Redressing paradise lost

LAST WEEK, a bill recognizing the rights of native Hawaiians failed in the Senate. Though a bipartisan majority supported the legislation, it came up four votes short of the 60 needed to bring it to the floor for a full debate.

Democrat Daniel K. Akaka, the first U.S. senator of Hawaiian background, who introduced the bill in 2000, had persevered through six years of procedural stalls and delays. In the end, 41 Republicans voted no, backed by the White House, which strongly opposed the bill because it would reverse the country’s melting-pot tradition and “divide people by their race.”

The banner of colorblind pluralism can come in very handy when someone is asking the government to acknowledge rights that have been withheld along ethnic lines since the end of the 19th century.

We heard a much different note from the White House in 1993, on the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of Hawaii’s sovereign government, when President Clinton signed into law what’s known as the Resolution of Apology. It admitted that the U.S. supplied military aid to the conspirators and contributed to “the deprivation of the rights of native Hawaiians to self-determination.”

Until 1893, Hawaii was our ally, recognized as an independent kingdom. But in the spirit of Manifest Destiny, the United States yearned to push farther west, to get a step closer to lucrative Asian markets and to establish a military hub -- Pearl Harbor -- in the mid-Pacific. Meanwhile, the sons and grandsons of New England missionaries came of age in Hawaii feeling that same destiny in their blood. For them, joining with the United States seemed inevitable, the path to protection and profit, trading advantage and the end of tariffs on their sugar.

In January 1893, with the aid of U.S. Marines, Queen Liliuokalani’s government was overthrown by force. Five years later, Hawaii was annexed to the U.S. by the Senate. No one asked the Hawaiians. In fact, in 1897 a petition protesting annexation bearing 21,000 Hawaiian signatures -- a little more than half the native population -- was sent from Honolulu to Washington.

Soon the Hawaiian language would be stolen just like the kingdom. Early in the 20th century, it was banned in schools and in public offices. It was a devastating policy. When an indigenous language is devalued, replaced with another, the culture suffers, and something in the spirit suffers too.

That colonial cloud finally began to lift in the 1960s, thanks in part to the civil rights movement and a widespread reclaiming of ethnic pride. In Hawaii, it started with music and dance. The traditional hula came back to life. Old songs almost forgotten were sung by new generations of performers. Drumming and chanting were revived, as was long-distance voyaging, along with navigational skills that had allowed Polynesians to explore and settle the Pacific. Once again schools offered classes in the native tongue. What is now called the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance spawned a new political consciousness and a new level of dialogue about land rights, access to resources and the status of native Hawaiians vis-a-vis the state and federal governments.

The resolution that Clinton signed was a major step. Its language is unequivocal: “The Congress apologizes to native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow ....” Congress “urges the president of the United States to also acknowledge the ramifications of the overthrow ... and to support reconciliation efforts between the United States and the native Hawaiian people.”

Akaka’s bill was an effort to act on that mandate. It laid out a process for creating a “native Hawaiian governing entity” that could negotiate with the federal government, much as most Native American tribes negotiate now. This entity could address such matters as the long-contested status of 1.4 million acres ceded by the federal government to the new state of Hawaii in 1959, to be “held as a public trust for five purposes, one of which is for the betterment of conditions for native Hawaiians.” The bill then stressed that the assets and revenues associated with these lands “have never been completely inventoried or segregated.”

Even in Hawaii, not everyone lamented the outcome of the Senate vote. Some critics argue that special treatment for Hawaiians could come at the expense of other ethnic groups. And some activists in the sovereignty movement believe it’s wrong for Hawaiians to negotiate on any level with the government that betrayed them.

Though the bill is dead for this session of Congress, that doesn’t mean the issues will go away. Akaka will try again, or some revised form of legislation will emerge. What underlies the bill isn’t secession, as some opponents fear, nor racial divisiveness. It is a people’s long journey to recover a voice that was almost lost. Fueled by the ongoing cultural revival, that voice grows stronger day by day.