Return to the Hawaiian Independence Home Page, or the News Articles Index
Excerpted from:
by Karen Eoff
For over 2,000 years, the Hawaiian Islands supported a growing, thriving population, a self-sufficient and sovereign nation. The "Kanaka Maoli" (real people) had a culture based on sharing, respect and ecological harmony. Then, in 1893, by an act of war, the U.S. overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and imposed Western concepts of private land ownership based on individual gain, desire and greed. Conservation of land and ocean resources, once essential for survival, was replaced by commercial exploitation of the indigenous people and their lands, with wasteful consumption of resources, pollution and desecration of the land.
It is no longer a secret ... all is not well in Paradise. From the missionaries of the last century to the developers of this century, the pressure to westernize the Hawaiian culture has been relentless, leaving in its wake the scars on the land and the breakdown of the Hawaiian value systems. In a relatively short period of time, much has been destroyed. What is left of the land and the culture is extraordinary beyond words, and should be respected by all and allowed to recover and resurge. For over 100 years, foreign men of power have been exerting their will and dominance over the Hawaiian people and the land. Some see it as progress, some see it as racism.
In an attempt for survival in what has become someone else's paradise, Sovereignty is like a shield against the forces that impose complete westernization of the culture and the land. In its simplest form, Sovereignty means reparation and a formal apology by the U.S. for unkept promises; and a return of the Homelands and Ceded Lands to Hawaiian control and the formation of a Hawaiian nation.
Running parallel to the Sovereignty movement is a growing political awareness and revival of cultural tradition. People are becoming educated about the truth and are actively seeking a return to the moral fiber of the laws that guarantee protection of Hawaiian rights. In the process of testing different avenues and demanding accountability from all levels of government, issues affecting the survival of the culture continue to surface.
At the present time, there is a potentially landmark case before the Hawaii Supreme Court rising out of a proposal for a large-scale resort development on a popularly used beach in Kona. When modern-day concepts of U.S. property law conflict with traditional concepts and uses of the land, the battles have usually gone in favor of the developers, creating violations of the laws protecting Native Hawaiian (gathering) rights and contributing to the destruction of the Hawaiian culture. Where the U.S. Constitution upholds private property owners' rights, it violates the Hawaii State Constitution, which seeks to protect traditional and customary Hawaiian practices. These laws of protection must be clarified to avoid this continued conflict. The moral components of the law must be brought out to assure the preservation of their intent. They can no longer be interpreted to accommodate western standards and concepts. The moral intent of the laws has become buried by the profit-motivated developers and their high-paid lawyers representing western concepts. Laws have been ignored in order to issue permits to big developers and as large-scale resort projects continue to dominate the coastline, Hawaiians lose the opportunity to subsist in a context that has meaning.
Cultural practices and traditional knowledge must be passed on if the culture is to survive. Hawaiian traditions must be further developed and made available to the rest of the world. We need to look beyond western thought to alternative insights and solutions devised by other peoples and other cultures. The Hawaiian tradition has much to offer in areas of psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, religion, biology, astronomy and environmental studies. Hawaiians must be allowed to develop as Hawaiians to take this 2,000-year- old culture and move into the future, applying knowledge and wisdom of the past to present-day situations. Exploitation cannot be allowed to continue for the loss of a race is a tragic loss for all mankind.
Creating a sovereign Hawaiian Nation may be an example the rest of the world can learn from. As people who share a common culture, religion, language, value system and land base start to exercise control over their lands and lives, free from the domination of other nations, the goals of self-sufficiency and self-determination will emerge. Hawaiians must be able to reclaim and revitalize the culture and apply Hawaiian traditions to modern times.
My hope is that as Sovereignty comes more into focus, and the ideals of the self-governing Hawaiian Nation emerge, that some of these values and concepts will also begin to penetrate all governmental agencies; that the moral principles of Hawaiian Law will guide us in all future land use decisions in Hawaii; and that the state motto will be realized: "Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka 'Aina I Ka Pono' ... the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.
Return to the Hawaiian Independence Home Page or the News Articles Index