Category Archives: Hawaiian issues

Two centuries ago, Hawaiians chose a civil rather than a religious social order

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And a war was fought to settle the issue.

That was one of the take-aways for me from a panel discussion organized by IMUA TMT, a pro-telescope organization which was streamed live on Sunday afternoon and is now available for viewing on YouTube (“Uniting TMT and Mauna Kea“).

This discussion features panelists:

Peter Apo, Former OHA Trustee – Moderator
Kalepa Baybayan – PWO Navigator, Captain
Mailani Neal – Native Hawaiian Applied Physics/Astronomy Student
Paul Brewbaker – Principal, TZ Economics
Bruce Heldenfeldt – Retired Mauna Kea Ranger
James Mauliola Keaka Stone Jr. – Attorney, Educator, Cultural Practitioner

I wanted to highlight one cogent observation made by attorney James “Kimo” Stone. This was in the context of responding to claims that the act of building on Mauna Kea is “desecration” because some believe it involves digging into sacred soil, along with claims by many protesters that certain protocols and ceremonies they have adopted reflect traditional cultural practices and beliefs.

Stone first pointed out that digging wasn’t considered “desecration,” as evidenced by the presence of a stone quarry where Hawaiians dug out highly prized stones for use as adzes and other tools. And he said the “protocols” and ceremonies being conducted are actually of modern, rather than traditional, origin.

Stone said there simply is “no direct connection” between traditional practices and those now being used by protesters.

Then he went on, noting that the control exerted by the ancient Hawaiian religious beliefs was ended in 1819 by Hawaiians before the arrival of the missionaries.

The beliefs expressed by TMT opponents are, Stone said “…not consistent with the destruction of the kapu system by King Liholiho.”

That matter of whether the hawaiian religion had any further control or jurisdiction over the Hawaiian people was settled in 1819, when Liholiho sat down and ate with his mother, Keopuolani, and and his regent, Kaahumanu, and later settled on the battlefield when Liholiho defeated Kekuaokalani at the battle of Kuamo‘o. So since 1819 it was hawaiians who overthrew what they peceived as the shackles, the burdens, of the ancient religion.

It isn’t that we don’t respect people’s beliefs, but that is different from saying that somehow they have jurisdiction or control over what we can or cannot do on Mauna Kea.

Peter Apo then commented that he only learned of the battle at Kuamo‘o a few years ago, and believes most Hawaiians still aren’t aware of it.

From Kuamoo.org:

In the 1819 Battle of Kuamo‘o, Hawaiian forces clashed over the traditional kapu religious system. The dispute pitted the forces of Kekuaokalani, nephew of Kamehameha I, who sought to preserve the traditional system, against his cousin, Liholiho (Kamehameha II), who had abandoned the kapu system. Liholiho was victorious, but many warriors from both sides perished in battle and were buried on the property, including Kekuaokalani and his wife, Chiefess Manono. With her dying breath, Chiefess Manono is said to have uttered “M?lama k? aloha”? “keep your love”? a plea to both sides that no matter what obstacles come to Hawai‘i, keep your love of one another.

Kuamo‘o provides a possible clue relevant to my own family’s history. I’ll come back to that in a subsequent post.

Makua Valley Protest–February 1976

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One of the things I’ve been doing to while away these self-isolating days has been to back up more of my old images to Amazon and Google. These are two of my favorites.

On Saturday, February 28, 1976, a day-long rally was held to protest the U.S. Army’s continued control and use of Makua Valley for military training. The rally was organized by the Hawaiian Coalition of Native Claims. The group’s director, Gail Kawaipuna Prejean, had been in the small group that had illegally landed on Kahoolawe the previous month in the first of many public protests against the Navy’s continued bombing of the island.

The rally was held on the makai side of the road across from the 6,600 acre Makua Military Reservation. It was a day filled with music, speeches, prayers, and more, reflecting the new and growing political and cultural activism of Hawaiians.

Later in the day, a splinter group crossed the road, walked past the Army’s “No Trespassing” signs, climbed over a fence, and planted a protest flag. Everyone was in high spirits.

Click on either photo to see a larger version.

“Aloha Aina” in early 1976

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“Aloha Aina” is a term that has been used in a lot of different ways over the past century or more.

The Aloha Aina Party was a Hawaiian political organization in the period leading up to and continuing after the overthrow of the Kingdom. Mid-century, there was a successful racehorse by that name. In the 1950s, there was a prominent local tour company, Aloha Aina Tours, often mentioned in the news.

But in usage today, it’s a world view at the core of the modern Hawaiian cultural and political renaissance.

From Wikipedia:

Aloha ??ina also means Hawaiian patriotism; love for the land and it?s people. It is an in-depth relationship between the places and communities that hold significance to the individual. As such, it is an ethic that includes striving to improve the well-being of Hawai?i and engaging in experiences that foster aloha for and life-long allegiance to ka l?hui Hawai?i and ka pae ??ina o Hawai?i. According to Jon Osorio, Professor at the Kamakak?okalani Center for Hawaiian Studies: “Aloha ‘?ina is a relationship not just with the land but really with nature itself and in particular that part of the land and sea and streams and water that actually sustains life. ‘?i is the word that means to eat and when we say ‘?ina we’re talking basically about what it is that feeds not just humans but basically everything, and everything is directly dependent and interdependent with the ‘?ina.

I was going through several boxes of my old files preparing for an interview about my involvement in the movement to stop the Navy’s bombing of Kahoolawe, and ran this gem.

It’s a single page leaflet distributed at a workshop held at Maui Community College on Valentines Day 1976, just six weeks after the first protest landing on Kahoolawe brought opposition to the bombing directly to the public.

It was, as far as I can tell, the first use of the phrase “Aloha Aina” in its modern usage, signifying a world view that places protection of the land, in a physical and spiritual sense, along with the people and communities that depend on it, above other considerations, taking land out of the category of “commodity” to be bought and sold, and putting in in a separate category to be protected and nourished.

It is signed by Emma DeFries, who was a spiritual force very much entwined with what became known as the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana, and Walter Ritte, who signed on behalf of the Protect Kahoolawe Aloha Aina Ohana.

Searching Newspapers.com, I didn’t find any published use of the term for several years after this, although it quickly found its way into active use after this, at least within the Kahoolawe and broader Native Hawaiian activist movements.

I love discovering that a bit of paper saved from the closest wastebasket in 1976 has become a bit of history over the intervening decades.

More of the sovereignty movement’s pseudo-legal theories

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I would like to attribute the following to a fringe group in the current Hawaiian sovereignty movement, but I’m afraid such silliness has taken root in the belief systems of more than a simple “fringe.”

In a post last Wednesday, I took an updated look at a lawsuit brought by the state’s Office of Consumer Protection seeking to block a lawyer from attempting to stop foreclosures by invoking supposed Hawaiian sovereignty.

I’ll try to summarize his argument, made unsuccessfully in hundreds of foreclosure cases. The lawyer, Dexter Kaiama, argues Hawaii annexation to the U.S. in 1898 wasn’t legal, Kingdom law still reigns, land titles since that time are “clouded,” and American courts have no jurisdiction.

Yes, that’s a lot to swallow, and courts have quickly and easily dismissed the arguments. It isn’t clear whether any clients were disadvantaged by the lack of universal success of the sovereignty argument, or were simply thankful for any delays in their foreclosure cases that being tied up in court caused. But such legally frivolous arguments, repeated many times over in different cases, do end up racking up costs for the courts and the public.

It turns out that Kaiama and his apparent partner, sovereignty activist and theorist David Keanu Sai, have other items in their bag of tricks.

In one of several cases involving defendants who were arrested last year during the protests on Mauna Kea, Kaiama agues that only a “properly constituted” military tribunal has jurisdiction over his client, apparently based on the premiss that Hawaii is occupied by an enemy power (the United States) and therefore governed by the laws of war and those setting rules for the treatment of populations in occupied territories.

The State of Hawai‘i, through the Department of the Attorney General (hereinafter “STATE”), has filed charges of Obstruction in the District Court of the Third Circuit, against Defendant Kaliko Kanaele (hereinafter “KANAELE”).

However, the STATE cannot claim relief from the District Court of the Third Circuit because the appropriate court with subject matter jurisdiction in the Hawaiian Islands is an Article II Court established under and by virtue of Article II of the U.S. Constitution in compliance with Hague Convention IV, art. 43, Oct. 18, 1907, 36 Stat. 2277. Article 43, 1907 Hague Convention IV (36 U.S. Stat. 2277). Article II Courts are Military Courts established by authority of the President, being Federal Courts, which were established as “the product of military occupation.”
See David J. Bederman, Article II Courts, 44 Mercer L. Rev. 825, 826 (1992-1993).

Military Courts are generally based upon the occupant’s customary and conventional duty to govern occupied territory and to maintain law and order.

The fundamental question before this Court is whether or not it has subject-matterjurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1), or, in other words, is the District Court of the Third Circuit “regularly constituted” under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Pursuant to the argument presented below and the declaration and exhibits attached hereto, KANAELE submit and provide formal notice that this court is not “regularly constituted” and lacks lawful subject matter jurisdiction over the instant Complaint.

Elsewhere in the legal memo Kaiama relies on the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2006.

If you don’t recall the case, here’s a summary:

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur, was captured by Afghan forces and imprisoned by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court to challenge his detention. Before the district court ruled on the petition, he received a hearing from a military tribunal, which designated him an enemy combatant.

A few months later, the district court granted Hamdan’s habeas petition, ruling that he must first be given a hearing to determine whether he was a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention before he could be tried by a military commission. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the decision, however, finding that the Geneva Convention could not be enforced in federal court and that the establishment of military tribunals had been authorized by Congress and was therefore not unconstitutional.

I’ll leave you to ponder just how the case of Osama bin Laden’s driver is supposed to be considered comparable to that of a Hawaii resident and U.S. citizen arrested during a protest on Mauna Kea involving civil disobedience.

I’ll be returning in future posts begin to explain how misdirection, misrepresentation, and clear falsehoods have been used to take such arguments from the realm of the ludicrous to the marginally believable, at least to those who have consumed the current brand of Hawaiian sovereignty Kool Aid.

Be careful, it’s crazy out there!