[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 80 (Thursday, June 16, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6724-S6726]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AGAINST RACE-BASED GOVERNMENT IN HAWAII, PART III
Mr. KYL. Madam. President, I rise today to ask unanimous consent that
the following account of the history of the Hawaiian monarchy be
printed in the Record following my present remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. KYL. This history is in the appendix to ``Hawaii Divided Against
Itself Cannot Stand,'' an analysis of the 1993 apology resolution and
S. 147, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, that was
prepared by constitutional scholar Bruce Fein. I previously have
introduced earlier parts of that analysis into the Record--this is the
third and final instalment.
The appendix to Mr. Fein's analysis carefully explains the nature of
the Hawaiian monarchy, its evolution toward constitutional democracy,
the attempt by the last monarch to undercut those reforms and
compromise the judiciary, and the actors involved in stopping that
monarch and establishing a democratic republic. This account is a
useful antidote to the tendentious blame-America narrative provided in
the 1993 apology resolution. The truth is much more nuanced than the
resolution's ``Whites vs. Natives'' account. The real story is about a
multiracial constitutional monarchy slowly evolving toward democratic
norms and equal rights--a process whose final step was the admission of
Hawaii as a State in the Union. That step was approved in 1959 by 94
percent of Hawaii's voters--large majorities of non-Natives and Natives
alike.
The Native Hawaiian Government Act would undo that step--Hawaii's
admission to the Union as a unified people and State. Indeed, it would
even undo the progress made under the Kamehameha monarchy. That
constitutional monarchy was not a monoracial institution. It included
Hawaiians of all races. This bill would create, for the first time in
Hawaii since the early 19th century, a government of one race only.
This is not progress.
I urge my colleagues to read Mr. Fein's history, and to ask
themselves why we would want to undo the achievements of past
generations of Hawaiians by enacting S. 147 and creating a race-based
government in Hawaii.
Exhibit 1
[From the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Jun. 1, 2005]
Hawaii Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
(By Bruce Fein)
APPENDIX
The apology issued by the United States Congress in 1993 to
the Native Hawaiians for the ``illegal'' overthrow of the
Hawaiian monarchy and its annexation to the United States is
riddled with historical inaccuracies. The resolution alleges
that the Committee of Safety, the political juggernaut that
deposed Queen Lili'uokalani, ``represented American and
European sugar planters, descendants of missionaries, and
financiers.'' The language fails to disclose the Hawaiian
monarchy's deep and lasting ties with the most powerful sugar
planters on the islands. Many of the wealthiest sugar barons
steadfastly supported the monarchy in opposition to the
Committee for Safety.
Chinese and Japanese immigrants provided an abundant source
of cheap labor on the sugar plantations. They labored for
wages below what was required on the American mainland. The
sugar planters owed their impressive profit margins to these
workers. Annexation to the United States would have
eliminated the sugar planter's labor cost advantage. Many
sugar barons vigorously defended the monarchy to retain their
access to cheap labor.
The sugar barons invested heavily in the monarchy. Claus
Spreckels, the wealthiest sugar baron on the islands,
established Claus Spreckels & Co. Bank in 1885. King Kalakaua
borrowed heavily from Spreckels' bank; the planter's
substantial influence garnered him the nickname ``King
Claus''. King Kalakaua unsuccessfully endeavored to secure a
two million dollar loan from the British to settle his debts
to Spreckels' bank. Spreckels' financial stake in the
monarchy provided him with considerable political capital,
which he spent securing his business interests. After the
Committee of Safety deposed the Queen, Spreckels vigorously
lobbied for her re-instatement.
Some planters and financiers did offer their support to the
Committee of Safety due to economic concerns. Prior to 1890,
the United States conferred the privilege of duty free sugar
imports only on Hawaii. The McKinley Tariffs eliminated
Hawaii's advantage by allowing all foreign suppliers to
export their sugar to the United States duty free and
subsidizing domestic sugar production. Some businessman
favored establishing a free trade agreement with the United
States; others contended that annexation would assure
unfettered access to American markets for Hawaiian goods.
However, the congressional resolution exaggerates the
presence of sugar planters on the Committee of Safety. Two
members did hold management positions at sugar companies, and
the Honolulu Ironworks, a provider of equipment to the
plantations, employed another member. No member held a
controlling interest in a sugar company, nor would it be
accurate to assert that any of the members were sugar barons.
Queen Lili'uokalani herself furnished the proximate cause
of the revolt. Since its inception in 1810, the Hawaiian
monarchy embraced increasingly democratic governance. Queen
Lili'uokalani reversed that trend when she sought to
unilaterally change the constitution to augment her own power
and weaken the government's system of checks and balances.
The Hawaiian constitution, that the Queen had sworn to
uphold, explicitly limited the power to revise the
Constitution to the legislature, which represented native and
non-Native Hawaiians alike. Her proposed Constitution allowed
the monarch to appoint nobles for life, reduced judges'
tenure from life to six years, removed the prohibition
against diminishing judge's compensation, and admonished
Cabinet members that they would serve only ``during the
queen's pleasure.'' The Queen's own cabinet refused to
legitimize her autocratic constitution. Her disregard for
democracy provoked the 1893 revolution. The congressional
resolution blatantly ignores the historical circumstances
surrounding her overthrow.
While the apology expressly condemns the alleged military
intervention by the United States, the Hawaiian monarchy
itself established its primacy through a series of bloody
conflicts with rival chieftains. King Kamehameha I succeeded
in uniting the islands and establishing control over foreign
immigration, which began with Captain Cook's arrival nearly
thirty years earlier. He did not hold elections. He gained
power through brute force and ruthless measures. During a
battle in the Nuuanu Valley, Kamehameha's forces drove
thousands of Oahuan warriors off steep cliffs to their death.
According to the logic of the congressional Apology
Resolution, King Kamehameha I's seizure of land by force
amounts to a violation of international law. The Hawaiian
monarchy, which the resolution holds in such high regard, is
guilty of far more egregious ``illegal'' actions than those
supposedly perpetrated by the United States.
In 1819, shortly after the death of Kamehameha I, his
widow, Kaahumanu, became the de facto ruler and installed the
deceased King's 23 year old son by another wife, Liholiho, as
the nominal ruler, thereafter known as Kamehameha II. Under
pressure from Kaahumanu and Keopuolani, the young king's
mother, Liholiho broke the kapu, ordered the destruction of
heiaus (stone alters) and the burning of wooden idols.
Anthropologists have long regarded pre-contact Hawaii as the
most highly stratified of all Polynesian chiefdoms. The
chiefly elite from Maui and Hawaii Island had exercised a
cycle of territorial conquest, promulgating the kapu system,
an ideology based on the cult of Ku, a human sacrifice-
demanding god of war, to legitimize chiefly dominance over
the common people. The chiefs typically imposed the death
penalty for violating kapu; women and those of lower castes
suffered disproportionately under the system. When Liholiho
broke the kapu by sitting down to eat with the women Ali'i,
Kaahumanu announced, ``We intend to eat pork and bananas and
coconuts
[[Page S6725]]
and live as the white people do.'' The following year, 1820,
the first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii. Soon
after, Kaahumanu took charge of Christianity and made it the
official religion of the Kingdom. These shattering changes in
the religion, culture and governance of Hawaii were the work
of the Native Hawaiians themselves.
All foreigners came under the purview of the Native
Hawaiian monarchy. The Apology Resolution decries the
imperialist tendencies of the missionaries, yet their access
to Native Hawaiians remained contingent on the monarchy's
good graces. Several attempts to inject the Ten Commandments
into the civil code failed, and King Kamehameha III actually
banned Catholic missionaries for a time.
The Hawaiian monarchy had gained international recognition
by the reign of King Kamehameha III. The child king ceded
power to his regent, Kaahumanu, who remained the de facto
ruler until her death in 1832. While the regency yielded
significant changes in Hawaiian common law, including the
introduction of jury trials, King Kamehameha III affected a
seismic shift toward democracy when he produced the
Constitution of 1840. The influx of foreign merchants and
settlers had exposed the Native Hawaiians to new modes of
jurisprudence and governance. These revolutionary ideas found
expression in the new Hawaiian constitution. King Kamehameha
III took a particular interest in studying political
structures; he requested that an American missionary, William
Richards, tutor him in political economy and law.
The king, the chiefs, and their advisors convened to draft
a declaration of rights and laws in 1839. The declaration
secured the rights of each Hawaiian citizen to ``life, limb,
liberty, the labor of his lands, and productions of his
mind'' and represented a critical concession to the king's
subjects. The language ensured that native and non-Native
Hawaiian citizens enjoyed equal protection under the law.
The following year, the council of chiefs and King
Kamehameha III drafted a formal constitution. The document
provided for the creation of a ``representative body'' chosen
by the people and a supreme court consisting of the king; the
kuhina-nui, the premier or regent; and four judges appointed
by the ``representative body.'' Moreover, the document
specified that only the legislature could approve alterations
to the constitution following a year's notice of the proposed
change. The government followed the mandated procedure and
revised the constitution in 1852, which more explicitly
outlined the powers accorded to each branch of government.
While the Hawaiians borrowed many of their political
philosophies from Western civilization, they forged a
government of their own accord.
The Apology Resolution contends that ``the Indigenous
Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to
their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national
lands to the United States,'' yet the land system remained
virtually unchanged after the 1893 overthrow and subsequent
annexation. King Kamehameha III embarked on an ambitious land
reform program in 1848, termed the ``Great Mahele.'' The
original spate of reforms, the Buke Mahele, divided the land
amongst the King and the 245 chiefs. The King further divided
his lands into the Crown Lands and the Government Lands, the
latter was to be ``managed, leased, or sold, in accordance
with the will of said Nobles and Representatives . . .''
[Footnote: R.S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom 1778-1854
Vol 1, pg. 289.] Then, the Kuleana Grant program offered fee
simple titles to the native tenants tilling each plot or
kuleana. The commoners' share of land constituted a small
fraction of the total; however, the kuleana lands were the
primary productive agricultural land of the Kingdom and were
considered extremely valuable. The Kuleana Grants awarded
land to approximately two out of every three Native Hawaiian
families.
The editor of the Polynesian newspaper extolled the grant
as ``the crowning fact that gives liberty to a nation of
serfs.'' Indeed, fifty years prior to annexation, the
Hawaiian monarchy dismantled the ``subsistent social system
based on communal land tenure'' that the Apology Resolution
references. The government only extended the possibility of
land ownership to foreign born residents two years after the
Kuleana Grant. The provisional government of 1893 simply
gained ownership of the crown lands and the government lands.
The Apology Resolution faults the United States for acquiring
those lands from the provisional government without providing
compensation to Hawaii. Yet, the United States assumed over
3.8 million dollars of Hawaii's public debt, largely incurred
under the monarchy, after annexation. That debt burden
amounts to twice the market value of the land the United
States inherited. Native Hawaiians did not forfeit one acre
of land as a consequence of the overthrow or annexation.
King Kamehameha III's reign institutionalized a measure of
representative democracy and property rights in Hawaii. King
Kamehameha V's failure to designate a successor afforded
native and non-native subjects alike the opportunity to elect
the next two monarchs, King Lunalilo and King Kalakaua. The
Hawaiian monarchy itself infused democracy, property rights,
and a system of common law into Hawaiian society. The
annexation did not alter those institutions.
The Constitution of 1887 extended democracy to the
selection of nobility, reduced the arbitrary power of the
King, stipulated that only the legislature could approve
constitutional changes, and mandated that no cabinet minister
could be dismissed without the legislature's consent. While
the King signed the new constitution under pressure from a
militia group, the Honolulu Rifles, the net effect of the
revisions provided Hawaiian citizens with a more democratic
government. Many natives expressed concern over the extension
of suffrage to resident foreigners of western descent and the
property qualifications to vote for or become nobles. A
minority embarked on an ill-fated effort to depose King
Kalakaua and install Lili'uokalani in his place. However,
most native and non-native dissenters sought redress within
the democratic system. Their opposition parties, the National
Reform Party and the Liberal Party, garnered a substantial
number of seats in the legislature. Queen Lili'uokalani's
autocratic demands in 1893 appear even more egregious against
the backdrop of liberalization that her predecessors
championed.
The Apology Resolution also casts United States Minister to
Hawaii, John Stevens, in a sinister light, charging that he
``conspired with a small group of non-Hawaiian residents of
the Kingdom of Hawaii . . . to overthrow the indigenous and
lawful Government of Hawaii.'' Moreover, the resolution
contends that the United States Navy invaded Hawaii and
positioned themselves ``near Hawaiian Government buildings
and the Iolani Palace to intimidate Queen Liliuokalani.''
There is not a shred of hard evidence to support either of
those claims. The Blount Report itself, cited by the Apology
Resolution, contains statements from the leaders of the
revolution and from John Stevens himself which directly
refute those allegations. W.O. Smith recounted the
Committee of Safety's contact with Minister Stevens in
Blount's report: ``Mr. Stevens gave assurances of his
earnest purpose to afford all the protection that was in
his power to protect life and property; he emphasized that
fact that while he would call for the United States troops
to protect life and property, he could not recognize any
government until actually established. He repeated that
the troops when landed would not take sides with either
Party, but would protect American life and property.''
Minister Stevens consistently denied any involvement in the
revolution. Any statement to the contrary amounts to little
more than speculation.
The Blount Report was a partisan endeavor. The newly
elected Democratic President Cleveland castigated the
outgoing Republican administration of President Harrison for
its ``interventionist'' tactics in Hawaii prior to any
investigation. Cleveland accused Minister Stevens of
orchestrating virtually every aspect of the revolution in an
address to Congress claiming that ``But for the notorious
predilections of the United States Minister for annexation,
the Committee of Safety, which should be called the Committee
of Annexation, would never have existed.'' In fact, King
Kamehameha III first proposed annexation to the United States
in 1851, despite strenuous objections from the French and the
British. When Cleveland commissioned the Blount report, the
ongoing effort to discredit the Harrison administration
colored Blount's impartiality. He did not swear in his
witnesses, nor did he interview all involved. Cleveland even
attempted to re-instate Queen Liliuokalani, although he
aborted those efforts after the Queen repeatedly insisted
that all involved in the Committee of Safety be executed. The
Senate's bipartisan Morgan Report found little evidence to
support Queen Lilioukalani's fraudulent claims that United
States pressure forced her to abdicate the crown.
The provisional government encountered little resistance.
Just 800 Hawaiian royalists staged a short-lived counter-
revolution in 1895. Under the leadership of President Sanford
B. Dole, the new government convened a constitutional
convention in the summer of 1894. The resulting document
cemented civil liberties for all Hawaiian citizens, similar
to the American Bill of Rights, and mandated that a Senate
and House of Representatives be elected by the people.
Royalists continued to express their frustrations in
opposition newspapers without censure. After the 1898
annexation, Native Hawaiians proved a dynamic force in island
politics. While just one of the Washington-appointed
Governors, Samuel Wilder King, possessed Hawaiian blood, five
out of ten elected Delegates to Congress boasted Native
Hawaiian ancestry. In 1903, a Native Hawaiian Delegate to
Congress of royal ancestry, Prince Kuhio, delivered Hawaii's
first petition for statehood to Washington.
August 21, 1959 remains a day of celebration for Hawaiians
of all races and creeds. Hawaii's induction into the union as
the fiftieth state marked the culmination of its protracted
struggle for statehood. Native and non-Native Hawaiians voted
overwhelming in favor of statehood in the plebiscite
preceding the formal declaration. Native Hawaiians did not
rally in opposition to statehood; just 6 percent of the
voters opposed the measure whereas 94 percent resoundingly
announced their support. As Senator Inouye of Hawaii so
eloquently testified, ``Hawaii remains one of the greatest
examples of a multiethnic society living in relative peace.''
Congressional Record, 1994, Page S12249. He echoes the same
sentiments Captain Ashford expressed in 1884 to King Kalakaua
when he referred to the Hawaiian flag as, ``this beautiful
emblem of the unity
[[Page S6726]]
of many peoples who, blended together on a benignant basis of
political and race equality, combine to form the Kingdom of
Hawaii . . .'' The Akaka Bill would thus represent a wretched
regression in race relations that would occasion equally
wretched racial ills.
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