As those in Maui attempt to make sense of the wildfires that left behind a trail of loss, experts and activists say that the devastation has highlighted the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty.
Those involved in discussions around sovereignty, or the right of a nation-state to govern itself, spoke to NBC News to underscore that the issue has undeniable context to the fires. They include advocates and scholars fighting for international acknowledgement of the Kingdom of Hawaii as an existing nation-state, to others working toward complete independence from U.S. interference.
The experts also spoke about the island’s fraught place in American history, which they say allowed corporations to expand and dry out the land in Lahaina, the town most severely devastated by the wildfires in the state. The U.S. claims that a congressional resolution passed in 1898 declared that the Hawaiian islands were “officially annexed.” But some scholars argue the resolution, an internal American law, has no legal standing in the Hawaiian Kingdom and makes American presence an illegal occupation.
But scholars and activists say that Native Hawaiians have ultimately been seeking their right to self-determination, or decision-making power on their lands — and that the lack thereof is a root cause of the wildfires. And gaining agency and decision-making power, they add, is critical to healing.
“Lahaina is not America. But that fire is American. And it was really lit as far back as 1893,” Keala Kelly, a filmmaker and sovereignty activist, told NBC News, referring to when U.S. troops illegally overthrew the Hawaiian queen. “Once the system of governance in Hawaii was stolen from us, everything about land and water became … this never ending abusive system of theft.”
What does sovereignty and the movement around it mean to you?
Ron Williams, archivist at the Hawaii State Archives: It’s evolved. When Haunani-Kay [Trask, the late leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement] was…
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