Thoughts on the overthrow

Dr. Ronald Williams brought out a letter from US Minister (Minister Plenipotentiary, I.e., Ambassdor) John L. Stevens to Sanford Dole that advised him not to declare a Provisional Government until he has control of the Iolani Palace barracks and the police Station. While watching Act of War, we see Dole declare a Provisional Government, then the narrator says “the Queen had control of the barracks and police station” (!) In other words, the overthrow was botched [see video]

So today, January 17th, we recognize the overthrow. But in terms of international law, it’s actually the 16th of January that’s the important date because that’s the day that the intervention happened – the landing of the marines from the USS Boston. 

Although the illegality of the overthrow wasn’t fully understood when Act of War was made in 1993-94, there’s one quote that more than hints at this, and it’s from, of all places, the American magazine (still in existence) Harper’s Weekly:

“if the Constitution were to be strictly followed, annexation could not take place”

Harperʻs Weekly

Another great American quote:

“the government of Hawaii has been stolen and offered to America by the thieves – what is [our] duty? accept the stolen goods?”

Yet another, from President Cleveland:

“the Provisional Government owes its existence to an armed invasion…”

Grover Cleveland, address to Congress, 1893

This means the Provisional Government is self-proclaimed, and by extension, so was the Republic of Hawai’i – and again by extension, its successors the Territorial and State governments – hence the once-popular epithet “fake state.”

The US was engaged in an important, and I think worthwhile, debate over its own role in global affairs, over whether it would be an empire or a “protectionist” power remaining within its own borders. Mark Twain was a prominent member of the Anti-imperialist League, opposing annexation. Prominent among supporters of the expansionist doctrine was Theodore Roosevelt, whose name you’ll recognize from a local high school in Makiki.

People put little faith in international law, which constitutes the “rules” of the international system, and some on the extreme end hold that international law doesn’t exist. But those people still need passports to travel, benefit from trade agreements – which are treaties – and the treaty that forbids shooting down passenger planes – that is, international law.

Waikiki: Film Review

Director Christopher Kahunahana chose only the grittiest parts of Chinatown, Kaka’ako and Sand Island to film Waikiki, on location – but instead of backdrops as Hollywood films use them, these locales are nearly characters in themselves. Waikīkī never appears in the film. Rather, the song Waikiki cuts through the film, it’s lyrics creating, at times, cognitive dissonance the way that the streams cut through the mauka forest down makai through Honolulu’s urban blight. But at times the lyrics are surprisingly apt:

There’s a feeling deep in my heart

Stabbing at me just like a dart

Waikiki by Andy Cummings

One senses that Kahunahana collected footage of ʻāina and wai over a period of time, the way Terrence Malick did for Tree of Life. We follow streams from the “pristine” kuahiwi areas down to their channelized forms, graffiti-ridden.

Waikīkī means spouting fresh water, but rather than the pleasant bubbling of an artesian spring, this water bubbles like the witches cauldron from Macbeth; “something wicked this way comes.” Kahunahana seems to purposely leave out the kahakō from Waikiki, leaving us to surmise:

“Kiki: vt., To sting, as a bee; to peck, leap at, as a hen. Figuratively, to make disagreeable remarks.”

wehewehe.org

Or perhaps to stab, as a dart?

Through the coconut wireless I heard that Kahunahana managed a bar in Chinatown; not a bar, the bar – full of hipsters and the beautiful people who have their shit together. But the bar that the protagonist Kea (Danielle Zalopany) works in is across and down Hotel Street, as miserable a dive as is possible to conceive. But the characters there – easily stereotyped: the dirty old man, the chain-smoking dragon lady owner – are played sympathetically. They care for Kea, even perhaps show her aloha – what sheʻs missing in her violent marriage. Even her name, which is almost certainly Kealoha, is violently truncated in a nonsensical way common to Hawaiians who canʻt speak their language. And here Kea is representative – she manages to hit and defy all the Hawaiian stereotypes: abusive marriage, homelessness, the fake smile of the reluctant hula dancer.

I spent a sleepless night trying to process the visual feast I had just consumed; a feast equal parts brandy, which goes down smooth and razor blades that tear up your insides. Visually, Kahunahana shows us what film can be again, that it can slow down and it doesnʻt have to be an unwatchable two hour punch in the face by Marvel characters.

Flashbacks take us to Keaʻs upbringing and tuition in culture from her kupunawahine, always inexplicably in water. This water bubbles however, and is not still. In one of the film’s few engagements with history, Kea beseeches Lili’uokalani’s statue at a low point. But the Queen of Hawai’i – as the statue notes from 1891 to 1917 – responds with only stony silence. No spoiler here – the pathos of Zalopany’s Kea can be seen in the trailer:

Trailer for Christopher Kahunahanaʻs film Waikiki

The film begins with the song Waikiki and also ends with the song Waikiki, but this time Brother Noland’s nearly forgotten 1980s cry for sanity:

Come down with me/Have you ever tripped through reality?/Come down with me/Come down and see Come see what they′ve done to Waikiki/And ask me why? Won’t you open your eyes? Can′t you see we lost our paradise? There’s too many people/Not enough sand/Can’t they see we want our land? Then why do I grumble? ′Cause of concrete jungles/In a place where people were once humble/Too much one way signs/You know I think they′re blind/They can’t even recognise a don′t walk sign/Too much hotels/ God it looks like hell/No more Hawaiian style

“Waikiki” – Brother Noland (Noland Conjugation)

Kahunahana shows how the healing properties of culture and ‘āina are tenuous and can slip through your fingers like the ʻāina and wai slip through the fingers of Kea and her kupunawahine – her one grip on wholeness. The director has done nothing short of depicting the collision of cultures inside the psyche of one Hawaiian wahine.

Is Lahainaluna a Federal Indian Boarding School?

Maybe Lahainaluna is, or was, a Federal Indian Boarding School, but how can it be that both Kamehameha and Lahainaluna are in this category of schools? One is for Hawaiians, the other is not. One is a private school that took Federal funding, the other is a normal, state-funded (not federally funded) public school.

Lahainaluna Seminary was founded by Kamehameha III in 1831 (not the Federal or a State Government)

The report from the Department of Interior discusses Kamehameha in some detail, mainly a recounting of the history of its founding, which, as I noted in my previous post:

In 1888, the Kamehameha School for Boys incorporated a military training program, which the War Department recognized as a military school in 1910. Between 1916 and 2002, under the National Defense Act, Kamehameha Schools participated in the Reserve Officers Training Corp and Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp programs.

As I commented in that post, skimming over the years between 1888 and 1916 without mentioning the overthrow or annexation elides these pivotal events which must affect Kamehameha’s ostensible status as an Indian Boarding School. This also continues the narrative that Hawaiians are somehow Indians. There is no comparable description of Lahainaluna, and we are therefore left to speculate what precisely made Lahainaluna qualify as a genocidal institution.

When I was at Lahainaluna, there is no doubt that the work was tough – but this was supposed to be the merit of the place. Still, when (as I have it from a good source) the department of labor came in and checked for child labor violations, it was not so far off the mark. Harassment was a worse problem than overwork in my view, though I was personally fortunate enough to have escaped the worst of it. 

We had kids of all races. Many were in fact Hawaiian, but my Senior year roommate was from Canada!

Something about the agricultural nature of Kamehameha and Lahainaluna (as well as the other schools implicated in the list – mostly agricultural reform schools) lent itself to the characterization as Federal Indian Boarding Schools. Actually, Lahainaluna had become over the years something of a de facto reform school. There seemed to be a time when young people took pride in a hard day’s work, but those days were mostly behind us by my time. So parents who couldnʻt handle their kids sent them there as a last resort – sometimes it worked, sometimes not. This was a change from the days when it was somewhat selective to attend the boarding department. 

Like Kamehameha, Lahainluna has boarding and day students – so were these schools indoctrinating the day students as well? There may be a case at Kamehameha, but at Lahainaluna the experience of boarding and day students was so completely different that it was as if they attended different schools. It is highly improbable that Lahainaluna was indoctrinating the day students. I tell you flatly: they werenʻt. So how does this compare to Federal Indian Schools that were boarding-only? The boarding was part of the process – to separate the children from their parents was part of the genocidal process. At Lahainaluna, about half of the boarders live on Maui and visited their families on weekends and all breaks – not an effective way to separate them from their problematic, culture-laden parents!

As for deculturization, Lahainaluna was not especially guilty, in my experience. In fact, we had what Iʻve called the “industrial Hawaiian experience,” which was actually a fairly normal experience for a 20th century Hawaiian in terms of farming and learning an abbreviated form of Hawaiian culture. And it was very abbreviated – we learned Hawaiian songs for performing on David Malo Day, but we did not have a course in Hawaiian language at the oldest school in Hawaiʻi, for example. (We had a Hawaiian culture course, but it was an elective, which I did not take).

But perhaps the defending of these institutions by their “victims” is itself the sign that these were truly schools for indoctrination, assimilation and even ethnocide? These issues, raised by the Interior report, if nothing else, show that it is difficult to see whether an institution is genocidal or not – even long after the fact – when you are inside it.

Is Kamehameha a Federal Indian Boarding School?

The US Department of Interior released a report by Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland, under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (who is the first Native American in the position), on the genocidal practice of Indian Boarding Schools. In Canada and Australia as well as the US it has been recognized that such schools serve to separate Indigenous children from their parents, severing the transmission of Native culture and practices from one generation to the next. Ward Churchill notes that the US did not sign the UN Convention Against Genocide for over 40 years because it was in violation of the Convention, mostly because of the existence well into the 20th century of Indian boarding schools.

The documentary Waterman claims that Duke Kahanamoku left Kamehameha because of its suppression of culture

Kamehameha Schools is listed among eleven schools considered Federal Indian Boarding Schools, along with Lahainaluna!

1. Hilo Boarding School

2. Industrial and Reformatory School (Kawailou)

3. Industrial and Reformatory School (Keoneula, Kapalama)

4. Industrial and Reformatory School (Waialee, Waialua)

5. Industrial and Reformatory School for Girls (Keoneula, Kapalama)

6. Industrial and Reformatory School for Girls (Maunawili, Ko’olaupoko)

7. Industrial and Reformatory School for Girls (Mo’ili’ili, Honolulu)

8. Kamehameha Schools

9. Lahainaluna Seminary

10.Mauna Loa Forestry Camp School

11.Molokai Forestry Camp School 

(Federal Indian Boarding Schools Initiative Investigative Report, 2022, 78).

The Report goes on to describe the genealogy of Kamehamehaʻs founding and its status as Federal Indian Boarding School:

So “her own people”303 could once again thrive, the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, in 1883 left her estate in “trust for a school dedicated to the education and upbringing of Native Hawaiians.” Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop’s will provided for the construction and maintenance of “two schools, each for boarding and day scholars, one for boys and one for girls,”305 “in the Hawaiian Islands, called the Kamehameha Schools, on the Hawaiian monarchy’s ancestral lands,”306 with the purpose of providing “a good education in the common English branches, and also instruction in morals and in such useful knowledge as may tend to make good and industrious men and women.”

In 1888, the Kamehameha School for Boys incorporated a military training program, which the War Department recognized as a military school in 1910. Between 1916 and 2002, under the National Defense Act, Kamehameha Schools participated in the Reserve Officers Training Corp and Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp programs. From 1935 to the early months of World War II, the United States recruited attendees and graduates of the Kamehameha School for Boys to colonize the Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands, first through the Department of Commerce until jurisdiction was transferred to the Department. The Kamehameha Schools continue to benefit Native Hawaiian education today.

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, 2022, 75.

There is a documented connection between Kamehameha and Indian Boarding Schools – Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua showed that Kamehameha was based in part on an Indian Boarding School. However, when the Report notes that “In 1888, the Kamehameha School for Boys incorporated a military training program, which the War Department recognized as a military school in 1910, ” it elides over distinction between Kamehameha, which was a Kingdom school (as was Lahainaluna, but it became public), and such schools on the US continent. If Kamehameha had a military training program that was in fact connected to the US military, that could only have been because it occurred the year after the Bayonet Constitution, of which the Report makes no mention. And while the Report, with ostensibly good intentions, notes the suppression of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi in schools, glossing over events and institutions pre- and post-overthrow serves to add to the already considerable confusion, or huikau, that exists in such historical genealogies.

Chinese Immigration

#234 in the Moʻolelo series

It is thought that the first Chinese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived on the early ships in 1789. These very early Chinese in Hawaiʻi were traders and farmers, dealing in sandalwood, kalo and rice. This was the period of Kamehameha I, who encouraged a balanced harvesting of Sandalwood. Chinese are known to have called Hawaiʻi the “Fragrant Mountain of Sandalwood,” fragrant because sandalwood is a scented wood used by Chinese for incense of scented boxes. But the mass immigration for planation work began in the early 1850s. Chinese workers were brought in on 3-year contracts, some of which were renewed for an additional three years, but the process lasted for only a decade, after which Chinese tended to become mechants, developing Chinatown.

Picture thought to be of Chinese sailing to Hawaiʻi (Source: Smithsonian)

The Hawaiʻi Chinese History Center notes:

After completing their contracts with the sugar plantation, many Chinese immigrantsbought parcels of land along the harbor and opened restaurants, shops, and specialized services with residential accommodations built in or near the same building. Immigrants of other races also built businesses, but majority of the establishments were owned and operated by the Chinese population, hence the area became known as “Chinatown.”

Hawaiʻi Chinese History Center, hichinatown.com

THE MASTERS AND SERVANTS ACT

By 1850, the need for planation workers had outpaced the population, which was dwindling. Not trusting of Chinese workers they intended to recruit, a law was drafted by Attorney General William Little Lee to restrict the freedoms of immigrant workers – the Masters and Servants Act. According to Wilma Sur, who questions whether this law was a form of “brutal slavery:

In 1850, Lee drafted the Masters & Servants Act, which stated that workers (servants) had to provide work to their employers (masters) according to the contract.   Contracts often changed without notice to workers.  If workers were exploited and abused during their jobs, they could not run away as that would breach their contract, punishable by imprisonment or redemption, plus interest, of lost hours.  There were cases of Kanaka Maoli and early immigrant Chinese workers being beaten by their employers.

Wilma Sur

Duke Kahanamoku

After a long break, #233 in the Moʻolelo series

Duke Paoa Kahanamoku won multiple Olympic medals in swimming and popularized surfing globally. As Isaiah Helekunihi Walker describes his rise to fame:

Born eight years before annexation, in 1890, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, a descendant of Hawaiian royalty, was a expert surfer and swimmer by his late teens. At the turn of the century Duke had already mastered the waves near his family’s home in Kālia, Waikīkī. By 1912 he was the world’s greatest surfer and fastest swimmer. Between 1912 and 1922 Duke won a total of six Olympic medals (three gold, two silver and one bronze) and broke several world swimming records.

Walker, 2011, 64.

“A portrait of swimming and surfing star Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii, circa 1912.” Unknown author, public domain.

Hall and Ambrose recount Duke’s triumphant, yet humble, return to Honolulu:

Suddenly a celebrity, and lionized wherever he went, in Europe following the [1912] Stockholm Olympics, he was nevertheless so quiet and reserved on board the Wilhelmina that many passengers were unaware who he was until the boat steamed into Honolulu Harbor to the piers crowded with Duke’s fans and family.

Hall and Ambrose, 1995, 7.

Kahanamoku became an actor, appearing in 30 movies (Hall and Ambrose, 1995, 68). In 1934, he ran for sheriff of Honolulu as a Democrat and won (Davis, 2015, 86). In 1963, Governor John A. Burns proclaimed August 24th (Kahanamoku’s 73rd birthday) “Duke Kahanamoku Day.” While Kahanamoku was an Olympic medalist, he was never able to compete in the Olympics in surfing. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Carissa Moore won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in surfing. Recognizing his legacy, she immediately went to the statue of Kahanamoku on Waikīkī beach. She wrote:

Stopped by to share my leis with Duke to honor our father of modern day surfing and the ambassador of Aloha … Surfing wouldn’t be what it is today without him and all those who came before.

Pilotin, 2021

The 1850 Masters and Servants Act

#232 in the Moʻolelo series, although it was drafted by William Little Lee, this law constitutes a possible dark mark on the Hawaiian Kingdom government. Mahalo to Anuenue kudu Puhi Adams for reminding me to write about the law.

Hawaiian Kingdom Attorney General William Little Lee has an intriguing and problematic role in the “Middle Kingdom” period – that crucial period around 1850:

As a Harvard-trained lawyer, former student of US Supreme Court Joseph Story, William Little Lee was certainly one of the most able lawyers in the Kingdom at this period, and his background deserves some attention. Merry (2000, 3) considers William Little Lee archetypical enough to begin her book with a description of his position as a joint architect (along with several others) of Hawaiʻi’s legal system:

In October 1846 William Little Lee arrived in Hawaiʻi  … Lee was twenty-five years old and a lawyer. Trained at Harvard University under judge Joseph Story and Professor Simon Greenleaf, Lee had practiced law in Troy, New York, for a year and had been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Scarcely a month after his his ship docked in Honolulu, Kamehameha III, the king of HawaiʻI, had persuaded Lee to stay on in the independent kingdom and become a judge in the Honolulu court. By 1847 he had helped to draft legislation creating a new Superior Court of Law and Equality; he was immediately elected its chief justice. In the same year he was appointed to the Privy Council and appointed president of the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles … Lee … invested in one of the earliest sugar plantations with his friend [Charles Reed] Bishop … By 1850 Lee had penned a new criminal code for the islands, modeled after a Massachusetts prototype, and by 1852 a new constitution.

Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawaiʻi, 2000.

William Little Lee (Source: wikipedia commons)

Lee’s attitude and approach toward working with Hawaiians is apparent in a letter Lee wrote to a friend in 1851:

Certainly they are a kind and peaceable people, with a superabundance of generous hospitality; but with all their good traits, they lack the elements necessary to perpetuate their existence. Living without exertion, & contented with enough to eat and drink, they give themselves no care for the future, and mope away life without spirit, ambition or hope. Now & then we meet an enterprising native, climbing up in the world, and I feel like crying bravo! my good fellow! bravo! but the mass of the people, where are they? I consider the doom of this nation as sealed, though I will labor on without ceasing, hoping for the blessing of heaven to bring some change (Merry, 2000, 5).

Lee was not alone in his sentiments on the “protestant work ethic.” This idea was so ingrained in the inner circle, that “several laws enacted in 1839 and 1840, and later compiled in the Laws of 1842, permit[ing] the extinguishment of tenant rights in limited circumstances,” including the “dispossession of tenants because of idleness, where such idleness is proven at trial,” public purposes and road building (PASH v. Hawaiʻi County Planning Commission, 1995). Forbes (2000, 7) notes that Lee was chosen for a committee of three that would revise the constitution in 1850-51 and produce the Constitution of 1852 under Kauikeaouli.

With that background, let us turn to the masters and servants act – Wilma Sur asks whether the law constitutes a “brutal [form of] slavery:”

In 1850, Lee drafted the Masters & Servants Act, which stated that workers (servants) had to provide work to their employers (masters) according to the contract.   Contracts often changed without notice to workers.  If workers were exploited and abused during their jobs, they could not run away as that would breach their contract, punishable by imprisonment or redemption, plus interest, of lost hours.  There were cases of Kanaka Maoli and early immigrant Chinese workers being beaten by their employers (Sur).

Sur, Wilma. “Hawai’i’s Masters and Servants Act: Brutal Slavery?” 31 U. Haw. L. Rev. 87

More thoughts on Bill 499 (2021) providing for extensions of “ceded” lands leases

#231 in the Moʻolelo series

Republican State Senator Kurt Fevella (Ewa Beach) stated that governor Ige should veto Bill 499. He wrote in Civil Beat:

I am not opposed to development. However, what I do object to is the fact that this measure provides an exemption for the University of Hawaii but does not exempt lands managed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

Some have been led to believe this bill only affects lands that are under the Board of Land and Natural Resources. This is not the case. DHHL, as a state agency, through the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, must follow HRS Chapter 171 when leasing trust lands.

As specified in Section 204 of this Act, DHHL is prohibited from extending general leases if those lands are not required for homestead leasing. By not exempting DHHL like we have done for the University of Hawaii, this bill is a violation of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act and is unconstitutional based on federal law that preempts state law.

On Think Tech, former Governor John Waiheʻe interviewed Hawaiian attorney Colin Kippen, who felt that this was a bill preferred by lessees, who benefit from low-priced, old leases of ceded lands (presumably from the time of statehood, almost 65 years ago, since the typical lease is 65 years).

The Other Side

Itʻs important to listen to the opposition in order to make a fair assessment in an issue such as this one, which is multi-faceted. A legislator who saw my testimony (who I wonʻt name, but is a supporter of Bill 499) explained to me that much of the support for this bill centers around Hilo – the local businesses that benefit from the nearly 65 year-old leases might go out of business if leases expire and they are outbid by national US chains in the same industry. (Hardware and grocery stores were mentioned). But it could be that other businesses stand to benefit. As Fevella wrote:

Currently, nearly 3,000 acres under general leases would be subject to this bill, and of these leases less than 1% are leased to Native Hawaiians. On Hawaii Island there are 72 leases on 740 acres, on Kauai there are six leases on 72 acres, on Molokai there are five leases on 1,762 acres and on Oahu there are 39 leases on 248 acres. This information can be found in the 2020 DHHL Annual Report.

Who Benefits?

In my academic training, we were trained to ask “whatʻs at stake?” It’s useful to ask who benefits from this bill, and the answers are not clear. One phrase that is ambiguous is “government leases” which brings up the possibility of military leases being among the beneficiaries. This is particularly relevant as the lease for Makua, among other areas near their 100 year expiration date.

A History of the 21st Century

#230 in the Moʻolelo series, here I try to determine what events in the years since 2000 pass the threshold for being considered historical – it is a difficult process to view your own time from the lens of history and here I just take a first stab at such a process, focusing mainly on how events affected Hawaiians.

In 2000, the Rice v Cayetano case had just been settled at the Supreme Court and the Hawaiian community was reeling from a new climate in which one of the few exclusive, “special” rights Hawaiians had was undermined. Attacks followed on all the Hawaiian trusts, most unsuccessful: Hawaiian Homes, OHA itself and Kamehameha Schools admissions policy, in an era I call the “backlash.” Opponents, who later organized into institutional form in the Grassroot Institute, sometimes used civil rights concepts against these programs, arguing that they were not “colorblind.” In 2006, Kamehameha briefly lost its admissions policy, but this decision was reversed in en banc review. The Akaka bill appeared in multiple forms between 1999 and 2012, more and more “watered down” in my view, but more importantly, using strange logic to circumvent the use of race in the selection of leadership. The bill ended its 13 year run after the death of Senator Daniel Inouye and retirement of Senator Daniel Akaka.

At the same time, between 1999 and 2001, the groundbreaking Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom case took place at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands. The case concerned a Hawaiian national, Lance Larsen, who had been incarcerated for driving without license plates and claimed that the Acting Hawaiian Kingdom, led by Keanu Sai, should have protected his rights. The case at The Hague centered around whether the United States was required to participate in the proceedings (it had explicitly refused to do so), but the subtext was really whether the Hawaiian Kingdom existed as an Independent State. The outcome of this case has been debated and many are inconclusive as to its meaning, but the record in the PCA does list the Hawaiian Kingdom as a “State” i.e., sovereign country.

In 2002, Republican Linda Lingle was elected Governor and she initiated the most aggressive distribution of Hawaiian homes leases in the program’s history – about one third of all leases in the programʻs history were disbursed in the first few years of the Lingle administration. In 2010, Neil Abercrombie was elected in what turned out to be one term. Abercrombie immediately got Bill 195 passed, granting to OHA the lands of Kakaʻako Mākai, valued at the time at $187 million, to settle claims to ceded lands revenue up to that point (not future revenue due).

In 2014, the Department of Interior held hearings on most islands and sites on the US continent (some in Indian casinos) asking for feedback on a proposed “rule change” that would allow for the recognition of a Hawaiian national entity akin to an Native American nation – what we now call “Fed Rec.” About 98% percent of oral testimony in Hawaiʻi was in opposition to the rule change and the term “occupation” was often heard at the hearings (I attended the hearing at the State Capitol), showing the growth of the independence movement. When written testimony was recorded later, the balance was 65% in favor of the rule change and 35% opposed, according to a count made by Law Professor Williamson Chang. (Most of the written testimony in favor were form letters provided by the Hawaiian Civic Clubs).

In conjunction with this nation-building effort, the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, called Kanaʻiolowalu, was organized, followed by a constitutional convention, called Naʻi Aupuni. The certification of the election of delegates was prevented, however, by the US Supreme Court and so the convention occurred with all candidates admitted as “participants” (the couldnʻt be called delegates on account of not being elected). The election of Donald Trump in 2016 prevented the continuation of these processes, though they could continue under the Biden administration.

Moʻolelo Pōkole: Summary of the Reign of Kalākaua

#229 in the Moʻolelo series

Kalākaua’s reign is one of the most controversial and subject to debate among historians. A consensus used to exist that, while a visionary, Kalākaua was a flawed leader due to his excesses of spending and poor choices of advisors. Recent scholarship is more positive and views Kalākaua as a competent ruler who was a victim of historical circumstances. Kalākaua’s goals included strengthening Hawaiian culture – this was related to his motto “Hoʻoulu Lāhui” – and modernizing Hawaiʻi through technology and science. These goals required revenue, which he planned to gain through a Reciprocity Treaty allowing Hawaiʻi sugar to be exported to the US without tariffs.

For example, on Kalākaua’s diplomatic entourage that was sent to Samoa, the received narrative is one of a disastrous fiasco. But Kalani Cook reframes this mission in his book Return to Kahiki as a legitimate attempt to build Polynesian connections, and an outright Confederation of Pacific states. The fact that the chief Malietoa was overthrown during the mission was not Kalākaua’s fault, nor was it foreseeable. In fact, Western imperialism was behind the coup.

Similarly, Tiffany Lani Ing has reframed Kalākaua’s entire reign in her book Reclaiming Kalākaua, focusing on his very impressive reception everywhere he went in the world during his world tour, especially (and notably) in America. More on that coming soon.

While the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty brought prosperity to Hawaiʻi, it also created a dependence on the US market for sugar. This led to the Bayonet Constitution, which stripped the King of power, transferring it to his cabinet. Many historians believe that Kalākaua’s reign paved the way for the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.