king rather than any of the other people with similar ancestral roots, likely numbering in the many thousands. The whole idea of declaring oneself "king" in this way invites retorts of the "sure, and I'm Jesus Christ" variety.
It's likely Gonzalves is an effective community organizer and popular voice, but that's a long way from claiming to be the king.
Combine the absence of legitimacy with the implied threats of "marshals" with badges claiming authority to enforce the "kings" orders, and I have to wonder whether the "sovereignty" idea is poised to usher in an era of regional "warlords," each with claims to wield sovereignty within their own territory, and each rejecting local and state government authority?
It is interesting to see the Hawaii Supreme Court, which apparently shares similar concerns, has been slowly spelling out the limits of sovereignty politics. In the latest case of this kind, decided earlier this year, the court went out of its way to reject arguments made by members of one Hawaiian sovereignty group that they were exempt from state law because they are "citizens" subject to the laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (State v. Armitage, decided January 28, 2014).
The case involved criminal charges filed against Henry Noa and two other members of the Restored Hawaiian Government (also referred to as the Reinstated Kingdom of Hawaii or Reinstated Nation of Hawaii) for landing on Kahoolawe in a demonstration they described as aimed at "reclaiming" Kahoolawe and all other public lands for their Reinstated Kingdom.
The Supreme Court dismissed the criminal charges on a technicality, but then took the occasion to systematically address the sovereignty arguments raised in this case and others.
The court acknowledged the state's stated openness to resolving outstanding historical claims that might be asserted by Hawaiians based on the Legislature's previous recognition of their "unrelinquished sovereignty."
But the court said clearly that it could not, and would not, pick and choose among the claims of competing sovereignty groups.
"To date, no sovereign native Hawaiian entity has been recognized by the United States and the State of Hawaii," and the court noted that there are "several" organizations vying for such recognition.
Whether or not an independent sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom exists is a political question and is not a matter for the courts to determine, the court ruled.
Only when a sovereign Hawaiian governing entity is recognized in the local, national and international arenas will it be granted the appropriate legal deference. Today, no group is able to claim such recognition.
The court also held that while the state Constitution protects "all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes," building a native Hawaiian nation is not one of the fundamental rights protected by the constitution.
And the court noted that, contrary to a popular belief in sovereignty circles, "individuals claiming to be citizens of an independent sovereign entity are not exempt from the state's laws."
"'International law' takes precedence over state statutes in only limited circumstances," the court held. "These circumstances are not present when the dispute is concerned with domestic rights and duties."
In addition, according to the court, the state "has a legitimate interest in the conduct of persons within its jurisdiction, and their conduct is amenable to reasonable state regulation, regardless of 'international law.'"
I'm glad the Supreme Court has clarified the legal limits of popular sovereignty claims, and hope that we can restore our natural skepticism when this or that royal wannabe steps forward to test our credibility.
Reasserting our ability to laugh at them when they so clearly deserve it would be a welcome bonus.
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6. Umi Perkins, Hawaii Independent, Wednesday February 26, 2014. "Sovereignty not a laughing matter: A response to Ian lind".
http://hawaiiindependent.net/story/sovereignty-not-a-laughing-matter
Civil Beat's decision to publish journalist and blogger Ian Lind's article on "Laughable Royalty Claims" was certainly influenced by the racially-charged climate around Representative Faye Hanohano and the incident at Kalama Park on Maui. I have long respected Lind as a journalist, but he is, in this case, simply out of his depth. I will show that even more than in the other cases, Lind's mockery of sovereignty groups who claim to be the legitimate government misses the historical and political context that drives these groups.
First, my credentials. As I tell my students, it's not merely what is said, but who says it that matters. I encourage them to look for credibility and neutrality. I am not a crackpot. I have a master's degree in government from Harvard and a PhD in Political Science from UH Mānoa. I have been a Hawaiian history teacher for fourteen years in public and private schools. I teach political science in the University of Hawai'i system. Consequently, I have the background necessary to put Lind's statements in perspective.
Lind gives us all permission to laugh at the actions of groups such as Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom (also known as the Hawaiian Kingdom Government) and others. His support for the laughability of their claims comes from recent rulings by the Hawai'i Supreme Court. This line of thinking comes from, at best, a Federal recognition mentality in which Hawaiians must ask permission to act on their claims, and at worst from a passive acceptance of the political status quo. It also ignores the historical sequence of events that led us here. When Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Peter Apo (himself an advocate of Federal recognition) spoke to my Hawai'i Politics class last week, he said that Hawaiians' historical grievances must be addressed eventually. "You can feel the tension" in the Hawaiian community, he said. It is this tension that drives groups such as those Lind names to simply take the reins and establish governments, with or without (usually without) permission.
While he acknowledges that there are "other more mainstream sovereignty initiatives," Lind does not name any, and his blog iLind.com deals mainly with media and mainstream politics, not sovereignty. We are left to assume he is referring to the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission and its Kana'iolowalu initiative, which I have written about, and is itself highly problematic. One leader curiously not mentioned is Keanu Sai. Lind states that "only when a sovereign Hawaiian governing entity is recognized in the local, national and international arenas will it be granted the appropriate legal deference. Today, no group is able to claim such recognition." Sai's Acting Hawaiian Kingdom, however, argued a case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the World Court in 2000. This is tacit recognition of Hawai'i's continued sovereign status from an international entitity, rather than from the Hawai'i State Supreme Court, which cannot be expected to rule against its own credibility. Sai went on to get a PhD in Political Science based on the argument that Hawai'i remains a sovereign nation. On his dissertation committee were the dean of UH Law School (credibility) and the dean of the School of Law at one of the colleges of the University of London (neutrality).
The idea has been slowly, but steadily, growing that Hawai'i remains sovereign even though its government was, as Lind put it, "overthrown." Putting quotes around the overthrow and neglecting the most credible initiatives for the recognition of sovereignty shows a complete lack of understanding of the history of the Hawaiian nation. Lind can probably be forgiven for this lack. A professor in the UH Mānoa History Department once told me that there seemed to be an effort to "do in" Hawaiian history as a field, an effort that trickled down to create a lack of curriculum materials for Hawaiian history at the lower levels.
Annexation 101
After the US-backed overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani, and President Cleveland's agreement to reinstate her in 1893, five years of stalemate passed between Congress (the majority of whom wanted annexation) and the President (who said the Provisional Government was "self proclaimed" and "owed its existence to an armed invasion"). The annexationist William McKinley's election was not enough to allow for the passage of a treaty of annexation, and after the Spanish-American War "annexation" was asserted through a mere Joint Resolution, which has little legal force in the US and none outside it.
This fact has driven sovereignty groups to act on the "inherent sovereignty" that was recognized in the 1993 Apology Resolution. Lind's note that the Hawai'i Supreme Court has stated that "To date, no sovereign native Hawaiian entity has been recognized by the United States and the State of Hawaii," shows no grasp of this history. It has also led some foreign countries to question Hawai'i's legal status. In 2011, China challenged then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to prove whether the US held jurisdiction to Hawai'i. What is implicated is that Hawai'i is under occupation. As Cambridge University international legal theorist James Crawford explains,
There is a strong presumption that the State continues to exist, with its rights and obligations, despite revolutionary changes in government, or despite a period in which there is no, or no effective, government. Belligerent occupation does not affect the continuity of the State, even where there exists no government claiming to represent the occupied State.
What we have, then, are governments "claiming to represent the occupied State," but whose claims are not deemed credible by all. While it may be true that "their claims
are conflicting and overlapping," their attempts to restore the government of Hawai'i universally recognized as having been illegally overthrown are no laughing matter.
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7. Ian Lind's own blog, Saturday March 1, 2014. "Drawn into a battle royal."
http://www.ilind.net/2014/03/01/drawn-into-a-battle-royal
I admit that I fully expected my column over at Civil Beat this week to be quickly attacked ("Hawaii Monitor: Some Laughable Royalty Claims").
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2014/02/26/21292-hawaii-monitor-some-laughable-royalty-claims/
That expectation proved correct. A rebuttal by Umi Perkins appeared in the Hawaii Independent the same day as my column was published ("Sovereignty not a laughing matter").
http://hawaiiindependent.net/story/sovereignty-not-a-laughing-matter
Both items also drew comments, most pretty hostile to my column.
If you've used up your free access to Civil Beat, you can read my column here.
http://ilind.net/misc%20/2014/hm-royals.pdf
It's interesting to note that most comments attack me for my supposed views of "sovereignty," although the column addressed only the claims of those using sovereignty arguments as background for asserting their own personal royal prerogatives.
In any case, I'll get around to responding to Perkins' rebuttal, and to some of the most interesting comments, in the next few days.
In the meantime, feel free to comment here.
** There were many interesting and valuable comments, especially regarding a U.S. supreme Court decision in 1901 which said that joint resolution is a perfectly acceptable method of annexation.
DeLima v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 1 (1901)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=182&page=1
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8. Ian Lind, Honolulu Civil Beat, Wednesday March 5, 2014. "Is Part of the Sovereignty Debate Just a Matter of Faith?"
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2014/03/05/21377-hawaii-monitor-is-part-of-the-sovereignty-debate-just-a-matter-of-faith/
The hostile responses and sometimes quite personal attacks generated by my column here last week, in which I questioned the dubious claims of those who believe they wield royal powers on behalf of a government representing the pre-1893 Kingdom of Hawaii, were not unexpected.
As one old friend later commented, "Ya knew what you wuz getting into..."
He's right, of course, I knew the column would generate some unpleasantness, because trying to talk about sovereignty has become much like attempting to debate religion. It can be very difficult to get past points of disagreement.
In both cases, believers are united by certain core articles of faith, beliefs that are not subject to rational testing and are not open to critical and skeptical examination. Those who don't share the faith are looked upon as non-believers who are fit to be cast down to the nether-regions or, in the case of sovereignty, dismissed as ignorant and presumably anti-Hawaiian.
I'm indebted to The Hawaii Independent for publishing a very critical response by Hawaiian teacher and scholar, Umi Perkins ("Sovereignty is not a laughing matter"). His column can be a beginning point to ground this discussion.
Perkins highlights one currently popular theory, the idea that the Kingdom of Hawaii retained its sovereignty even though its government was overthrown in 1893.
Referring to this as "the most credible" of the current approaches to sovereignty, Perkins criticizes me for "curiously failing" to mention its chief proponent, David Keanu Sai.
Sai is important, Perkins tells us, because he took a case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2000, and the case provided "tacit recognition of Hawaii's continued sovereign status from an international entity
."
But on closer inspection, the case established nothing of the kind, and did not boost the standing of this Hawaii sovereignty theory.
Here's a summary of the case that went to the Permanent Court. Sai and a friend, Lance Larsen, pretended to have a dispute they wanted arbitrated by the permanent court, which typically hears cases involving trade disputes.
Larsen described himself as a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and blamed the kingdom represented by Sai for allowing Larsen to be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed by the State of Hawaii for failing to display an automobile license and safety sticker on his car. Larsen claimed Sai and the Kingdom failed in their duty to intervene to block the U.S. from mistreating Larsen, a citizen of the kingdom.
The two took advantage of the formal structure of arbitration, which focuses on resolving differences while accepting points agreed to by the parties themselves.
In this case, since both Sai and Larsen agreed on the continued existence of the kingdom, the arbitrators initially accepted this as a given.
The two men then asked the Court of Arbitration to confirm the kingdom's continued jurisdiction, and to further verify that the kingdom illegally failed to protect Larsen against the imposition of American laws. It was a clever attempt to trick the court into having to rule on the legality or illegality, under international law, of the overthrow of the kingdom.
The result was pretty straightforward. You can read the formal arbitration award online.
The arbitration panel clearly saw there was no real dispute between Sai and Larsen, thereby making them ineligible to have their dispute decided by the Court of Arbitration. The case was tossed out on this "technicality," but by law an important technicality.
"It is not the function of an international arbitration tribunal, whose decision is enforceable by legal process as between the parties, to decide purely historical issues or controversies which bear no relation to the legal rights and obligations of the parties at the time of the dispute," the arbitration award concluded. "And this is true whatever symbolic significance or affect may be attributed to those historical issues."
Because the case tripped over this basic issue of jurisdiction, the arbitrators never had to consider whether, for purposes of international law, the Hawaiian Kingdom "may be regarded as continuing to exist," or whether Sai could validly claim to represent it. They took pains to make explicit their decision that they had not made any ruling in this regard.
And the arbitrators further signaled skepticism over the idea that the Hawaiian Kingdom, or any state, "would continue indefinitely to exist during a period of annexation by another State." Although that was a position agreed to by Sai and Larsen, arbitrators said that if the issue were to be reviewed on its merits, other factors to be considered would include "the lapse of time since the annexation, subsequent political, constitutional and international developments, and relevant changes in international law since the 1890s."
In the end, the arbitration tribunal determined that, as a matter of international law, "there is no dispute between the parties" capable of being settled through arbitration. Further, again as a matter of international law, the underlying matters raised by Sai and Larsen could not be considered without the consent of the United States, which had obviously never been sought.
Contrary to Perkins' assertion, the arbitrators made clear in their award that they gave no "tacit recognition" to the sovereignty claims of Sai and his Hawaiian Kingdom.
But Perkins then dismisses the "annexation" of Hawaii by the U.S. in 1898 yes, he added the quotation marks as legally flawed because it "was asserted through a mere Joint Resolution, which has little legal force in the U.S. and none outside it."
It's hard to say where this notion comes from. No authority is offered for this rather surprising assertion, which was also raised by several others who commented on my column, all agreeing that only a treaty of annexation could have made Hawaii's entry into the United States legal.
But this is again a misstatement. The U.S. Supreme Court as early as 1901, in the case of DeLima v. Bidwell, ruled that annexation of territory via treaty has the same legal status and force as annexation by an Act of Congress. To dismissively claim a Joint Resolution of Congress is insufficient may play well to an audience of believers, but appears to fall short as a valid statement of law.
So while Sai, and perhaps Perkins, wrap their views in legalistic claims, when it comes down to it, those claims are dubious. Unless, of course, they must be accepted on faith.
But then, like arguments over religion, I'm not convinced that a continuing sovereignty debate focusing on obscure and often hypothetical historical minutiae is useful, or capable of eventually overcoming differences and moving us all forward, legally or politically.
I do agree with Perkins when he quotes OHA trustee Peter Apo: "'You can feel the tension' in the Hawaiian community, he (Apo) said. It is this tension that drives groups such as those Lind names to simply take the reins and establish governments, with or without (usually without) permission."
But, in my view, this tension isn't new. And it would be incorrect to attribute it primarily to issues related to sovereignty, or to assume it would be relieved by progress along any of the potential paths to some form of Hawaiian sovereignty.
Here's the problem that I see. Hawaiians have experienced a prolonged period of downward relative social mobility. They might be better off than before, but have lost ground relative to other ethnic groups. In my view, this decline doesn't date back to 1893, or 1898, but to the post-WWII period.
After all, in the first decades of the 20th Century, following annexation, Hawaiians made up the largest segment of the islands' electorate. Many Hawaiians, probably a majority, followed leaders like Prince Kuhio and John C. Lane, into the Republican Party, even during those decades when the Big Five and the Caucasian elite dominated the islands' politics and economy through the GOP.
During the decades that followed, up through World War II, Hawaiians benefited greatly from political patronage, and dominated the ranks of police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other government employees.
That changed in the post-war years, as the Democratic Party gained power by building a political coalition around the Japanese-American voting block. Although many Hawaiians also worked hard for Democratic victories, the ethnic makeup of the government workforce clearly changed, to the detriment of the Hawaiian community.
Somehow, while other, more recently arrived ethnic groups have climbed up the social ladder, Hawaiians still have more than their share of poverty, ill health, poor housing, imprisonment, unemployment, and other social problems. Progress, economic development, and the passage of time have brought fewer benefits to Hawaiians than to other segments of the community, or so it seems.
What if sovereignty isn't self-evident? And what if it only counts if it addresses the problems that afflict so many Hawaiians in the 21st Century?
And how about if it does so in a way that can be achieved in practice, rather than debated about endlessly for another century?
That's a sovereignty debate that I'm sure would engage far more people than are drawn to the infighting of would-be royals or pseudo-legal academic studies of times and events long past.
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9. Ian Lind's own blog, Thursday March 6, 2014, early morning (first comment was at 8:23 AM)
http://www.ilind.net/2014/03/06/12341/
Questioning matters of faith can be dangerous territory
Perhaps I shouldn't have revisited the Hawaiian sovereignty debate in my Civil Beat column this week ("Hawaii Monitor: Is Part of the Sovereignty Debate Just a Matter of Faith?").
http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2014/03/05/21377-hawaii-monitor-is-part-of-the-sovereignty-debate-just-a-matter-of-faith/
The central idea:
Trying to talk about sovereignty has become much like attempting to debate religion. It can be very difficult to get past points of disagreement.
In both cases, believers are united by certain core articles of faith, beliefs that are not subject to rational testing and are not open to critical and skeptical examination. Those who don't share the faith are looked upon as non-believers who are fit to be cast down to the nether-regions or, in the case of sovereignty, dismissed as ignorant and presumably anti-Hawaiian.
There hasn't been anything said so far that would undercut this thesis.
If you can't climb over, around, or through the Civil Beat paywall, you can read my column here.
http://ilind.net/misc%20/2014/hm-faith-030514.pdf
I've been over some of the same turf before in a post here back in September 2011 ("Reminder: Always check the footnotes").
http://www.ilind.net/2011/09/13/reminder-always-check-the-footnotes/comment-page-1/
If you're interesting in such things, you might want to check it as well.
Now, though, I'm going to try to stay away from this topic for a while.
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** Comment by Ken Conklin online in Lind's blog,
http://www.ilind.net/2014/03/06/12341/#comment-51145
Ian, thanks for your excellent analysis of some Hawaiian sovereignty issues (especially Keanu Sai's nonsense at the Hague), and for your courage in publishing it. I have two comments which I hope will be seen in the spirit of helpfulness with which they are sent.
1. I was sorry to see you mix sovereignty with social welfare. Each of those is a complex topic needing separate analysis; and a resolution of one will not necessarily resolve or even advance the other. I have the same sort of discomfort when I see some churches think that helping needy people with food and shelter, is a substitute for theological clarity or worship of God (although I guess some liberals think those are identical). I agree Hawaii would be better off to "move on" and set aside the sovereignty debates which seem to go nowhere and end in the same sort of angry rancor we see when Muslims and Jews discuss the history of the Middle East. However, so long as one side insists on rehashing every detail of history in order to seek current political advantage, it is essential (especially for a scholar) to take their claims seriously and refute them decisively. Giving food, healthcare and housing to needy people will not stop agitators from inciting them to bash haoles over bogus historical grievances. My respect for the importance of history, and my respect for a few of the more respectable activists, is shown by my willingness to engage them on the issues and not to think I can bribe them with "bread and circuses."
2. Your brief discussion of the 1898 annexation missed an important point. The biggest propaganda assertion by the independence activists, on the topic of annexation, is their claim that a joint resolution of Congress is merely an internal law applicable only inside the borders of the U.S. and has no power to reach out and grab a foreign nation (You'll find this claim asserted in some of the nasty comments at Civil Beat, which can be more beat than civil). The rebuttal is to point out that the method chosen by any nation to ratify a treaty is indeed an internal matter for that nation alone to decide. So when Hawaii used its own internal process to create, offer, and ratify a Treaty of Annexation, and sent it to the U.S.; then it was up to the U.S. to use its own internal process to pass its own internal law accepting that offer (and it followed the precedent from 50 years previously when joint resolution was used to ratify the offer from Texas to be annexed). The Senators who strongly opposed the Treaty of Annexation could have filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court arguing that joint resolution was not a valid method for ratifying a treaty, but they chose not to do so. Those Senators would have had a perfect right to make such a complaint; but people claiming to be spokesmen for a different nation (Keanu Sai et al) have no right to complain about the internal procedures used by the U.S. to make its own decision. But of course all this is boring "inside baseball" stuff, and does not help that homeless Hawaiian pushing his stolen shopping cart full of rags and cans along Kamehameha Highway.
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** Comment by Scott Crawford online in Lind's blog:
http://www.ilind.net/2014/03/06/12341/#comment-51151
Ken, you know the U.S. Constitution is very specific that the Senate ratifies treaties with a 2/3 supermajority. This is basic. So either you are ratifying a treaty, or you are passing a joint resolution, but you can't be doing both at the same time. They tried to ratify a treaty, and it failed. So they passed a joint resolution instead, pretending that was sufficient. But they never ratified the treaty. They never completed their own clearly constitutionally defined process for ratifying a treaty, 2/3 of the Senate. That's just plain fact.
(And Texas is not precedent because, as the Justice Department pointed out in 1988, Texas relied on the constitutional provision of admitting new states, but this was not the case with Hawaii.)
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** Comment by "t" online in Lind's blog:
http://www.ilind.net/2014/03/06/12341/#comment-51154
Regarding precedence:
Did the Texas annexation by joint resolution itself have precedence? If not, then precedence was and is *not* an absolute requirement. If there was precedence for the Texas annexation, we would love to see it.
Meanwhile, see the 2011 federal dismissal of David Keanu Sai's lawsuit; it speaks for itself:
The federal courts have long recognized that the determination of sovereignty over a territory is fundamentally a political question beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. As the Supreme Court recognized in 1890:
"Who is the sovereign, de jure or de facto, of a territory, is not a judicial, but a political, question, the determination of which by the legislative and executive departments of any government conclusively binds the judges, as well as all other officers, citizens, and subjects of that government. This principle has always been upheld by this court, and has been affirmed under a great variety of circumstances."
Jones v. United States, 137 U.S. 202, 212, 11 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed. 691 (1890). This principle was recently reaffirmed by the D.C. Circuit, which ruled that claims requiring the determination of sovereignty over Taiwan under federal and international law presented a political question requiring dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See Lin v. United States, 561 F.3d 502, 50508 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, U.S. , 130 S.Ct. 202, 175 L.Ed.2d 128 (2009).
Analysis of the Baker v. Carr factors confirms that Plaintiff's claims present this Court with a nonjusticiable political question. Plaintiff's lawsuit challenges the United States's recognition of the Republic of Hawaii as a sovereign entity and *7 the United States's exercise of authority over Hawaii following annexation. However, "[t]he conduct of the foreign relations of our Government is committed by the Constitution to the Executive and Legislative 'the political' Departments of the Government, and the propriety of what may be done in the exercise of this political power is not subject to judicial inquiry or decision." Oetjen v. Cent. Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302, 38 S.Ct. 309, 62 L.Ed. 726 (1918). In addition, the Constitution vests Congress with the "Power to dispose of an make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States." U.S. Const., Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2. Therefore, there is a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of these issues to the political branches.
Furthermore, it would be impossible for this Court to grant the relief requested by Plaintiff without disturbing a judgment of the legislative and executive branches that has remained untouched by the federal courts for over a century. Since its annexation in 1898 and admission to the Union as a State in 1959, Hawaii has been firmly established as part of the United States. The passage of time and the significance of the issue of sovereignty present an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made.
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10. Umi Perkins, Hawaii Independent March 6, 2014, 3:40 PM.
http://hawaiiindependent.net/story/facts-not-faith-support-sovereignty
I would like at the outset to express my appreciation that Ian Lind's response ("Is Part of the Sovereignty Movement Just a Matter of Faith?") to my rebuttal ("Sovereignty Not a Laughing Matter") in The Independent was, in the spirit of its publisher, civil. These types of debates were common during the heyday of Hawaiian newspapers in the nineteenth century. Such debates are healthy and central to a democratic society, which suggests the Hawaiian monarchy period was more democratic (with a small d) then is often thought. It also holds out hope for a flourishing of new voices in this age of new media.
While I have no interest in debating the sovereignty issue "endlessly for another century," no one (at least no one very credible) held against the Jewish people the desire to recreate a state two thousand years after the fact. I would argue that the overthrow really wasn't that long ago my grandmother was six years old when Lili'uokalani died, and she lived until 2002 it's nearly in living memory. But Lind's response demanded, and rightly so, a much more thorough examination of the historical and legal questions, particularly that of annexation.
Lind concludes after a discussion the Larsen case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, that "It's hard to say where [the] notion comes from" that a treaty is required to annex territory, and that "no authority is offered for this rather surprising assertion." It's true I offered no authority, and that's because it's not a surprising assertion at all, but rather a standard, accepted principle of international politics. Congressional authority is restricted to US territory and simply does not extend to a foreign country, even (or especially) one in which the US aided an overthrow. The role of Congress (the Senate only) consists of the approval of treaties, which alone are international law. Anything else an "Act of Congress," even less a joint resolution is mere domestic law, not applicable in foreign territory. Professor Lassa Oppenheim, author of International Law (1948), explains that, "cession of State territory is the transfer of sovereignty over State territory by the owner-State to another State, and that the "only form in which a cession can be effected is an agreement embodied in a treaty between the ceding and the acquiring State."
In June, 1898, during the debates over the Newlands Resolution, Senator Augustus Bacon stated that "a joint resolution for the annexation of foreign territory was necessarily and essentially the subject matter of a treaty, and that it could not be accomplished legally and constitutionally by a statute or joint resolution. If Hawaii was to be annexed, it ought certainly to be annexed by a constitutional method; and if by a constitutional method it can not be annexed, no Senator ought to desire its annexation sufficiently to induce him to give his support to an unconstitutional measure." Congressman Thomas Ball of Texas concurred, calling the Joint Resolution "a deliberate attempt to do unlawfully that which can not be done lawfully."
Lind cites the DeLima v. Bidwell case, but this was in 1901, after annexation, is still domestic, and was one of the "insular cases" depriving Territorial citizens of the full rights of U.S. citizens. It is consequently not an authoritative case on the matter of annexation, but rather a historically notorious case of the abuse of US "possessions." Further, all territory acquired by the US was done so by treaty (including some of conquest) except for, ostensibly, Hawai'i.
Citing US Supreme Court cases as support for his contentions is itself a "matter of faith" that neglects the very fundamental fact that there were two countries involved in the annexation, thereby making this an international legal issue. This is like asking one boxer in a fight to determine the rules of victory after the fact. In contrast, I would cite a text that all can agree is a credible source: the international law text used at the Richardson School of Law at UH Mānoa, International Law and Litigation in the U.S. co-authored by the well-known, late Professor Jon Van Dyke. It notes that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Article 27 states that "a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty." While the Convention has not been ratified by the United States, "it is cited by US Courts and the Executive view is that much of the treaty on treaties is customary international law."
Supreme Court decisions do not modify this customary international law that has developed the international system. In a 1988 memorandum entitled "Legal Issues Raised by Proposed Presidential Proclamation To Extend the Territorial Sea," Acting US Assistant Attorney General Douglas Kmiec stated:
Congress approved the joint resolution and President McKinley signed the measure in 1898. Nevertheless, whether this action demonstrates the constitutional power of Congress to acquire territory is certainly questionable.
It is therefore unclear which constitutional power Congress exercised when it acquired Hawaii by joint resolution.
And then there was the secret session on annexation of the US Senate in 1898 (the record of which was unsealed in 1969). Behind closed doors, the Senate discussion comprises about 80 pages of text and is difficult to summarize, but the entire text can be seen here. The following quote from Senator John Tyler Morgan strongly suggests that Congress, in fact, did not annex Hawai'i. The Senate empowered the President, it appears, to occupy Hawai'i, for that is all the executive branch can do. If the President could annex alone, McKinley would have done so he had already signed the treaty.
Mr. MORGAN.
the President having no prerogative powers, but deriving his powers from the law, that Congress shall enact a law to enable him to do it, and not leave it to his unbridled will and judgment
When he is in foreign countries he draws his powers from the laws of nations, but when he is at home fighting rebels or Indians, or the like of that, he draws them from the laws of the United States, for the enabling power comes from Congress, and without it he cannot turn a wheel.
In addition to showing the limits of the executive and legislative branches, the transcript linked-above notes Hawai'i's continued neutral status even after the overthrow, and the Senate's concern over the violation of this status. This is not a legal issue, but it is worth noting that John Tyler Morgan, leader of the annexationist cause in the Senate, was a high ranking "Dragon" of the Ku Klux Klan for the State of Alabama, according to Authentic History: Ku Klux Klan, by Susan Davis (1924).
Senator Richard Pettigrew, an opponent of annexation, asked about the wisdom of bringing neutral Hawai'i into a conflict simply for coaling in the Spanish-American war:
Mr. PETTIGREW: Why are there not ten thousand to twelve thousand tons of coal there [in "Unalaska"] eight hundred miles nearer Manila than at Honolulu in a foreign territory? Why bring Hawaii into this complication? Why embarrass that feeble republic, or monarchy, or oligarchy, or whatever it is, with our presence? Why sail eight hundred miles out of the way in order to relieve Dewey? Why did we not sail straight there, coal in our own territory
?
Lind balks at my quotation marks around "annexation," but he puts them around the overthrow, the legality of which is an absolutely settled issue. In the 1993 Apology Resolution, Public Law 103-150 (which, like the 1898 Newlands Resolution of annexation is just a statement), the United States "apologize[d] to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii [sic] on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States." It notes that this "resulted in the suppression of the inherent sovereignty and the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination."
It requires a kind of double think to believe that while the overthrow was illegal, annexation was somehow legal. But that seems to be what the majority (though perhaps not Lind) believes occurred an illegal overthrow followed by a legal annexation. I focused on the lack of a treaty precisely because the history of the overthrow is well-known, while less well-known is the idea that annexation was illegal on its own terms.
Lind concluded his response with the questions: "What if sovereignty isn't self-evident? And what if it only counts if it addresses the problems that afflict so many Hawaiians in the 21st Century?" Sovereignty isn't self-evident if one party in the dispute is to be the arbiter of all rules, rather than using the rules of the system that the nearly 200 countries now in existence, in the very large majority of cases, follow. As for solving problems, I do not view sovereignty as a panacea. It could solve some problems, and likely would create many. But note that no decolonized country has ever asked its colonial overlord to return. Sovereignty is simply a recognized status that Hawaiians wanted to retain in 1898, as evidenced by the Kū'ē petitions, and that has been repeatedly asserted by Hawaiians today in various forms.
I will conclude with some questions of my own. If a treaty was not required to annex Hawai'i, then why did the US try to perform a treaty twice? The first treaty was withdrawn by President Cleveland in 1893 and the second was killed in the Senate in 1897. If a treaty was not required, why did both sides pretend after the fact that there had been one? Lorrin Thurston wrote in his 1904 book of the same title, that one of the Fundamental Law[s] of Hawaii was an "1897 Treaty of Annexation." Sanford Dole later helped erect a statue of William McKinley at the renamed Honolulu High School that holds a "treaty of annexation" in its hand. In 1902, the US State Department published a History of the Department of State, which maintains, erroneously, that Hawai'i was annexed by treaty.
Not all the historical facts are on the side of the sovereignty movement. It's true, for instance, that several countries recognized the Republic of Hawai'i. This is problematic, and it is quite unclear how much those countries knew about the specifics of annexation. But by far the bulk of evidence, as I have set forth, supports the movement's claims.
What we have is a subjugated history, one that is exacerbated by focusing on the claims of one part of the larger sovereignty movement with whose claims one disagrees. The larger movement itself is based not on faith, but on historically and legally sound reasoning.
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11. Ken Conklin attempted to post a comment online at 9:53 PM on Thursday March 6 in Umi Perkins Hawaii Independent article of March 6. Hawaii Independent requires log-in through Facebook in order to post, which I have not been successful in doing either at Hawaii Independent or at Civil Beat for several months. My name and photo appear as though I have successfully logged in, and my attempted comment shows up in my browser as though it got posted, but is not really there when viewed through a different browser.
Accordingly I sent the comment directly to Hawaii Independent owner, publisher, and editor Ikaika Hussey, on Thursday March 6, as follows:
On Mar 6, 2014, at 11:06 PM, Ken Conklin
publisher@hawaiiindependent.net
I tried to post this essay as a comment to Umi Perkins' essay of March 6, but it appears I am unable to do that. Please post it as an essay on its own, or as a comment.
-- Ken Conklin
This is a lengthy, detailed reply to Umi Perkins' essay. Please take the time to read it. Sorry it's merely in the format of a comment, because I have no status to post it as a full-fledged essay.
Umi Perkins has said what many independence activists like to say: that a joint resolution of Congress is merely an internal law applicable only inside the borders of the U.S. and has no power to reach out and grab a foreign nation. But the method chosen by any nation to ratify a treaty is indeed an internal matter for that nation alone to decide. There is no "international law" that forces any nation to use any particular procedure rather than another procedure to decide for itself whether to agree to a treaty offered by another nation. So when Hawaii used its own internal process to create, offer, and ratify a Treaty of Annexation, and sent it to the U.S.; then it was up to the U.S. to use its own internal process to pass its own internal law accepting that offer. The U.S. followed its own precedent from 50 years previously when joint resolution was used to ratify the offer from Texas to be annexed. The Senators who strongly opposed the Hawaiian Treaty of Annexation could have filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court arguing that joint resolution was not a valid method for ratifying a treaty, but they chose not to do so, perhaps because they realized they would lose. Those Senators would have had a perfect right to file such a lawsuit. But people claiming to be spokesmen for a different nation (Keanu Sai et al) have no right to complain about the internal procedures used by the U.S. to make its own decision. The U.S. joint resolution did not use an internal law to reach out and grab a foreign nation; it used an internal law to make its own sovereign decision to ratify a treaty it had been offered.
Mr. Perkins refers to the "illegal overthrow." Of course any revolution is "illegal." But the family of nations accepted it as legitimate, in two stages, as was customary in revolutions in the 19th Century and even still today.
(1) Within two days after the Hawaiian revolution of 1893, all the local consuls of other nations, who were present in Honolulu at the time, sent a short letter to President Dole granting de facto recognition to the revolutionary Provisional Government. De facto recognition was the only level of recognition which a consul was authorized to give, and the only form of recognition appropriate to a temporary revolutionary provisional government. It was merely an acknowledgment that the PG had successfully taken control of the government, and the nation granting de facto recognition thereby confirmed that it would henceforth do business with the PG and no longer with the Lili'uokalani regime, until such time as the local consul could communicate with his home office thousands of miles away for further instructions. The letters of de facto recognition were published in the Honolulu newspaper and were also later reprinted in the report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and can be seen at
(2) Following the transition from a temporary revolutionary Provisional Government to a permanent Republic of Hawaii [a normal transition which all successful revolutions go through], President Dole's government sent a copy of the Republic's Constitution to the local consuls with a request that they communicate with their home governments to seek full-fledged diplomatic recognition de jure. When the government of one nation gives de jure recognition to the government of another nation, that means that the granting nation acknowledges that the receiving government is the rightful holder of the sovereign powers of the receiving nation. De jure recognition cannot be granted by a local consul -- it must be granted personally from the head of state of the grantor to the head of state of the grantee. And so it happened during the Fall of 1894 that Emperors, Kings, Queens, and Presidents of at least 19 nations on 4 continents personally signed letters of de jure recognition in 11 languages to Hawaii President Dole. Those letters included all the major nations which previously had treaties with the Kingdom. I would emphasize that some of those heads of state were the same ones who had previously met King Kalakaua and/or Queen Lili'uokalani. Perhaps the most difficult one for fans of Lili'uokalani to swallow was the letter personally signed by Queen Victoria who had met Lili'uokalani and Kapiolani at Victoria's Golden Jubilee in London -- the same Queen Victoria who previously had agreed to be godmother to Prince Albert (son of Alexander Liholiho and Queen Emma) and had sent a crib still on display at Queen Emma's summer home. But Victoria knew that her duty was to recognize the Republic as the rightful government of the still-independent nation of Hawaii. Those letters are in the Hawaii archives, and with the help of two friends I was able to get them photographed and posted on a webpage at
By all the standards of "international law" of the 1890s, the family of nations recognized the Provisional Government de facto and then the Republic de jure as the rightful government of Hawaii. Therefore the Republic had the right to speak on behalf of the nation of Hawaii and to offer a Treaty of Annexation, which the U.S. then accepted by a method (joint resolution) which the U.S. had every right to choose as its method for accepting the Treaty.
I know there will be diehard deadenders of the Hawaiian Kingdom who will pick and poke at every possible detail, and the rancorous debate can continue for centuries just like the debate between Muslims and Jews over the history of the Middle East. For example, some will say that Lili'uokalani's abdication and loyalty oath to the Republic were signed under duress and are therefore not valid. However, we follow the same procedures today when a criminal is arrested and held in jail and negotiates a plea bargain with the help of his attorney. The criminal is under duress, held in jail, and perhaps faces a trial ending in the death penalty unless he pleads guilty in exchange for a prison sentence instead of the death penalty. You might not think that's fair, but it is the accepted standard of practice in all nations.
** Four days later, on Monday March 10, at 4:38 PM, Ikaika Hussey finally acknowledged receiving my message:
However, my comment never got posted either as a comment to Perkins' essay nor as a freestanding essay. Apparently Hussey was saying "Thanks for your submission to our refusal to publish your comment" rather than "Thanks for your submission of your comment, which we will post promptly."
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Published March 13, 2014 by
Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
Send comments or questions to:
You may now
SEE A COLLECTION OF DIALOGS ABOUT THE AKAKA BILL, AND RACISM
or
SEE MORE WEBPAGES ABOUT HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY ISSUES
http://tinyurl.com/9f4vh4
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/RepublicLettersRecog.html
That webpage also provides photos of ex-queen Lili'uokalani's personally signed 5-page letter of abdication and one-page oath of loyalty to the Republic, witnessed and signed by all of her final cabinet ministers and her personal attorney, and notarized.
"Ken, Thanks for your submission."
Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com
