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Equality of Hawai‘i’s people worth defending

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 16, 2008 at 10:07am

Equality of Hawai‘i’s people worth defending

TAKING OFF THE GLOVES and "CALLING a SPADE a SPADE !"At least 19 nations sent formal letters to President Sanford B. Dole granting full-fledged (de jure) diplomatic recognition to the Republic as the legitimate government of Hawai‘i.
These were not the tentative de facto recognitions given by local consuls in Honolulu in January 1893 to the temporary Provisional Government?1.
MOST IF NOT ALL WERE IN COLONIAL RULE , OCCUPATION OR COLONIAL RULING PUPPET HANDS !2."de facto" recognition to the Provisional Government.
Definition:as though rightful: acting or existing in fact but without legal sanctionthe "de facto" rules of the country[Early 17th century.
< Latin, "in fact," literally "from what is done"] = WHITE and MITE dosnt, make RIGHT or LEGAL !.
3.Liliuokalani says: “I hereby do fully and unequivocally admit and declare that the Government of the Republic of Hawai‘i is the only lawful Government of the Hawaiian Islands ... I hereby declare to [everyone] that I consider them as bound in duty and honor henceforth to support and sustain the Government of the Republic of Hawaii.
” On January 16, 1893, United States diplomatic and military personnel conspired with a small group of individuals to overthrow the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom and prepared to provide for annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States of America, under a treaty of annexation submitted to the United States Senate, on February 15, 1893. Newly elected U.S. President Grover Cleveland, having received notice that the cause of the so-called revolution derived from illegal intervention by U.S. diplomatic and military personnel, withdrew the treaty of annexation and appointed James H. Blount, as Special Commissioner, to investigate the terms of the so-called revolution and to report his findings.
His ExcellencyAlbert S.
WillisU.S.
Envoy Extraordinary & Minister Plenipotentiaryhttp://www. hawaiiankingdom. org/protest_1894_queen_us. shtmlSir:Having in mind the amicable relations hitherto existing between the Government which you here represent and the Government of Hawai’i, as evidenced by many years of friendly intercourse, and being desirous of bringing to the attention of your Government the facts here following, I Lili’uokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom Queen, do hereby solemnly protest that I am now, and have continuously been since the 20th day of January A.D. 1891, the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom; that on the 17th day of January A.D. 1893 (in the words of the President of the United States himself), “By an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representatives of the United States and without authority of Congress, the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown. A substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair;” that on said date I and my Government prepared a written protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a provisional government of and for this Kingdom; that said protest was forwarded to the President of the United States, also to Sanford B. Dole, the Chairman of the Executive Council of the said Provisional government, and was by the latter duly acknowledged; that in response to said protest the President of the United States sent a special commissioner in the person of Hon. James H. Blount to Honolulu to make an accurate, full and impartial investigation of the facts attending the subversion of the Constitutional Government of Hawai’i and the installment in its place of the Provisional Government; that said Commissioner arrived in Honolulu on the 29th day of March A.D. 1893 and fulfilled his duties with untiring diligence and with rare tact and fairness; that said Commissioner found that the government of Hawai’i surrendered its authority under a threat of war, until such time only as the government of the United States, upon the facts being presented to it, should re-instate the Constitutional Sovereign, and the provisional government was created to exist until terms of union with the United States of America have been negotiated and agreed upon, also that but for the lawless occupation of Honolulu under false pretexts by United States forces, and but for the United States Minister’s recognition of the provisional government when the United States forces were its sole support and constituted its only military strength, I and my government would never have yielded to the provisional government, even for a time, and for the sole purpose of submitting my case to the enlightened justice of the United States, or for any purpose; also that the great wrong done to this feeble but independent State by a an abuse of the authority of the United States should be undone by restoring the legitimate government.
That since the happening of said events, the executive and the Congress of the United States have formally declined the overtures of said Provisional Government for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.
That notwithstanding said recited facts, said provisional government has continued to exercise the functions of government in this Kingdom to the present date, and that its course, from the time of its inception to the present, has been marked by a succession of arbitrary, illiberal and despotic acts, and by the enactment and enforcement of pretended ‘laws’ subversive of the first principles of free government and utterly at variance with the traditions, history, habits and wishes of the Hawaiian people.
That said Provisional Government has now recently convened, and is now holding what it is pleased to term a constitutional convention, composed of nineteen (19) self-appointed members, being the President and Executive and Advisory Councils of said provisional government, and eighteen (18) delegates elected by less than ten per cent (10%) of the legal voters of the Kingdom, consisting almost entirely of aliens, and chiefly of such aliens as have no permanent home or interests in Hawai’i, and which said convention is now considering a draft of a constitution (copy of which is hereto annexed) submitted for its approval by the Executive Council of said provisional government consisting of the President and Ministers thereof.
That it is the expressed purpose of the said provisional government to promulgate such constitution as shall be approved by said convention without submitting it to a vote of the people, or of any of the people, and to thereupon proclaim a government under such constitution and under the name of the Republic of Hawai’i.
That the said provisional government has not assumed a republican or other constitutional form, but has remained a mere executive council or oligarchy, set up without the assent of the people; that it has not sought to find a permanent basis of popular support, and has given no evidence of any intention to do so; that its representatives assert that the people of Hawai’i are unfit for popular government and frankly avow that they can be best ruled by arbitrary or despotic power, and that the proposed constitution, so submitted by said executive council of the provisional government for the approval of said convention does not provide for or contemplate a free, popular or republican form of government, but does contemplate and provide for a form of government of arbitrary and oligarchical powers, concentrated in the hands of a few individuals irresponsible to the people, or to the representatives of the people, and which is opposed to all modern ideas of free government.
Wherefore, I, the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, on behalf of myself and the people of my said Kingdom do hereby again most solemnly protest against the acts aforesaid, and against any and all other acts done against myself, my people and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and I do hereby most earnestly request that the Government represented by you will not extend its recognition to any pretended government of the Hawaiian Islands, under whatever name it may apply for such recognition, other than the constitutional government so deposed as aforesaid, except such government shall show its title to exist by the will of the people of Hawai’i, expressed at an election wherein the whole people shall have had an opportunity unembarrassed by force and undeterred by fear or fraud, to register their preferences as to the form of government under which they will live.
With assurances of my esteem,I am, Sir,Lili’uokalanihttp://hawaiiankingdom. org/us-occupation. shtmlThe report concluded that the United States legation assigned to the Hawaiian Kingdom, together with United States Marines and Naval personnel, were directly responsible for the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom government. The report details the culpability of the United States government in violating international laws and the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom, but the United States Government fails to follow through in its commitment to assist in reinstating the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Instead, the United States allows five years to lapse and a new United States President, William McKinley, enters into a second treaty of annexation with the same individuals who participated in the illegal overthrow with the U.S. legation in 1893 on June 16, 1897, but the treaty was unable to be ratified by the United States Senate due to protests that were submitted by Her Majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani and signature petitions against annexation by 21,169 Hawaiian nationals.
As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States opted to unilaterally annex the Hawaiian Islands by enacting a congressional joint resolution on July 7, 1898, in order to utilize the Hawaiian Islands as a military base to fight the Spanish in Guam and the Philippines. The United States has remained in the Hawaiian Islands and the Hawaiian Kingdom has since been under prolonged occupation to the present, but its continuity as an independent State remains intact under international law.
The main documents surrounding United States intervention and subsequent occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
4.Hawai‘i is rightfully a "state of the United States", the ceded lands belong to all Hawai‘i’s people without racial distinction.

KAUAI Opinion

Guest Viewpoint


http://www. kauaiworld. com/articles/2008/04/16/opinion/edit02. txt

Equality of Hawai‘i’s people worth defending

by Kenneth Conklin

Do historical facts matter in current debates about the Apology Resolution, Akaka Bill, and ceded lands?

At least 19 nations sent formal letters to President Sanford B. Dole granting full-fledged (de jure) diplomatic recognition to the Republic as the legitimate government of Hawai‘i. These were not the tentative de facto recognitions given by local consuls in Honolulu in January 1893 to the temporary Provisional Government.

These letters in late 1894 were sent from national capitals in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, welcoming the permanent government of the Republic of Hawaii into the family of nations.

The letters were personally signed by: Queen Victoria, President Grover Cleveland, Tsar Alexander III, two princes on behalf of Emperor Kuangsu (China), President Casimir Perier (France), King Don Alfonso XIII and Queen Dona Maria Christina (Spain), President Porfirio Diaz (Mexico), and 12 others.

Photographs of the letters, including some English translations, can be seen at ...com/4wtwdz

The Kingdom of Hawaii also recognized the Republic in the same way as those other 19 nations. Ex-queen Liliuokalani personally signed a five-page letter of abdication, and a one-page oath of loyalty to the Republic of Hawai‘i on Jan. 24, 1895; in consultation with and witnessed by her personal attorney and former cabinet members she had appointed. Photographs are on the same Web page.

Among other things, Liliuokalani says: “I hereby do fully and unequivocally admit and declare that the Government of the Republic of Hawai‘i is the only lawful Government of the Hawaiian Islands ... I hereby declare to [everyone] that I consider them as bound in duty and honor henceforth to support and sustain the Government of the Republic of Hawaii.” Consensus among nations determined what was “international law” in 1893-1898. No nation ever protested the Hawaiian revolution of 1893 nor the annexation of 1898. No nation ever refused to do business with the Provisional Government, Republic of Hawaii, or United States as having sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Every local consul in Honolulu in January 1893 gave immediate de facto recognition to the Provisional Government.

At least 19 nations sent formal letters of de jure recognition from their head of state to Republic of Hawaii President Sanford B. Dole.

So what?

Thanks to recognition, the Republic had standing under international law to offer treaties, including a treaty of annexation to the United States. The Republic had the right to make a deal ceding the public lands of Hawai‘i in exchange for payment of Hawai‘i’s national debt.

Never again can Hawaiian secessionists say that the Republic of Hawaii was illegal, had only de facto recognition, or was merely a U.S. puppet regime.

By never protesting the overthrow and by recognizing the successor Republic, those nations condoned the revolution of 1893 as legal, thus discrediting the 1993 apology resolution which referred to “the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.” The Akaka Bill is undermined because it relies on the apology resolution and repeatedly cites it. Discrediting the apology resolution also eliminates the primary reason given by the Hawaii Supreme Court for prohibiting the state of Hawaii from selling any ceded lands without first reaching a “settlement” with a racial group.

The time has come for Hawai‘i politicians to stop playing with the fires of racial separatism and ethnic nationalism. Let’s boldly make policy decisions based on facts: the revolution that overthrew the monarchy was a good thing condoned as legitimate by the international community.

Hawai‘i is rightfully a state of the United States, the ceded lands belong to all Hawai‘i’s people without racial distinction.

The unity and equality of Hawai‘i’s people are worth defending and nurturing.

• Kenneth Conklin is a retired professor of philosophy who resides in Kane‘ohe, O‘ahu. He recently published “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State.
”

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Toxic Smells in Kekaha?

Posted by KAHEA on April 16, 2008 at 9:29am
We received the email below from Kekaha, and wanted to post to see if anyone else has experienced this, or knows anything more about what's going on. If you have information, please email kahea-alliance@hawaii.rr.com or call KAHEA toll-free at 888-526-6288:Today around 1030 a.m., I came home to my house in Kekaha and was overwhelmed with a strong chemical smell in the air. I usually leave my windows open to have the fresh air blow through, but as I entered my home, the smell was collected in my rooms facing the east. I opened all the doors in my house and the chemical smell became less apparent but still present. At about noon, I started feeling nauseas and had extreme head aches. I jumped in my care and drove to the beach to get fresh air. After about 15 minutes or so, I started feeling better.My daughter who attends Kekaha Elementary came home after 2 p.m. and told me that they had to evacuate their classes earlier in the day and go into the park because of the"chemical" smell, and that many of the children became ill. A neighbor of mines also mentioned that the EMT also had to visit St. Theresa's School in Kekaha.Someone is poisoning us, and if there is anyone out there who knows what's happening, please let me know. The only ones who would be spraying chemicals in our area is Syngenta or Pioneer.
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BENT ON TOTAL DESTRUCTION ? IN YOUR NAME !

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 15, 2008 at 7:08pm
BENT ON TOTAL DESTRUCTION ? IN YOUR NAME !USA & MILITARY HAVE AGAIN FUCKED WHATS LEFT OF HAWAII , THE HAWAIIANS and THEIR AINA " SOVEREIGN NATION" THE APOLOGY BILL WAS DA FINGER ,THE ILLEGAL PUPPET GOVERNMENT "THE FIST and ARM"THE CONTINUING ABUSES OF OUR AINA & RACE "THE TAX PAYERS OF USA": " THE KANAKA MAOLI SHACKLED IN A BENT POSITION and STRIPPED OF ALL RIGHTS, AND MADE READY FOR DA FINAL THRUST" of GOOD OLE YANKEE COLONIAL MASTER SLAVE FUCKING !!!WELCOME TO DA "NEW WORLD ORDER" MY YOU CHOKE AND DIE !!REMEMBER YOUR TURN IS NEXT !!!BAAH , BAAH ,SHEEPLEFUCKING PISSED AS ALWAYZ !!!PONOProve4.jpgNot3.gifGOOD2.gifnwo.gifApril 15, 2008Stryker Brigade will be based in HawaiiBy William ColeAdvertiser Military WriterThe Army today announced it had formalized its decision to permanently station the Stryker brigade in Hawai'i, officials said.The decision, which has been expected for months, ends questions about the long-term location of the $1.5 billion fast-strike unit, whose 4,000 soldiers and 325 Stryker vehicles are deployed to Iraq.Although the Army in 2001 decided to base one of the units in Hawai'i, and proceeded with more than $700 million in construction projects, a federal appeals court ruled in 2006 that the service had not adequately examined alternative locations.Bases in Alaska and Colorado were examined before the Army in February said Hawai'i was the “preferred” location, and today announced it has made the decision permanent.The Army said Hawai'i was selected primarily because it is best able to meet strategic defense and national security needs in the Pacific.“Stationing the (Stryker brigade) in Hawai'i sends a powerful signal to our friends and our enemies that we are committed to U.S. interests in this vital region,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific headquartered at Fort Shafter.Mixon added, “We know that Hawai'i has limited space and beautiful natural resources. We will continue to protect them.”Lt. Gen. James D. Thurman, deputy chief of staff of the Army, said he made the basing decision in part because the U.S. has vital interests in the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia, and defense directives call for a reorientation of forces to the region.The 19-ton, eight-wheeled Stryker armored vehicles are the most advanced weapon system used by any country in the southeastern Pacific Rim, the Army said, and as such, it can “provide a dominant force for contingency deployments such as our commitment to the defense of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea” and deter sanctuary for terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia.Stationing Stryker brigades in Alaska and Hawai'i provides “strategic flexibility” to deploy two Stryker brigades simultaneously, if necessary, the Army said.INOUYE.jpgEA2.jpgl_9e33729f40575b08e60d2dff24161148.gif
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Bremer’s 100 orders Iraq’s rape and destruction

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 13, 2008 at 11:21pm
: Bremer’s 100 orders Iraq’s rape and destructionBremer’s 100 orders:The true scale of Iraq’s rape and destructionWhisperwolf, http://uruknet../If you’re a US Citizen (and even if you’re not), ask yourself one important question with reference to Iraq:Have you ever heard of Bremer’s 100 orders?If the answer is "no" then you don’t understand the true destruction of Iraq. This is not altogether something to be ashamed of; the media, led by Murdoch’s "FOX News" has deliberately refrained from covering the laws in any detail, mostly because if they did reveal the extent of the destruction, good American citizens would be outraged.
But Bremer’s 100 orders destroyed Iraq’s economy not just for years but for decades to come. It undid some historical things dating back ten thousand years. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it’s not.
Iraq is home to the oldest agricultural traditions in the world. Historical, genetic and archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon dating of carbon-containing materials at the site, show that the Fertile Crescent, including modern Iraq, was the center of domestication for a remarkable array of today’s primary agricultural crops and livestock animals. Wheat, barley, rye, lentils, sheep, goats, and pigs were all originally brought under human control around 8000 BCE. Iraq is where wild wheat was once originated and many of its cereal varieties have been exported and adapted worldwide. The beginning of agriculture led inexorably to the development of human civilization.
Since then, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia have used informal seed supply systems to plant crops, suited to their particular environment. The saving and sharing of seeds in Iraq has always been a largely informal matter. Local varieties of grain and legumes have been adapted to local conditions over the millennia. While much has changed in the ensuing millennia, agriculture remains an essential part of Iraq’s heritage. Despite extreme aridity, characterized by low rainfalls and soil salinity, Iraq had a world standard agricultural sector producing good quality food for generations.
According to the Rome-based UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 97 percent of Iraqi farmers in 2002 still used saved seed from their own stocks from last year’s harvest, or purchased from local markets.
Source - Global ResearchSo the scene is set. In 2002 things have been unchanged for centuries. Why break a system that worked? Then Bremer came along with the answer: We’ll break a system that works for Iraq, because doing so will generate profit for America.
Bremer wasn’t the first choice for the job. In the aftermath of invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority was originally led by Lt General Jay Garner, who had plans to actually help Iraq by trying to direct the CPA to give control back to Iraqis as soon as possible and hold elections as soon as was practically possible. Alas for Lt General Garner, the Bush administration didn’t want this. Lt General Garner was summarily sacked from the role within a month, and Paul Bremer appointed to the job.
Bremer, under orders from the administration and it’s corporate masters, began systematically destroying any chance the Iraqis had of putting their country back together, in what has since become known as Bremer’s 100 orders. In one hundred orders, Bremer set about the destruction of ten thousand years of working economy in Iraq.
Even now it’s extremely difficult for an interested party reading an article like this to get a straightforward list of all 100 orders and what they do, so for the sake of clarity we will focus on a few of the most destructive orders.
Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq’s 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) 'national treatment’ - which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses", wrote Antonia Juhasz, a project director at the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco (LATimes, August 05, 2004).
Now one might argue that quite a number of Western states already do things this way, and that wouldn’t be inaccurate. However, Iraq has never done things that way, and neither have any of it’s neighbors. The state ran everything prior to 2002. In combination with the crippling sanctions that had been imposed on the Iraqi people by the United Nations when it was accepting as fact the lies the Bush administration was telling about WMD, this meant that suddenly anyone could buy anything in Iraq, but the Iraqi people who SHOULD have been first on the list were broke, and couldn’t afford to buy anything. So it was all sold to other countries, on 40 year ownership licenses that prevent this damage from being undone until 2042 at the very soonest. With NO requirement to re-invest in Iraq, no tax to pay and very few limits, this opened up the Iraqi economy to completely unfettered competition from foreign investment. The only block to this Republican Utopia was that the Coalition Provisional Authority granted the licenses, which of course they made sure that they punished the countries unwilling to back them in war, and rewarded those that did back them. Since the "Coalition of the Willing" to all intents and purposes only consisted at that time of the US and the UK this meant that the bulk of these 40 year licenses were granted to US companies. In other words, not only could the Iraqi people see a military occupation, but they could also see their commerce being taken over for the next 40 years by a corporate occupation.
From the same article quoted above:"Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq’s laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts".
So we not only have foreign companies able to buy all the commerce and 50% of the banks in Iraq, and not being obliged to employ Iraqis to run it, but anyone they DO employ to run it becomes immune from Iraq’s laws, owing to being a foreign contractor. And even worse, they can employ their own armed "private security" - which Blackwater USA were immediately offering as a ’service’ - which is also immune from any kind of prosecution. This led to the situation we’ve seen on YouTube where armored vehicles escorting foreign contractors are driving along Iraq’s streets smashing any Iraqi car that gets in their way to one side. They don’t have to obey the law. It’s a two tier society, and they’re the upper tier. (and yes, I know that video clip starts with an excerpt from the film "Aliens" but that excerpt just shows the mindset of the drivers). In ANY OTHER COUNTRY, America included, NOBODY would be allowed to just ram vehicles out of the way - yet Bremer has allowed that in Iraq, for the next 40 years, and there’s no shortage of Blackwater USA macho Rambo’s prepared to do it.
"Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations".
There is to be NO change, and these orders reinforce that. There is to be NO going back to having things run by the Iraqis, for the Iraqis. That’s not the way corporations want things done. Iraq is to be a safe haven for corporations to do whatever the hell they like, when they like, to who they like. And anyone who gets in their way is a terrorist.
Now we come to the worst order of all. Order 81.
Again from Global Research:Order 81 deals specifically with Plant Variety Protection (PVP) because it is designed to protect the commercial interests of corporate seed companies. Its aim is to force Iraqi farmers to plant so-called "protected" crop varieties 'defined as new, distinct uniform and stable’, and most likely genetically modified. This means Iraqi farmers will have one choice; to buy PVP registered seeds. Order 81 opens the way for patenting (ownership) of plant forms, and facilitates the introduction of genetically modified crops or organisms (GMOs) to Iraq. U.S. agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto and Syngenta will be the beneficiaries. Iraqi farmers will be forced to buy their seeds from these corporations. GMOs will replace the old tradition of breeding closely related plants, and replace them with organisms composed of DNA from an altogether different species, e.g., bacterium genes into corn. In the long run, there won’t be a big enough gene pool for genetic viability.
It should be noted here that Monsanto have deep connections to the Bush administration. They also create a special genetically modified grain seed that works well with their own brand of pesticide, because part of its genetic modification is an immunity to the toxins in that particular pesticide. Unfortunately, nothing else is immune, and the pesticide ruthlessly poisons ANY other plant life except the genetically modified grain. Also when the pesticide is absorbed into the soil, the fields it was deployed in won’t grow any other crop but the Monsanto GM grain until the pesticide’s effects diminish - by which time anyone trying to reverse the usage of Monsanto products would long since have gone bankrupt.
if a large international corporation developed a seed variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and an Iraqi farmer was growing another variety that did the same, it was illegal for the farmer to save his own seed. Instead, he is obliged to pay a royalty fee for using Monsanto’s GMO seed.
Upon purchasing the patented seeds, farmers must sign the company’s technology agreement (Technology User Agreements). This agreement allows the company to control farmers’ practices and conduct property investigation. The farmer becomes the slave of the company.
Order 81 ignores Iraqi farmers’ old traditions of saving seeds, and using their knowledge to breed and plant their crops. It also brutally disregards the contributions which Iraqi farmers have made over hundreds of generations to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, dates and pulses. If anybody owns those varieties and their unique virtues, it is the families who bred them, even though nobody has described or characterized them in terms of their genetic makeup. If anything, the new law — in allowing old varieties to be genetically manipulated or otherwise modified and then "registered" — involves the theft of inherited intellectual property, the loss of farmers’ freedoms, and the destruction of food sovereignty in Iraq.
Like U.S. farmers, Iraqi farmers will be "harassed for doing what they have always done." For example, Iraqi farmers can be sued by Monsanto, if their non-GMO crops are polluted by GMO crops planted in their vicinity. The health and environmental consequences of GMO crops are still unknown. GMO-based agriculture definitely encourages monoculture and genetic pollution. Moreover, this will further increase the already polluted Iraqi environment as a result of tens of thousands of tons of 'depleted’ uranium dust, napalm, chemical weapons, and phosphorous bombs.
Farmers will also be required to buy fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, against plants disease. Iraqi farmers will be required to pay royalties for the new seeds and they will be forbidden from saving seeds. In other words, Iraqi farmers will become agricultural producers for export, a recipe for the introduction of hunger in Iraq, not unknown in many developing countries.
Evidence shows that Western "bio-prospectors" have been using indigenous genetic material taken from their traditional owners. It is this kind of looting or "biopiracy" that is contributing to the destruction of farmers in the developing world, because they have lost control of what they sow, grow, reap and eat.
Source: Seeds of DestructionWhen you consider the destruction done to Iraq by Bremer’s 100 orders you start to see why the unemployed, angry, penniless Iraqi people are so upset at the occupation. You start to see why when someone like Sadr comes along and promises a return to old values, that’s so tempting. You can see why Maliki absolutely HAS to stop other parties that might run on a "get the occupier out" ticket from competing against him in elections. In researching this article I alternated between tears and anger at what I was finding.
Before I close - this shameful state of affairs, although instituted by the Bush administration, was tacitly condoned by the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD who have just stood by and let this happen without objection. They share the blame. They share the responsibillity. What has happened to Iraq is not the fault of one nation, but the fault of a failing of nations and nobody should point fingers at other people without accepting some of the blame themselves. How this blatant illegal occupation has been allowed to rape and destroy a nation is a thing that everyone, everywhere should be disgusted about.

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You're Being Ignored On "Voices Of Truth - One-On-One With Hawai`i's Future"‏

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 13, 2008 at 5:49pm
You're Being Ignored On "Voices Of Truth - One-On-One With Hawai`i's Future"‏Prove2.gifusa4.giflight2.gif

Aloha `aina,

The shenanigans over the ceded lands settlement between the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and House leadership in the Hawai`i legislature continue unabated.

Even though you’ve made it very clear you don’t want a ceded lands settlement, OHA and House majority leader Kirk Caldwell continue to thumb their noses, ignore the people’s will and attempt to work a back door deal.

Let’s be clear - this is not representative government in action.

It’s yet another example of why in a Free Hawai`i you would decide the future instead of being ignored by OHA trustees and bureaucrats who have sold out and take their orders from the illegal US occupation.

We say mahalo to all of you who continue to contact both OHA and the legislature to express your outrage.

If you’re one of the few who have yet to do so, here’s a great place to start - repcaldwell@Capitol.hawaii.gov or call (808)-586-8475.

Many of you have contacted us to ask what an LLC is, why OHA is pushing so hard, and exactly who would profit.

Be sure and watch Free Hawai`i TV this coming Wednesday. We have your answers, but it ain’t pretty.

And by the way, if you support our issues on the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network, please email this to a friend and see below how you can help us continue our work.

We do appreciate everyone who has let us know recently how much you enjoy our new shows. It’s especially gratifying to hear you gather your `ohana to sit down and watch.

Our purpose is to turn our viewers into activists to create a brighter future for Hawai`i. You’re needed now more than ever on Voices Of Truth – One-On-One With Hawai`i’s Future.

MONDAY, April 14th At 7:00 PM & FRIDAY, April 18th At 5:30 PM – Hawai`i Island – Na Leo, Channel 53
THURSDAY, April 17th At 8:30 PM & FRIDAY, April 18th At 8:30 AM – Kaua`i – Ho`ike, Channel 52
“Continuing The Quest – A Visit With Earl Louis”

Living his entire life of 43 years in Punalu`u, on Hawai`i Island, Earl has seen a lot of changes.

Located in the district of Ka`u, he tells us Punalu`u sees more development and tourists practically every day.

A fierce advocate for preserving the last uninhabited coastline on Hawai`i Island, Earl knows both the good and bad news - Punalu`u is not only beautiful but easily accessible.

“Why should we cater to people who want to destroy this land with more resorts and condominiums?”

That’s the question Earl confronts on a daily basis.

Fertilizers from resort golf courses flow to the ocean, killing off the limu (seaweed) that is food for both the fish and Hawksbill turtle that come to nest on Punalu`u beaches and lay their eggs.

Earl’s mission of trying to save the entire eighty-mile coastline might seem daunting to some.

To him, it’s simply what must be done.

Join us in our amazing visit with Earl and you’ll experience what we did - a humble man whose words stay with you a very long time - “This is what the ancestors left for us thousands of years ago. We need to educate our visitors. They don’t know how special and sacred this `aina is. Development is not the only answer.”

TUESDAY, April 15th At 6:30 PM & WEDNESDAY, April 16th At 6:30 AM – Maui – Akaku, Channel 53
“Modern Konohiki – A Visit With Ke`eaumoku Kapu”

“What is the destiny in your life?

“What is the history of this place and is there a place suitable for me?”

These are questions that drive the spirit of Ke`eaumoku Kapu, modern day warrior and protector of the `aina.

A former construction worker building houses and highways, Ke`eaumoku’s first awakening came during the 1993 Onipa`a March in Honolulu.

The second occurred when he found himself actually making concrete parts for the H-3 freeway, which eventually caused the desecration of ancient sites in Halawa Valley on O`ahu.

Needing to earn money to feed his family, he kept asking himself, “Is what I’m doing pono, is it just? Is the knowledge I’m acquiring through the corporate system legitimate, based on my life as an island person and Kanaka Maoli?”

Soon thereafter he walked in, quit his job and dedicated the rest of his life to answering the question, “Is there a way to create just with the unjust?”

Today he and his wife run no less than five associations dedicated to serving those threatened with losing their family land to corporate development.

Don’t miss Ke`eaumoku as he leads us through his own awakening that took him from someone whose life was run by US corporations to the warrior he is today who sits on the County of Maui Cultural Resources Commission and the Native Hawaiian Historic Preservation Council. See for yourself how he realized the “contemporary management system has nothing to do with our upbringing as Kanaka Maoli,” and the words he lives by – “we must do whatever we can because our land is at stake.”

SATURDAY, April 19th At 8:00 PM – O`ahu - `Olelo, Channel 53
“Eyes Of The Kupuna – A Visit With Aunty Pele Hanoa”

Imagine living next to a beautiful black sands beach, a place you’ve lived your entire life.

Nature is at your door. The ocean, the beach, endangered turtles use the area coming ashore to breed.

Now also imagine tour buses pulling up next to your home and brining one thousand tourists a day. That’s right, one thousand tourists every single day.

Tourists who harass the turtles, steal the sand for souvenirs, leave litter, and behave obnoxiously.

How would you like to put up with that every day of your life?

Aunty Pele does.

Born and raised in Punalu`u, she’s a prime example of old Hawai`i - staying on the land where you were born, because you were taught from an early age to malama the `aina – care for your ancestral land.

All around her things are changing – and not for the better. Multi-national corporations building developments on the shore and then stealing the water from agricultural lands for their projects.

Yet none of this stops her.

Be sure and catch our visit with Aunty Pele. You’ll be as inspired as we were by this remarkable kupuna who stops at nothing and whose message is one you’ll long remember – “We accepted everyone who came to Hawai`i. Now they should reciprocate by protecting and caring for what we have.”

Voices Of Truth interviews those creating a better future for Hawai`i to discover what made them go from armchair observers to active participants in the hopes of inspiring viewers to do the same.

Please consider a donation today to help further our work. Every single penny counts.

You may donate via PayPal at VoicesOfTruthTV.com or by mail –
The Koani Foundation
PO Box 1878
Lihu`e, Kaua`i 96766

If you missed a show, want you see your favorites again or you don’t live in Hawai`i, here’s how to view our shows anytime – visit VoicesOfTruthTV.com and simply click on the episodes you wish to view.

And for news on issues that affect you, watch FreeHawaiiTV.com.

It’s all part of the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network.

Ho`oku`oko`a,

`Ehu Kekahu Cardwell
The Koani Foundation
Visit www.FreeHawaii.Info
Watch www.FreeHawaiiTV.com
“Voices Of Truth” now online - www.VoicesOfTruthTV.com
The Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network

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YOU'RE BEING IGNORED ON "VOICES OF TRUTH - ONE-ON-ONE WITH HAWAI`I'S FUTURE"

Posted by Free Hawai`i on April 13, 2008 at 6:30am
The shenanigans over the ceded lands settlement between the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and House leadership in the Hawai`i legislature continue unabated.Even though you’ve made it very clear you don’t want a ceded lands settlement, OHA and House majority leader Kirk Caldwell continue to thumb their noses, ignore the people’s will and attempt to work a back door deal.Let’s be clear - this is not representative government in action.It’s yet another example of why in a Free Hawai`i you would decide the future instead of being ignored by OHA trustees and bureaucrats who have sold out and take their orders from the illegal US occupation.We say mahalo to all of you who continue to contact both OHA and the legislature to express your outrage.If you’re one of the few who have yet to do so, here’s a great place to start - repcaldwell@Capitol.hawaii.gov or call (808)-586-8475.Many of you have contacted us to ask what an LLC is, why OHA is pushing so hard, and exactly who would profit.Be sure and watch Free Hawai`i TV this coming Wednesday. We have your answers, but it ain’t pretty.And by the way, if you support our issues on the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network, please email this to a friend and see below how you can help us continue our work.We do appreciate everyone who has let us know recently how much you enjoy our new shows. It’s especially gratifying to hear you gather your `ohana to sit down and watch.Our purpose is to turn our viewers into activists to create a brighter future for Hawai`i. You’re needed now more than ever on Voices Of Truth – One-On-One With Hawai`i’s Future.MONDAY, April 14th At 7:00 PM & FRIDAY, April 18th At 5:30 PM – Hawai`i Island – Na Leo, Channel 53THURSDAY, April 17th At 8:30 PM & FRIDAY, April 18th At 8:30 AM – Kaua`i – Ho`ike, Channel 52“Continuing The Quest – A Visit With Earl Louis”Living his entire life of 43 years in Punalu`u, on Hawai`i Island, Earl has seen a lot of changes.Located in the district of Ka`u, he tells us Punalu`u sees more development and tourists practically every day.A fierce advocate for preserving the last uninhabited coastline on Hawai`i Island, Earl knows both the good and bad news - Punalu`u is not only beautiful but easily accessible.“Why should we cater to people who want to destroy this land with more resorts and condominiums?”That’s the question Earl confronts on a daily basis.Fertilizers from resort golf courses flow to the ocean, killing off the limu (seaweed) that is food for both the fish and Hawksbill turtle that come to nest on Punalu`u beaches and lay their eggs.Earl’s mission of trying to save the entire eighty-mile coastline might seem daunting to some.To him, it’s simply what must be done.Join us in our amazing visit with Earl and you’ll experience what we did - a humble man whose words stay with you a very long time - “This is what the ancestors left for us thousands of years ago. We need to educate our visitors. They don’t know how special and sacred this `aina is. Development is not the only answer.”TUESDAY, April 15th At 6:30 PM & WEDNESDAY, April 16th At 6:30 AM – Maui – Akaku, Channel 53“Modern Konohiki – A Visit With Ke`eaumoku Kapu”“What is the destiny in your life?“What is the history of this place and is there a place suitable for me?”These are questions that drive the spirit of Ke`eaumoku Kapu, modern day warrior and protector of the `aina.A former construction worker building houses and highways, Ke`eaumoku’s first awakening came during the 1993 Onipa`a March in Honolulu.The second occurred when he found himself actually making concrete parts for the H-3 freeway, which eventually caused the desecration of ancient sites in Halawa Valley on O`ahu.Needing to earn money to feed his family, he kept asking himself, “Is what I’m doing pono, is it just? Is the knowledge I’m acquiring through the corporate system legitimate, based on my life as an island person and Kanaka Maoli?”Soon thereafter he walked in, quit his job and dedicated the rest of his life to answering the question, “Is there a way to create just with the unjust?”Today he and his wife run no less than five associations dedicated to serving those threatened with losing their family land to corporate development.Don’t miss Ke`eaumoku as he leads us through his own awakening that took him from someone whose life was run by US corporations to the warrior he is today who sits on the County of Maui Cultural Resources Commission and the Native Hawaiian Historic Preservation Council. See for yourself how he realized the “contemporary management system has nothing to do with our upbringing as Kanaka Maoli,” and the words he lives by – “we must do whatever we can because our land is at stake.”SATURDAY, April 19th At 8:00 PM – O`ahu - `Olelo, Channel 53“Eyes Of The Kupuna – A Visit With Aunty Pele Hanoa”Imagine living next to a beautiful black sands beach, a place you’ve lived your entire life.Nature is at your door. The ocean, the beach, endangered turtles use the area coming ashore to breed.Now also imagine tour buses pulling up next to your home and brining one thousand tourists a day. That’s right, one thousand tourists every single day.Tourists who harass the turtles, steal the sand for souvenirs, leave litter, and behave obnoxiously.How would you like to put up with that every day of your life?Aunty Pele does.Born and raised in Punalu`u, she’s a prime example of old Hawai`i - staying on the land where you were born, because you were taught from an early age to malama the `aina – care for your ancestral land.All around her things are changing – and not for the better. Multi-national corporations building developments on the shore and then stealing the water from agricultural lands for their projects.Yet none of this stops her.Be sure and catch our visit with Aunty Pele. You’ll be as inspired as we were by this remarkable kupuna who stops at nothing and whose message is one you’ll long remember – “We accepted everyone who came to Hawai`i. Now they should reciprocate by protecting and caring for what we have.”Voices Of Truth interviews those creating a better future for Hawai`i to discover what made them go from armchair observers to active participants in the hopes of inspiring viewers to do the same.Please consider a donation today to help further our work. Every single penny counts.You may donate via PayPal at VoicesOfTruthTV.com or by mail –The Koani FoundationPO Box 1878Lihu`e, Kaua`i 96766If you missed a show, want you see your favorites again or you don’t live in Hawai`i, here’s how to view our shows anytime – visit VoicesOfTruthTV.com and simply click on the episodes you wish to view.And for news on issues that affect you, watch FreeHawaiiTV.com.It’s all part of the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network.
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Conflicts of conference

Posted by Ikaika Hussey on April 12, 2008 at 10:00pm
From the Hawaii Standard: Joan Conrow posted some thoughts yesterday on some possible back room politics within the State House of Representatives to bring the OHA settlement bill back to life. Conrow cites an email circulated by Andre Perez. [Full disclosure: Andre is a colleague and friend.]
Apparently, according to Andre’s email, HB1201, a bill carried over from last year, is being used as a shell for a settlement bill drafted by OHA: HB1201 HD1 SD1 CD1 PROPOSED. The email goes on to say: Rep. Kirk Caldwell is calling for a conference to discuss HB1201 HD1 SD1 CD1 PROPOSED (OHA's Proposed Version) with the intention of removing OHA's proposed language and inserting HB266 HD2 language (Ceded Land Settlement legislation that was held in Senate Committees). There is a lot of back door maneuvering.
If this is true, it would seem to violate conference rules:
The authority of the Conference Committee shall be limited to resolving differences between the Senate and House drafts of a bill ... a Conference Committee shall not amend a bill or resolution by inserting into the bill or resolution any unrelated or new subject matter.
I've left a message on Kirk Caldwell's answering machine to verify this story. I'll post a follow-up if I do get a call back. Why new conferees? Also of note is the placement of new legislators on the conference committee. According to the legislature's website, House leadership has replaced Pono Chong and Karen Leinani Awana with Jon Riki Karamatsu and Gene Ward. It's worth asking why the two previous legislators are being replaced at all, regardless of what plans the House leadership has for this bill. But beyond that, if this bill is indeed going to become a vehicle for any iteration of the settlement legislation, why aren't Ken Ito and Tommy Waters, the chairs of the House committees which originally heard the bill, on this conference committee? It would be a blow to public faith in the legislative process if Caldwell and others in leadership positions make any move to resuscitate a bill which had such resounding (and unified) opposition, and which obviously represented a lack of consensus in the Hawaiian community.
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Hawaii Needs You

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 12, 2008 at 7:48pm
Hawaii Needs Youby _NONE, The Nation, Issue April 28, 2008An open letter to the US left from the Hawaiian sovereignty movement.The confluence of two forces--a massive military expansion in Hawai'i and Congressional legislation that will stymie the Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiian] sovereignty movement--will expand and consolidate the use of Hawai'i for US empire. We are calling on the US left to join our movement opposing these threats and to add our quest for independence as a plank of the broad US left strategy for a nonimperialist America. If you support peace and justice for the United States and the world, please support demilitarization and independence for Hawai'i.Since 1893, the United States has malformed Hawai'i into the command and control center for US imperialism in Oceania and Asia. From the hills of the Ewa district of O'ahu, the US Pacific Command--the largest of the unified military commands--directs troops and hardware throughout literally half the planet. Since the late nineteenth century, the US military has multiplied in our islands, taking 150,000 acres for its use, including one-quarter of the metropolitan island of O'ahu. Moreover, the National Security Administration is building a new surveillance facility nearby, not far from where urban assault brigades, called Strykers, will train for deployment throughout the world. The US Navy is also increasing training over the entire archipelago, including populated areas and the fragile northwestern whale sanctuary. This militarized occupation has a long history. Ke Awalau o Pu'uloa--known now as Pearl Harbor--became one of the very first overseas bases, along with Guantánamo, around the time of the Spanish-American War. We still hold much in common with prerevolution Cuba--a sugar plantation economy and status as the playground for the rich of North America.We have suffered from the effects of being the pawn for US wars on the world. Our family members languish from strange diseases brought by military toxins in our water and soil. Our economy is a foreign-run modern plantation serving multinational shareholders and decorated generals. We salute a foreign flag, and the education system instructs us to yearn for a distant continent called the Mainland. Tourists imbibe in sunny Waīkikī, while the beaches in the native-inhabited regions are littered with chemical munitions.But amid our suffering, we have survived. Our tenacity and resilience have historical roots: in 1897, 95 percent of the Kanaka Maoli population signed petitions that helped to defeat a treaty to forcibly annex Hawai'i to the United States.The last forty years have seen remarkable change for our people, through the advancement of a grassroots struggle against the political occupation and mental colonization of our homeland. We have been successful in several campaigns: in stopping the bombing of Kaho'olawe Island and Makua Valley, in revitalizing the Hawaiian language and culture in our schools and families, in returning to our indigenous spiritual practices and in making Hawaiian sovereignty a dinner-table topic and an actual possibility. These hard-fought wins are successes in the movement for self-determination and also a threat to America's use of Hawai'i as the purveyor of its empire.It is against this backdrop that the Akaka bill (the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act) is being discussed in the halls of Congress. Named for US Senator Daniel Akaka, the bill is being promoted by Hawai'i's corporate and political elite as a vehicle for racial justice. Yet the bill would turn back one of the most important victories of the last four decades--the rise of Hawaiian self-determination, including independence, as a political possibility--replacing it with the extinguishment of our historic claims to land and sovereignty.Our conundrum puts us squarely in opposition to the middle ground of American politics, which has arrived at a consensus that Hawai'i will remain a military colony of the United States. Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye is a major purveyor of pork barrel spending for military appropriations and defense contractors. All three presidential contenders have signaled their support for the Akaka bill. And while the far right wing of the Republican Party opposes the Akaka bill, both major parties have no quarrel over the continuance of the empire's use of our homeland.In light of this American consensus on Hawai'i, we turn to our nearest political allies, US progressive movements, and seek your solidarity for our independence because it is congruent and essential to your hope for a better world. Please join us in opposing the Akaka bill and the militarization of Hawai'i, and please support Hawai'i's independence as part of your vision for a more humane United States and a more just world.Ikaika Hussey, convenor, Movement for Aloha No ka Aina
 (MANA)Terrilee Keko'olani, Ohana Koa/Nuclear-Free and Independent PacificNoelani Goodyear-Kaopua, assistant professor of political
 science, University of Hawaii, ManoaJon Osorio, director, Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawaii, ManoaKekuni Blaisdell, convenor, Ka PakaukauAndre Perez, Hui PuKelii "Skippy" Ioane, Hui PuKai'opua Fyfe, director, The Koani Foundation
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BACK DOOR DEALING CONTINUES WITH CEDED LANDS BILL

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 12, 2008 at 7:29pm
Your Help Needed Now To Defeat This BillPrivate dealing continues between the Office Of Hawaiian Affairs and the Hawai`i legislature on the ceded lands bill.Despite overwhelming constituent outcry against it and the senate killing the bill, representative Kirk Caldwell and OHA are busy manufacturing support and calling for a conference to discuss it, HB1201.Here are conference members -Senator Kokubun -senkokubun@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6760Senator Baker -senbaker@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6070Senator English -senenglish@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 587-7225Senator Hee -senhee@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-7330Senator Slom -senslom@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8420Senator Hanabusa -senhanabusa@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-7793Senator Tokuda -sentokuda@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 587-7215Representative Ito -repito@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8470Representative Ward -repward@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6420Representative Say -repsay@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6100Representative Karamatsu -repkaramatsu@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8490Contact those listed above and let them know any measure pertaining to the Ceded Land Settlement is unacceptable and should not be passed.You, your family, and friends can make a critical difference.Neighbor islands residents call the following toll free -Hawai`i - 974-4000Kaua`i - 274-3141Maui - 984-2400Molokai / Lana`i - (800) 468-4644Here's a sample message to send them -Aloha mai,I am contacting you to help kill HB 1201.I believe that the disputed matters pertaining to the Ceded Lands can be resolved in a fair, just, and honest manner.But the legislation OHA is suggesting is not legitimate.Once the Settlement Agreement is nullified, I support 1) a full and complete inventory of the Ceded Lands, 2) an audit of all gross revenues generated by the Ceded Lands, 3) beneficiary consultation with all stakeholders, and 4) an OHA audit.Please vote "NO" on HB1201.Mahalo,Your NameCity, State
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RE: Famous Are the Flowers: Hawaiian Resistance Then and Now

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 12, 2008 at 8:13am
RE: Famous Are the Flowers: Hawaiian Resistance Then and NowFamous Are the Flowers: Hawaiian Resistance Then and Nowby ELINOR LANGER, The Nation, Issue April 28, 2008Initial research for this Special Issue was funded by The Nation Institute.What seems like many years ago, on a family trip to Māui, I suddenly realized that Hawai'i was not what it seemed to be. We were driving through Lāhainā toward a near-in coastal reef when it came to me that what I saw was not fitting together. Makai--as the Hawaiians say, toward the sea--was a crowded tourist town filled with restaurants, trinket shops and alluring kiosks where tour guides offering commercial adventures of every description plied their wares. Mauka--toward the mountains--was a crumbling sugar mill about which the question that sprang to mind was not so much what had happened there in earlier times but how on earth it was standing now. Up the hill, I knew, was the building known as Hale Pa'i, which had housed the first missionary press, and at the very top, Lāhaināluna, the original missionary school from which the first generation of seminary-trained Hawaiians had gone out to spread the language and the Word. On my lap as we drove was a guidebook to Māui I had been reading the night before and was leafing through again that said, in spirit if not in so many words, In 1893, a group of sugar planters and other businessmen, some of whom were descendants of the missionaries, overthrew the Queen and they all lived happily ever after. At which point a voice in my head involuntarily said, "No way!"At the time this was no more than the passing thought of a leftish tourist who had no wish to subtract yet another beautiful spot from the list of places it was possible to go in the world without discomfort, but the thought stuck. At home, I bought Queen Lili'uokalani's autobiography, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, which--surprise--did not agree with the author of the guidebook, and a few other volumes, but I soon put them aside. I was writing about another subject, and I did not have the time. Over a decade later, when I returned to those books, I found them astonishing, for the history they told of the destruction of the independent Kingdom of Hawai'i largely by American businessmen in Honolulu with the support of American troops, and its annexation five years later not by treaty but by mere Congressional resolution, was a history I had never been taught. Nor had I been taught the history of the years before, when between the coming of Captain Cook in 1778 and the coming of the missionaries in 1820 the native population declined from perhaps 800,000 to about 135,000 from foreign diseases, nor the decline that continued inexorably year after year so that by the time of annexation in 1898 it was under 40,000, with many observers predicting, and indeed treating it as a convenience, that there would soon be none.Yet what might be the point of this belated historical excursion was an open question. For one thing, it was over. That was then. However things might have been in the days when, as a 1941 picture book put it, "Hawaiians owned and operated Hawaii," Hawai'i now was a state, officially owned and operated by the USA, in particular by the US military, which controlled 22.4 percent of the island of O'ahu and 5.7 percent of the land of the islands as a whole. About 7 million tourists a year visited the place, the majority Americans, enjoying not just the sun and sea but that ideal ratio of the exotic and the familiar not possible elsewhere around the globe, where America owned only a partial share. As for that bane of American history--race--with its mixture of people in some cases dating back to before the islands were on any map, the Hawai'i fondue was the richest blend in the world. Walking the streets of Honolulu or elsewhere you would need a racial Geiger counter to figure out who was what. The political implications, too, seemed almost stale. With so many more recent examples to choose from, who needs to cluck over nineteenth-century Hawai'i, merely the first of many places beyond our shorelines where an independent people in the way of American imperialism met their fate?The more I immersed myself in the story of Hawai'i, however, the more I saw that what was so compelling about it was not that these issues were settled but that they were not. In January 1993, on the centennial of the overthrow, the state sponsored an immense day-by-day re-enactment of its events so authentic that when the actress playing the Queen returned to the 'Iolani Palace from a meeting with her cabinet ministers across the street to tell the people that her efforts to restore certain rights to the native population via a new Constitution would have to be postponed, many in the audience instinctively held their hats to their chests. Two days later, when a well-known nationalist of the present delivered the cry of a well-known royalist of the past--"We must stand together.... We love our Kingdom! We love our Queen! We love the land that gave us birth!"--the audience cheered and wept. That summer an international tribunal convened by sovereignty activists with judges from several countries took testimony throughout the islands, documenting many aspects of the US-Hawai'i relationship as violations of international law. Five years later, on the anniversary of formal annexation, when newly found petitions against it signed by about 38,000 of the 40,000 Native Hawaiians alive in 1898 were displayed in a tent outside the Bishop Museum and people found the signatures of their grandparents, whose stands against the American colossus had been in the category of dangerous family secrets, they wept again. This awareness of history has only deepened with time. Start a conversation with almost anyone on a park bench or bus, and you are likely to find not only a genealogist but a historian, eager to tell you of his or her personal experiences and also the tales passed on by the uncle of an uncle of an uncle of an uncle from the time of Kamehameha the Great who knew just where the king had injured his ankle when he was a boy. What is true of random Hawaiians is also true of random haoles, many of whom have shared in the reconsideration of history and have taken the causes of their Native Hawaiian neighbors to heart.So much feeling in the streets was bound to have reverberations in Washington. With Hawai'i an inextricable part of the US economy and the islands the headquarters of the military's vital Pacific Command, whose jurisdiction covers more than half the surface of the earth, it would not do to have restless natives. On November 23, 1993--a few months after telling an eager throng on Waīkikī Beach, "You will not be forgotten"--President Clinton signed Public Law 103-150, known as the Apology Resolution, to "acknowledge" the 100th anniversary of the January 17, 1893, overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i and to offer an apology to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States. A poignant thirty-seven-clause review of the history of the islands, the Apology Resolution may be one of the most empathetic documents ever to emanate from Washington [see box, page 17]. Its implications were barely noticed until later. Intended by the senators from Hawai'i who sponsored it simply to register the injustices of the past without pointing to any remedies in the future, the resolution implicitly raised a follow-up question: what do you do after you say you're sorry? In the words of one of the handful of other senators who took it seriously enough to say anything at all, "the logical consequences of this resolution would be independence."IIOn March 29, 1893, two months after the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani and only a few weeks after the second inauguration of Democratic President Grover Cleveland, whose first term had been followed by the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, there arrived in Honolulu a courtly, silver-haired gentleman named James Blount, sent by the new President to find out what had really happened in the islands. The political circumstances of Blount's mission were these. Two days after the overthrow, representatives of the self-appointed Provisional Government--essentially the leaders of a longstanding movement for annexation in a new guise--had set off for Washington carrying with them a well-developed petition for annexation to the United States, which they had every reason to believe would be warmly welcomed, but not carrying the representatives of the Kingdom, who were forced to wait for the next crossing, several weeks later, to present their case. Annexation was a cherished ambition of many prominent Republicans, in particular Benjamin Harrison's expansionist Secretary of State, James Blaine, a long-term associate of the American minister to Hawai'i, John Stevens. The American minister, it would turn out, had not only, on his own initiative, recognized the Provisional Government even before it was in full possession of the buildings traditionally considered to warrant such recognition, but had conspired with its leading members beforehand to encourage their revolutionary plans. Barely a month after the first outlines of the American-led revolt had stirred Honolulu and with only seventeen days of the Republican Administration left to go, on February 15 a treaty of annexation was whisked before the US Senate for ratification. Democrat Cleveland was appalled. If the United States was to depart "from unbroken American tradition in providing for the addition to our territory of islands of the sea more than two thousand miles removed from our nearest coast [the] transaction should be clear and free from suspicion," the President told Congress later. Five days after taking the oath of office, on March 9, 1893, Cleveland withdrew the treaty from the Senate for "re-examination." Two days later, he summoned Blount.The Blount Report would be a remarkable government document in any era. A 1,400-page model of open diplomacy, it contains what appears to be the entire diplomatic correspondence between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States from the 1820s on, including communications between the State Department and its ministers in Honolulu of a sort that would never be published today, transcripts of Blount's interviews with the principals, analyses of the Kingdom's successive Constitutions, learned articles of the period on important aspects of Hawaiian life from health to population, newspaper reports, public speeches, budgets, sugar export statistics, stockholder data for the leading corporations--in short, everything an independent observer would need to arrive at an opinion about what had taken place and why. It is a primary source for understanding the events of the Hawaiian revolution even today. Its moral heft is no less impressive than its physical heft. "Colonel" Blount was nobody's pawn. A former Confederate officer, he had endured the Yankee occupation of his hometown of Macon, Georgia, after the Civil War and the lesser indignities that came from representing it in Congress for twenty years after Georgia was readmitted to the Union, rising to become the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee before he retired. Thinking that Blount was a friend, but not taking chances, the leaders of the Provisional Government and Minister Stevens were unpleasantly surprised when they rowed out to greet his vessel with the news that they had already rented him, as he would report, a "house, well furnished [with servants and a carriage and horses]...[for which] I could pay...just what I chose, from nothing up," and he declined. He also declined the Queen's offer of a mere carriage ride into the city. Sensing at once that "with the minds of Hawaiian citizens...full of uncertainty as to what the presence of American troops, the American flag, and the American protectorate implied" no one would speak with him freely, he had the flag hauled down and the troops returned to their ships, not dissuaded even by an urgent visit from Stevens and one of the annexationists who informed him with "intense gravity...that he knew beyond doubt...that if the flag and troops were removed" troops from a Japanese ship in the harbor would rush in to restore the Queen. "I was not impressed much with these statements," Blount noted wryly in his opening paragraphs. Details dispensed with, he set to work.The heart of the Blount Report is a lucid and often droll thirty-nine-page, first-person narrative addressed to Cleveland's Secretary of State, W.Q. Gresham, describing some of his encounters and his conclusions. Whether it was his character, his experience or simply his chosen position outside the literally interrelated circles of power in Honolulu, this well-seasoned Southerner seems to have been as immune to rhetoric as he was to manipulation, particularly rhetoric draping racial and economic issues in the plumage of democracy. What Blount told Washington, in brief, was (1) the pretense of the new leaders that it was the Queen's moving to change the Constitution (the alleged "cause" of the coup) rather than their dethroning her that was illegal overlooked the racial truth that the Constitution she was trying to change was the one forced on her predecessor six years before for the very purpose of shifting power from the native monarchy to the white elite; (2) "the controlling element in the white population is connected with the sugar industry.... Annexation has for its charm the complete abolition of all duties on...exports to the United States"; (3) American diplomatic and military resources were strongly implicated in the coup; and (4) the natives didn't want it. "The testimony [even] of leading annexationists is that if the question of annexation was submitted to a popular vote...[it] would be defeated," he wrote.The Blount Report's unsparing assessment of the US role in the overthrow was far from universally welcomed. Submitted to Congress by Cleveland in a lengthy message of December 18, 1893, in which he described the coup as "an act of war... [against] the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people...which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair"--words the visitor can find emblazoned on a rock in President Grover Cleveland Court in downtown Honolulu today--it became a cornerstone of the anti-annexationist position in the national struggle over Manifest Destiny taking place at the time. It was countered two months later by another voluminous document known as the Morgan Report, after the annexationist chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat John Tyler Morgan of Alabama, who established to his own satisfaction, though not to that of all the members of his committee, just what he set out to establish, among other points: that Blount's appointment to Hawai'i without the consent of the Senate was illegal in the first place, and that no illegalities had been committed by US representatives or armed forces in Hawai'i in the second place."Manifest Destiny" was the catchphrase for a whole confluence of late nineteenth-century racial, economic and national defense issues that divided the public as intensely as any such issues since slavery. With its dark-skinned natives, burgeoning sugar plantations and strategic location, Hawai'i was at the center of the debates. While The Nation, along with Harper's Weekly and a number of influential papers across the country, was passionately in the anti-annexationist column [see boxes, pages 18 and 19], other papers, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Sun, were just as eager for it to happen. The Anti-Imperialist League, with prominent members, sent speakers all over the country. Congress prevaricated. Despite his original hope of restoring Lili'uokalani to her throne, Cleveland appears to have been stymied by her alleged initial refusal to grant amnesty to those who conspired against her and by the stalemate in Congress. With their hopes for annexation stalled, on July 4, 1894, the leaders of the coup, who had been calling themselves the Provisional Government, renamed themselves the Republic of Hawai'i, further complicating efforts at US intervention, which they now claimed would be interference with the internal affairs of a sovereign state. In January 1895, after an unsuccessful native uprising against the government of which she was accused of having prior knowledge, Lili'uokalani was tried, convicted and imprisoned in 'Iolani Palace, which further strengthened the new government's position. In spring 1897, when expansionist Republican William McKinley succeeded Cleveland, the linked annexationists in Honolulu and Washington resumed their campaign. Still unable to achieve the two-thirds Senate majority required for ratification of annexation by treaty, Congressional annexationists attempted to acquire the islands by joint resolution of both houses--which also stalled until July 1898, two months after Commodore Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, when it went through.To those who had resisted the logic of Capt. Alfred Mahan, whose The Influence of Sea Power Upon History in 1890 had been followed by a pointed discussion in Forum titled "Hawaii and Our Future Sea Power" in 1893, the importance of our troops stopping over in Honolulu on their way to the Philippines now spoke for itself. There never was any treaty. On August 12, 1898, in a formal ceremony, Hawai'i was officially annexed, the land seized from the Kingdom in the 1893 coup included. In 1900 it became a territory. In 1959 in a referendum in which the only choice was whether the voter was for or against statehood--the restoration of the Kingdom or any other form of independence was not an option--it became the fiftieth state. The Blount Report has been challenged, ignored and, doubtless some would argue, transcended, but it has never been convincingly refuted. The issues of the illegality of the overthrow of the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the legality of the governments that followed have never really been settled.IIIIn mid-1845 King Kamehameha III and his legislature received petitions from the common people of several islands warning that the sale of land to foreigners, their appointments to government offices and their induction as citizens should all be stopped. "The selling of lands to outsiders is not a wise course," said a petition from Kona. "If you wish to sell or lease the lands you should sell or lease them to your own people. By so doing the lands will remain as your own and you will continue to reign over the Hawaiian people and the country and everything in Hawai'i will not be taken away." "It is not proper that any foreigner should come in and be promoted in your kingdom, among your Chiefs and your people," argued a petition from Lāhainā. The whole idea of foreign citizenship was called into question. "What is to be the result of so many foreigners taking the oath of allegiance?" the Lāhainā petitioners asked. That "this kingdom will pass into their hands, and that too very soon," they answered themselves. "We, to whom the land has belonged from the beginning, shall all dwindle away."What is remarkable about these petitions is not only their indication of the strength of the connection between the people and their sovereign, nor even their prescience in anticipating the effects that the incorporation of so many foreign elements would bring; it is that only twenty-five years after the New England missionaries began the work of creating a Hawaiian alphabet from the sounds of their unwritten language, the petitions were all in writing and that a mere six years after a declaration of principles of government informally known as the Hawaiian Magna Carta had begun to spell out the rights of ordinary citizens and limit those of the monarch, the rudimentary constitutional government to which they were addressed was well in place. While much of what came in with the foreigners has often been rejected or repudiated, the tools of literacy and democracy were quickly put to use.The society the Native Hawaiians were seeking to preserve with their petitions was a stable, well-ordered hierarchical world in which the sense of belonging was so natural that no one could ever have noticed its existence until the way of life everyone had so naturally led had disappeared. It has been described in a recent comparative anthropological study as having the "most complex [social organization] of any Polynesian chiefdoms and probably of any chiefdoms known elsewhere in the world" at contact. From the first settlements, now generally thought to have been by voyagers from the Marquesas or Tahiti who arrived around the time of Christ, the small populations of all the islands gradually expanded in terrain, from the windward coasts into the leeward areas, and in numbers, until somewhere around 1100, when they were joined by a second migration, from Tahiti, which continued for a few hundred years. It is from this mix, during the period roughly between 1100 and perhaps 1600 or 1700, that the society now referred to as ancient Hawaiian civilization--with its distinctive technological accomplishments in aquaculture and agriculture, its distinctive cultural achievements in oral poetry and dance, and its distinctive combination of religious and political power--gradually solidified.Described variously as feudal or communal, depending on the preconceptions of the observer, Hawaiian society as it existed at the time of European contact appears to have had one particularly notable feature: that however specialized and stratified social functions and social relationships might be, they were intrinsically reciprocal. This was particularly true of the relationship between the ali'i, the chiefs, and the maka'ainana, the common people, whose rights to the land were guaranteed regardless of changes in the fortunes of the high-ranking konohiki, or overseers, or even of the chiefs themselves, as a result of wars or other familial or political challenges. "A stone that is high up can roll down, but a stone that is down cannot roll" was the saying that articulated this principle. One of the many sources of the bond between the chiefs and the people was, as it always is, war. Although the dates are not firmly established, it appears that at least by the beginning of the eighteenth century a process of consolidation of separately ruled chiefdoms on each of the major islands, by war, was largely completed and by the end of the century the four separate island kingdoms of Ma¯ui, Hawai'i, O'ahu and Kaua'ī, but particularly Māui and Hawai'i, were each trying to consolidate the whole. It was a long, ambitious effort, involving major movements of men and supplies, taking place on both sides of European contact and before and after the incorporation of European weapons and ships. It was also exceedingly bloody. As most visitors today know from the signs atop the pali where it took place, about 10,000 warriors died in the 1795 Battle of Nu'anu alone, in which Hawai'i conquered O'ahu .The unification of the islands at the same time that they were discovered by the West is the central fact of modern Hawaiian history, for it meant that just as the nation was coming together, the culture that made it one was coming apart. From the weapons demonstrations provided by the first white sailors who ended up staying on the islands, which helped King Kamehameha win the wars, to the diplomatic guidance provided him by British navigator George Vancouver, which helped him get his bearings in the world, the establishment of the united Kingdom and the influence of Westerners were intertwined. Everything that happened occurred against the backdrop of the European and American presence, including the famous events of 1819 celebrated throughout Christendom when, shortly after the death of Kamehameha, his chiefly successors renounced their native gods without ever having seen the first missionaries, who arrived the following year. By that time Western commercial traders had been flooding the country for more than a quarter-century, and their impunity from the tabus of the Hawaiian gods as well as their immunity from the diseases decimating the people were hard to miss.As gaping as the religious void was a political void. With the previously unknown islands suddenly at the center of a burgeoning tricontinental trade in fur, sandalwood and whale oil, there were tasks to be performed for which the Hawaiians in their self-contained development could not possibly have been prepared. When the legislative council responded to the Lāhainā petitioners' request that the foreigners in the government be dismissed with the question, "If these shall be dismissed, where is there a man who is qualified to transact business with [other] foreigners?" they were not simply being self-serving, they were also being practical.The most important business involving foreigners around the middle of the century--probably more far-reaching even than the treaties initiating the new Kingdom into the web of nations--was the introduction of private property, the conversion of the ancient system in which the land was used rather than owned into a system in which it could be bought and sold, a transformation known as the Māhele. Both the rationale and the process of the Māhele, whose aftermath is still in dispute, are too complicated to be briefly summarized, but it is the cornerstone of the subsequent development of the islands. When the initial land awards were completed, 70 percent of the maka'ainana had lost the rights to the land they and their ancestors had long enjoyed, and the acquisition of land by foreigners on which the great fortunes of the islands rest even today was well under way. It is difficult to imagine anything harder to bear for a people already bearing so much than the loss of their land. In the roughly fifty years between the Māhele and annexation, the native population approximately halved again, from 88,000 to about 40,000. In addition, with the expansion of the sugar industry beginning around the same time and the deliberate importation of foreign labor to keep the new plantations going, particularly the Chinese in the 1850s and the Japanese in the 1860s, Hawaiians were soon a much smaller percentage of the population as a whole--about half in the 1880s, about a quarter at annexation. Without a place in their own society, many natives who did not die of disease died of despair, a phenomenon noticed by European and Hawaiian observers alike. "The people dismissed freely their souls and died" was the Hawaiian way of putting it. It would be wrong to oversimplify the relationships between Europeans and Hawaiians. Among the Westerners from many different countries who left their mark on the new Kingdom were those who respected Hawaiian civilization as well as those who mocked it, those whose learning helped preserve some of its cultural treasures for later generations as well as those whose actions hastened their decay, those with genuine feeling for their Hawaiian wives, mistresses, friends and colleagues and those whose only feeling was for themselves. Whatever the character of individuals, however, the consequences of their collective presence--Hawaiian losses and haole gains--remained the same.When David Kalākaua--the first monarch not of the direct Kamehameha lineage to rule the islands-- became King in 1874, he took as his motto Ho'oulu Lāhui: Increase the Nation. "I shall endeavor to preserve and increase the people that they shall multiply and fill the land with chiefs and commoners," he said in one of his first public speeches. Kalākaua is the most controversial figure in Hawaiian history, more so even than the Queen, his sister and successor. He is applauded and condemned in different quarters today almost as passionately as he was when he lived, in part because his legacy is so complex. Not only did he strengthen the Kingdom abroad through an unprecedented round-the-world voyage during which he impressed dignitaries from Tokyo to London with his intellect and sophistication--he also weakened it at home, where he undermined the balance between native and foreign power maintained by his predecessors by capitulating, under threat of force, to the aptly named 1887 Bayonet Constitution, which expanded the power of the latter at the expense of the former. Not only did he strengthen the nation's identity through such unifying symbols as the 'Iolani Palace and the statue of Kamehameha the Great, which still grace Honolulu today, he also weakened its security, particularly by the 1887 renewal of the 1876 sugar-inspired reciprocity treaty with the United States, which involved the first official abandonment of Hawaiian territorial sovereignty: the cession of Pearl Harbor. Controversial financial charges against Kalākaua, ranging from reckless extravagance to personal corruption, have also never gone out of circulation. Undoubtedly the principal reason for the continued debate about Kalākaua's place and stature is his continued relevance. He is one of the major links between the old Hawaiian civilization and the contemporary sovereignty movement. When he brought the missionary-outlawed hula back into public performance, when he set up a genealogical board to verify and record the true family histories of the endangered ali'i, when he created the semi-secret society Ka Hale Nauā--Temple of Wisdom--to preserve traditional forms of knowledge of the earth, sea and sky, he was giving his people back their interupted history. When he held his formal coronation and other public celebrations on the palace grounds, he was reinforcing a connection between the monarchy and the people that would help give them something to hold on to. While it is Lili'uokalani who is generally credited with leaving behind the legal framework that has made it possible for later generations to challenge the legitimacy of her successors, it may well have been Kalākaua who kept alive the love of the Kingdom that accounts for the outpourings of the 1993 centennial in the first place. The identification of the Hawaiian people with the monarchy is very strong. A few weeks after the coup, a musical friend of Lili'uokalani's was asked by members of the Royal Hawaiian Band who had refused to sign the new government's petition for annexation to the United States to write them a song that would express their loyalty to the Queen. You will not be paid... You will have to eat stones... is what they were told. The result was "Kaulana Nā Pua," Famous Are the Flowers, the "pua" frequently also translated as "children" or "descendants" but always meaning something growing out of and belonging to the land:Kaulana nā pua a'o Hawai'iFamous are the children of Hawai'iK ū pa'a mahope o ka 'āinaEver loyal to the landHiki mai ka 'elele o ka loko 'inoWhen the evil-hearted messenger comesPalapala 'ānunu me ka pākaha.With his greedy document of extortion.Pane mai Hawai'i moku o Keawe.Hawai'i, land of Keawe, answers.Kōkua nā Hono a'o Pi'ilani.Pi'ilani's bays help.Kāko'o mai Kaua'i o ManoMano's Kaua'i lends supportPa'apū me ke one Kakuhihewa.And so do the sands of Kakuhihewa.'A'ole 'a' 'kau i ka pūlimaNo one will fix a signatureMaluna o ka pepa o ka 'enemiTo the paper of the enemyHo'ohui 'āina kū 'ai hewaWith its sin of annexationI ka pono sivila a'o ke kanaka.And sale of native civil rights.'A'ole mākou a'e minaminaWe do not valueI ka pu'ukālā a ke aupuni.The government's sums of money.Ua lawa makou i ka pōhaku,We are satisfied with the stones.I ka 'ai kamaha o o ka 'āina.Astonishing food of the land.Mahope mākou o Lili'u-laniWe back Lili'u-laniA loa'a 'ē ka pono a ka 'āina.Who has won the rights of the land.(A kau hou 'ia e ke kalaunu)(She will be crowned again.)Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puanaTell the storyKa po'e i aloha i ka 'aina.Of the people who love their land.Soon the new government's demand that the band members sign "the paper of the enemy" had become a rallying call. In 1893 the people of Hawai'i had not yet lost their language--that would happen under the Territory--but even as they did, they kept this song. When it was revived by a leading popular musician near the beginning of the cultural revival in the 1970s, it fit right in. When it was sung--in Hawaiian--to the great throngs on the 'Iolani Palace grounds in the 1993 commemoration, the crowd knew the words.IVOn January 3, 1976, a small group of citizens of the islands of Māui and Moloka'i crossed an eight-mile channel from Māui to begin the illegal occupation of an island few Americans even knew existed, the eighth and smallest of the major Hawaiian islands, Kaho'olawe. However little-known it was at the time, Kaho'olawe was known very well to the earliest Hawaiians, for whom it was the base for the celestial and navigational instruction that made possible the round-trip voyages from Hawai'i to Tahiti, which are thought to have gone on until around 1400. Its place names, such as Lae o Kealaikahiki, the "Point of Pathway to Tahiti," are full of information about its role. It was also well-known to the residents of the nearest parts of Māui and Lāna'i because ever since December 8, 1941, the day after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it had been given over to the Navy for target practice, a function that continued well into the Vietnam era. When the bombs hit Kaho'olawe, you could see, hear and feel them throughout the neighboring islands. "As a child [I experienced] the shaking of all our windows as an everyday occurrence," a man from Lāna'i testified at a public hearing.The struggle for Kaho'olawe is seen by many observers as the formative episode in the larger struggle to reclaim Hawaiian identity, which has been a force in the islands ever since because there was something so deeply Hawaiian about it. For one thing, it was about the land, to which Hawaiians understand themselves to be so genealogically related that its desecration becomes practically a family murder. From the first night spent on dry ground so littered with unexploded ordnance that any footstep might have led to death, the two members of the group who had avoided arrest by the Coast Guard felt themselves to be in the presence of their ancestors, and the more they learned as their movement widened and deepened, the more they learned that was true. Later archaeological surveys discovered more than 2,000 shrines, living areas and other evidence of a functioning society.The character of the movement and the people in it was also distinctively Hawaiian. Organized as an 'ohana--family--rather than as a formal association, it blended the knowledge of the elders, who still knew from oral traditions something of the former status of Kaho'olawe, with the energies of the young people, who still had the will to reclaim it. Led by, among others, a charismatic singer-philosopher named George Helm, whose roots were deep in the rural soil of Moloka'i, the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana, or PKO, attracted others with the same combination of intelligence and soul, and when Helm and an experienced boatman named Kimo Mitchell were lost at sea during another attempted landing in March 1977 the determination of the 'ohana further intensified. Just as there is no inauthenticity like that of the Hawaiian tourist industry, there is no authenticity like that of the true Hawaiian, and in light of its influence the juxtaposition of the sacredness of Kaho'olawe and its devastation began to appear more and more unacceptable. In 1980, as a result of PKO litigation, the Navy agreed to limit bombing, begin clearance of live munitions, institute conservation and reforestation measures, and allow access to PKO for four 
no-bombing days ten months a year to carry out its own preservation and restoration activities. In 1990 the bombing was ended completely, and in 1994 the island was returned to the State of Hawai'i along with $400 million from Washington to further its recovery. The island is still a dangerous place, and disagreements remain over who should control the right of access, the state or PKO, but when the children of Lāna'i and Māui look out today over the narrow channels that separate them from Kaho'olawe they see not the source of their nightmares but a source of pride.The literal uncovering of the Hawaiian past on Kaho'olawe both strengthened and was strengthened by other political struggles and cultural retrievals occurring about the same time. In 1959, as the simultaneous arrival of statehood and jets brought with it a building boom that resulted in the displacement of many Native Hawaiian communities throughout the islands, there were organized protests and demonstrations from O'ahu to Kaua'i. There was the Hōkūle'a, a bold reconstruction of a Polynesian voyaging canoe, which made a successful journey from Māui to Tahiti by noninstrument navigation in thirty-two days in 1976, precisely duplicating the voyages recounted in ancestral chants--the first of many such navigational feats. There were young musicians exploring a newly realized Hawaiian-ness with such contributions as "Kaulana Nā Pua." There were hula teachers, traditional healers and practitioners of the Hawaiian martial art of lua, all survivors of a frail Polynesian underground that had somehow managed to sustain itself over the years. The more Hawaiians came together in protest or song, the more they understood that they were in fact Hawaiians and that they no longer knew what that meant.Apart from the revered scholar, translator, songwriter and chanter Mary Kawena Pukui, whose works included the Hawaiian-English dictionary, a study of Hawaiian place names and an anthropological study of traditional Hawaiian society on the Big Island, where she was born, and those who collaborated with her, Hawaiian history under the Territory did not exist, either as academic enterprise or on the shelves. The writings of the great Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau had been published only in newspapers, mainly between 1866 and 1871, and were unavailable until translated and collected by Pukui in 1961. The invaluable works of preservation that had been undertaken toward the end of the nineteenth century--Abraham Fornander's three-volume An Account of the Polynesian Race, King Kalākaua's Legends and Myths of Hawaii, Nathaniel Emerson's Unwritten Literature of Hawaii--and even a unique series of lectures on ancient Hawaiian civilization sponsored by the Kamehameha School in the 1930s, had all gone out of print. As for the history of the Territory itself, it is perhaps best symbolized by the statue of President McKinley outside McKinley High School in Honolulu clutching a Treaty of Annexation that never was. The Queen was not fat, stupid, lazy and lascivious either, as children educated under the Territory were generally taught. Her autobiography, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, which has proven to be the single most influential account of the overthrow and annexation, was also out of print.The loss of history was inseparable from another fundamental loss, the Hawaiian language. What the missionaries had given in establishing the Hawaiian alphabet in the 1820s their descendants had taken away with the banning of Hawaiian as the medium of instruction in public and private schools in 1896. Nineteenth-century Hawaiians had amazed the world with the speed and pleasure with which they took to seeing their language in writing, achieving near-universal literacy in a few decades and mastering a wide range of subjects from math to geography in their native tongue. Shakespeare, along with the classic writers of other Western languages, was also translated into Hawaiian. In addition, over the course of the century about a hundred Hawaiian-language newspapers had come into being, with articles on subjects ranging from prayer to politics, making the written language an everyday, taken-for-granted thing. It did not take long for this legacy to be shattered. In stories too familiar from the experiences of indigenous people everywhere, great-grandparents alive today recall being slapped if they used a Hawaiian word on the school grounds and slapped harder if they used it a second time. Today's grandparents remember the shame of speaking the language as part of the larger shame of simply being Hawaiian. Many of today's parents and children grew up without ever hearing the language at all. With dwindling readership, the last of the Hawaiian-language newspapers went out of business around World War II. The number of native speakers of Hawaiian left in the 1980s was estimated to be under 2,000.In 1983 a group of educators formed 'Aha Pūnana Leo, which means "language nest," expressing their wish to feed their ancestral language into the mouths of Hawaiian children as birds feed their young. Starting with one immersion preschool on Kaua'i, the immersion program now includes two independent K-12s as well as similar programs within the Hawaiian public school system. The numbers are small and the teachers involved are quick to stress the difficulties, including the paucity of curriculum materials and of other teachers, but the program is still turning out graduates who are fluent and literate in Hawaiian. Hawaiian is considered to be one of the most successful language-reclamation programs in the world, after Hebrew, which is one of its models, and it is itself a model for the revitalization of other indigenous languages in the United States and elsewhere. In the same period a new generation of scholars trained in the language, which had been available at the university level since 1921, began translating and interpreting nineteenth-century archives largely unused by previous historians, in time publishing a number of remarkable books that show the Hawaiians of the nineteenth century in a new and active light, both drawing on and enhancing the knowledge of the past [see "Resources," page 28]. There are also Hawaiian studies programs at the university campuses at Manoa and Hilo. Today, Hawaiian history is no longer so hard to find. Kamakau, Kalākaua, Emerson, Fornander and the Queen, among others, are all available at the supermarket.So many recoveries led naturally to the question: why not the ultimate recovery--sovereignty? How the idea first arose is a subject on which there are many different opinions. What "sovereignty" might be exactly and how to get it are also the subject of many opinions. In the 1980s and '90s the strongest initiative came from a grassroots organization call Kā Lahui Hawai'i, which defined itself as a "ation within a nation" and enrolled as many as 20,000 Hawaiians in a constitutionally governed entity internal to the state with representation from all the islands. Recently, positions resting on international law--some stressing the illegality of the 1893 overthrow, others the illegitimacy of statehood on the grounds of the US unilateral withdrawal of Hawai'i from the UN's list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, still others combining both arguments--have been getting more attention. The underlying claim is the same laid out in the 1993 international tribunal: Hawaiian sovereignty was never legally relinquished. There are also numerous other variants, and numerous representatives of them, including a Hawaiian Kingdom and a Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom, separate organizations, each with its own thinkers, strategies and shadow cabinet. For all its divisions, the sovereignty movement is a tightly knit political community, and for the most part people get along. All can agree with the recent formulation of one of their several spokespeople apropos the anticipated 2009 half-century anniversary of statehood: "To me statehood is not a reason for celebration. We've been led to believe that we were adopted, and then we found out we were kidnapped."Despite the fact that inside the sovereignty camp it sometimes appears that its influence peaked with the flush of 1993, in other circles it is still seen as a rising force, enough to provoke a continuing reaction. In 2000, thanks to a Hawaiian incarnation of the conservative-libertarian ideological grouping that includes such US representatives as the Heritage and Heartland foundations, a challenge to the right of a state agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), to confine voting for its trustees to citizens of Hawaiian descent was upheld by the Supreme Court, in Rice v. Cayetano, clearing a pathway for similar challenges to a variety of Native Hawaiian benefit programs, many of them administered by the OHA. (Another challenge, to the hallowed Hawaiians-only admission policy of the Kamehameha schools, settled out of court in 2007 after years of litigation, emerged from the same political constellation.) With health, income, education and other vital statistics consistently showing Native Hawaiians at the bottom of the ethnic social ladder, the threat to such aid as had emerged over the years was unacceptable to the state's Democratic leadership, which began pressing for a federally recognized tribal government for Native Hawaiians to protect the endangered programs. The legislation--known formally as the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act and informally as the Akaka bill after Senator Daniel Akaka, who has introduced it regularly since 2000--has become the locus of an increasingly serious national debate centering on whether the bill recognizes Native Hawaiians on a political basis, which according to the bill's supporters has precedents in federal Indian policy and poses no constitutional problems, or on a racial basis, which, according to conservative opponents including the Bush White House, would be illegal. More recently, this argument has been taken up in the public arena, with conservative editorialists denouncing the bill's proposed creation of a special status for Native Hawaiians as at best discriminatory and at worst racist.On the islands, too, the Akaka bill has generated increasing heat, and even fear, opposed by peculiar bedfellows: the constellation behind the legal challenges, led since 2001 by the Honolulu-based Grassroot Institute, who see it as dividing the citizens of Hawai'i into two classes according to race and opening the way to secession, and many sovereignty activists, who see it as distorting and undermining their fundamental identity. Their position is, We are not Native Americans, we are not even Native Hawaiians, we are Polynesians. Another commonality between the conservatives and the sovereignty movement is distrust of the OHA, the thirty-year-old agency that, as the chief lobbyist for the Akaka bill and the natural starting point for a future Native Hawaiian government, is widely seen as unable to separate advocacy for Native Hawaiians, which was its original mandate, from protecting its own bureaucracy, which was not. With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama having recently stated that, unlike Bush, they would sign the Akaka bill should it pass Congress (and with John McCain also thought to support it), the long stalemate over the bill may be coming to an end. What happens if it becomes law is unpredictable. The bill is conspicuously vague. Deferring all important decisions to future "government-to-government" negotiations after a Native Hawaiian governing entity is created, the bill is so open-ended that no one knows where it will lead, including Senator Akaka, who told an NPR interviewer that it would be up to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren whether to seek independence--a bit of candor greeted in many quarters with a shiver.The heart of the matter, long concealed by other things and staggering to contemplate now that it is being faced, is land: the 1.8 million acres "ceded" by the Republic to the United States at the time of annexation and referred to by everyone touched by the sovereignty movement as "stolen." This land involves roughly half the state of Hawai'i and includes some of its most valuable property, starting with the Honolulu airport. Whenever one of the islands' vigilant protest groups litigates or rallies against the environmental consequences of the Army's twenty-ton Strykers or the inter-island superferry or genetically modified seeds, the question is raised, Whose land is it, anyway?: the question of sovereignty. The crowds at sovereignty demonstrations are far smaller than in 1993, but the ideas of the sovereignty movement have taken hold.The most remarkable thing about the present moment, in fact, is the extent to which the illegality of the American takeover is recognized. Despite the fact that the racial mixture of individuals and families is such that the question of who is "Hawaiian" can never be satisfactorily answered; despite the fact that a large proportion of families are thoroughly integrated into the economic status quo through the employment of one or more members in the military or tourist industry; despite the fact that, overall, the citizens of Hawai'i appear used to and indeed proud of being Americans, there is a widespread consensus, strengthened by the Apology Resolution, that the historical sequence that began with the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom and ended with Hawai'i's star on the American flag was wrong, and that the fact that it started a long time ago does not make it right. "If it is disgraceful for a single individual to steal, it is no less disgraceful for a nation, an aggregate of individuals, to steal...[and] I believe that when the American people fully understand the Hawaiian matter, they will condemn the great wrong done to the natives by the missionaries and their descendants," wrote Grover Cleveland's Secretary of State Walter Gresham in 1895, a prediction that seems finally to be coming true. No one thinks that that historical sequence can be reversed, but neither can it any longer be ignored. The next phases will be the stuff of politics on both sides of the water. As for the Native Hawaiians, whose very existence as a people was so long presumed doomed, they are moved simply to find themselves still here. "Hawaiians go back 1,200 generations," proclaimed one of the speakers at the most recent commemoration of the overthrow last January, "and we will be here for 1,200 more." So they are not in a terrible hurry. They know change takes time. Just offshore from the Big Island, Hawai'i, a new volcanic island is thrusting up from the ocean floor--Kama'ehu--already represented on a sovereignty T-shirt, though it is not expected to reach the surface for at least 10,000 years. In the words of a new chant accompanying a Hawaiian dance troupe's homage to the new arrival: "The child is born, the family grows.
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"Molokai Ranch Cuts More Than Just Jobs" - Molokai Dispatch Article

Posted by Pono Kealoha on April 12, 2008 at 7:04am
"Molokai Ranch Cuts More Than Just Jobs" - Molokai Dispatch Article
What a sad waste - in so many ways...Aloha, Kahualaulani

Ranch Cuts More Than Just Jobs

Friday 4-11-08
Filed Under: Announcements | Political | Sports & Outdoors | La`au Point
059web.img_assist_custom.jpgDestructive measures in the wake of closure.
By Brandon Roberts
Kaluakoi residents awoke Wednesday to the sound of rain and falling coconut palms. Up to 30 trees have been killed to make barriers around the golf course, and have many Molokai residents wondering why.
"This is just so sad, it looks like a war-zone with all the beautiful trees down," said Judy Canady, Ke Nani Kai resident of 27 years. "They could have at least had the courtesy to tell us."
She believes the Ranch is doing this as retribution for the failure of the La`au development.
Judy's husband Darryl, former president of the West Molokai Association, said that the Ranch shutdown and subsequent hacking of healthy trees has been a "festering, ongoing, and growing situation for many years." Judy added that the horrible situation has hope, "it brings us together in the community."
The Canady's echoed many West End residents' sentiments that what respect the Ranch and Peter Nicholas may have had has all but disappeared. One resident of 18 years said that they should be put in jail.
"When the La`au proposal started, I gave the Ranch the benefit of the doubt, but it divided the community, and when I saw Peter Nicholas get ugly, I said, this is not the way a business person should act, this is wrong. I did not respect the way Nicholas treated the members of the community," Judy said with sadness.
"Walter Ritte was wonderful today," Judy said. She made a phone call to Ritte, a community leader against the La`au development, the night before to express her concern and emotions about the destruction on the West End.
Ritte told Ranch manager John Sabas that he would bring the Ranch all the kiawe trees they wanted to barricade the vacant golf course, but Sabas allegedly said he preferred to use the live coconuts.
"They just don't care, not one ounce," expressed an emotional Carol Harms, Kaluakoi resident. She pointed toward a standing group of dead coconut trees wondering why live palms were used instead to make the ineffective barriers.
Historically in Hawaii, it was an act of war and disrespect to cut down coconut palms. The trees are a source of life, producing food, water, shade, and holding precious land from erosion.
Meanwhile, in Maunaloa, the swimming pool at The Lodge, which once held blue waters and happy vacationers, is now full of sand. The Lodge itself has been wrapped in hog fencing, and many now wonder if this is a new definition of "mothballing".
Many questions arise as to the legality of recent Ranch activities. Did the Ranch need permits for these actions? The back-filling of the pool and the chopping of a healthy Norfolk pine next to the Lodge to clear a path for a dump truck to access the pool, as well as the killing of vibrant coconut palms are all questionable. Many on Molokai are empty and in pain, wondering what motives and intent the Ranch has behind their destructive and disrespectful actions.

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Dictator

Submitted by Francobenz on Fri, 2008-04-11 21:40.
When you have a dictator in place this is what happens. The "wannabe" king is unhappy and wants to starve the people. All this "wannabe" has is title to the land, but as each day passes the wannabe loses his power and the people see him and his subjects for what they really are, selfish & rude. Now they will make the earth bleed to punish the people but mother earth will regrow and heal herself and might even repay the destruction with a little revenge. Be stong people of Molokai, this dictator will pass in time and the island will heal.And the land will return to the people. I promise. Keep the spirit of Aloha alive for your future, God Bless.

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depressing

Submitted by halemalu on Fri, 2008-04-11 22:27.
i am so depressed right now. my only hope is that those who did this will experience "what goes around comes around". it seems that to some people this vile act was something trivial, but it really is a sign of something sinister. i hope this makes news all the way to the mainland papers.

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Ranch Cuts More Than Jobs

Submitted by friendlyguy on Fri, 2008-04-11 19:46.
Wow! As an outsider I have refrained from offering an opinion on this entire matter. However, what they did to those trees shows that any community, anywhere in the world, would be MUCH better off without people with that type of mentality living or working in the community. They are either stupid or vindictive beyond rehabilitation: and either way, you are surely, SURELY!, better off without them and/or their business ventures.

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Ranch Cuts More Than Jobs

Submitted by lokelo on Fri, 2008-04-11 15:30.
It is their property to do with it what they want, but these people are SICK! What will they do next, torch the tentalos at the beach village?

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even if it is their "legal" right to do what they want....

Submitted by halemalu on Fri, 2008-04-11 16:58.
legal isn't always moral. moral and immoral has a bigger impact on those around us than "legal" and "illegal". the cutting down of a bunch of trees may be a trivial thing to some, but this act shows us the character of those who own/manage that ranch.
there are people who belong on this special island, and others who don't. they are like elephants in a china shop, trampling on our culture and our environment, treating the island like a piece of real estate, a mere commodity, not like the living aina to be cherished and respected.

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BULLETIN! - BACK DOOR DEALING CONTINUES WITH CEDED LANDS BILL

Posted by Free Hawai`i on April 11, 2008 at 7:56pm
Your Help Needed Now To Defeat This BillPrivate dealing continues between the Office Of Hawaiian Affairs and the Hawai`i legislature on the ceded lands bill.Despite overwhelming constituent outcry against it and the senate killing the bill, representative Kirk Caldwell and OHA are busy manufacturing support and calling for a conference to discuss the bill, HB1201.Here are conference members -Senator Kokubun -senkokubun@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6760Senator Baker -senbaker@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6070Senator English -senenglish@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 587-7225Senator Hee -senhee@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-7330Senator Slom -senslom@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8420Senator Hanabusa -senhanabusa@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-7793Senator Tokuda -sentokuda@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 587-7215Representative Ito -repito@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8470Representative Ward -repward@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6420Representative Say -repsay@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-6100Representative Karamatsu -repkaramatsu@Capitol.hawaii.gov (808) 586-8490Contact those listed above and let them know any measure pertaining to the Ceded Land Settlement is unacceptable and should not be passed.You, your family, and friends can make a critical difference.Neighbor islands residents call the following toll free -Hawai`i - 974-4000Kaua`i - 274-3141Maui - 984-2400Molokai / Lana`i - (800) 468-4644Here's a sample message to send them -Aloha mai,I am contacting you to help kill HB 1201.I believe that the disputed matters pertaining to the Ceded Lands can be resolved in a fair, just, and honest manner.But the legislation OHA is suggesting is not legitimate.Once the Settlement Agreement is nullified, I support 1) a full and complete inventory of the Ceded Lands, 2) an audit of all gross revenues generated by the Ceded Lands, 3) beneficiary consultation with all stakeholders, and 4) an OHA audit.Please vote "NO" on HB1201.Mahalo,Your NameCity, State
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Letter to BLNR Re: Mauna Kea Management Plan

Posted by ku ching on April 10, 2008 at 11:25pm
April 10, 2008Ms Laura Thielen, ChairpersonMembersBoard of Land and Natural Resources1151 Punchbowl St.Honolulu, Hawaii 96813Dear Ms Thielen and BLNR Members:Re: Proposed Mauna Kea Management PlanApril 11, 2008 Hearing and CommentsAloha,Thank you for taking up and considering the important matter of the management of Mauna Kea.The Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, the Sierra Club (Hawaii Island chapter), Royal Order of Kamehameha I, and Mr. Clarence Ching object to the University of Hawai`i Institute for Astronomy (“UH/IFA”) presentation and public comment period before the Board of Land and Natural Resources (“BLNR”). There are a number of reasons this briefing as currently structured is not appropriate.First, the BLNR is repeating the same mistake on which the Third Circuit Court ruled against UH/IFA and the Board of Land and Natural Resources in January 2008. On January 28, 2008, Judge Hara entered a final judgment in favor of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou et al., and against the UH/IFA and BLNR for the failure of the BLNR to prepare its own Comprehensive Master Plan as required by the BLNR’s own rules. Mauna Kea et al v. BLNR, Third Circuit Court, Civil No. 4-1-397. The BLNR may not delegate the adoption of a comprehensive master plan for Mauna Kea to the UH/IFA and its agents (the Office of Mauna Kea Management and Ku`iwalu Consulting, LLC).Second, Judge Hara’s Order was clear. BLNR has a duty to protect the conservation resources of the entire summit area of Mauna Kea. Under the BLNR’s rules, the DLNR must prepare and the BLNR must approve a comprehensive management plan for the summit of Mauna Kea. This duty may not be delegated to a third party.Third, on February 26, 2008, the BLNR and UH/IFA both appealed Judge Hara’s decision and order to the Intermediate Court of Appeals. By again contracting for UH to prepare a plan, neither the BLNR nor UH/IFA are complying with the Court’s Order. Both seek to reverse the Third Circuit decision, calling for the protection and conservation of Mauna Kea.Fourth, BLNR may not transfer its fiduciary duty to a conflicted third party like the UH/IFA, its agents (or foreign governments) using Mauna Kea. The Hawaii Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the delegation of the State’s fiduciary duty to other parties is unlawful.Fifth, the State may not use the lack of funds to justify delegating their fiduciary duty to protect the public resources on behalf of the Native Hawaiians and People of Hawai`i.Sixth, Judge Hara’s decision called for a conservation plan not a development plan for construction of another observatory. The UH/IFA and University of California are moving to build the world’s largest telescope, known as the TMT atop Mauna Kea. The TMT is so big nearly every telescope on the summit could fit inside its dome. The TMT’s stadium size dome cannot fit on the summit, so the UH/IFA is proposing to build it on the north summit plateau, that is the last undeveloped view plane, comprised of pristine land, sacred landscape and one of the largest burial complexes. The construction timeline for the TMT is set to begin in 2009.The construction of the TMT will have cumulative impacts way beyond those already found in NASA EIS, which were considered adverse, significant and substantial.Finally, we do not think it is appropriate to simultaneously claim that BLNR is complying with the Court’s Order while at the same time appealing the very same decision.The below signed parties in the litigation are constrained by the fact of the appeal from formally participating in this discussion. We believe this violates our due process rights and is fundamentally unfair to us as well as the public whose rights and resources you have a duty to protect.Thank you for your time and consideration.In Aloha we remain,Kealoha Pisciotta, Mauna Kea Anaina Hou,Debbie Ward, Sierra Club (Hawaii Island chapter)Clarence Ching, Individual PractitionerAli`i Sir Paul K. Neves, Royal Order of Kamehameha I.
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CURIOUS ABOUT HOW HAWAI`I SUPPOSEDLY BECAME A US STATE?

Posted by Free Hawai`i on April 10, 2008 at 7:30pm
The United States acquired Hawai`i through force.Queen Lili`uokalani, Hawai`i's last Queen, was deposed on Jan. 17, 1893, by a group of American businessmen supported by the United States Navy and Marine Corps and diplomatic representatives.Sovereignty of Hawai`i was allegedly transferred to the U.S. on Aug. 12, 1898 during ceremonies at `Iolani Palace in Honolulu, on the island of O`ahu.Hawai`i allegedly became a U.S. territory in 1900.On Nov. 23, 1993, The United States apologized for illegally overthrowing the Kingdom of Hawai`i, and recognized the inherent sovereignty and right of self-determination of native islanders.Needless to say, a lot of shady events took place between Jan. 17,1893 and Aug. 21, 1959.Hawaiian sovereignty is a hot issue in the islands to this day and likely will be for as long as the United States flag flies over Hawai`i.History Clearly Shows The Hawaiian Nation Wasn't Annexed It Was Stolen!
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US progressive magazine publishes open letter from sovereignty movement

Posted by Ikaika Hussey on April 10, 2008 at 3:30pm
Aloha aina kakou: The following piece ran in The Nation, the oldest US magazine and a pillar of the US progressive movement. It's part of a special issue The Nation is publishing about Hawaii. I haven't seen it in print yet, but hope to in the next couple of days. (Apparently The Nation opposed the US annexation of Hawaii in 1898.) Hawaii Needs You An open letter to the US left from the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. The confluence of two forces--a massive military expansion in Hawai'i and Congressional legislation that will stymie the Kanaka Maoli [Native Hawaiian] sovereignty movement--will expand and consolidate the use of Hawai'i for US empire. We are calling on the US left to join our movement opposing these threats and to add our quest for independence as a plank of the broad US left strategy for a nonimperialist America. If you support peace and justice for the United States and the world, please support demilitarization and independence for Hawai'i. Since 1893, the United States has malformed Hawai'i into the command and control center for US imperialism in Oceania and Asia. From the hills of the Ewa district of O'ahu, the US Pacific Command--the largest of the unified military commands--directs troops and hardware throughout literally half the planet. Since the late nineteenth century, the US military has multiplied in our islands, taking 150,000 acres for its use, including one-quarter of the metropolitan island of O'ahu. Moreover, the National Security Administration is building a new surveillance facility nearby, not far from where urban assault brigades, called Strykers, will train for deployment throughout the world. The US Navy is also increasing training over the entire archipelago, including populated areas and the fragile northwestern whale sanctuary. This militarized occupation has a long history. Ke Awalau o Pu'uloa--known now as Pearl Harbor--became one of the very first overseas bases, along with Guantánamo, around the time of the Spanish-American War. We still hold much in common with prerevolution Cuba--a sugar plantation economy and status as the playground for the rich of North America. We have suffered from the effects of being the pawn for US wars on the world. Our family members languish from strange diseases brought by military toxins in our water and soil. Our economy is a foreign-run modern plantation serving multinational shareholders and decorated generals. We salute a foreign flag, and the education system instructs us to yearn for a distant continent called the Mainland. Tourists imbibe in sunny Waīkikī, while the beaches in the native-inhabited regions are littered with chemical munitions. But amid our suffering, we have survived. Our tenacity and resilience have historical roots: in 1897, 95 percent of the Kanaka Maoli population signed petitions that helped to defeat a treaty to forcibly annex Hawai'i to the United States. The last forty years have seen remarkable change for our people, through the advancement of a grassroots struggle against the political occupation and mental colonization of our homeland. We have been successful in several campaigns: in stopping the bombing of Kaho'olawe Island and Makua Valley, in revitalizing the Hawaiian language and culture in our schools and families, in returning to our indigenous spiritual practices and in making Hawaiian sovereignty a dinner-table topic and an actual possibility. These hard-fought wins are successes in the movement for self-determination and also a threat to America's use of Hawai'i as the purveyor of its empire. It is against this backdrop that the Akaka bill (the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act) is being discussed in the halls of Congress. Named for US Senator Daniel Akaka, the bill is being promoted by Hawai'i's corporate and political elite as a vehicle for racial justice. Yet the bill would turn back one of the most important victories of the last four decades--the rise of Hawaiian self-determination, including independence, as a political possibility--replacing it with the extinguishment of our historic claims to land and sovereignty. Our conundrum puts us squarely in opposition to the middle ground of American politics, which has arrived at a consensus that Hawai'i will remain a military colony of the United States. Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye is a major purveyor of pork barrel spending for military appropriations and defense contractors. All three presidential contenders have signaled their support for the Akaka bill. And while the far right wing of the Republican Party opposes the Akaka bill, both major parties have no quarrel over the continuance of the empire's use of our homeland. In light of this American consensus on Hawai'i, we turn to our nearest political allies, US progressive movements, and seek your solidarity for our independence because it is congruent and essential to your hope for a better world. Please join us in opposing the Akaka bill and the militarization of Hawai'i, and please support Hawai'i's independence as part of your vision for a more humane United States and a more just world. Ikaika Hussey, convenor, Movement for Aloha No ka Aina
 (MANA) Terrilee Keko'olani, Ohana Koa/Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua, assistant professor of political
science, University of Hawaii, Manoa Jon Osorio, director, Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa Kekuni Blaisdell, convenor, Ka Pakaukau Andre Perez, Hui Pu Kelii "Skippy" Ioane, Hui Pu Kai'opua Fyfe, director, The Koani Foundation
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Anakē Nona Beamer

Posted by ʻOhukaniʻōhiʻa on April 10, 2008 at 1:00pm

I Pepeluali 2008 ua noho au me anake Nona ma, o kona ohana no ho'i, Keola me kona wahine nani o Moana, Kaliko, ko anake Nona keikikane hanai no ia, a me na mea e a'e, no ko lakou "Aloha Music Camp" ma Kaupoa, Molokai Komohana, i kahakai. Aue, ka lealea o ia nohona! A laila nee mai keia nuhou kaumaha loa o ka hala o anake i keia au, e komo i ke au aumakua. Aloha wale!In February 2008 I stayed with aunty Nona, and her family, Keola and his beautiful wife Moana, Kaliko, aunty Nona's hanai son, and others, for their "Aloha Music Camp" at Kaupoa, West Moloka'i, at the seaside. Ah, such a delight that was! And now, this very sad news comes by, about the passing of aunty from this realm into the realm of the ancestors. Such aloha!April 10, 2008Lahaina, HawaiiOur beloved kupuna, Winona Kapuailohia Desha Beamer, fondly known as Auntie Nona, passed away quietly in her sleep last night at home in Lahaina, Hawaii. Auntie Nona was born on August 15 in the Puna District of Hawai`i and raised in Hilo by her grandmother, Helen Kapuailohia Desha Beamer; who Nona called “Sweetheart Grandmother”. Tutu Helen was one of Hawai'i's most prolific and accomplished composers as well as a skilled dancer whose grace left a lasting imprint on the hula and Nona.Nona performed her first hula in public at the age of three and by the age of eleven was teaching hula in her mother’s Waikiki studio. Her very first student was the actress, Mary Pickford. Entering Kamehameha School in 1935, she was actually expelled twice for being “willful”; because she was driven even then to teach the Hawaiian language, culture, chant and dance to others.After attending Barnard College and the University of Hawaii, where she was told that she could never earn a living in Hawaiian culture, she proceeded to carve a niche for herself and took over her mother’s hula studio in 1947. She began teaching at Kamehameha School in 1949 and in her nearly forty years there, began their first Hawaiiana department. Nona coined the phrase “Hawaiiana” to illustrate the teaching of “the best of Hawaiian culture”; meaning the literature, songs, dances, chants and poetry of Hawai`i.A noted chanter, composer and singer, Nona is revered for her scholarship and accomplishments in the education of Native Hawaiian children. She has numerous publications and recordings and has written many of Hawaii’s most beloved songs, including “Pupu Hinuhinu” which was written as a lullaby for her two boys. Her sons, Keola and Kapono Beamer are world renown musicians/educators and continue the family’s tradition of sharing Hawaiiana through music and teaching.In 2000, Auntie Nona inspired the establishment of the Hula Preservation Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring the lives of beloved elder hula masters. The Aloha Music Camp, L.L.C. began in 2001 and continues the tradition of teaching and sharing aloha with participants from around the world. Auntie Nona’s last public performance was at the camp this past February, when she performed “Green Rose Hula” with all the beauty, sparkle and grace she always possessed when performing. Her most recent inspiration is the Mohala Hou Foundation, a non-profit established last year to continue her vision of protecting and perpetuating the culture that she held so dear by sharing and educating Hawaiiana with all who are interested. The Foundation makes it possible through scholarships for students and Kupuna to attend the Aloha Music Camp.An extraordinary woman who dedicated her life to the education of Hawaiians and those who have a desire to learn about Hawaiian culture; Auntie Nona took inspiration from Hawaii’s last queen, Liliuokalani. As quoted in an interview in 1994, “Her life has been important and inspiring and educational to me. Not just from the standpoint of what a wonderful woman she was but because she shared her feelings and her tenderness and her compassion. Even after they imprisoned her she wrote “The Queen’s Prayer,” in which she asks for forgiveness for those who were unkind to her. So much of her life involved music and teaching and children. All my life I have taught Queen Lili’s songs and music to children.”In her own very humble, gracious and truly remarkable way, Auntie Nona was not only a pioneer, ali`i, musician and humanitarian, she truly is the embodiment of aloha.Auntie Nona is survived by her sons, Keola and Kapono Beamer, her grandson, Kamana Beamer, daughters-in-law, Moanalani Beamer her hanai children, Kaliko Beamer-Trapp and Maile Beamer-Loo and her hanai sister, Kathy Templeton. Auntie Nona requested a private family ceremony to spread her ashes at the family ranch on the island of Hawai`i. She requested donations to Mohala Hou Foundation in lieu of flowers. Donations may be sent toMohala Hou Foundation843 Waine‘e Street F5 Suite 685Lahaina, Hawai`i 96761 – 1685.
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