[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9] [Senate] [Pages 12846-12848] [From the U.S. 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 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 [[Page 12847]] 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 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. [[Page 12848]] ____________________