Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 15, Number 12, 1 December 1998 — ZERO --SUM GAME [ARTICLE]

ZERO --SUM GAME

8 y Mike Markrich Editor's note: Mr. Markrich is afree - lanee writer. His two-part article will conclude in next month's Ka W'ai Ola. N 1621, 200 years before the missionaries arrived in Hawai'i, a group of religious settlers, the Pilgrims. landed in Massaehusetts. They were met by a Native American tribe, the Wampanoag, whose chief, Massasoit, welcomed the newcomers. As millions of schoolchildren know, Massasoit saved the Pilgrims from starvation by teaching them to farm and fish. The Pilgrims expressed their gratitude and the two peoples celebrated their friendship with a feast we now know as Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, decades of fraudulent land deals and insulting behavior by the whites led to a bitter war in 1675. lts organizer was Phillip. Massosoit's son. Eventually King Phillip's War. it heeame known. led to the deei mation of the Indian tribes of New England, the dispossession of their property and the integration of their lands into the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The missionaries who eame to Hawai'i from New England in 1821 were well acquainted with this history. There is a popular myth, perpetuated over the last 100 years, that the oeeupation of Hawai'i was benign, that Hawaiians preferred the Americans to a possible take over by a European power such as Spain. France or England. The truth is more complex. Annexation began to be discussed as a last resort to forestall a : French threat in the 1840s. during the reign of Kamehameha III, but it was resisted bitterly by his successors. Kamehameha IV, Kalākaua and LiliI uokalani were sophisticated enough to understand the logical consequences. In tiny Hawai'i, politics was a zero-sum game. Annexation by the United States would mean the loss of Hawaiians' politieal control over their land and submis-

sion to a new eeonomie order dictated by outsiders. History had taught Hawaiians to be wary. Within 100 years of contact with Captain Cook, their population had declined by 80 percent as a result of disease, low fertility rates and out-migra-tion. Entire valleys were depopulated virtually overnight. Whether the trauma would have been worse without the missionary presence ( and there were many who did good deeds) is unknown. But undeniably the dispossession and depopulalion of Native Hawaiians, that started at contact, has reverberated among Native Hawaiians for generations. The question that arises today is how the United States government and the State of Hawaii ean compensate a people who have lost so mueh. For many Native Hawaiians, the answer is sovereignty. This nationalist movement, motivated by the same impulses that drove the Wampanoag, is a response to a specific series of wrongs suffered by the Hawaiian people for two centuries: population decline, loss of land. the deliberate effort to erase culture and language, and impoverishment. The means by whieh these grievances are settled with the dominant white and AsianAmerican power structure will determine Hawai'i's eeonomie viability in the 21st century. In 1 890, the Reciprocity Treaty, whieh ensured the entry of Hawaii sugar and other goods tax-free into U.S. markets, was effectively negated when Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Bill. This allowed all foreign sugar to enter the U.S. tax free. Suddenly, Hawai'i sugar growers were forced to compete head to head on the basis of Cuba's price. They could not (Cuba had lower transportation costs), and they soon lost their major market, California. The Hawaiian Kingdom plunged into a recession. The downturn threatened all the gains the Hawai'i sugar planters had made since 1876, when the Reciprocity

Treaty was first signed. "It was a huge scare for them," said Hawaii State Department of Business Eeonomie Development and Tourism economist Chris Grandy, who, with University of Hawaii professor Sumner La Croix, now on leave at Bamard College, co-wrote an academic paper on the eeonomie history of Annexation. "The sugar growers," explained Grandy. who has a Ph.D. in economics, "didn't want to be at the mercy of Congress whieh could change the tariff at any time." They were in favor of Annexation because it would give them a loek on the American market and possibly a subsidy, such as the Louisiana growers received. They knew that Kalākaua was opposed to Annexation and the concession of Pear! Harbor, whieh the U.S. government clearly wanted for strategic purposes. But they were indifferent to that. "Sacrificing Hawaiian sovereignty cost them nothing," said Grandy, "but potentially brought them tremendous gains." In 1883, the Committee of Safety staged a eoup overthrowing Queen Lili'uokalani. An illegal government was established, Washington was lobbied, and, in 1 894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff was introduced. It effectively reestablished the advantage of the Hawai 'i sugar planters over Cuba and secured their weahh. Annexation eame five years later. The Organic Act that incorporated Hawai'i under U.S. law compensated the Native Hawaiians for losing their kingdom by providing them with special status: They were accepted at exclusive white's only clubs such as Outrigger while Asians were not; they were represented in the professions and the territorial legislature; they fdled jobs in the territorial civil service and represented the Islands in Congress. However. soon even these small concessions disappeared. In 1 952 The McCarran - Walter Act allowed Asian immigrants to be natural-

ized. Thousands of Asian sugar and pineapple workers and their wives were able to vote for the first time. Together with their Hawaii-born children, they voted overwhelmingly Democratic. By 1954. Hawai'i's legislature was dominated by Democrats. The Native Hawaiians. who were mostly Republicans. eventually lost their patronage positions to Americans of Japanese ancestry and other Asian-Americans. Onee again, their loss was another demographic group's gain. "It was another devastating blow," said Dan Tuttle. a former political science professor at the University of Hawai'i and a Honolulu Advertiser political coIumnist from 1959-1984. " Up until the latter part of the 1950s they were in pretty good shape. A lot of them were employed in government jobs - from laborers to directors. The director of the territorial civil service was a Hawaiian. After 1 954. most of them were replaced by Asians. It was a gradual process over five years." The Native Hawaiians' loss of so many eeonomie opportunities within such a short period in an Island state where jobs are scarce, left deep scars. Many Native Hawaiian families suffered as they struggled to find new jobs and opportunities. Many Native Hawaiian children felt they were unable to eompete against Asian-American students who seemed to have more advantages. By the mid-1970s, many Hawaiians felt they had lost more than they had gained. When Governor George Aryoshi gave a speech in October 1975 describing the Hawaiians as having a tendency to " feel sorry for themselves," he meant no harm, but the words added insult to injury. Hawaiian writers wrote to the Advertiser and Star Bulletin objecting to condescenscion from those who could not understand the depth of their anger or sense of loss. Many felt powerless and angry. ■

Tne Economics of Annexation