Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 3, 1 Malaki 2000 — Sovereignty [ARTICLE]

Sovereignty

John Goeman's Jan. 28. Honolulu Advertiser letter obscures what really happened in 1893. The overthrow was an egregious act of treachery. Goemans states that under the U.S. Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land. I implore Goemans to produce any treaty allowing the United States to replace the lawful Hawaiian nation, depose its sovereign queen and turn governance over to 13 white businessmen under threat of military action by armed forces of the United States. Upon learning of the illegal overthrow, President Grover Cleveland said, "By an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress, the government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown." This was reiterated in the 1993 Joint Resolution Public Law 103-150, whieh stated, "Whereas the indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their

national lands to the United States, whether through their monarch or through a plebiscite or referendum." Goeman's conclusion that "there is not going to be, nor could there be, a sovereign Hawaiian nation within our constitutional system of government," is as bereft of logic as his contrived rationalizations. Rod Ferreira Kamuela