Indigenous Hawai'ians Protest the Exploitation of their Islands

Indigenous Hawai'ians Protest the Exploitation of their Islands

Reminiscent of the Civil Rights movement that thundered through the continental states in the 1960’s, the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement has gripped the shores and cities of America’s pet paradise and rattled its “settler society” with determined strength and purpose: the deliberate exploitation of Hawaiian land, Hawaiian spirituality, and Hawaiian life must unequivocally end now.

From first contact in 1778, through the militaristic overthrow of the Queen in 1893, America’s “settler society” ostensibly destroyed the cultural fabric and language of Hawai’i’s autochthonous people. American colonists killed thousands of natives through the spread of lethal diseases and crippled the existing Hawaiian economy through land acquisition and monopoly of the sugar market. Engineered exclusively for the benefit and survival of the settlers, American “settler society” allowed for no legal recourse by the marginalized natives; native rights were denied altogether.

Thus defined by 100 years of oppression and exploitation, modern Hawaiians are fiercely ethnocentric in a movement which has progressed from demands of restitution to outright sovereignty (69). As “multinational corporations sell our [Hawaiian] beauty”(61), the Ka Lāhui Hawai’i actively seeks to secure indigenous self-determination and enforce the Draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for all remaining Hawaiians. In these demands for universal human rights, the strenuous progress of decolonization reverberates with every non-violent demonstration and international gesture. Yet despite the triumphant illusion of decolonization, historical colonialism continues to render Hawaiians victim to the consuming institutions of neocolonialism, namely, co-optation and the scourge of tourism (108). Triumphant decolonization is not yet a reality.

The success of decolonization rests heavily on eradicating the “psychological dependency” Hawaiians imbibe through haole education (42). As he who controls the past controls the future, modern day haoles seek to perpetuate modern racist realities by poisoning public memory with counterfeit history. Haoles teach these false interpretations of “settler society” and crudely render “civilization” as a blessed yoke to the feudal Hawaiians. Therefore, in the cycle of decolonization, the truth of the marginalized Hawaiians must be rewritten.

Spiritual and cultural identity is primarily reclaimed in the celebration and survival of native languages and philosophies. As “[Haunani-Kay Trask] had to learn the [Hawaiian] language like a lover so that [Trask] could rock within her and lay at night in her dreaming arms” (118), so must the prostitution of Hawai’i by haole and tourist be transformed.