Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kānaka Maoli

                                                             The Tribunal was convened by Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell and was                                                              organized on behalf of the Kanaka Maoli people by the                                                                      Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Kōmike which engaged more than five                                                              hundred people and sixty sponsors on five islands in the                                                                process. The idea of a Kanaka Maoli Tribunal was first                                                                      proposed in March 1992 by the late Kawaipuna Prejean,                                                                    roving international envoy for Kanaka Maoli sovereignty                                                                    organizations.

                                                             The UN process of decolonization includes the right to                                                                    educate the peoples of non-self-governing territories to                                                                  all options regarding their rights to self-determination.                                                                    These options include: the return to full independence as                                                              a sovereign nation state, free association, or                                                                                    incorporation within another nation state. The right, choice, and option of independence was denied to the Kanaka Maoli people in the US 1959 statehood process, resulting in the illegal incorporation of Hawaiʻi by the United States against the previously expressed will of the Kānaka Maoli. The failure to have the option of decolonization at the time of the US Statehood elections, must therefore be researched, exposed, and explored. 

The UN process of decolonization provides a means for regaining rights to self-determination. UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 was created to support the decolonization process for dependent peoples in non-self-governing territories: “Stating the need for the universal respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of all peoples, … recognizing the passionate yearning for freedom in all dependent peoples and the decisive role of such peoples in the attainment of their independence, … the denial of or impediments in the way of the freedom of such peoples … constitute a serious threat to world peace, and solemnly proclaims the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end to colonialism in all its forms and manifestations;” and to this end declares that: 

1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.

2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. 3. Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.

The UN Decolonization process requires the formal support of other nations for re-inscription or reenlistment on the UN decolonization list for non-self-governing territories in order for the UN Decolonization Committee to proceed with the process.

The Tribunal was an act of empowerment towards realizing the greater options for the Kānaka Maoli within rights of all Indigenous peoples under international law. The judges’ Interim Report explains the law of peoples as nations. This refers to international law arising from peoples’ international tribunals, such as Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kanaka Maoli. International Peoples’ tribunals follow the precedent set by the Nuremberg trials after World War II to provide support for justice under international law and the law of peoples as nations and the inherent law of humanity. The inherent law of humanity refers to a higher law based on the perpetual search for justice by those living under unjust laws. It also refers to law in relationships between persons, peoples, their nations, and their sacred environments. This is especially embodied in the cultures of Indigenous peoples.

Eight days of hearings by a panel of nine judges and three prosecutor-advocates were conducted in review of both oral and written testimonies from Kanaka Maoli and other expert witnesses on five islands of Ka Paeʻāina.

The judges at the Tribunal were Milner S. Ball, Caldwell Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Georgia; Hyun-Kyug Chung, Assistant Professor of Theology from Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea; Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School; Ward Churchill (Creek/Cherokee Mētis), Associative Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder; Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice and Fellow of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University; Lennox Hinds, Professor of Law at Rutgers University; past Director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, Counsel to the African National Congress (ANC) in the United States; Te Moana Nui a Kiwa Jackson (Ngati Kahungunu and Ngati Porou Maori), Director of Maori Legal Service, Wellington, Aotearoa (“New Zealand”); Asma Khader, Attorney, Educator, Journalist: member of the Palestinian Rights Society and the National Committee for the Protection of Children (Amman, Jordan); Oda Makoto, Novelist and Literary Critic; Visiting Professor of Comparative Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, member of the Permanent People's Tribunal; and Sharon Venne (Cree). Lawyer; human rights advocate at the United Nations, Rockefeller Fellow on indigenous legal systems. The advocate-prosecutor team consisted of Glenn Morris, Shawnee attorney and Director of the Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics, University of Colorado at Denver, Director American Indian Movement, Denver Chapter; Maivan Clech Lam, Vietnamese attorney and Professor of Law at City University of New York; Rockefeller Fellow at University of Colorado at Boulder; and José Morin, Puerto Rican attorney and Executive Director of the North Star Foundation in New York, previously with the Center for Constitutional Rights. These international jurists, lawyers, and educators provided unique points of view and brought to the proceedings a familiarity with new conventions and agreements that are changing the dynamics and the language of international law.

Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kanaka Maoli created a process for actively redefining our own identity and destiny as a people, culture and independent nation, opening the way for a further peoples’ process to expand our rights according to the spirit and the will of the people. As Kānaka Maoli and as indigenous peoples it is imperative to continue to pursue our rights to and of self-determination, decolonization, independence and regional inter-dependence.

We must continue to give voice to truth to power. As the Pākuʻi prophecy predicts, as the oceans rise, so will the power of the people to right the wrongs of the past and set into place the pono of the future. With access to global networks of communication and visibility, the voices of the peoples of the world are demanding and creating social change to end poverty, hunger, inequality, domination, war, exploitation, subjugation, and oppression. Power to the peoples to create peace and mutual respect as a basis for a balanced and thriving new interdependent world, region by region, nation by nation, community by community, peoples by peoples.

As Indigenous peoples have encountered the bold words and tenets of international laws, they have begun writing declarations, pacts and manifestos of their own. Many important culturally based principles, values and understandings have been inserted into important Indigenous documents that expand the foundation of Indigenous and human rights, for all peoples globally, such as:

• The Kari-oca Declaration, 1992, Indigenous Alternative to Agenda 21, the Rio Earth Summit Charter 
• The Mataatua Declaration, 1993, Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights 
• The Tribunal Verdict, 1993, Kahoʻokolokolonui Kanaka Maoli 
• The PIANGO Resolution, 1997 
• The Pu’uhonua Peace Pact, 1999, N. Minton, S. Newcomb 
• The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century, 2000 
• The Paoakalani Declaration, 2003, about Kanaka Maoli Intellectual Property Rights 
• The Moana Nui Declaration drafted at the Moana Nui Conference during the 2011 APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Hawaiʻi 

… to list a few. A more complete list can be attained on the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Peoples website.

Indigenous peoples have been described as non-self-governing, unrepresented, vulnerable, dependent, colonized, exploited, dominated, and subjugated. Many Indigenous peoples are survivors of genocide, not yet honored by their own names, identities, languages, cultures, and histories, and have collectively authored the minimum standards under international law that protect the rights of all peoples. As peoples of the first nations of the earth, indigenous peoples are the practitioners, observers, and contributors of wisdom and wise practices for peaceful coexistence and balance with the natural world. This time honored collective pattern recognition of the earth’s systems of life support, regeneration and renewal can become the shared basis of a new paradigm shift needed to protect life on earth through mutual respect for nature’s capacity for sustainability and the shared awareness that the human potential is most beneficially realized through living intelligently without doing harm.