Those of you who don’t have Civil Beat on your regular daily reading list, you might want to check out my Hawaii Monitor column this week, “Frivolous Claim Over Sovereignty Snags Homeowner.”
It’s an odd story of an unexpected and obviously bogus title claim hitting a homeowner in Kaaawa just when the sale of his home was in escrow.
And it has drawn some criticism, which makes things interesting.
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As of Friday morning there are ten comments to that article. It’s astonishing that a majority of them parrot the crazy assertion that there was never a treaty of annexation, that Hawaii is under an illegal military occupation by a foreign oppressor (the U.S.), etc. For whatever reason, I have been unable to post any comments on Civil Beat for several months. So here’s the comment I would have posted:
Yes, there is a Treaty of Annexation. It was offered by Hawaii in 1897; initially had no vote in Congress because the politicians were unsure they had enough support; but then the Treaty was ratified by a vote of 42-21 in the Senate and 209-91 in the House, and signed by President McKinley.
See webpage “Treaty of Annexation between the Republic of Hawaii and the United States of America (1898). Full text of the treaty, and of the resolutions whereby the Republic of Hawaii legislature and the U.S. Congress ratified it. The politics surrounding the treaty, then and now” at
http://tinyurl.com/2748fgg
For a more detailed account of the politics involving ratification during the 1897-1898 Congress, see a book published in 2011: William M. Morgan Ph.D., PACIFIC GIBRALTAR: U.S. – JAPANESE RIVALRY OVER THE ANNEXATION OF HAWAII, 1885-1898. I have a detailed book review at
http://tinyurl.com/8y2s6o5
some Native Hawaiian activists need to know that ends-just-the-means is not a great approach, especially in court.
March 10, 2011
Hawaii will stay in the United States, judge says
Hawaii will be staying in the United States, for the time being.
This week, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the 19th century annexation of the islands. Still, the lawsuit by David Keanu Sai does offer an interesting history lesson, for those who want to know more about the growth of the American empire.
As the judge notes:
“Near the end of the nineteenth century, American business interests were dominating the islands and creating tensions with pro-native, anti-Western interests…In 1893, a group of professionals and businessmen, with the active assistance of John Stevens, the United States Minister to Hawaii, acting with United States Armed Forces, replaced the monarchy with a provisional government that sought annexation by the United States. The overthrow of the Hawaiian government was effected on January 17, 1893.”
Hmm, sure sounds familiar…
Anyway, Sai claimed the annexation was unconstitutional. He tried putting money where his mouth is, having created in the 1990s the Hawaiian Kingdom Trust Company to serve as provisional government of the islands. That did not end well, for reasons further spelled out in the judge’s decision.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the lawsuit, not least because it’s beyond her judicial power. She explained:
“The federal courts have long recognized that the determination of sovereignty over a territory is fundamentally a political question beyond the jurisdiction of the courts.”
Read more here: http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/law/2011/03/hawaii-will-stay-in-the-united-states-judge-says.html#comments#storylink=cpy