Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2018. xvii, 275 pp. (B&W photos, illustration.) US$25.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-7075-8.
Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism critically considers contemporary discourses of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) nationalist movements in light of the historical interactions between the Hawai’ian Kingdom and the United States. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui “focuses on the effects of Christianization and the introduction of the Anglo-American legal system in relation to land, gender, and sexuality in the Hawaiian context in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the consequences of that transformation for contemporary sovereignty politics” (2–3). Specifically, the book “seeks to demonstrate how white American notions of property title, state sovereignty, and normative gender relations and sexuality, become intimately imbricated in aspirations for Hawaiian liberation and in mobilizing available categories for mobilizing Kanaka distinctiveness—hence the word ‘paradoxes’ in the title of this book” (3).
The book is organized clearly with an excellent introduction, titled Contradictory Sovereignty, in which Kauanui outlines her overall argument while bringing in a discussion of indigeneity, missionaries, settler colonialism, international law, colonial biopolitics (drawing from Foucault and Stoler, 21–24) and sovereignty (drawing from Alfred, Barker, Moreton-Robinson, Goodyear–Ka‘ōpua, 25–30). This introduction also provides a discussion of her methods, described as “an interdisciplinary project engage[d] in critical discourse analysis and archival research” (31) and her positioning as an active participant in the Hawaii sovereignty movement since 1990 (30). She concludes the introduction by summarizing the contents of the remainder of the book.
Chapter 1, Contested Indigeneity: Between Kingdom and “Tribe”, addresses the contested classification of the Kanaka Maoli as indigenous. Perhaps one of the most interesting turns in the analysis is the consideration of how Native Hawaiians, in the context of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement advocating for nationalism, distinguish themselves from Native Americans and indigenous peoples as a whole. In doing so, Kauanui maintains that nationalists tend to reify a savage-civilized dichotomy, situating themselves higher on the hierarchy.
Chapter 2, Properties of the Land: That Which Feeds, considers the intimate relationships that the Kanaka Maoli have with the land and explores two contradictory approaches to sovereignty for those promoting Hawaiian nationalism: federally recognized Native Hawaiians (similar to Native Americans in the continental United States) and the assertion of the existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Kauanui argues that both of these rely on a property-based relationship to the land which marginalizes historic Kanaka Maoli relationships to the land based around kinship. Indeed, the book shows that for a long period of time leading up to the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, the United States was very much involved in altering the policies and perceptions of Native Hawaiians. Chapter 3, Gender, Marriage, and Coverture: A New Proprietary Relationship, highlights the social, economic, and political subjugation of women beginning in 1820 by the work of Christian missionaries. By 1825, heterosexual, monogamous Christian marriage became kingdom law, further subordinating women.
Along these lines, some in the contemporary Hawaiian Nationalist movement have been critical of the “savage sexualities” of those whose sexual practices and partners they deem to be inappropriate. These “savage sexualities,” discussed in chapter 4, are taken to entail a variety of practices outside of Western conceptualizations of marriage brought in by the missionaries who are hence framed as civilized. Kauanui clearly shows that these are recent and indeed colonial interventions. The author draws from a series of vignettes to show how the meanings and interpretations of sexual practices, including aikāne relationships based around same-sex friendship and sexuality, and gender, including the concept of māhū, varied across time amongst the Kanaka Maoli.
In her conclusion, Decolonial Challenges to the Legacies of Occupation and Settler Colonialism, Kauanui considers potential paths forward in advocating for sovereignty in a manner which does not “flatten the contours of indigeneity in violent ways” (41). Overall, Kauanui is effective in demonstrating the paradoxes of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She does so in order to consider the possibility of alternative futures for the potential of sovereignty to emerge outside of Western ideologies. Although US officials issued official apologies for annexation, these do not provide the legal ground upon which sovereignty may meaningfully emerge, rather the movement needs directed action from within.
Through her careful research and analysis of historic documents, she effectively situates contemporary calls for sovereignty demonstrating the selective utilization and, at times, appropriation of key Kanaka Maoli concepts. She shows that rather than viewing these as the true culture or timeless traditions, they are not outside the scope of historic encounters with settler societies. Rather they emerge as selective “practices” (35) which are employed towards particular ends. Indeed, she is successful in articulating and supporting her primary objective in this work, noting that the extent and influence of settler societies extends beyond absolute material control over land and resources. It is demonstrated by the extent to which Western ideologies are embraced by some in order to defend sovereignty. In doing so, these Kanaka Maoli consistently traded their own autonomous sovereignty for colonial logics or, following Foucault, colonial biopolitics, some of which remains today. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, in Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism, has revealed how this pervades contemporary discourses of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She is to be commended for her diligence in both scholarship and activism. The book is a fine example of scholarship demonstrating the intersectionality of nationality, ethnicity, and gender in a meaningful and robust manner.
David Fazzino
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, USA