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At the start of November, about 95,000 election ballots were mailed to registered Native Hawaiian voters, including many who reside outside of the islands.

It has taken over a century of pain and anguish for Hawaiians to finally forge a democratically convened electoral process.

Those who are elected, including delegates who don’t live in the islands, are supposed to conduct a political dialogue that leads to the proposition of a Native Hawaiian governing entity that will redefine the political relationship between Hawaiians and the United States.

The anticipated outcome is a proposal that spells out what the political re-emergence of a Hawaiian nation will look like. The dialogue will likely bring anxiety and painful introspection for generations to come. Some things might be gained, others lost.

Recognition Or Independence?

The delegates will soon face a fork in the road, one that highlights a fundamental political divide. Do they favor federal recognition or independence from the United States?

Should the new governing entity embrace the well-trod and somewhat predictable path of Native American Indians and Native Alaskans, who obtained federal recognition? Or should this new Hawaiian governing entity pursue a complete legal separation from the United States — a political option being aggressively pursued by some Native Hawaiians known as Independents or Hawaiian Nationals.

The federal recognition-versus-independence argument has been swirling for decades. But it is only in the last 10 years that the independence model has picked up many vocal new supporters.

As a result, independence is likely to be carefully vetted by Native Hawaiian delegates.

An Identity Crisis

Managing the merging of Hawaiian cultural and national identity has been an emotional passage for many Hawaiians.

How are we supposed to feel about the American overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom which, in its aftermath, exacted a high toll on the Native Hawaiian population? We lost our lands, cultural customs and many traditions. A once-proud nation suffered an enormous loss of dignity. All of this capped by the death of two-thirds of the population who had no immunity to common western diseases.

A great deal has happened since then.

The world has continued to evolve, as have both the United States and the Hawaiian people. This leads to some important questions: What does it mean to be an American of Hawaiian ancestry today and are the cultural and national identities reconcilable?

America — The Enemy?

A considerable number of Native Hawaiians see America as the enemy. To them, the United States is an occupying or colonizing force in our islands. To them, if Queen Liliuokalani never relinquished the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom, it still exists.

They cite the terrible historical consequences of the overthrow as an irreparable act of war and they come to the somewhat logical conclusion that it doesn’t make sense to place faith in the same destructive American political system.

From such a perspective, seeking justice and self-determination through federal recognition is not an option.

America — The Rational Option?

Others, in spite of the historical trauma, value their American citizenship as they move forward.

This group looks back in sorrow, but does not dwell on the tragic past. They see the federal recognition process as a rational and emotionally acceptable opportunity to hit a re-set button. They want to pursue a future of new-found opportunities based on a negotiated settlement.

This has been possible for other indigenous peoples in this country, but it has been denied to Native Hawaiians for the 122 years since the overthrow.

In their view, recognition would officially sanction dialogue with the federal government to restore strategic elements of self-determination and sovereignty and, most importantly, trigger a healing process that might bind deep wounds.

The Nation I Know

Since the overthrow of 1893, five generations of Native Hawaiians have lived the American experience.

For many of us there is a mokuauhau, which is a genealogy of common experiences that bonds successive generations of Native Hawaiian in the islands since the end of the queen’s reign.

Through the years we — yes, I am one — have set the color-blind standards of inter-ethnic marriage and the emergence of Hawaii’s signature population of culturally hybrid children. American-educated, we emerged from a time of cultural assimilation into American society, but we share a unique multicultural DNA.

We should also fashion a nation-within-a-nation model of reconciliation that will not only bring closure to many long-standing grievances, but also provide new opportunities for all of the people of Hawaii.

We are also bonded to an American national identity forged by the shared pain of World War II, as well as major wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. With each succeeding generation, the emotional ties to America have tended to grow deeper.

With these things in mind, I argue for reconciliation through federal recognition. We should continue to aggressively investigate the circumstances that led to annexation and address the subsequent injustices.

We should also fashion a nation-within-a-nation model of reconciliation that will not only bring closure to many long-standing grievances, but also provide new opportunities for all of the people of Hawaii.

There is no denying that America’s history is scarred with injustices of all sorts: Racism, sexism, the violation of indigenous people’s rights, income inequality, unjust wars — all those things that have blighted and that continue to blight the country.

But, America remains a young country. It has a long ways to go to live up to the full measure of its promises which are painfully slow to be realized and can only be measured over decades and lifetimes.

For Native Hawaiians perhaps we are on the brink of a historic breakthrough to finally join all other indigenous peoples of the United States as constitutionally recognized Native Americans with equal opportunities to shape our own political destiny as a Hawaiian nation.