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Reclaiming Hawaiian Sovereignty

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The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity

Abstract

Various legal narratives are currently told about Native Hawaiians in American federal courts. Such narratives often draw on law historically specific to other minority groups including African Americans and Native Americans and often conflict with the realities of Hawaiian law and legal history as well as real-time discrimination and inequities seemingly attracted to Native Hawaiian identity. These include racialized and federal recognition narratives which narrate Native Hawaiians as racists or a type of federally recognized tribe. Contemporary Native Hawaiian narratives sometimes echo those narratives, seemingly reflecting a legal identity crisis. Sovereignty is often the “go-to” narrative for many Native Hawaiians, but it too may have various limits in regard to the history and realities of the Native Hawaiian people. A fourth narrative also iterated by the Native Hawaiian community but sometimes given less attention is a remedial self-determination like that in international law. Such self-determination is guaranteed to all indigenous peoples in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007. The Declaration may align more closely with Native Hawaiian understandings of sovereignty. Native Hawaiian understandings of sovereignty are rarely probed in federal courts but may be particularly valuable given the need for Native Hawaiians to validate such narratives themselves particularly as they seek consensus. This chapter explores the various legal narratives, their limits, and possibilities in terms of Native Hawaiians, with validation in mind. Education is used to focus and illustrate.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Assistant Vice Chancellor Pacific, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Keakaokawai Varner Hemi

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  1. Keakaokawai Varner Hemi
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Correspondence to Keakaokawai Varner Hemi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Socio & Anthro, Rm 309, Univ of Canterbury Dept of Socio & Anthro, Rm 309, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

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  1. Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

  2. Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

  3. Faculty of Education and Social Work, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada

    . Airini

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Hemi, K.V. (2019). Reclaiming Hawaiian Sovereignty. In: Ratuva, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_77-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_77-1

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