Hāloa: The long breath of Hawaiian sovereignty, water rights, and Indigenous law

Abstract

This research explores how Native Hawaiian–led efforts to protect sacred lands and waters reveal forms of Indigenous survivance and resistance to the logics of settler colonialism. These forms range in visibility from direct protest to the perpetuation of Indigenous practices, values, and knowledge systems. Inspired by movements for social justice on the North American continent, the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s saw a reawakening of pride in Hawaiian culture within the context of the rapid changes brought by statehood in 1959. In response to the forceful thrust of Americanization and physical displacement of rural communities, young Native Hawaiians rose to defend their right to live as Hawaiians in their own homeland. As a result of the activism of the Hawaiian Renaissance, the 1978 Constitutional Convention reaffirmed Native Hawaiian rights previously codified by Kingdom law, which included a unique public trust doctrine grounded in Indigenous land and water management. My research is guided by the moʻolelo (oral histories) of nā kūpuna who were once the “radical” activists of the Hawaiian Renaissance. Their stories shed light on a history unaccounted for in standard textbooks and reveal a genealogy of Native Hawaiian resistance that was reawakened under the banner of Aloha ‘Āina (reciprocal love of land).