Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

In Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty J. Kēhaulani Kauanui examines contradictions of indigeneity and self-determination in U.S. domestic policy and international law. She theorizes paradoxes in the laws themselves and in nationalist assertions of Hawaiian Kingdom restoration and demands for U.S. deoccupation, which echo colonialist models of governance. Kauanui argues that Hawaiian elites' approaches to reforming and regulating land, gender, and sexuality in the early nineteenth century that paved the way for sovereign recognition of the kingdom complicate contemporary nationalist activism today, which too often includes disavowing the indigeneity of the Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiian) people. Problematizing the ways the positing of the Hawaiian Kingdom's continued existence has been accompanied by a denial of U.S. settler colonialism, Kauanui considers possibilities for a decolonial approach to Hawaiian sovereignty that would address the privatization and capitalist development of land and the ongoing legacy of the imposition of heteropatriarchal modes of social relations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, History, Feminism, Politics

296 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2018

Reviews

[Tee · Rating 4 out of 5]

**** 3.5 Stars ****

Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty was an intense read, especially because I had no prior knowledge of anything "Hawaiian" historically or socially.

Kauanui presents the paradoxes in reclaiming the Hawaiian kingdom or de-colonizing the land. The arrival of Christian missionaries and how the Hawaiian kingdom had to change its customs regarding gender, sexuality, and the privatization of land. Kauanui suggests that it was not just about "imposed" colonialism, but the Hawaiian king/queen made the decision in order to protect their people. Agency was involved.

The only issue I had with this book was the writing style. I found it difficult to follow and Kauanui kind of assumed everyone knows Hawaiian history. Otherwise, it was a great read and it certainly provided me with extensive knowledge on Hawaiian struggle for sovereignty and self-determination.

I just found it boring at times because I am not very interested in Hawaiian sovereignty. It is not in my depth of interest.

However, I definitely recommend this read! Excellent author with extensive knowledge on the topic.

[Leila Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and Politics of State Nationalism, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui unpacks paradoxes inherent in past and contemporary assertions of Hawaiian sovereignty. She maintains that certain Hawaiian claims of sovereignty are themselves colored by the history of settler colonialism on the island. She especially critiques the idea prevalent among the mostly male Hawaiian kingdom nationalists that their nation was never colonized by the United States, and thus needs to be simply restored to its original sovereignty. According to Kauanui, in the process of forming itself as an independent nation, before U.S. colonization, the Hawaiian Kingdom modeled itself after Western nations and enacted its own “colonial biopolitics” in relation to Hawaiians. In this process, the Kingdom fundamentally transformed practices regarding land, gender, and sexuality. If the Kingdom’s sovereignty were simply restored, as Kingdom nationalists wish, it would ironically reproduce the very settler colonial logics already built into the kingdom, at the expense of those who were marginalized by its nineteenth-century biopolitics, such as people who lost land, women, and queer people.
Kauanui offers an in-depth critique of Hawaiian elites and Indigenous political movements; however, fails to fully understand the diverse operations and impact of Asian settler-colonialism within Hawaii. In Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai'i, Candace Fujikane acknowledges the historical exploitation of Asian plantation labor in Hawai‘i while equally importantly acknowledging the ways that Asian migrants and their descendants are beneficiaries of US settler colonialism and exploring how early Asian settlers were both active agents in the making of their own histories and unwitting recruits swept into the service of empire. In this formulation it is not necessary for migrants of color to migrate “intentionally” to become settlers; rather, settler status is a mixture of both self-determination and structural contingency. As Fujikane puts it succinctly, “Colonial intent [does not] define the status of Asians as settlers but rather the historical context of US colonialism for which they unknowingly became a part” (Fujikane 2008, 86). Even though Fujikane stresses that political and economical subordination does not exempt Asian ethnic groups from participating as settlers in a colonial system—particularly Filipinos—her emphasis on Asian demographic majority, dominant political representation, and economic power in Hawai‘i emphasizes how political and economic authority are nonetheless dominant features of settler-colonial identity.
How does Kauanui explore the layers of identity and indigeneity that exist within settler-colonial frameworks? How can Kauanui’s critique of the Hawaiian Kingdom be used to apply to other groups of elites? How can we expand this to tackle the complexity of harm woven into liberal Asian power and oppression in Hawai'i? ((The scale of violence of the white supremacist settler-colonial state of the US and of white settlers against both Native Hawaiians and Asian laborers must be first centered and addressed))

[Meghan]

this book isn’t getting a rating from me mostly because i don’t think i was smart enough to fully grasp all of the concepts

however i gained historical context from this book and learned a bit about what makes hawaiian sovereignty so complicated- the topic being more than just statehood/country hood was always something i kind of knew but never really understood, and this book helped me with that!

[Andrea Pimentel · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a renewed emphasis on calls for decolonization within scholarly circles, with many disciplines following the trend in attempts that often fail to unsettle, much less describe the origins and boundaries of colonial violence. Situating what is decolonial often becomes a fraught task when serious questions concerning self-determination intersect sovereignty. Kauanui’s text departs from this conundrum in Paradoxes through a close examination of the current political projects in modern Hawaii seeking different models of sovereignty. In her careful reading of the limits of these movements, Kauanui effectively points toward a re-engagement with Kanaka Maoli epistemologies, unsettling the coloniality that shapes mainstream Hawaiian nationalist perspectives. I view the book’s contribution as two-folded: a theoretical/scholarly contribution within settler colonial studies and a revision to Hawaiian historiography, but also as a political provocation to the sovereignty movements she is a part of.
The book centers on the paradoxes of Hawaiian sovereignty as historically rooted in the nineteenth-century contact with missionaries across the archipelago and the enduring consequences of this historical moment expressed in contemporary sovereignty political movements. Using critical discourse analysis and archival research, Kauanui divides her empirical work in four chapters structured around uncovering the colonial biopolitics governing “Indigenous life, death, reproduction, gender, sexuality, relation to land and property, and other sites of state power over both the physical and political bodies of the Hawaiian population” (23). As a Kauanui traces these colonial biopolitics across these spheres of Hawaiian existence, she exposes how this has produced paradoxes of sovereignty in which settler notions of land, gender, and sexuality become imbued in contemporary discourses of self-determination and sovereignty.
With land, gender relations, and sexuality as the three bases in which Kauanui proposes a reconsideration of understanding Hawaiian sovereignty through an Indigenous epistemology, the book is organized in four chapters that build from each other through the overlying connection of the endurance of a colonial biopolitics. The first two chapters review the limits of the law and the property regimes emerging from the settler colonial encounter as the more salient examples of the disruption to a Kanaka Maoli social order. These chapters establish a connection between the politics of sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom during the nineteenth-century and contemporary nationalist discourses to begin unsettling not only the two current models of self-determination between deoccupation versus federal recognition, but Kauanui points toward an alternative option beyond a state-centered approach, or one that is legible as an Indigenous sovereignty.
In the first chapter, Kauanui introduces the reader to the ongoing debates among those seeking Hawaiian sovereignty, with a particular emphasis on the resistance from Kingdom nationalists to the notion of indigeneity tied to U.S. federal recognition. Through a careful consideration of the limitations between U.S. and international law touching upon indigenous peoples and sovereignty, Kauanui views both models as insufficient in tackling the settler colonial structure that both continue to draw from. Building from this rejection of statehood as solving the decolonization project, chapter 2 addresses the crux of many Indigenous struggles toward self-determination: land dispossession. The privatization of Hawaiian lands occurred separate to the dispossession experienced by tribal nations in the continental U.S., but Kauanui insists that it was regardless shaped by the same settler colonial logic of elimination. Still, Kauanui views this dispossession as a paradox since she traces the effects of the 1848 Māhele land division and the 1850 Kuleana Act as efforts on behalf of Hawaiian elites to appropriate “aspects of European modes as a way to negotiate colonial encroachment” (93). By arguing how present-time private property regimes interfere with questions over land, title, and governance in nationalist contexts, Kauanui views a decolonial future rooted in shifting away from property relations.
The influence of the West through the settler encounter not only changed land relations, but the imposition of a property regime had consequences to Hawaiian notions of gender, kinship, and sexuality, as discussed in chapters 3 and 4. Following the conception of the colonial biopolitics, these chapters address the rupture in relations based on Hawaiian traditions. I found that there was conceptual overlap between Kauanui’s consideration of marriage, coverture, and sexuality, as both chapters narrate early Hawaiian state efforts to regulate what she deems “savage” sexualities, with the connection to contemporary discussions of female suffrage and same-sex marriage demarking the separation between these chapters. Still, both chapters conclude with a call to move away from the enclosure of colonial domination in notions of gender and sexuality, turning to ea as one of guiding principles for a decolonial Hawaiian future.
As the book deals primarily with the task of its scholarly contribution in reinterpreting the politics of sovereignty through a colonial biopolitics, the concluding remarks pointing toward an ethic a decolonial future based on life-affirming and consensual relations through ea appeared rushed. While I do not believe it was Kauanui’s intention to provide a guideline instead of an invitation to think otherwise in the conclusion, throughout the text she does warn of the urgency of an Indigenous decolonization tied to sovereignty claims. It remains to be seen how this book will influence and sway those critiqued within it, especially with the looming threat of there being “nothing left to reclaim” (73).

[Robert Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult, scholarly gripping review of the complexities of Hawaiian identity, the fabricating power of a colonial mind and attempts to decolonize space, response, practice and life. She offers an overview how the current sovereignty movements paradoxically contain colonial mindsets and offers models for practical decolonization of mind, space, practice and life.

I enjoyed the introduction and model of "ea" or "a gloss for non Western models of rule with deeper meanings of life and breath" as a philosophical notion of self governance and sovereignty that is based on peoples experiences of land, history, mind etc

Complex critique and thought provoking on issues related to post-colonial decolonization actions and self critical awareness.

[Pandaduh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really complicated the definitions of sovereignty for me, in a good way. I had no idea it would topple over my preconceptions of the word -- a word that I keep having to stuff more context into as I learn more. It was already heavy baggage (started from reading: Native Studies Keywords). The words "indigenous" and "citizenship" are also complicated for me.

I picked this book up for any potential take on "sovereignty as nationalism," a growing topic (rather, hyperfixation) of interest for me. As someone vaguely aware of the history of Hawaii, I thought it would present arguments/insight similar to what I've read for Native American tribes. But no. I had no idea that some Hawaiian nationalists (Kingdom nationalists) actually look down on the tribes who accept federal/government recognition, to the point of undermining others' efforts for sovereignty. It reminded me of the federally recognized tribes undermining the Lumbee attempts for federal recognition. It's levels upon levels of types of sovereignty and, in the process, invalidating other indigenous populations to protect or grab at their own. The fact some nationalists completely reject the ideas of decolonization because they don't believe colonization "happened" slapped me into a reality I didn't know existed. There's plenty to consider in terms of a tribe vs kingdom vs etc., just like there is for occupation vs settler colonialism vs etc. that I had not done much thinking on before. Kauanui is inviting indigenous people, and does a good job of it, to dream of futures that don't involve resurrecting a Kingdom just to be recognized by the US or other colonial states, but the argument on resorting a relationship to land didn't stick with me well (would have to re-read but it centered on not making environmental efforts a commodification, I think?) as a way of bettering Nation-to-Nation relations.

I was struck with how sovereignty can veer into conservativism/traditionalism, claiming to revert back to something as it once was without fully acknowledging that there is no official "as it once was." Some so willing to give up the rights of others for their own grabs at power and autonomy? Kingdom nationals seem willing to ignore indigenous sexualities and ways of governance, in favor of patriarchy if it gets them what they want? Weaponized sovereignty?

“Given that the United States purportedly annexed Hawai'i in 1898, before these statements were negotiated, those who cite them apply them retroactively. In this logic Hawai'i is merely occupied by the United States; kingdom nationalists argue that Hawai'i was never colonized: therefore decolonization is an inappropriate political strategy. Because the Hawaiian nation afforded citizenship to people who were not Kanaka Maoli [native people to Hawai'i] - and because of its status as an independent state - kingdom nationalists tend to distance themselves from Indigenous rights discourse as well.”....

“Like race, indigeneity is a socially constructed category rather than one based on the notion of immutable biological characteristics. Moreover, global political movements tending to the legacy of colonial dispossession have shaped how scholars comprehend (and apprehend) the Indigenous as a subject of study (and indigeneity as an analytic).” ...

“The status of domestic dependent nation that would be granted Native Hawaiians through a process of federal recognition does not recognize the kingdom's history of sovereign existence or take into account the unjust occupation or overthrow of the monarch inflicted by the U.S. government. At the same time, relying on presently existing international law regarding Indigenous Peoples also has the limitation that in tis present state such law still gives priority to existing nation-states and puts the preexisting rights of Indigenous People as nations on a back burner.”

I thought this book would also somehow interweave the work of Kim TallBear, who has done a lot of work in the topic of sexualities in Native American populations. I was expecting to see parallels and contrasts but that's not the direction it goes (if her work is mentioned, then I missed it). I think I was expecting encompassing insights in the area of sexualities (ie indigenous or pan-indian, if you will) but we only get hyper-focused examples (ie Hawaiian or specific tribal situations). I want to know what Kauanui thinks of TallBear's work, I guess (in: Making Kin not Population: Reconceiving Generations).

[Gary Reger · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Hawaii became the fiftieth state in 1959, it had been a possession of the United States since 1898. American incorporation of Hawaii as a colony followed the overthrow of its previous government in 1893 and a new constitution adopted the following year. But--what was in fact the status of the archipelago when the US took possession?

In 1795 Kamehameha I declared himself king. He proceeded to conquer the rest of the islands, which had previously been under the authority of independent chiefs. His reign, which lasted until 1840, inaugurated the establishment of Hawaii as an independent state. It negotiated treaties as a free and self-governing entity with many European partners.

But Hawaii faced a problem. To be accepted by other nation-states in the West, it needed to conform to political, social, and cultural practices that ruled western polities. This demanded a major revolution: the establishment of a hereditary kingship, the privatization of landholding, the imposition of heterosexual marriage as the only permissible context for sex, and the suppression of ancient cultural practices like hula. The process was aided, indeed imposed, by Christian missionaries, whose arrival starting in the 1820s provided the impetus for these transformations. In other words, to be accepted by the great powers as a state, Hawaii had to repudiate its past. Although Hawaii was never really a colony, and so cannot be "decolonized," the acceptance of these western rules constituted a "coloniality," a congeries of necessary conditions for colonization, even when colonization did not occur. (She borrows this useful if somewhat awkward term from Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures, Decolonial Options [2011].)

The paradoxes that this history created, and which persist today, are the subject of Kauanui's book. She stresses again and again that Hawaii never ceded itself to the United States; it was never a proper colony under international law. These circumstances have, she argues, complexified the efforts of different groups on the islands to assert some kind of indigenous authority. There are largely two: those who want to reestablish the kingdom, which they argue was never abolished, and those who look toward the model of Native American reservations to fashion an indigenous entity along the same lines.

The problems, or paradoxes, are manifold. Those who want a new kingdom--which also implies simply breaking away from the United States--accept the transformation of traditional practices that the kingdom fostered. Indeed, some of the strongest supporters are evangelical Christians, who abjure the free sexual practices that proliferated before the missionaries arrived. Those looking toward the Native American model face the serious problem that the land on the islands which might be claimed for a reservation consists of many non-contiguous packets; it is impossible to assemble a coherent reservation along the lines of most (but not all: the Tohono O'odham in Arizona, for example, control two non-contiguous parcels) reservations.

Kauani explores these paradoxes in a series of chapters devoted to the kingdom, land privatization (the Mahele), marriage and gender relations, and sexuality. She unveils the problems all the groups who would like somehow, and in such different ways, to reestablish some kind of Hawaiian cultural and political world. It's quite clear, from her analysis, that the project is, really, hopeless, not least because the haole (white persons, non-Hawaiians) living in the archipelago vastly outnumber the Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiians).

Due to the way she structured the book, there is some repetition from chapter to chapter, as elements of her argument, like the development of the kingdom, need to be repeated to set the conditions, since everything is intertwined. But that's a minor problem, in fact surely unavoidable. As an introduction to the various Hawaiian independence movements Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty can't be beat.

[*•Ava•* 🇵🇭 hapa haole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the introduction and first two chapters as research for my senior thesis in anthropology. All I can say as reading this made me realize I would not have made it far in the field of political science.
The book presents a wonderfully interesting dialogue on the paradoxes of Hawaiian sovereignty, in conversation with kingdom nationalists, Hawaiian history, Indigenous sovereignty in all its conceptions, and the prevailing structure of the settler-colonial state. At times, I found the book hard to follow with the dense language, as well as the writing style. But, it is clear the author is an expert on the topic and the multitudes of history that were able to be conveyed in the short sections I read was utterly impressive.

[Osvaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tough to read, but I would recommend the book to everyone interested and/or worried about US global domination and Eurocentric worldviews. Its an enlightening text that shows how colonialism is not only well and alive, but is also ingrained in life aspects of colonized people (and in former colonies!) such as sexuality and gender.

[Jimmy J. Crantz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it has good ideas, and it’s effective to introduce the problems as a set of paradoxes. Still, this was a hard read for me who didn’t know much about Hawaii before. After hours of jumping between the chapters trying to create a timelime, I think I sort of get it, and still, kind of not.

[MJ Dinong · Rating 4 out of 5]

DNF

This was intellectually dense and reading was slow going because of that. However, I found myself regularly referencing Kauanuiʻs ideas since reading the portions that I did. Really enjoyed their precise and heavy academic writing and the chapter focused on Kauikeauoliʻs aikane.

[Mills College Library]

996.904 K211 2018

[Drew Haaland]

Easily the most dense book I've read so far. Lots of interesting things, but it reads like a textbook. Was hard to get through.

[Hal · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a really interesting and informative read! i learned about whole conversations that i didn’t even know were happening.