Native Hawaiian Sovereignty

Senator Daniel Akaka, who is facing a very interesting challenge from Hawaiian Congressman Ed Case in Hawaii's September primary, has long favored the creation of a quasi-sovereign government for Native Hawaiians. The Wall Street Journal has an article by John Fund today that discusses the current plan, which is up for a Senate vote sometime in the next couple of weeks.

The prevailing argument for this kind of legislation hinges on the idea that, unlike most native groups within the United States, native Hawaiians do not have a governance body, and have no distinct sovereignty. While this is true, the counter-argument says that unlike the other native groups within US borders, native Hawaiians voted in 1959 to become part of the United States, willingly giving up sovereignty.

The case is, of course, more complex than that. In "A Call for Hawaiian Sovereignty," written by Michael Kioni Dudley and Keoni Kealoha Agard, a strong case is made that the will of native Hawaiians was long before overrun by non-Natives, and that is was non-Natives who made union with the United States a virtual necessity. The book is clearly biased towards the independence movement, but it puts forward a number of strong points that those opposed to native Hawaiian sovereignty must be able to rebut, and so I recommend it strongly no matter what side of the argument you fall on.

My personal beliefs, as in so many areas, are out of line with what is possible today. I don't think Hawaii or Alaska should ever have been added to the territory of the United States, let alone granted statehood. Of course, due to the military and resource importance of these two states, they will never be severed from the union (and a strong case can be made that severance/independence would not actually solve the problem that was created by their initial addition to the Union in the first place, a topic I will leave for another day). That said, I think a limited sovereignty movement is not out of line with acceptable policy.

This particular bill, however, strikes me as going a bit farther than is desirable. It purports to give the new sovereign entity control not over a geographic region, but over all "native Hawaiians," however defined, including those on the mainland. This is too much, too amorphous, and the precedent it would present would be dangerous at best. I will be watching how the Senate reacts to this proposal with interest, and will be watching the Hawaiian Senate primary with greater interest than I had previously as well.