The Politics of Being Indigenous

“In the midst of these evidences of prosperity it is but too apparent that the natives are steadily decreasing in numbers and gradually losing their hold upon the land of their fathers. Within a century they have dwindled from four hundred thousand to a little more than a tenth of that number of landless, hopeless victims. They are slowly sinking under the restraints and burdens of their surroundings, and will in time succumb to social and political conditions foreign to their natures and poisonous to their blood. Year by year their footprints will grow more dim along the sands of their reef-sheltered shores until finally their voices will be heard no more forever. And then, if not before, the Hawaiian Islands will pass into the political, as they are now firmly within the great American Republic.” (King Kalakaua, 1887)

In less than a decade from his observation, his kingdom would be overthrown, his successor Queen Liliuokalani imprisoned, and his islands annexed to the United States.

Who could have known that in less than a generation the natives would lose their land and their language (and thereby their identity)? This was not by accident but rather by a calculated effort that began in 1820 with the arrival of the missionaries and culminated a century later with a state of affairs in which the indigenous people were rendered mere facsimiles of their forefathers mimicking without understanding their songs and hula.

Is the Hawaii situation unique, given the fact that as native peoples we are intrinsically linked by our cultural similarities and connected one to another by our ocean that has served as a highway since time immemorial? How do we as indigenous people regain our identity in a moneyed economy where the poor principally live out their culture while the elite merely talk about it? What role can institutions like universities undertake and assume other than being an arm of the ruling class? Can politics be successfully utilized to reverse the reality of the loss of our identity and to promote the wellbeing of Pacific indigenes?

These issues will be discussed as they relate to self-determination for native Hawaiians and the long road that must be taken to achieve this.