Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kānaka Maoli

Nine charges were brought against the US at the Tribunal. These charges were:

1. Impermissible interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign people and nation.

2. Aiding and abetting a foreign coup d’état against the government of a sovereign people and nation.

3. Annexation of a sovereign people, their nation and territory, without their free and informed consent.

4. Imposition of statehood on a people, their nation and territory, without their free and informed consent.

5. Illegal appropriation of the lands, waters, and resources of the Kānaka Maoli.

6. Economic colonization and dispossession of the Kānaka Maoli.

7. Acts of genocide and ethnocide against the Kānaka Maoli.

8. Destruction, pollution, contamination and desecration of the environment of Ka Paeʻāina [the Hawaiian Archipelago].

9. Violations by the United States and its subsidiaries of their own established trust responsibilities and other obligations toward the Kānaka Maoli.

The Heart of the Matter – Inherent Sovereignty

In clear violation of the inherent sovereignty of the Kanaka Maoli people, and international laws which protect the rights of self-determination of all peoples, US federal and Hawaiʻi state governments have proceeded to co-opt the “sovereignty issue” by keeping the process under the control of the state. Since non-Kānaka Maoli outnumber Kānaka Maoli 4:1, any public vote on Kanaka Maoli sovereignty is designed to be determined by others than Kānaka Maoli. The inherent sovereignty of the Kanaka Maoli people, which is recognized by the US in Public Law 103-150, is inherent to the Kānaka Maoli people not to the state of Hawaiʻi.

At the center of controversial sovereignty issues are the almost two million acres of stolen Kanaka Maoli lands now designated as “public lands” that were “ceded” to the US by the usurping annexationists of the so-called Republic of Hawaiʻi in 1898. In 1959, at the time of US imposed statehood, most of these seized lands were transferred by the US to itself under the newly formed state of Hawaiʻi. Revenues from these lands now support the state government, so it is obvious that the state would be opposed to any rectifications that remove these lucrative lands from its control. The devastation to the Kanaka Maoli people, who now comprise less than twenty percent of the Islands’ 1.3 million people, resulted in the worst health, social, economic, incarceration, and education indicators in Hawaiʻi. Kānaka Maoli are the most endangered people in their own homeland.