In August 2023 wildfires ravaged the 2nd largest island in the Hawai’ian

[make sure to emphasize that apostrophe like its a black kids name]

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 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 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 ran 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 [cut to libyan embassy raid] 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 down 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. Totally

less than 5% of Hawai’ian land is owned by Natives, who make up around

10% of the population.

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,

prompting Democratic led congress in 1993 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 the current head of the Kamehameha house 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!