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Although this was a clear victory for the Native people, the military has not lost major ground in Hawai'i. After the death of two activists, and the arrests and jailing of many more, the bombing was finally halted in 1990. Kaho'olawe is home to many navigational and other ancient Native sites. Although the residents failed to stop their eviction and the transformation of their pig and vegetable farms into upper-income developments, the resistance began to spread to every island.īy 1976, Hawaiians were landing on Kaho'olawe Island to protest its use as a military bombing range since the second World War. The residents' resistance called forth an outpouring of support throughout the archipelago. Rural Hawaiians living by month-to-month leases on lands controlled by one of the largest private trusts in Hawai'i, the Bishop Estate, were given one month's notice to leave their homes and farms of more than twenty years. Evictions of Hawaiians lead to increasing protest, especially in communities scheduled for residential and commercial development.Īn early and typical example here was the Kalama Valley eviction on O'ahu island in 1970. Urbanization brought an influx of rich haole from the American continent who, unlike tourists, wanted to live in Hawai'i. New immigrants from Asia, especially the Philippines, poured into Hawai'i to work in the huge resorts, while tourists began to visit in the millions.īy 1970, rural Hawaiian communities were besieged by rapid development. Residential and commercial (predominently hotel) development encroached on lands once covered with sugar cane. Statehood transformed Hawai'i's economy from a sugar/military outpost of an empire to a tourist/military outpost. After Hawai'i became a state, however, the politics and demographics of Hawai'i shifted: Asian plantation workers, with a small group of Hawaiians, captured elected offices, including the governorship. Now, caught in a political system where we have no separate legal status - unlike other Native peoples controlled by the United States- we are by every measure the most oppressed people living in our ancestral homeland.īetween annexation in 1900 and statehood in 1959, haole sugar capitalists controlled the economy and the politics of Hawai'i. Throughout the Second World War, Hawai'i was under martial law for seven years, during which time hundreds of thousands of acres of land were confiscated, civil rights were held in abeyance, and a general atmosphere of military intimidation reigned. In the meantime, shiploads and planeloads of American military forces continue to pass through Hawai'i on their way to imperialist wars in Asia and elsewhere. Burdened with commodification of our culture and exploitation of our people, Hawaiians now exist in an occupied country whose hostage people are forced to witness, and for many of us to participate in, our collective humiliation as tourist artifacts for the world's rich. Far from encouraging a cultural revival, as tourist industry apologists contend, tourism has appropriated and cheapened our dance, music, language, and people, particularly our women. The hula, for example, an ancient form of dance with deep spiritual meaning, has been made ornamental, a form of exotica for the gaping tourist. The latest affliction of corporate tourism has meant a particularly insidious form of cultural prostitution. Under foreign control, we have been overrun by settlers: missionaries and capitalists, adventurers and, of course, hordes of tourists, nearly seven million by 1998. Our lands and waters have been taken for military bases, resorts, urbanization and plantation agriculture.

Our language was banned in 1896, resulting in several generations of Hawaiians, including myself, whose only language is English. Today, Hawaiians continue to suffer the effects of haole (white) colonization. as a Territory in 1900, our country became a white planter outpost, providing missionary-descended sugar barons in the islands and imperialist Americans on the continent with a military watering hole in the Pacific. When the United States military invaded our archipelago in 1893 and overthrew our constitutional monarchy, our fate as an outpost of the American empire was sealed. Less than 20% of the current population in Hawai'i, our Native people have suffered all the familiar horrors of contact: massive depopulation, landlessness, christianization, economic and political marginalization, institutionalization in the military and the prisons, poor health and educational profiles, increasing diaspora. Our Hawaiian people, now but a remnant of the nearly one million Natives present at contact with the West in the 18th century, live at the margins of our island society. Modern Hawai'i, like its colonial overlord, the United States of America, is a settler society.