Saturday, March 21, 2009




Sister Islands: Contemplating Pacific Nationalism
Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu

Pan-Pacific Nation was born out of a piece I submitted for an exhibition at the ARTS at Marks Garage in 2007 on Alternate Urban Futures. Entitled “Kalākaua’s Dream: A Confederation of Pacific Nations,” excerpts from it are interspersed throughout this essay.

King Kalākaua believed in a unified Oceania – in a Pacific federation of international states with the Kingdom of Hawai‘i as its leader. He sought to protect his fellow Pacific Islanders from foreign control and to promote self-governance and independence. He was not alone. The Legislature, in 1883, adopted a resolution protesting the colonization of Pacific peoples:

“Whereas His Hawaiian Majesty’s Government being informed that certain Sovereign and Colonial States propose to annex various Islands and Archipelagoes of Polynesia, does hereby solemnly protest against such projects of annexation, as unjust to a simple and ignorant people, and subversive in their case of those conditions for favorable national development, which have been so happily accorded to the Hawaiian Nation. … And his Hawaiian Majesty’s Government … makes earnest appeal to the Governments of great and enlightened States, that they will recognize the inalienable rights of the several native communities of Polynesia to enjoy opportunities for progress and self-government, and will guarantee to them the same favorable opportunities which have made Hawaii prosperous and happy, and which incite her national spirit to lift up a voice among the Nations in behalf of sister island and groups of Polynesia.”

Being a Hawaiian today is fraught with complexity. With our Ali‘i Trusts and state and federal benefits constantly in danger of being dismantled on the basis of being race-based, we are told that nation-within-a-nation status is the answer. To be “Native American”, to have a status akin to federally-recognized Indian tribes, afford us protections and ensures the continuing validity of Native Hawaiian programs. But what does it mean to abandon our genealogical past in favor of a political future? After all, Native American, by definition, describes a people in relation to the United States of America. It is not a reflection of a people, in and of themselves.

Kalākaua sought to intervene on behalf of the native peoples in the annexation of the islands of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Gilbert Islands, and Eastern Caroline. In 1885, he appointed a minister to travel to Europe on a reconnaissance mission – “to ascertain whether Hawai‘i may not be recognized as eligible to take a leading part in a more complete political organization of Central Polynesia…”

Hawai‘i‘s roots reach not towards the Americas, but across the great expanse of Moana Nui Ākea, towards our ancestral Kahiki. Towards Tahiti, the Marquesas, Samoa, Tonga, Aotearoa. But King Kalākaua’s dream was also based on politics. On his trip around the World, he encountered kingdoms whose great domains were separated by oceans and huge mountain chains, yet governed by a single ruler. While Kalākaua desire to protect his sister islands might have been genuine, it nonetheless also manifested a paternalistic attitude that sought to elevate his own political standing.

Kalākaua also interceded in a brewing civil conflict in Samoa. A treaty was negotiated, whereby King Malietoa of Samoa agreed “to bind [himself] to enter into a political Confederation with His Majesty Kalakaua” and pledged to “conform to whatever measures may hereafter by adopted by His Majesty Kalakaua and be mutually agreed upon to promote and carry into effect this political Confederation, and to maintain it now and forever.” Ratified by Kalākaua in March of 1887, the treaty was met with outrage and contempt by the United States, Germany, and Great Britain. Germany, who threatened to go to war with the Kingdom of Hawai‘i over the matter, ultimately forcibly deposed Malietoa, banished him from his homeland, and placed their own designee upon the throne.

But ultimately, Kalākaua’s dream mattered not. World Powers would not tolerate an upstart, much less a family of upstarts. Western history today depicts Kalākaua as being wastefully grandiose, both politically and economically, yet scholars fail to take into consideration the deliberate ways in which he was made to fail.

It was terribly prophetic, for just as Malietoa’s dream of Samoan independence ended, so too did Kalākaua’s, as American businessmen forced upon him the “Bayonet Constitution” in July of 1887. With the new Cabinet came the dismantling of his domestic and foreign policies, including his vision for a Confederation of independent Pacific Nations. Less than six years later, his sister, Queen Lili‘uokalani, would be overthrown by these same agents, in concert with the armed forces of the United States.

So what does it mean today, in 2009, to reflect on Pan Pacific Nationhood? There is a palpable and painful irony in Kalākaua once viewing the Kingdom of Hawai‘i as being in a position of strength, power, and leadership. Instead we were overthrown, colonized, and subsumed. It is for these very reasons that today, we must not define ourselves in relation to the colonizer. We must retrieve the collective ancestral memory of what we once were – a proud Kingdom. Our fate will not be determined by Congress or the courtroom – rather, our destiny lies in the mud of the kalo field and the damp forests of the uplands. It is in the fertility of our minds and bodies that our Nation will be reborn.

More than a century later, the dream survives, as Hawaiian voyaging canoes traverse the Pacific, renewing our cultural connections. Now more than ever, our futures are as interwoven as our past as we seek to ensure our vitality and sustainability against the rising tides of global climate change and cultural homogeneity.

Kalākaua’s dream, enchanting as it is, remains as elusive in practice as it is in concept. Instead, we meet on the pā, the platform, he alo a he alo, face to face as equals. We recite our respective mo‘okuauhau, our genealogies, out of respect, and in the hopes of identifying common ancestors, but we must respect and encourage our cultural and historical differences. None is more learned than the other. Instead, we move together, a collection of sister nations, riding the same ocean currents beneath the same rising moon.

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