In August 2023 wildfires ravaged the 2nd largest island in the Hawai’ian archipelago, killing over 100 people. With the federal government under scrutiny for its response, it’s worth understanding how this island chain 2500 miles away from the North American continent ended up being ruled from Washington DC, and why some on the island may want to change that. 

Hawai’i was one of the last parts of the earth to be settled by humans, with polynesian boats landing there about 1000 years ago and setting up a feudal agricultural society on the islands. European contact formally began in 1778 with the disastrous visit of Captain James Cook, a foolish and aggressive explorer who tried his luck one too many times with trampling over the natives’ basic rights to property and person. Despite his death, Cook began the age of European contact with what he had originally named the Sandwich islands. Later visitors were more polite, but also brought alien diseases that decimated the population of the islands just as they had done in the Americas. Hawai’i became unified in 1810 after a period of conquest of the other smaller islands including Maui and Oahu by Kamehameha the high king of Hawai’i island (also known as “the big island”). One holdout, the far west Kauai island, managed to stay independent after 20 years of pressure and invasion by Kamehameha, who soon after died, being briefly replaced by his son and then in 1824 by his younger son, named Kamehameha III. This man was to fundamentally change Hawai’ian society. 

Greatly influenced by the traders and growing European residents on the islands, Kamehameha introduced a constitution in Hawai’i giving the legislature power instead of vesting it all in his person. His most significant change in Hawai’ian society was the Great Mahele of 1848, a huge land reform that replaced the system of feudal nobility with a program of homesteading for common people and a set aside of ⅓ for the exclusive ownership of natives. The actual effects of this reform was that american and european interests were able to buy much of it, and native hawaiians who were not instructed in how to claim the land lost out of a lot of it. The poor implementation of the Mahele unfortunately is partially why natives own so little of the land that they used to inhabit 100 years ago. The primary beneficiaries (along with the monarch who kept ⅓ of the land for his personal disposal) were the great sugar cane plantations set up in this period. Wealthy Westerners were able to buy or flatter their way into the King’s court, and the Kingdom of Hawai’i slowly became in many ways a puppet state. In 1873 Hawai’i became an elective monarchy, with their house of representatives (where white delegates were overrepresented) electing the young Lunalilo, who unfortunately soon died, replaced by Kalākaua (kah-lah-kah-oo-ah) the first non-Kamehameha monarch in 1874. Kalākaua was responsible for signing a free trade treaty with the United States in 1875, with the conditions that the perfect harbor on the Big Island ‘Wai Momi’, later translated to Pearl Harbor be given to the US as a permanent naval base, bringing the two nations ever closer to eachother. As white European immigration increased, migrants from China and Japan further diluted the political and economic power of the natives. In 1887 Kalākaua, not known as a great politicker but as “the merry monarch”, who took a circumnavigational tour of the world for his pleasure, was forced at threat of coup to sign a constitution giving ever more power to the legislature and by extension further empowering the American presence on the island. 

In 1891 Kalākaua (kah-lah-kah-oo-ah) died on a trip to America, and his sister Liliʻuokalani [leh-lee-o-kalani] ascended to the throne. Liliʻuokalani sought to abrogate the so-called “Bayonet constitution” and give native Hawai’ians more power, and was strongly opposed in the legislature. When she proposed a new constitution on January 14 1893, an American militia calling itself the Committee of Safety (a sacrilegious callback to the committees of safety in the American Revolution) declared that the Kingdom had been dissolved on the 17th. While armed, they would probably have had little chance if they had not coordinated their actions with the steam-cruiser USS Boston who landed her marines and sailors in Honolulu as a show of force. Dismayed at the odds of fighting a modernized major power, Liliʻuokalani surrendered to the American Provisional government of Hawai’i. The cruiser was ordered into Honolulu by outgoing Republican (and expansionist) President Benjamin Harrison, but in March 1893 a new president came to power. Grover Cleveland was the first democrat to have been elected since the end of the American Civil War, and after an interregnum was poised for his second non-consequential term, a unique case in American politics. Cleveland had run on and believed in a traditional Democratic policy for the domestic and foreign arena. Laissez-faire, free trade, peace and honest friendship with all, entangling alliances with none. The blatant act of usurpation in Hawai’i, after which the “Provisional Government” was not petitioning the U.S., not only to recognize but to annex them as a State of the Union stopped just short of enraging Mr. Cleveland. In an address to congress he said:
“The military demonstration upon the soil of Honolulu was of itself an act of war; unless made either with the consent of the government of Hawaii or for the bona fide purpose of protecting the imperiled lives and property of citizens of the United States. But there is no pretense of any such consent on the part of the government of the queen. The existing government, instead of requesting the presence of an armed force, protested against it. There is as little basis for the pretense that forces were landed for the security of American life and property. If so, they would have been stationed in the vicinity of such property and so as to protect it, instead of at a distance and so as to command the Hawaiian Government Building and palace.  When these armed men were landed, the city of Honolulu was in its customary orderly and peaceful condition”

Cleveland then initiated a congressional investigation, which returned that July with “The Blount Report”, completely condemning as obviously extralegal the steps American citizens AND US minister to Hawai’i John Stevens (bad luck with ambassadors with that name and keeping their heads out of trouble HEH HEH) had taken to overthrow a friendly government. The Republican controlled senate however initiated their own report which totally exonerated every participant in the coup EXCEPT Queen Liliʻuokalani. Powerless to undo the damage his country had done to the people of Hawai’i, Cleveland at least sat on the issue through to the end of his term in March 1897. 

His successor William McKinley was everything Cleveland was not (setting aside monetary policy). A Republican Protectionist and Imperialist, he won against laudably anti-imperialist but stupidly anti-gold Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Once in power he scared Americans with notions that the growing Japanese population in Hawai’i would lead to a JAPANESE led coup against the American one, and that he had to act swiftly to secure american democracy 2500 miles away. The United States formally annexed the islands on August 12 1898. The ceremony was done to raucous applause from the American settlers, while the native Hawai’ians mostly stayed in the homes in shame and defeat. Hawai’i became a Territory of the United States, to which was soon added the formerly Spanish controlled Philippines and Guam in McKinley’s two ocean war that year. Filipino immigrants soon began to come in, adding another layer to the Hawai’ian stew and further diluting the power of Natives. With the new legal status came further changes to the economic structure of the Island. The “crown lands”, that ⅓ of Hawai’ian territory owned exclusively by the monarch, was seized by the territorial government. Liliʻuokalani spent the last two decades of her life fighting this expropriation to little effect. Today less than 5% of Hawai’ian land is owned by Natives, who make up around 10% of the population, with up to a ⅓ having significant native ancestry.

Hawai’i was a lucrative source of sugar throughout the 20th century, and its Pearl harbor was invaluable for securing America’s new Pacific Empire (as well as defending its new Panama Canal). But while invaluable it was not invulnerable, and Hawai’i was the first and nearly only part of the United States to be attacked during World War Two. The devastating defeat at Pearl Harbor likely increased public sympathy and support after the war to accept Hawai’i as the first non-white majority state in 1959. Since its accession Hawai’i has become a huge tourist spot for both American and foreign visitors, with its ancient traditions becoming a fun exploration of the quaint and alien. 

While men like Russel Means in the lower 48 were fighting for indigenous rights during the 60s and 70s a parallel movement grew on Hawai’i, including the “Ohana movement” against the US Navy using one of the smaller Hawai’ian islands Kaho’olawe [kah-how-oh-lavay] as a giant target for artillery and bombs, with the last tests performed in 1990. Monarchy restorationists also arose in the 1980s and Dennis Kanahele, a descendent of Kamehameha I, was declared the head of state of the Nation of Hawai’i in 1993, leading several high profile protests against the US federal government. Native pressure prompted the Democratic led congress that year to Acknowledge that the Blount Report was correct after all, 100 years later, and American annexation was illegitimate. The U.S. Navy pulled out of Pearl Harbor, the government was dissolved, and Dennis Kanahele was crowned King among adoring crowds…In many ways this kind of land acknowledgment is more insulting than simply ignoring the crimes that were integral to imperial expansion. When Harvard says it occupies native land and was built with slave hands, ok? So just give it back?

With the predictably lackluster federal response to the Maui wildfires you may find more and more Hawai’ians, ESPECIALLY of full or partial native ancestry calling for a restoration of their ancient land and rights. The land question in Hawai’i is important: libertarians, as on the American continent, do not have to believe that there was no unowned land anywhere to point to clear violations of person and property by Westerners. If you’re interested in more libertarian indigenous rights movements, please check out our videos HERE [Zapatistas] and HERE [Native Americans]. Libertarians are always on the side of the victimized, and always should be. Long live the Hawai’ians, and may 1000 flowers bloom!