Hawaiian Soverignty
The date was the 16th of January 1893 when a small group of US military alongside a small, but influential group of local business men conspired to overthrow the Sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom, at the time recognized world wide as a Sovereign Kingdom. On the 15th of February of the same year this group submitted a request to the United States Government for annexation.
The president at the time was Grover Cleveland who investigated the situation and concluded that the request for annexation was illegal due to the methods used. However, nothing was done to correct the situation and when, four years later, a new president McKinley took office the original group of individuals again petition for annexation, which was granted on the 7th of July, 1898 for the main purpose of using the islands as a military outpost.
The Admissions Act of March 18, 1959, allowed Hawai'i to join the United States as an official state. However, still nothing had been done concerning the illegal overthrow of a Sovereign Nation until the 15th of November, 1993 when President Bill Clinton signed an official Apology Resolution which admitted that the US was wrong in providing military assistance to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Unfortunately, while the apology admitted wrongdoing, it did not propose any concrete solutions or remedies to a people whose nation had been taken away from them.
Today the Hawaiians fight to get the Hawaiian Kingdom reestablished. This is the Sovereignty Movement and, for the most part, there are two sides. The first side is governmental and is known as the Akaka Bill. Among other things it seeks to bring the Hawaiians under the Indian Native Rights acts. The other side is the Hawaiian Independence Movement, which, for the most part, seeks a severance from the US and a restoration of the Hawaiian People. The Independence Movements point out that unlike the American Indians, Hawai'i was an internationally recognized Sovereign Nation and thus would not fall under the same category.
Congress is set to hear the Akaka Bill late 2004 or early 2005 and all the issues are all very complex. Hawai'i is a true melting pot of cultures with 20% of the population being made up of people with Hawaiian blood. An almost equal number of Hawaiians live in the mainland or abroad.
On the sidebar to the left we have given some links to Pro-Akaka Bill websites and Pro-Independence websites. There are many more websites out there which you can Google for much more information and viewpoints.
Below we present a third opinion from Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D for which he has graciously given consent for us to republish here. You can find more information as well at Dr. Conklin's extensive website.
