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National Geographic : 2002 Dec
Contents
Reducing massive Pacific Ocean breakers to a scant rime offoam, immense sea cliffs-the tallestin the world-can rise as high as 3,000feet alonga 15-mile stretch of Moloka'i's north shore. Native Hawaiianspredominateon this still largely rural island,where population density is one-fiftieth that on O'ahu, andper capita income is among the lowest in the state. speaker, but when her young daughter entered the immersion program, she began to learn Hawaiian herself. "She was my inspiration." Mapuana's community of Keaukaha, home to roughly 1,400 native Hawaiians and adja cent to Hilo International Airport, is now cel ebrating its 78th anniversary as the second oldest of the state's 67 Hawaiian home lands. Under current law anyone who is at least half Hawaiian is entitled to a piece of land, a house lot, or a number of acres, depending on whether the location is urban or rural. Hawai ians with less than 50 percent Hawaiian blood-by far the majority-don't qualify, and some regard the restriction as unfair. Having to prove Hawaiianness through blood dates back to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, which was designed to return ceded land to qualified people. But the process of granting land is so bureaucratic that many on the waiting list die before ever being resettled. Even after all this time, the Hawaiian home lands support a population of only 22,500. AWAIIANS WIDELY REGARD the blood requirement as irrelevant. For most the slightest tincture of blood (koko) is enough to identify a person as a native islander. The bumper sticker "Got Koko?" is a simple emblem for a complex issue: Hawaiian sov ereignty. By one estimation there are nine different sovereignty groups, with a combined membership of some 48,000-about a fifth of all native Hawaiians. No one knows the exact number of sovereignty groups because they tend to be schismatic and splinter prone. Some are conciliatory, lobbying for nation-within a-nation status, much as some Native Ameri can groups have managed to be enclosed entities on the mainland. Others demand nothing less than total independence: secession from the United States, limiting full citizen ship only to those of Hawaiian ancestry, and deleting the 50th star from the American flag. In 1998 one group enthroned a Hawaiian monarch at Iolan'i Palace in downtown Honolulu: His Royal Majesty 'Akahi Nui, great-grandnephew of Queen Lili'uokalani, who has already issued an orotund proclama tion, beginning, "I, Majesty 'Akahi Nui, Ali'i Nui and Sovereign Heir to the Crown and Throne of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, being a Sovereign Nation of God, Am Now, on behalf of the Almighty Creator, restoring His Sov ereign Nation once again." A few weeks after my visit to Keaukaha, I was walking down a back road in Hilo and saw a banner waving over a large open tent proclaiming "The Lawful Kingdom of Hawai'i." That was how I bumped into Sam Kaleleiki, one of the friendliest Hawaiians I met during my travels; he was also, in his way, the most intransigent. "I am not an American," he said. Although he had served in the U.S. Marines for 32 years, he said he doesn't pay taxes, doesn't vote, and doesn't recognize the U.S. government as having a legal claim on Hawai'i. Hawai'i's queen, Lili'uokalani, had been overthrown and imprisoned in 1893 at the instigation of a group of American businessmen, he said, and the islands illegally annexed in 1898; they were overdue for return to their native people, as had happened in Zimbabwe and India and elsewhere. "Hawai'i is not America," Sam told me. "We are not Native Americans. We are Kanaka Maoli" On September 11, 2001, Sam was in Las Vegas at a reunion of his Marine buddies when news came of the tragedies in New York, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania. Much to the dismay of his buddies, Sam who has a silver Marine Corps insignia inlaid in a front tooth-left the room rather than salute the flag or sing "God Bless America." To calm them, he said, "I'm a Hawaiian." Sam is an island organizer for the Big Island and one of 24 elected representatives of the Lawful Kingdom (Continued on page 34) NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, DECEMBER 2002
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