When People Cross Borders
October 2003
Banner photo: ©SEKAI BUNKA PHOTO
Waves of Change in Hawai`i
The September 7 march
[Eric Ishiwata]
On the morning of September 7, 2003, the "dream paradise" that typically shrouds Waikiki's tourist district was disrupted by a mile-long wave of native and nonnative Hawaiian demonstrators. Clad in red T-shirts reading, "Kū i ka Pono: Justice for Hawaiians," over 5,000 marchers sought to foreground the recent threats to native Hawaiian entitlements. In the words of Victoria Holt-Takamine, president of the ´Ilio´ulaokalani Coalition and organizer of the event:
"This is a gathering to unite Hawaiians, and all others who support native Hawaiians, to express our commitment to the protection of Hawaiian rights, the preservation of . . . all the services, agencies, and programs that contribute to the capability and well-being of native Hawaiians . . . This is about ensuring that the basic needs, health, education, and welfare of our Hawaiian people are being met."
The ´Ilio´ulaokalani Coalition's "March for Justice" was deliberately staged on the eve of a pivotal U.S. district court hearing, Arakaki v. Lingle. In this suit, 16 nonnative Hawai`i residents seek to dismantle the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) on the grounds that the programs and entitlements that have been established to support people of native Hawaiian ancestry are "race-based," discriminatory, and therefore unconstitutional.
Two other parallel cases have been brought against Kamehameha Schools, arguing that the Hawaiian-only admissions policy discriminates on the basis of race in violation of federal law.
Native, Not Immigrant
The Hawaiian Civic Club's Annelle Amaral said, "It's starting to look like a real pattern to take away Hawaiian rights, to eliminate us as indigenous people with claims, and the state's intent to relegate us to a position of another minority in this place."
If native Hawaiians, who are estimated to have arrived in the islands from other Polynesian societies between the fourth and sixth centuries C.E., are defined merely as the first to arrive in successive waves of immigration to the islands, the ability to fight for and protect their rights will be greatly undermined.
This tactic levels the playing field by reducing native Hawaiians to merely "another minority in this place"--immigrants amongst other immigrants. In the aforementioned court cases, plaintiffs frequently support their arguments by citing sociological and anthropological studies on Hawaii's racial dynamics. These studies frame Hawai`i as a land of immigrants by mapping out the successive waves of migrations. Typically beginning with chapters on the Polynesian "immigrants" who first settled on these islands (i.e. the native Hawaiians), subsequent chapters examine Hawaii's subsequent waves of immigration: Caucasians, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Japanese, American Blacks, Filipinos, Koreans and finally Samoan and other Pacific Islander communities. A long history of immigration creating complex racial and cultural mixings.
It is this sort of "dilution" that conservative elements in Hawai`i are hoping to expedite. Arakaki v. Lingle stands to not only diminish the significance of Hawaiian ancestry, it will also reduce State and Federal spending while simultaneously releasing thousands of acres of prime land to the will of free enterprise.
The islands' history has been full of similar instances where European and Asian settlers have used the power of Western law to privatize and acquire what was previously communally used Hawaiian land. Most notably, in 1843: " . . . [a]fter a five-month British takeover of the government . . . a weary and frightened King Kamehameha III gave in to [foreign] advisors for a division of the lands, called the Māhele. This dispossession of the Hawaiians' birthright--our one hānau, or birth-sands--allowed foreigners to own land . . . Traditional lands were quickly transferred to foreign ownership and burgeoning sugar plantations. By 1888, three-quarters of all arable land was controlled by [foreigners]."
Because the outcome of these juridical threats appear to be solely in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, other, non-traditional spaces of resistance have begun to open up. The surfbreaks just off of Waikiki Beach, for example, stand as one of the islands' most heavily politicized arenas.
Despite its proximity to one of the world's most famous tourist destinations, the famous waves of Waikiki are no longer a place "made safe" for tourists. Surfing protocol dictates that the first surfer to stand up closest to the peak of a breaking wave has the right of way. However, irrespective of positioning, localism dictates that the most local surfers possess a priority over the others--and in Hawai`i, no one is more local than native Hawaiians. Transgressions of this in-the-water hierarchy are frequently settled through violence.
Hawaiian sugar plantations required a constant supply of cheap labor, usually the latest immigrant arrivals
Any resistance to the normative codes of commodified aloha, the tourism industry's distortion of a Hawaiian sense of love and welcome, is an assertion of agency for a native Hawaiian population that is constantly under attack. These hypermasculine local surfers are flexing their agency not only against the foreign intruders of their surfbreaks, but also against Hawaii's state government and the tourism industry. And, while violence is never to be condoned, the politics of Oahu's surfbreaks offer a small space where native Hawaiians and nonnative residents can actually overturn the touristic order.
Continuing Struggle
Even hula practitioners, the most salient and commodified image broadcast by the tourism industry, have become politicized. In February 1997, in order to contest a bill that was poised to "terminate traditional and customary practices" through a regulation of gathering rights which are essential to the practice of hula, Hawaii's hula masters mobilized hundreds of their hula students and, for the first time, hula became politicized in order to defend traditional and customary Hawaiian rights. Ultimately, the bill was defeated.
These "unlikely" champions undeniably transformed Hawaii's political terrain with a force beyond the means and imaginations of traditional forms of political action.
Today's legal firestorm against native entitlements has followed a single theme: Hawaiian-only benefits are "race-based" and therefore unconstitutional.
If Arakaki's plaintiffs continue to reduce native Hawaiians to simply the islands' "first immigrants," there may be little that can be done to counter the claims of unconstitutional discrimination. In this sense, the outcome of this cascade of litigations will hinge largely upon which, or rather, whose history is presented before the court. If Hawai`i is presented simply as a land of immigrants, it will be difficult to recognize the thousands of wounds inflicted upon native Hawaiian language, culture and, most importantly, the people themselves.
However, if native Hawaiians are given a presence and a voice in the court proceedings, it will become evident that they are neither a race nor immigrants, but instead the indigenous peoples of the islands. An understanding of their connection to the land that will ensure the preservation of the ali'i trusts, those lands and resources that were solely dedicated to servicing the needs of the Hawaiian people following the United States' 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai`i, for the future generations of native Hawaiians.
This Hawaiian sense of connection is perhaps expressed best in the words of activist Haunani-Kay Trask:
"As the indigenous people of Hawai`i, Hawaiians are Native to the Hawaiian Islands. We do not descend from the Americas or from Asia but from the great Pacific Ocean where our ancestors navigated to, and from, every archipelago. Genealogically, we say we are the descendents of Papahānaumoku (Earth Mother) and Wākea (Sky Father) who created our beautiful islands. From this land came the taro, and from the taro, our Hawaiian people. The lesson of our origins is that we are genealogically related to Hawai`i, our islands, as family."
Eric Ishiwata is a political science PhD candidate at the University of Hawai`i, Mānoa. His earlier work as a research analyst for the Globalization Research Center examined the relationships between global migrations, identity and culture.
