The Polynesian mariners were able to cross vast distances without a working link.
Or, at least, the guy writing the article is holding out for full autonomy. I don't know that Native Hawaiians generally are thinking of the goal of their political organizing as getting the US out of their archipelago completely.
I wonder what the 2 million acres figure denotes -- looking it up it's about half the land area of the islands.
Hawaii is one of the few places where they are making more real estate.
The article cited for the proposition that most Native Hawaiians steadfastly oppose recognition doesn't say that. It does say, exactly as you'd expect, that adoption by Native Hawaiians of a constitution is a prerequisite of recognition, and that this means a vote.
The US Supreme Court looked at whether the state government could act as though Native Hawaiians were sort of an equivalent of mainland Native Americans -- OP piece links a 1999 Brett Kavanaugh WSJ op-ed saying it can't -- in Rice v. Cayetano. Interesting contrast between Stevens & Ginsburg on the one hand, and Breyer and Souter on the other.
I look forward to hearing from DaveLHI on this subject.
I have a hard time believing in Hawaiian independence, so long as the US endures. Surely the number of people who would qualify for citizenship in a restored independent Hawaii continues to shrink over time, as a proportion of people living in the islands.
79 years is a long time, though, and maybe the US isn't anything like it is now at the next turn of the century.
4:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceded_lands
Ugh, I have stuff I have to get done today that cuts into commenting time. For now, I'll just say that anyone purporting to represent the views of "most Native Hawaiians" is either lying or delusional, and IMO sovereignty consumes an enormous amount of political energy that could be more productively directed to problems that might actually be resolvable. But I'm a haole guy from the mainland, so take that with however much salt you consider appropriate.
I thought you lived in Massachusetts.
No but my son has a name twin there.
Hawaii isn't the only place in Polynesia with this issue, see Fiji, but there's also a whole can of worms around Native sovereignty vis-a-vis the population of poor oppressed laborers brought in to do agricultural work. Not sure what exactly to say about it, other than that it's a can of worms that makes justice difficult. Hawaii also has a weird phenomenon where a lot of the Native Hawaiian aristocracy intermarried with the white planter aristocracy, so the current heir to the throne is a Republican politician who is extremely wealthy because he is also an heir to the James Campbell estate. This joint aristocracy then went about oppressing both poorer Native Hawaiians, and the indentured servants they brought it. What a mess.
12: Beyond that, there has been intermarriage in all directions for generations. An independent Hawaii would still be multi-ethnic, and it's hard to see how being another small Pacific nation would be better for Native Hawaiians or anyone else than being a US state.
13 I don't see how their aspirations can be reached without expelling you and the other 90% of people now in the state who aren't Native Hawaiians. On the other hand, embracing the tribal paradigm creates a government that can negotiate autonomy, can argue for return of specific lands (as the CSKT just recovered the National Bison Range) etc.
Obviously it's their call, and I can imagine that as in any small polity, the personalities and personages who embody the various proposals loom pretty large in the debate.
14: I don't think there's really even a coherent "they." There are lots of different views among activists of what a sovereign Hawaii would look like, but few, if any, involve mass expulsions. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the federal recognition approach, but it would have some real benefits and it might actually be achievable (if this SCt would let it happen).
So they'll let the 90% of you stay and work, and pay taxes, but you won't get to vote? Sounds like a Gulf monarchy.
It could be a democratic multiethnic country that was just independent from the US -- probably with reserved Native Hawaiian rights over large parts of the land area, but that doesn't imply limited suffrage.
16, 17: That's kind of the problem. It would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to write a constitution that the majority of Native Hawaiians would support, let alone the majority of the population.
13. The last census showed about 10% of Hawaiians identifying as "Native Hawaiians" and 30+% as part Native Hawaiian. "Asians" of all sorts are about 40% IIRC.
Oh yes, I put "Native Hawaiians" in those quotes because likely there is fudging in the same direction that gives us "Cherokee Princess" here on the mainland.
DaveLMA, as was explained in Rice, they had two categories for the programs at issue: one for people who were 50% Hawaiian, and the other who could show descent from anyone who lived there before 1778. (When Cook arrived?) Breyer found this latter category particularly annoying.
This raises a lot of interesting questions.
The Polynesian aristocracy that the Europeans encountered on Hawaii was the result of a relatively recent invasion of the islands. Molokai was the only island the invaders couldn't take. There were a number of kingdoms or duchies or whatever on the Hawaiian Islands, but Kamehameha traded for European firearms and took over all the islands, again save Molokai. That much I learned while drinking mai tais.
Will the US recognize one unified Hawaiian tribe? Will it recognize the tribes as constituted before Kamehameha's unification? Will attempts to reconstruct tribal structure before the later Polynesian invasion be recognized? Will the members of those tribes be entitled to reparations for centuries of slavery? The Hawaiian aristocrats were ruthless and bloodthirsty, so when Europeans moved in, they were a good fit. A lot of Europeans got rich and powerful the old fashioned way, marrying into wealthy and powerful circles.
What exactly are we trying to fix here and is reintroducing the tribes the right approach? How deeply does the US government want to step into mess? It's not like the Hawaiians weren't grownups when Cook's ship sailed in.
Wait, what later Polynesian invasions? Hawaiian unification happened at a late stage, but it was just one island's ruler taking over the other islands, not an invasion from outside Hawaii.
Yeah, I don't know what 22 is on about. At the time of US annexation Hawaii was a unified monarchy, so presumably federal recognition would be of whatever remains of that state structure. In this respect it's quite different from federal recognition of Native American tribes on the mainland.
Alternatively, we could take the opportunity to declare Quentin Kawānanakoa King of the United States, get rid of the president, and have a Prime Minister like a good normal country.
Let me be the first to suggest we find the Jacobin pretender of today.
Nevermind. It's a German aristocrat. I was sort of hoping for a pub owner in Leeds.
27, 28: Someone's been reading my Learned League answers. (I'm especially embarrassed because not only did I get the question wrong by saying Jacobite instead of Jacobin, but they actually gave me credit for it, which is obviously the wrong decision.).
Anyway I wanted Jacobin, but here you want Jacobite.
But the point is if you make a Hawaiian pretender King of the US and rename all federal lands to royal lands, then you've legally solved the ceded lands problem perfectly (while not accomplishing anything at all).
I was kind of bad at that, so I stopped before I got worse.
Anyway, as a former British colony, the rightful monarch is the last legitimate ruler of Britain, which does not exist because the William the Conqueror cheated his way to the predecessor throne of England. We need the heir of Harold Godwinson and his only living descendant is Dolly Parton. For proof, see here.
25: His mother is still alive. Senile, but alive.
32. There are plenty of descendants of Harold Godwinson knocking about, not least Elizabeth Windsor. How you regard their claim rough Harold depends on how you feel about marriage more danico, I suppose. But Harold was elected (by Witanagemot). I thought you were trying to get away from that. If you're looking for the heir to the House of Wessex and the early Kings of Alba (Scotland, more or less) you end up with the titular Duke of Bavaria, as per 28. He has explicitly said that he's not interested in the British crown, but he might find America more alluring. Or you could just offer the crown to Harry Wales, since he's already on site. If you want to see what it looks like for half the population of the UK to die laughing, thats definitely the way to go.
He just started a new job in some tech company.
34 If one were to be interested in restoring monarchy, to look back to one of the various dynasties in the British isles, and one wanted to act as if primogeniture had even the tiniest shred of legitimacy -- all completely ridiculous propositions in my book -- one would certainly want to do away with the gender bar. I have no idea who the pretender would be if you were looking at descendents of daughters as well as sons, from whichever king you wanted to say was a good starting point, but I'm willing to be they'd be made of better stuff than that Wales guy (of whom, I may have implied in the past, I do not think much).
It's all taken into account in my research.
My research is probably very good. Google says my h-index is 26.
Maybe you can use those research skills to explain this: https://twitter.com/CharleyMacorn/status/1374425164595617795
34: We should skip the intermediary, and give it to Markle.
one would certainly want to do away with the gender bar
Vaguely, tangentially related -- the "hidden" matrilineal dynasty of Garsenda (YouTube)