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Hawaiian sovereignty was stolen — snatched by a thief in the night. It was taken from the Hawaiian people by a racist group of men in collusion with the United States government under the administration of President Benjamin Harrison.

The taking of Hawaiian sovereignty is an age-old story with which many residents of the Hawaiian Islands — perhaps most — are all too familiar. To the utter dismay, the heart-felt sympathy or sorrowful empathy of these residents, the story of the Hawaiian fight for justice has never been silent, manifesting itself in street-side protests, media-covered marches, courtroom challenges, social media memes, op-eds like this one and so on.

To many non-Kanaka Maoli (non-Native Hawaiians), the Kanaka Maoli people seem angry — and we are. To others, we seem hurt; we are that, as well. To the rest, we seem intolerant, excluding, spiteful. But we are not. We just want to live by our terms in a way that is not hostile to our identity as Kanaka Maoli and the ‘aina (natural world) to whom we (those who have been disconnected from the culture) maintain a familial relationship.

For a great many Kanaka Maoli, our lives begin under oppression. Our childhood is spent immersed in injustice. The love of our parents and their expression of it are mired in the grief of their struggle to raise us in a world unaccommodating to them. The wisdom of our grandparents is encumbered by the misery associated with the loss of their world; they share the memory of the places they knew as a child and weep for their grandchildren who will never see them. Pieces of us are lost in each passing generation.

From the time we are born, Kanaka Maoli are well versed in struggle. We are tortured by the pain and suffering of generations before us, and that great weight becomes heavier as time goes on. We inherit this affliction, and we bear that great burden on our shoulders, hoping never to pass it on to our future generations. Yet we are still expected to carry ourselves like everyone else: never asking for help; being criticized and called racist for maintaining trusts, services and programs that benefit only Kanaka Maoli, as if inter-generational trauma and ongoing social injustice were not enough to explain why we need help to survive.

We go to school, like others do. We go to work, like others do. But we do so under great hardship. For us, daily life is different. The cross-island morning and evening commute to town can be agonizing, not simply from traffic woes, but because it is a constant reminder of our world being paved under. It is the way we are looked at when we speak our language. It is the cultural misappropriation we experience all around us. It is the increasing loss of the character of the place that our ancestors once knew.

Nearly 123 years ago, Hawaiian sovereignty was stolen. Our ability to govern ourselves and to make decisions — by us, for us — was taken. That wrong was never made right despite the assertion of two U.S. presidents to do just that. As a people, we have endured over a century of forced assimilation, and it should be obvious, through the stories we tell to this day, that we desire to exercise our right to self-determination as a distinct group of people on this planet, whose only homeland is the Hawaiian Islands.

In The Pursuit Of Self Determination

Kanaka Maoli have endeavored along many paths to self determination. Today, one such path is making headlines; it is the subject of ongoing intellectual discussion, adversarial exchanges, heated debates, and the occasional chit-chat at a backyard BBQ. This path is through Na‘i Aupuni.

There are an incredible number of misconceptions concerning Na‘i Aupuni, and it has created a very pronounced division between the Kanaka Maoli people — most distinctly between U.S. federal recognition (“fed-rec”) advocates and independence advocates.

The flaw of low participation in the Na’i Aupuni process should be shared by every organization and individual who either supported it or rejected it without … properly informing the Kanaka Maoli on what Na’i Aupuni really could achieve.

These misconceptions are often the product of the ever-diverging social-political-economic statuses of individual Kanaka Maoli (rich vs. poor, haves vs. have nots) and their inability to connect with one another; a growing lack of confidence in agencies such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (“OHA”) and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (“DHHL”), which serve Kanaka Maoli but are not always perceived to be equitable in their treatment of us; and an absolute (or very near absolute) mistrust for the State of Hawaii and the United States federal government for past injustices and, arguably, ongoing injustices. These are just some of the reasons, that when mixed together, create a very volatile situation highly adverse to consensus over issues such as, in this case, self-determination.

In clarity, Na‘i Aupuni is a path for Kanaka Maoli to tread upon in the pursuit of self determination. Na‘i Aupuni is not the perfect path and it certainly has its flaws; but it is what Kanaka Maoli make of it. Perhaps therein lies one of the flaws: the lack of Kanaka Maoli participation (less than 25 percent of the population). This flaw, however, should not be attributed to Na‘i Aupuni alone; rather, it should be shared by every organization and individual who either supported it or rejected it, without sufficiently educating and properly informing the Kanaka Maoli people (or themselves, for that matter) on what Na‘i Aupuni really could achieve with regard to Kanaka Maoli self-determination.

Na‘i Aupuni does not force us onto a single political path. We have many options, and we should be demanding that each of those options be considered. For that, we need more time in this process.

The division between pro-fed-rec and pro-independence Kanaka Maoli may always exist. However, both sides can certainly agree upon the need to exercise our right to self-determination. Moving forward requires that we find common ground – that solid foundation upon which we can rebuild.

It behooves every Kanaka Maoli interested in self-determination to find and to fight for that common ground. We can start there; and it is entirely possible for us to use the Na‘i Aupuni convention to establish that common ground, to put our great minds together, and to find a way to better our condition and alleviate the burden each of us carry for the sake of future generations.