Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 1/28/08 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Kris DeRego The Governor recently negotiated a $200 million ceded lands settlement with OHA, potentially bringing an end to decades of legal disputes.

Kris DeRego, Ka Leo Commentary Editor

Last week, the Governor's office announced that it had successfully negotiated an agreement with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs that would end decades of dispute over reparations for ceded lands. The plan, which must be approved by the state Legislature, addresses the amount of remuneration OHA is owed from income generated by land relinquished to the United States by the Republic of Hawai‘i in 1898.

Composed of crown lands and government lands (which supported the monarchy and the government, respectively), Hawai‘i's ceded lands have, throughout their history, been fraught with controversy. Shortly after the overthrow of the monarchy, these lands were reclassified as public lands and were transferred to federal control. Under the auspices of the Territorial Government, most ceded lands were leased to agricultural entrepreneurs, with what little land remained being devoted to the Hawaiian Home Lands Program (which, predictably, was restricted to homesteaders with a 50 percent blood quantum).

With the passage of the Admissions Act in 1959, Hawai‘i was granted statehood and, according to many of the era's political commentators, the colonization of the islands was complete. Incorporated into the measure, however, was a section stipulating that approximately 1.4 million acres of previously ceded land were to be held in public trust and used "for the betterment of the condition of Native Hawaiians."

Unfortunately, interpretation of the law proved to be contentious, at best. Decades of legal wrangling ensued, following the state's refusal to allocate financial resources for the fulfillment of the statute. In 1978, these disputes culminated in the creation of OHA, which was later instructed by the Hawai‘i Supreme Court to negotiate a settlement with the state regarding what lands and revenues would be covered in future payments.

According to the terms of the provisional settlement reached last week, more than 200 acres of land that belonged to the Kingdom of Hawai‘i before annexation will be returned to Native Hawaiians through OHA, the organization tasked with managing ceded land revenues allocated by the Legislature for the advancement of Native Hawaiian causes. Additionally, the state government will make a $13 million cash payment to OHA, and will continue to disburse $15.1 million annually to the agency for continuing proceeds.

While the deal may be important for improving relations between state governing institutions and the Native Hawaiian community, it shouldn't be misconstrued as a band-aid covering all of the historical grievances claimed by Hawai‘i's indigenous population. Instead, it should be viewed as an opportunity for furthering dialogue over the extent of the injuries incurred by Hawaiians after the overthrow, as well as an occasion for resituating the ongoing conversation about remedying such injuries within a broader discursive practice.

Traditionally, Native Hawaiian affairs have been studied through the lens of imperialism, and rightfully so. After all, Hawai‘i is a neocolonial state, whose elected leaders have a bad habit of neglecting the inequities of annexation. Locating indigenous issues within this framework is problematic, however, because doing so homogenizes the colonial experience into a single narrative. Moreover, when the newly crafted colonial narrative is accepted as historically definitive, the political binary upon which it is predicated becomes hegemonic.

The binary of which I'm speaking is, of course, that of the colonizer versus the colonized. Generally speaking, historical accounts of annexation revolve around an accented version of this dichotomy, whereby Native Hawaiians were subjugated at the hands of missionary oppressors. While factually accurate (no one could argue against the reality of the cultural holocaust that took place under missionary rule), these accounts deny the pluralistic complexion of power articulated by Native Hawaiians that, in turn, led to the appropriation and adaptation of colonial culture as a form of resistance to suppression.

One of the most explicit examples of adaptive resistance by Native Hawaiians can be found in attempts to preserve the Hawaiian language. As UH Mānoa professor Noenoe Silva has demonstrated, the preservation of the Hawaiian language served as a vehicle for crystallizing a cultural identity that tacitly opposed subjugation. Since the use of certain Hawaiian words denoted not only objects and ideas, but intimate relations between people and their environment, the maintenance of language concerning land paved the way for future anti-colonial struggles by sustaining types of knowledge that reject coercive forms of power in favor of more performative applications, whereby the culture of colonizer can be strategically adopted and fractured from within.

Regrettably, many of Hawai‘i's modern political institutions discount performative utterances of power, and are instead based on a perpetuation of the colonial confrontation. It is from such institutions, which secure power as a structural trait, that the recent ceded lands settlement was proposed. Naturally, the deal places compensation within the context of colonial violence, thereby limiting the conversation over reparations to participants who view the persistence of violence as the foundation for modern power dynamics.

What would an alternative settlement look like? To begin with, it would reflect the myriad meanings attached to ceded lands by different segments of the Hawaiian community. Furthermore, such a settlement would countervail the psychological hostility embedded in the colonial experience. Lastly, an alternative settlement would address the manner in which colonial power reproduced itself through everyday events, thereby creating space for new conceptualizations of restitution to emerge.

For that to happen, the state would have to acknowledge its interest in extending the legacy of colonialism. Given the Governor's own privileged heritage, however, I don't think that will be happening anytime soon.

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