Indigeneity, sovereignty, sustainability and cultural tourism: hosts and hostages at ʻIolani Palace, Hawai'i

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the historical events of dispossession and overthrow in Hawai'i from the mid/late nineteenth century onwards, and contemporary movements, interpretations and acts for Native Hawaiian sovereignty centered around ‘Iolani Palace on the island of O'ahu. Formerly the seat of the Hawaiian monarchy, then the capitol building of an overthrowing power and an occupying state, and now a heritage site, ‘Iolani Palace operates as a metonym for how notions of hospitality were leveraged in the service of a colonial theft. The discussion explores the role of tourism's growth, style and relationship with the evolving cultural politics of the Hawai'i archipelago. We use a site-specific exploration of this history to theorize what Jacques Derrida has described as the impossibility of hospitality in a colonial context. Furthermore, we show how aloha – a concept that has been overwhelmingly commodified by Hawaii's tourism industry – can be a means to theorize a hospitality that is reciprocal rather than unconditional – and how this plays out through alternative tours and acts that attempt to re-establish moments of critique and sovereignty at the very site of overthrow. Finally, we gesture to sustainability as a socio-political concept tied to Indigenous sovereignty, rather than a mostly eco-cultural one.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonialism
• heritage tourism
• hosts
• Hawaii
• sustainability
• indigeneity

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editors of the special issue, the anonymous reviewers and Bernard Lane for their helpful and generous comments throughout this process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kānaka Maoli translates as true or real people. We use a number of terms interchangeably to refer to Native Hawaiians, including Kānaka, Maoli, and Hawaiian. To position Hawaiian words as indigenous rather than foreign, we do not italicize them, but we do provide translations in parentheses after the word. We follow modern orthography for Hawaiian language terms including ʻokina (glottal stop) and the kahakō (macron), except where it has been dropped from the spelling in quotes or names. Words such as “Kānaka” with a macron indicate a plural, while “Kanaka” with no macron indicates a singular.

2. The Hawai‘i Pono‘i coalition is an umbrella name for a group of Native Hawaiian and local organizations that share the common goal of educating the Hawai‘i public about the islands’ Indigenous history and heritage.

3. Construction of the palace began in 1879.

4. Our thanks to Brandy Nālani McDougall for this insight and the subtle nuance of the translation (see also McDougall, 2010).

5. The anti-eviction struggle also included militarized sites such as Mākua Valley on O‘ahu, where generations of houseless Hawaiian families have faced repeated evictions while also facing displacement due to military occupation in the valley. Anti-military struggle has also been fought in other contested areas such as Kahoʻolawe Island, which was used as a bombing range by the US. Navy from the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor until 1993, when activists finally won an appeal to stop live-fire training on the island.

6. This type of reciprocity stands in stark contrast to the Reciprocity Treaties of 1875 and 1887, which were akin to free trade agreements between the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and the United States, which essentially gave haole sugar planters tariff-free access to the US sugar market in exchange for US access to the area known as Pu‘uloa, which would later become Pearl Harbor.

7. The John Doe v. Kamehameha case, in which a non-Hawaiian petitioner sued the schools admission policy for being exclusionary against non-Native Hawaiian, was settled before it reached the Supreme Court in 2008. This case followed the Rice v. Cayetano case, in which a white rancher in Maui argued for voting rights in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs elections. The Rice case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the plaintiff's favor.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liza Keānuenueokalani Williams

Liza Keānuenueokalani Williams is a University of California Berkeley Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ethnic Studies Department. She is currently working on a book manuscript that explores the capitalist links between tourism, the military, and the prison industrial complex and how these intersections shape neocolonialism for Native Hawaiians in the contemporary moment.

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She is the author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines (Duke 2013) and is co-editing a decolonial guide to Hawai'i.