The issue of Hawai?i and statehood may not be resolved anytime soon. On the one hand, Congressional records and the international community recognizes that Hawai?i is a state of the United States, while on the other hand, activist?s claims of not recognizing Hawai?i as a state is not simply hyperbole. Is this Orwellian newspeak, or a reconstruction of historical documents and events? How did the concept of statehood become so polarizing?

When US Congressmen voted on House Bill H.R. 4221 on March 12, 1959, it passed 323 votes to 89. Three provisions had to be ratified:
1. There had to be a plebiscite vote, the outcome of which 132,938 citizens approved it, while 7,854 voters rejected it. (In consideration of those who did not vote, 17% of the total population were opposed to immediate annexation);
2 . had to do with the ratification of boundaries; and
3. had to do with land provisions.

These three provisions passed through Congress on June 27, 1959.
After ratifying the Statehood Bill and electing its state representatives, on August 21, 1959, President Eisenhower formally proclaimed “the admission of the State of Hawaii into the Union on an equal footing with the other States.”

On Sept. 17, 1959, The United Nations Secretary-general received from the UN representative of the United States, the Cessation of the Transmission of Information under Article 73 e of the Charter.

These events took place on three stages: the local, the national, and the international.

Locally, the Hawaiian citizens that voted in the plebiscite did so in hopes that they would have a legitimate voice in Congress. As a territory, citizens were left out of the democratic process. They could not vote for representation, and had no voice in governance. When given the choice to vote for statehood, or remaining a territory, most voted for statehood. It should be noted that Ni?ihau overwhelmingly voted against statehood, while the 17th district of Kahala and Kokohead, voted equally for and against statehood, suggesting that there were many in the affluent neighborhood of Kahala that preferred to remain a territory.

Nationally, the events that took center stage were civil rights, the Cuban-revolution, uprisings in SE Asia, and the Cold War. The major issues of Eisenhower?s administration were about winning the Cold War. With the loss of Cuba and the impending loss of manufacturing in SE Asia, American interests were at risk. Senators then, as they are now, having to best represent their constituents, sought to vote according to both national security and commercial interests. With civil rights on the front-page of the national news, the international community, particularly those at the United Nations had difficulty comprehending the sincerity of promoting US-style democracy abroad while there was so much civil unrest at home. The Soviets and the Chinese, as well as the other nations questioned the US?s anti-communist rhetoric.

Internationally, the movement to grant independence to both trust territories (territories received from Axis powers during WWII) and non-self-governing territories (territories held as colonies) had been a key issue since even before the formation of the United Nations in 1945. Chapter XI, Article 73 states that the “interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories…” and that includes “(b) to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement…”

This movement towards self-governing territories, away from colonialism culminated in the Nov, 29th, 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which declares “…Immediate steps shall be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those Territories, without any conditions or reservations, in accordance with their freely expressed will and desire, without any distinctions as to race, creed or colour, in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.”

What took place in 1959, on all three stages: the local, national, and international, was in the case of Hawaii, a determination by the United States to remove Hawaii (and Alaska) from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. The US, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the State Department pushed the Statehood Bill into Congress at the beginning of the 86th Congress, 1st session. A full Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs unanimously approved the Bill as soon as the bill was ready to be immediately considered by the Senate. Roger Bell writes, in Last Among Equals (pg. 273), that, “this decisive preliminary action was unprecedented.”

If the United States had waited a year, there is the possibility that Hawaii would have been granted independence. What the form of that independence would have been is clearly debatable. By the same token, during the plebiscite vote, what if the voters had been given the option of voting for self-determination (which was the responsibility of the US to offer as an option)?

These are not purely fanciful meanderings, rather they have meaning today. The deliberate deceit by which Hawaii became a state was a colonialist manipulation of power. Today that same manipulation of power has resulted in the vast disparity of wealth and resources in our state, as well as globally.

On September 13th, 2007 the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the General Assembly. For two weeks, from April 21, to May 2, 2008, hundreds of indigenous peoples from around the globe attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Seventh Session. The theme for this session was “Climate Change, bio-cultural diversity, and livelihoods: the stewardship role of indigenous people and new challenges.”

There was testimony given by representatives of peoples who are literally the last speakers of their language, practitioners of their ways and beliefs, peoples facing real extinction due to the forces of colonialism. Clearly, any serious discussion about the effects of Hawai?i as a state has to grapple with the issues now being brought up in this international assembly.

The latest mask of colonialism, free-trade, the free-market economy, the vast conspiracy of sub-contractors and wall street speculation has led to environmental and cultural disaster. Mass migration, the real issue of genocide, and climate change, were all topics in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The forces against sovereignty here in Hawai?i make an assumption that is terribly flawed and short-sighted, and it is that the Hawai?i we are living in now will be the Hawai?i we will be living in tomorrow. The possibility of an international food crisis is actually upon us. The cost of shipping is rising. What will happen when food becomes unaffordable to the working poor, or to those unemployed and homeless, and then to the “middle-class”? A real question, that deserves examination now.

This land is connected to the tongue, connected to identity. The struggle towards self-determination is a necessity. Is it unrealistic to predict that the state will throw tax-payer money to research and sub-contact out food suppliers to feed the working poor? This post-Katrina solution is the new colonialism, and this is where the conflict over statehood will have teeth.