Transcript
Speaker: Aloha everyone, and welcome to a new series at the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: My name is Noah Ranslund, and I am a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Speaker: Before we delve into the rich history of pedagogy in Hawaii, I'd like to take a moment to explain the motivation behind this mini-series.
Speaker: I began interning at the Human Restoration Project in the summer of 2023, my family having recently moved to Oahu, Hawaii earlier that year.
Speaker: While trying to find a project to work on, I found myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of Hawaiian pedagogy, an area of study largely unknown even to many progressive educators.
Speaker: Often a footnote in American history classes, the nation of Hawai'i has a rich pedagogical history and at one time was one of the most literate, reaching near 100% in both English and Alelo Hawai'i.
Speaker: The Hawaiian education system has had a major impact on global history, taking in people from across the world since its inception.
Speaker: A notable historical figure who went to school in the Hawaiian Kingdom is Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary often considered the father of modern China, who orchestrated the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, developing his theories of democracy and pluralism at the Ayalani and Punahou schools, both of which are still regarded as world-class institutions.
Speaker: In addition to its private schools, the Kingdom of Hawai'i made public education a cornerstone of its constitution, founding one of the oldest public education systems in 1840, decades before the United States.
Speaker: However, the occupation and subsequent illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States of America, along with historical revisionism and denationalization that has continued to deprive Hawai'i of its national recognition, ultimately led to the negligent mismanagement of a once world-renowned education system.
Speaker: Since the overthrow of the Hawaiian government, the Hawaiian public school system has been thrown into disarray, and a massive educational gap has formed between native Hawaiian youth and their peers.
Speaker: Yet, despite this, the pedagogical innovation characteristic of the Hawaiian kingdom persists today, and with this mini-series, I hope to highlight some of the amazing work being done to heal the scars left by occupation and the denationalization of the Hawaiian people.
Speaker: First, we will look at the history of Hawaiian education through an interview with Dr. Keanu Tsai, a political scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Hawai'i Windward Community College, political science and Hawaiian studies departments, and affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa College of Education.
Speaker: We will explore the chronology of events that impacted Hawaiian education, as well as the legal theory behind the continuation of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its ties to Hawaiian pedagogy.
Speaker: Next, we will learn about the work of Dr. Stacey Potas, who recently defended her dissertation on ethnomathematics discussing the need to ground mathematical pedagogy in place, community, and culture with her Aina-based framework.
Speaker: And finally, we will get a glimpse into how these ideas are put into practice at the Hanaha'oli School, a pre-K through 6th grade progressive school that has been a part of the Honolulu community for over 100 years.
Speaker: Mahalo Nui for joining me on this journey as we explore the history, philosophy, and practices of pedagogy in the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to episode one of a three-part series on pedagogy in the Hawaiian Islands, where we explore history, philosophy, and progressive developments in Hawaiian pedagogy.
Speaker: My name is Noah Ranslund, and I'm a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, interning at the progressive education nonprofit, The Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Anna Wendland, Deborah Covington, and Patricia Jennings.
Speaker: Thank you for your ongoing support.
Speaker: You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube.
Speaker: In this episode, we delve into the history of education in the Hawaiian Kingdom, the impact of occupation and colonialism, and the link between Hawaiian sovereignty and pedagogical practice here in Hawaii.
Speaker: Today, I'm joined by Dr. Keanu Tsai.
Speaker: Dr. Tsai is a political scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Hawaii Windward Community College, political science and Hawaiian studies departments, and affiliate graduate faculty member at the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Education.
Speaker: He also served as agent for Hawaiian Kingdom at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Hague Netherlands, in Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom.
Speaker: His research focuses on the continued existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a state under international law that has been under military occupation by the United States of America since January 17, 1893.
Speaker: Hi, Dr. Tsai.
Speaker: Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker: I'm glad to be here.
Speaker: So I wanted to talk a little bit about just sort of as like a background.
Speaker: I know your history expertise is in Hawaiian history.
Speaker: And in particular, I wanted to talk about sort of, if you could a little bit, maybe before even Western contact, what education looked like here in Hawaii, in the various different islands, maybe even before the kingdom was unified.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: The problem that we have with regard to before Captain Cook arrived, right?
Speaker: Let's use that, 1778.
Speaker: There was no written record of what was going on, right?
Speaker: So we call that prehistoric.
Speaker: Historic, not in the sense of dinosaurs, but prehistoric, which is pre-written history, right?
Speaker: Now, once the language was reduced to writing in the 1820s,
Speaker: What began was gathering of stories of elderly people to put things down.
Speaker: So a lot of ethnography was going on, right?
Speaker: And that was not pushed by any foreigner.
Speaker: It was actually encouraged by instructors at Lahaina Luna, which is a secondary high school, secondary school, like a high school and college that the government ran, okay, Lahaina Luna.
Speaker: And a particular person is Samuel Kamakau.
Speaker: So Samuel Kamakau is one of a few that went out and actually interviewed the warriors under Kamehmeh and also under other Ali'i who were engaged in battles, trying to preserve the stories.
Speaker: And we don't have too much on education, right?
Speaker: Because the system back then was very different than what we had today.
Speaker: The situation back then was
Speaker: was very feudal-like, very military.
Speaker: It bore a remarkable resemblance to the Middle Ages, right?
Speaker: And the way lands were held.
Speaker: What we can surmise is that education was specifically tasked on what class you were in.
Speaker: So if you were in a li'i or chiefly class, you were trained, I guess you can call that educated, in fighting, right?
Speaker: Being a warrior, tactics, strategies, all that.
Speaker: If you were a Makainana commoner, you were trained in fishing, right?
Speaker: So that's one of the trades that was there, farming.
Speaker: But you can't say there was any particular pedagogy without any evidence.
Speaker: But we do know that it was a thriving system.
Speaker: And our anthropologists today are now recognizing that the island kingdoms in the North Pacific
Speaker: Frosty islands, it's multiple kingdoms, were actually archaic states, or primary states, similar to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, because of the stratification and organization.
Speaker: And Captain Cook referred to that in his observation in the ship logs as to how everything is so organized and very kingly, right?
Speaker: So when a king issues an order, we call it an ali'i nui, people listen.
Speaker: So you had this
Speaker: this common law that was understood without a written language.
Speaker: And that needs more study, more study for sure.
Speaker: And so then as the Hawaiian kingdom unified and as it started to be more recognized by the various global players at the time, how then in the transition to a constitutional monarchy,
Speaker: How then did those education systems develop and what political structures supported them and what, you know, philosophy?
Speaker: The one thing that caught the attention of the chiefs was what came to be known as Palapala.
Speaker: So Palapala is reading and writing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it was caught on by the chiefs.
Speaker: And there's a story that goes something along these lines that when Captain Cook arrived, Kamehameh was a young chief under Kalaniapu, the king at that time in 1778.
Speaker: Kamehameh would become the prognator of the Hawaiian kingdom.
Speaker: But back then, he was a young chief.
Speaker: And one thing he noticed was he didn't see a lot of screaming as far as marching orders.
Speaker: So he would watch a lieutenant write something down on paper, and somebody runs with it across the ship.
Speaker: The person at the mast in the front of the ship looks at it,
Speaker: And he starts doing something.
Speaker: And he asked, what is that?
Speaker: And he said, I gave him an order.
Speaker: And that shocked the chiefs because no word was spoken, right?
Speaker: Something so simple we take for granted.
Speaker: They were like, wait a minute.
Speaker: Now, the one thing about the culture of Polynesia, especially in the Northern Pacific, the Ali'i system is very autocratic and orders are issued.
Speaker: So we have what is called the Kauwoha,
Speaker: And there is a Niho Palawa.
Speaker: It's a symbol that chiefs wear.
Speaker: It's a carving.
Speaker: And the carving is of a tongue.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: A tongue.
Speaker: That tongue represents the one who issues the order.
Speaker: So you have to speak the order.
Speaker: To put something on a paper and nobody says anything, that was intriguing because they were able to get something across and accomplish where they didn't have to say anything.
Speaker: So I think that right there, just from observation of the chiefs, not the commoners, the chiefs, were like, this is something that is, it possesses what will be called what we would say mana, power, right?
Speaker: It was something unique, something different.
Speaker: Now, that began a chain of events that would develop into something very big.
Speaker: reading and writing, comprehension.
Speaker: So, Kemenma, in 1794, he, in an agreement between Captain Vancouver and Kemenma and his chiefs, agreed to join the British Empire.
Speaker: Oh, he became a British protector, okay, 1794 in February.
Speaker: Now, being a part of the British Empire, as a protector, not as a colony, right,
Speaker: Kamehameha was still able to run the country, right?
Speaker: But his allegiance was to King George III.
Speaker: So they considered themselves British subjects.
Speaker: Now, they knew that they needed to increment slowly British forms of governance.
Speaker: So that's where we get the prime minister in our history.
Speaker: We get governors.
Speaker: It's all from English forms of governance, right?
Speaker: But the one thing that we needed to change back then was the religion.
Speaker: Because the religion,
Speaker: of the chiefly system was not Protestant and it was not Christian.
Speaker: And it was quite brutal.
Speaker: In fact, there was human sacrifices for the war God.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So those were just how things were, right?
Speaker: In, in these separate kingdoms throughout the islands in the North Pacific.
Speaker: I remember that first knew he needed to begin to make that change, but he wasn't able to do it because of his rank.
Speaker: But his wife and his son will be able to do it because they were of a higher rank and they won't cause too much disruption.
Speaker: So what happened after Kamehameha first died, the custom is the religion, which is very strict.
Speaker: It's called a kapu, right?
Speaker: It's lifted and they call that Noah, lifted.
Speaker: And everybody mourns for the king, okay?
Speaker: The successor is supposed to reinstate the kapu, right?
Speaker: Well, what Lihulio did, which is Commembement II and his mom, who was Commembement I's wife of a very high-ranking chiefess, they just never brought back the kaput.
Speaker: They left it.
Speaker: And now it was basically, it left a vacuum, or should I say an opening, for the new religion to come from the English.
Speaker: Because Commembement I asked Captain Vancouver to send British missionaries, right?
Speaker: So in 1820, when you're after Commembement died,
Speaker: American missionaries showed up, right?
Speaker: Hawaiian kingdom didn't ask for them.
Speaker: They were waiting for British missionaries.
Speaker: Same religion, Protestantism, but wrong country, right?
Speaker: So when they arrived, they heard that the couple was never reinstated, was not reinstated.
Speaker: So they thought it was a blessing from God, right?
Speaker: But when they arrived, they weren't allowed to land because
Speaker: They were American and this was on the heels of the war of 1812.
Speaker: So they were looking at the Americans and you could be an extension of the United States coming to take over.
Speaker: So they were very hesitant to allow them to land, even though you had some native Hawaiians with them who came with them from the East Coast, right?
Speaker: So what ends up happening is John Young, one of the advisors to Commander I. He's a bit elderly, right?
Speaker: But he was British.
Speaker: And he was advising Commitment I on British governance and everything, and British tactics in fighting, all these things.
Speaker: So what ends up happening is John Young goes on board to the ship, goes on board the ship, and he explains to everyone the problem.
Speaker: He says, right religion, wrong nationality.
Speaker: That's why you're not allowed to land.
Speaker: But he was able to convince the chiefs and Commitment II at that time
Speaker: who was the son of commandment the first, allow them one year license to land so they can watch them.
Speaker: And that license was extended three additional times for a total of four.
Speaker: During that time, the chiefs were able to really understand where they're coming from.
Speaker: Cause if they're coming just with the religion, that's all good.
Speaker: Cause they were waiting for it, right?
Speaker: They didn't come here and need to convert anybody.
Speaker: They're waiting for them.
Speaker: So they finally agreed in 1824 to go teach the people.
Speaker: but more so to teach the palapala, the reading and writing.
Speaker: And the reading and writing took off because it was through the reading and writing that the missionaries were able to teach the Word of God, Protestantism, through reading and also preaching.
Speaker: And the Hawaiians loved that because they were more interested in the reading and writing than necessarily the Word of God, right?
Speaker: So you have this kind of, I would say, a bit of synergy going on.
Speaker: but it's still going through its bumps in the beginning.
Speaker: But what the missionaries were running into, there was no hesitancy as to the religion, but they weren't accepting it as quick as the missionaries wanted it.
Speaker: What they were accepting was reading and writing.
Speaker: And that was flying.
Speaker: Everybody could read and write.
Speaker: Literacy by 1830s was universal.
Speaker: Everyone could read and write in the Hawaiian language.
Speaker: And that's pretty astonishing.
Speaker: So that right there,
Speaker: began to allow the implementation of education.
Speaker: So education is now going to come on the heels of reading and writing and comprehension, right?
Speaker: And it starts to flourish.
Speaker: So when they begin to organize themselves as a constitutional monarchy under Commembed the Second Son, Commembed the Third, Kawikioli, he begins to do government reform because what's happening is you have
Speaker: Gun vote diplomacy.
Speaker: You got the French coming.
Speaker: Captain Laplace in 1839.
Speaker: Forcing certain things upon the king.
Speaker: Preferential treatment for French.
Speaker: The British, Lord Paulette, came in 1843.
Speaker: Forcing special preferential treatment for British.
Speaker: So Commitment was becoming embarrassed, he says.
Speaker: He's not being treated as an independent king.
Speaker: And what he was advised to do, government reform.
Speaker: Government reform that would show these other countries that we are a bona fide government that can provide the rule of law, the protection of rights to everyone who are coming to Hawaii shores, but under Hawaiian law.
Speaker: And that began the process of learning political science.
Speaker: It was taught at Lahaina Luna by William Richards.
Speaker: They adopted Francis Whalen's Elements of Political Economy, also the Moral Science.
Speaker: And this was all toward making sure that they control their government.
Speaker: So they're taking these influences and these multiple histories of different countries, but they're putting it in their own words.
Speaker: They're putting it in their own action because this was not
Speaker: foreigners coming to Hawaii to tell them that they needed to do something.
Speaker: They did this by circumstance, right?
Speaker: And they began to adjust.
Speaker: And that began the evolution of a constitutional government, very progressive, but also the broader aspect of Western thought.
Speaker: Not Western thought to be imposed, but Western thought in particular, the Enlightenment era, right?
Speaker: So John Locke.
Speaker: the consent of the governed, these principles of law, right?
Speaker: Also, the science revolution led by Newton, you know, Hawaiians were grabbing onto that.
Speaker: I mean, they were like a sponge just sucking it all in.
Speaker: And that's what ended up becoming a very robust educational system in the Hawaiian kingdom that actually by the 1880s had a student study abroad program.
Speaker: where the Hawaiian kingdom would send students to Europe, Japan, and China to learn and come back home.
Speaker: And that predates what countries are doing today by sending students out to other countries and come back home.
Speaker: The Hawaiian kingdom was already doing that.
Speaker: So Hawaii, its history has always been thought of as oppressive.
Speaker: The white man came, the missionaries came.
Speaker: That is all false.
Speaker: There is no evidence of that, none at all.
Speaker: It's, sometimes it ventures into conspiracy theories.
Speaker: It's not true.
Speaker: The evidence don't support it.
Speaker: Now, the fall of the Hawaiian educational system occurred when our government was overthrown after being invaded by U.S. Marines.
Speaker: That's when things started to change because the natives, being the majority of the national population, were the threat.
Speaker: Were the threat.
Speaker: very enlightened, understood their laws, participated in their government.
Speaker: The majority of the attorneys in the kingdom were native because they were good orators, right?
Speaker: And you just start to see a systematic move to denationalize the population.
Speaker: So in America, overthrew our government illegally, which President Cleveland acknowledged was illegal, and he sought to restore the queen.
Speaker: The issues of Pearl Harbor was a driving force with the Congress.
Speaker: They always wanted Pearl Harbor as a naval base and to use Hawaii as a military outpost to protect the West Coast of the United States.
Speaker: That then started a chain of events that were not in line with the Hawaiian kingdom, but in line with American expansionism.
Speaker: And by 1906, after not being able to acquire the Hawaiian kingdom by a treaty, all they did was pass a law in 1898 during the Spanish-American War
Speaker: saying we got you.
Speaker: Well, U.S. laws have no effect beyond the borders.
Speaker: So how do you conceal that obvious illegality, right?
Speaker: Well, in 1907, 1906 was the formal implementation by the United States here of denationalization.
Speaker: And that is when they began to obliterate the national consciousness in the minds of schoolchildren.
Speaker: Now, that is my grandparents' generation.
Speaker: By the time it got to my parents, it's already institutionalized.
Speaker: By the time it got to me, it's already complete.
Speaker: My mind had no memory of how the country operated, none at all.
Speaker: And that is pretty much what you have today.
Speaker: So when you have American education being imposed there, it's the social economic aspect that has a very powerful influence on children learning because their parents don't have good jobs, right?
Speaker: The parents might come from a culture of drug addiction, spouse abuse, right?
Speaker: These are real issues that did not exist before the Americans invaded us.
Speaker: But it did come to existence when you subjugate the natives of their own country, when they become strangers to their own country, and it just becomes a matter of survival.
Speaker: So when you look at education and pedagogy today, that is reacting to the consequence of the takeover.
Speaker: not really looking at how the Hawaiian kingdom operated through its pedagogy that was very successful in ensuring that the country's education is key and important because the Hawaiian kingdom understood that was the future of the country.
Speaker: That is why the legislature in the kingdom was very not hesitant, very open with their budget, right, for education.
Speaker: Very different today.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think that's, that's, that's really interesting.
Speaker: And I think that's a perspective that maybe a lot of Americans don't really get to hear.
Speaker: You know, I remember when I learned American history, you know, I took AP US history, which I think is supposed to be considered
Speaker: one of the more robust and, you know, all-encompassing ways that you can learn American history, at least, you know, in your typical public school.
Speaker: I know that that was not the history that I learned and that I think it at times fit a lot more the description of what you were saying before that stripped sort of Hawaii of its historical sovereignty and its historical role as an independent nation.
Speaker: And then, you know, just blatantly disregarded the, you know, illegal occupation and the role that the United States played in, you know, stripping Hawaii of its sovereignty.
Speaker: But so I'm curious to hear more about before the overthrow of the government, what could you identify as sort of uniquely Hawaiian characteristics of the pedagogy
Speaker: that was practiced in the Hawaiian kingdom?
Speaker: And then how did those pedagogical principles change after the overthrow?
Speaker: Well, in the kingdom, it's Western, right?
Speaker: It's a Western system, but it wasn't a matter of oppression.
Speaker: It was adopted.
Speaker: The Hawaiians brought it, I mean, well, accepted it.
Speaker: They sought it.
Speaker: And that's very different than the colonial context, that it was imposed by the colonizer or to force people to assimilate so that you can become what we are as opposed to what you are.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In the Hawaiian kingdom, it was no different than you look at Japan.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Japan today is not European, but it's Western because it's Western, it's Western, not because of the European ties.
Speaker: It's Western because of the concepts of Western thought, the idea of voting, the idea of representation, the idea of science, of falsification, of research.
Speaker: That is not limited to people living in Europe.
Speaker: That just is something that is important, right?
Speaker: It helps explain things.
Speaker: So you evolve.
Speaker: So the Hawaiian kingdom was no different than Germany.
Speaker: I'm sorry, no different than Japan, but at the same time, no different from Germany, and yet Germany is European.
Speaker: The Waikina was not European, right?
Speaker: So its approach to teach was in line with what was going on throughout the world.
Speaker: So I'll give you an example.
Speaker: In 1884, Bernice Powahi Bishop, she was a high-ranking chiefess who established what came to be known as the Kamehameha Schools that still exists today.
Speaker: And when the commandment of schools was established in 1887, it was established as a secondary school.
Speaker: In the kingdom era, secondary schools were also called colleges, right?
Speaker: So in each college or each secondary school, there was a way of teaching that will be called pedagogy, but also the approach on not necessarily how to teach, but what to teach.
Speaker: So what was unique to Kamehameha Schools, which I'm a graduate of, right?
Speaker: I graduated back in 1982, not from the kingdom era when it was operating in a very different way.
Speaker: But they adopted what was called manual training.
Speaker: Manual training is not manual labor.
Speaker: Manual training is hands-on engineering.
Speaker: That's the key.
Speaker: And it was actually introduced at one of the world fairs.
Speaker: In the 1880s, I believe, or 1870s, I believe it was one of the Nordic countries that introduced, I think it's maybe Finland, on a way of teaching.
Speaker: And I believe Notre Dame picked it up, right?
Speaker: And you actually had teaching manual training, which was engineering, but hands-on.
Speaker: Wood, carpentry, these kind of things.
Speaker: So you start to apply that.
Speaker: Commitment schools adopted that form of teaching manual training.
Speaker: Now after the overthrow, the majority of the trustees actually, yeah, well the majority of the trustees of the Commitment schools were all the insurgents.
Speaker: They changed it.
Speaker: Commitment schools later came to be known for manual labor and not manual training.
Speaker: And then they started to train people who went to Commitment schools for the workforce, to be police officers, to join the army, join the Navy,
Speaker: it did not adhere to manual training as it did before 1893.
Speaker: So that's an example of a type of pedagogy that was applied to a Native Hawaiian secondary school because it was limited only to Native Hawaiians.
Speaker: The preference was for Native Hawaiians to attend that school.
Speaker: That was according to the Bernice Powahee.
Speaker: So that's one example.
Speaker: Other places like Lahaina Luna, if you take a look at, I sent you the 1882 annual exams, that's a reflection of what was being taught, right?
Speaker: And they would use pedagogy that would be used in, let's say, Yale, Harvard, right?
Speaker: And points were excelling.
Speaker: So there weren't,
Speaker: falling behind like how you have it today.
Speaker: But Lionel Luna, secondary school, I mean, it went from geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus.
Speaker: Every four years, every one in those classes required math.
Speaker: Not, it was an elective.
Speaker: Plus you had world history, you had political economy, you had constitutional classes on how the constitution of the country operated, the Hawaiian kingdom.
Speaker: very different.
Speaker: So the way they operated back then was education was a part of a country.
Speaker: And the future of that country called the Hawaiian kingdom was dependent upon good education.
Speaker: And that's what was reflected in the school system before 1893.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker: And I think it speaks to a lot of
Speaker: the reasons why today, you know, Hawaii is falling so far behind in education, the element of subjugation, which sort of, from what I understand, really permeates Hawaiian political structures now, you know, as a state in the United States.
Speaker: I think you see what you're saying a lot, you know, you just, you walk around and you see the schools and I think it's hard not to see exactly what you're saying.
Speaker: So I'm curious how you personally would characterize now the relationship that Hawaii has to the United States and what you feel needs to change both sort of at a larger level, but sort of honing in on the education system, what changes you think really need to happen.
Speaker: Okay, so what we see today
Speaker: is consequential to what occurred in the past and incidental because the Hawaiian that exists today in this society is not the same Hawaiian that existed previous to 1893 and the Old Testament.
Speaker: They're two different societies, two different ways of thinking.
Speaker: And it goes back to
Speaker: the illegality of the American presence here.
Speaker: That's important.
Speaker: When I say that Hawaii is an occupied state, that it is not a part of the United States, that's not a political statement, that's a statement of fact, and a statement of fact that history can confirm.
Speaker: And the way it can confirm it is to understand Hawaii's position in the world at that time with regard to international law.
Speaker: So back in the 19th century,
Speaker: The Hawaiian kingdom was only one of 44 independent states, which includes the United States.
Speaker: Only 44 independent states existed at that time.
Speaker: Today, the United Nations has 193 members who are independent states.
Speaker: A lot of them came about through decolonization, right?
Speaker: But the Hawaiian kingdom was an original independent state.
Speaker: It was never a colony of another country, let alone the United States.
Speaker: Under international law and those rules that apply to those countries, 44 countries, as it would apply to the 193 or so today, is that when a military invasion overthrows a government of a country, that doesn't equate to an overthrow of the country.
Speaker: It's just the government, right?
Speaker: So under international rules, there's a separation between the country, which is a state, and its government.
Speaker: International law called international humanitarian law, the laws of war, require and obligate that the invader who overthrows the government must provisionally be that government to maintain public order.
Speaker: So they have to administer the laws of the occupied state, not impose their own laws.
Speaker: So when the government of Japan was overthrown in 1945,
Speaker: General MacArthur became a military governor over a government that was formerly Japanese to continue to administer Japanese law until you get a treaty.
Speaker: And that happened in 1952, which is when the occupation of Japan ended, 1952.
Speaker: The same thing applied to Germany, right?
Speaker: Because Germany's government, the Nazi government, was annihilated, Germany, like Japan, didn't lose any sovereignty.
Speaker: They just didn't have control of their sovereignty because the government was overthrown, and that's important.
Speaker: So what we had in the case of the Hawaiian Kingdom, they overthrew our government with the purpose of securing Pearl Harbor as a military outpost, a naval base.
Speaker: Today, Hawaii houses 100 military sites, 118 military sites.
Speaker: It is headquarters for the Indo-Pacific Combatant Command.
Speaker: That's where we are today.
Speaker: Now, how did we get to that point?
Speaker: Well, the United States was unable to acquire a treaty from the Hawaiian kingdom after the overture of the government.
Speaker: So in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States Congress, based on this military necessity, as they argue, we need to take Hawaii in order to fight the Spanish.
Speaker: So they passed the joint resolution in 1898, purporting to annex a foreign country.
Speaker: Now, the United States could no more pass a law in Congress annexing Canada, right, than they could annex the Hawaiian kingdom by passing a law, period.
Speaker: It's limited to their territory.
Speaker: Now, what ends up happening is when the United States now takes over the government of the Hawaiian kingdom that was being held by insurgents that they installed, they start to implement that plan of denationalization.
Speaker: And they begin to brainwash the children
Speaker: Not the adults, because they knew Hawaii was occupied.
Speaker: But they began to brainwash the children that they are no longer Hawaiian subjects, but Americans.
Speaker: And that Hawaii was acquired by a treaty.
Speaker: And that you must speak English.
Speaker: And if you don't speak English, you get beaten.
Speaker: That right there is a war crime.
Speaker: In 1919, the United States and the Allied Powers in World War I accused
Speaker: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria for committing the war crime of denationalization to Serbian school children.
Speaker: That's a war crime.
Speaker: They were doing it here.
Speaker: Where the war in the First World War only lasted four years, so it was more of an attempt to denationalize.
Speaker: What we got here is 130 years of denationalization that has gone unfettered.
Speaker: No accountability.
Speaker: That creates a devastating effect to the psyche
Speaker: of a people who were led to believe that they're part of the United States.
Speaker: And then Americans start migrating to the United States where the American population in 1890, according to the government census, did you know there was only 1,900 Americans?
Speaker: Yeah, 1,900.
Speaker: By 1950, according to the U.S. Census report, that population exploded to 500,000.
Speaker: And here we are today with more.
Speaker: So you have Hawaiian subjects who believe they're Americans through brainwashing, trying to survive in a system that they don't know how to exist in because they have always been put down.
Speaker: The jobs, right?
Speaker: They weren't allowed to go to high school during the territorial days.
Speaker: Did you know that Native Hawaiians only went up to the eighth grade?
Speaker: Then they started to work.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that was a policy.
Speaker: And who was allowed to go to the high schools?
Speaker: White people.
Speaker: In fact, it's clear they even say it.
Speaker: Their purpose was to make sure that the high schools were not only American as far as students, but also American in blood and being white.
Speaker: It's in the newspapers.
Speaker: So you start to see where that past has a direct link to where we are today.
Speaker: Now you have some native Hawaiians that excelled.
Speaker: They were able to get good jobs.
Speaker: So the social economic problems were not part of them, but you have many others that didn't.
Speaker: And what you have is a collection of people trying to survive in this type of social economic system that is not theirs.
Speaker: Now, what is my answer to this?
Speaker: Not that I exacerbate the problem, I'm just identifying the problem so that we can have a proper diagnosis on how to provide a remedial solution.
Speaker: The first thing is, under the law of occupation, which still exists today, that the occupier must begin to administer the laws of the occupied state, not American law.
Speaker: Even though 130 years passed, that law still applies.
Speaker: Now, once you begin to administer the laws of the occupied state, you also have to bring back and align today's society with the status quo of what the Hawaiian kingdom was before the invasion.
Speaker: its institutions, its territory, its education, its language, those are the rules.
Speaker: Now, that's pretty lofty as far as what should happen.
Speaker: Well, it gets down to one point and it needs to be important to know as to whether or not the Hawaiian kingdom still exists or am I just saying it?
Speaker: So I was part of a group of Hawaiian subjects
Speaker: that restored the Hawaiian kingdom government, very similar to how governments in exile were established during World War II.
Speaker: And I also have a military background.
Speaker: So I used to be a field artillery officer, got on as a captain.
Speaker: So I have a lot of experience from the military side.
Speaker: So we restored the government and we came up with a strategic plan, an operational plan to address this monolith of a problem with limited resources and manpower, right?
Speaker: So we came up with three phases of a strategic plan.
Speaker: First phase, we need verification that the Hawaiian kingdom continues to exist as a state.
Speaker: A state, which is an international law country.
Speaker: Once we get verification by some reputable body, which at that time we didn't know where, but we needed to get it.
Speaker: Once we get verification, then we move to phase two, exposure.
Speaker: Expose the Hawaiian state politically, economically, through education,
Speaker: legally and basically just get everybody uncomfortable because everything you thought was is gone all your property you think you own in the hawaiian kingdom in the hawaiian islands you don't have title every title stopped in 1893 who's the notary public right they got the rules were not abide by uh contracts right uh barack obama people say barack obama you know the birthers yeah they were right for all the wrong reasons because well he was born here
Speaker: And he was born outside of American territory.
Speaker: He was born in the Hawaiian kingdom.
Speaker: So he's an American by parentage from his mom, but he's not natural born.
Speaker: That's an example of how you get things hot.
Speaker: Because when people start to feel uncomfortable is when it's real, right?
Speaker: So that's phase two.
Speaker: And that is going to lead to war crimes.
Speaker: That is going to lead to criminal culpability where now it's individuals got to think about what they're doing and not, oh, I'm standing behind the United States and they're going to protect me.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: You can get hit with a war crime.
Speaker: and there's no statute of limitations.
Speaker: In fact, Germany prosecuted a 97-year-old secretary for Nazi war crimes from a concentration camp.
Speaker: That shows you there's no statute of limitations.
Speaker: So it kind of plays on you.
Speaker: Now, two, all that means, all that would not be able to take place unless we get past phase one.
Speaker: Verification, the Hawaiian kingdom still exists as an independent state.
Speaker: So what occurred in 1999, there was an arbitration case.
Speaker: Lance Larsen, a Hawaiian subject,
Speaker: who went through an unfair trial because he was trying to claim he had rights as a Hawaiian subject and that these laws of the state of Hawaii are illegal.
Speaker: He was eventually incarcerated.
Speaker: His attorney alleged that the Council of Regency, the restored government, was liable for not protecting him because we're allowing American laws to be imposed.
Speaker: That was their argument.
Speaker: And we denied it, but we entered into an agreement, an arbitration agreement, to take it before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands.
Speaker: which is a body that will resolve international disputes.
Speaker: It's not a domestic dispute.
Speaker: So when the notice of arbitration was filed, we knew, the Consular Regency knew, that we can get past phase one.
Speaker: Because under the treaty that established the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1899, which the United States was a part of, right, they provide that any contracting state to that treaty
Speaker: will help maintain the Permitting Court of Arbitration.
Speaker: So if they have any dispute, they can use the facilities at no cost.
Speaker: But Article 47 of the treaty allows non-contracting states to have access to the institution to resolve an international dispute, but they have to pay at cost, right?
Speaker: So today you have 123 members contracting states of the Permitting Court of Arbitration.
Speaker: you have 193 members of the United Nations.
Speaker: That means the balance of the 122 members of the UN are non-contracting states, but they can still have access to the Permitting Code of Arbitration at cost.
Speaker: The others, no cost.
Speaker: We knew that is our way to get verification because we are a non-contracting state and the proceedings would have to pay at cost, would have to be borne by both parties.
Speaker: In fact, it would be borne by the plaintiff
Speaker: Not us, because we're the defendant.
Speaker: But in order to get accepted into the Permanent Court of Arbitration, Article 47 of the treaty has to be fulfilled.
Speaker: So when the case was initiated in November of 1999 in the Netherlands, in the Hague, the Secretariat, which is the body that runs the Permanent Court of Arbitration, its Secretary General contacted me.
Speaker: And this was, the case started, was initiated in November of 1999,
Speaker: I was contacted by him in February of 2000.
Speaker: Between November of 1999 and February of 2000, they were doing their due diligence as to whether or not the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist under Article 47 to allow it access.
Speaker: So he's on the phone with me and he says that, because I was the lead agent representing the Hawaiian Kingdom, he says, Mr. Tsai, the secretariat
Speaker: here in the Hague, can find no evidence that the Hawaiian kingdom ceases to exist because there's no treaty.
Speaker: That's what he tells me.
Speaker: And I said, okay.
Speaker: And he goes, he would highly recommend that both the Hawaiian kingdom and Lance Larson's attorney agree to provide a formal invitation to the United States to join in the arbitration when they create the tribunal, which they did in June of 2000.
Speaker: And the United States, we had a meeting with them at the U.S. State Department on March 3rd in Washington.
Speaker: They were apprised of the offer.
Speaker: And two weeks later, we get word that they denied the invitation, but they never contested the Hawaiian Kingdom's existence or the tribunal being formed.
Speaker: All they asked is permission from the Council of Regency and Lance Larson's Council if the United States can have access to all records and pleadings of the case.
Speaker: For us, regarding our phase one, we got it.
Speaker: During our oral hearing in the Netherlands in December of 2000, we had oral hearings there.
Speaker: We're going to use that oral hearing to begin exposure of the Hawaiian kingdom on that bully pulpit.
Speaker: And we're going to make sure it's in the transcripts.
Speaker: And once we finished that, we were contacted by an ambassador from Ruan.
Speaker: at the International Court of Justice, which is housed in the same peace palace, they're in the same building, right?
Speaker: The International Court of Justice was, they had a case, Congo versus Belgium, because Belgium had issued an international arrest warrant for the Minnesota Foreign Affairs of Congo for genocide.
Speaker: And they wanted to arrest him outside of Belgian territory.
Speaker: So that was the issue at the International Court of Justice.
Speaker: Across the hall was the Hawaiian Kingdom case.
Speaker: And it caught the attention of the ambassadors who were in attendance because what is Hawaii doing in the Peace Palace, which is a building?
Speaker: Well, he went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration Secretariat, the registry, and asked if you could have access to all records and pleadings.
Speaker: So what we did was we made it not only for the United States to have access, any country can access the records.
Speaker: He contacted us on the last day of our hearings.
Speaker: We had three days of hearings, oral hearings up in the Hague.
Speaker: On the last day he contacted us, he says he has important information to convey to us.
Speaker: If we can meet him in Brussels, Belgium.
Speaker: So myself and my legal team got the train, got a meeting with the ambassador.
Speaker: He explains to us that his government in Kigali had reviewed all the records and it is clear how he's occupied and this cannot be tolerated over 100 years.
Speaker: And that Rwanda, with the consent of the Council of Regency, is going to be able to offer
Speaker: bringing this to the attention of the United Nations General Assembly by putting us on the agenda, always occupational.
Speaker: Now that prompted a meeting that I needed to have with my legal team because we're about to move from one mountain to another mountain and our people back home have no clue what's going on, right?
Speaker: So we had a quick meeting.
Speaker: I sat back down in front of the ambassador and I said to him, please convey to your president our sincere gratitude and thanks.
Speaker: we cannot accept this offer at this time it's too premature our people back home have no idea of Hawaii's profound status as a country that still exists but under occupation we need to address denationalization head on and and thank you again so the meeting came to a close we caught the train back to the Netherlands in the Hague we had a meeting
Speaker: And it was agreed upon that since I already had a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii in 1987 in sociology, I know what they're teaching about Hawaii's history, colonization, indigenous peoples, it's all wrong, completely wrong.
Speaker: Since I already have the bachelor's degree, the plan was for me to enter the political science department master's program, get a master's degree specializing in international relations and law, and they get my PhD and start changing
Speaker: the understanding of our history from inside.
Speaker: And that triggered many different doctoral dissertations, master's theses, peer review articles, large review articles that speak to these issues, which is where we are today because people are becoming educated.
Speaker: And once you start to get educated, then you can make an informed decision on how to fix the problem.
Speaker: And right now we are in secret.
Speaker: We're in negotiations.
Speaker: with senior leadership of the state of Hawaii for the transformation into a military government in order to comply with the law of occupation.
Speaker: So it's been taken very seriously, very seriously, as a result of education.
Speaker: So just as the insurgents and the United States weaponized education to satisfy their agenda and to conceal any legality, we utilize education and we weaponized it as well in a positive way.
Speaker: apply scientific thinking, falsification, research, theory, footnotes, evidence, you know, and that's where we are today.
Speaker: So we are continuing where our ancestors were what they understood in the kingdom era, the importance of education.
Speaker: And here we're using the importance of education to right the wrong.
Speaker: And we're walking on that path.
Speaker: We don't need to wage warfare.
Speaker: I like to
Speaker: base is a key.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: It really seems like today, just as education, you know, learning about Hawaiian history and Hawaiian culture and the full scope of what Hawaii as a, you know, kingdom and as a community of people has done was essential in the recognition of the Hawaiian kingdom.
Speaker: So it is now in reclaiming that status as a, you know, sovereign, independent nation.
Speaker: To shift gears a little bit, I wanted to ask you about, so I've been reading recently a lot about sort of indigenous Hawaiian progressive pedagogy and the sort of core elements of that.
Speaker: And you sort of touched on a little bit one of the things that's discussed a lot, the sort of hands-on learning.
Speaker: You know, I've spent some time at the Hana Haoli School.
Speaker: I don't know if you're familiar, but...
Speaker: It's a school that is, you know, it's constructed around sort of the ideas of progressive era education.
Speaker: And so I'm interested in whether you feel that this sort of
Speaker: This indigenous Hawaiian pedagogy that focuses on Hawaiian cultural practices as a center point for education, you know, in particular, that sort of, you know, hands-on approach.
Speaker: Other elements include sort of the notion of place-based pedagogy, the element of ohana or family education.
Speaker: in the education and pedagogical philosophy.
Speaker: I'm curious whether you feel that that sort of new progressive movement that's forming is a continuation of what's come before, or whether you feel that it's something entirely new that's coming up as a reaction to the century plus of occupation.
Speaker: Well, it comes with a lot of baggage as far as
Speaker: the approach, okay?
Speaker: And inherent in this pedagogy is colonization, the rights of indigenous peoples, the state itself that tribal nations exist within and are trying to take control through self-determination in controlling their form of education, okay?
Speaker: Now, the problem with that is it's counterproductive, counterproductive to our situation.
Speaker: indigenous peoples.
Speaker: Peoples plural refers to nations.
Speaker: The definition is that indigenous peoples are tribal nations that exist within a state not of their own, their own making.
Speaker: So the Navajo Nation, the Choctaw, the Maori Nation of New Zealand, Aotearoa, right?
Speaker: They are tribal nations that exist within a metropolitan state not of their making.
Speaker: Now, in the case of Tonga and Samoa, which are members of the United Nations,
Speaker: They're not indigenous.
Speaker: They're not an indigenous people because they created their state, right?
Speaker: There are no tribal nations in Tonga.
Speaker: There are no tribal nations in Samoa.
Speaker: Samoa and Tonga was made up of their people who evolved to a point of making a state of their own.
Speaker: The Hawaiian Kingdom did the same thing in 1843, internationally recognized as an independent state.
Speaker: So when you bring in the idea of indigeneity, it murkies everything.
Speaker: it's like you have to say, yeah, you're in the United States, but I know you're occupied.
Speaker: No, you can't be in the United States and occupied at the same time that means you're exclusive.
Speaker: You're either occupied or you're part of the United States.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: So what ends up happening is because money is tied to research and education in this current system, you can only get money
Speaker: And with that, you bring the baggage.
Speaker: There is no money in research to educate people who have been denationalized as a war crime.
Speaker: There's no money there, unless you go find it outside of the United States, right?
Speaker: So you can see a lot of the academy here, in Hawaii, they're caught.
Speaker: Like they have to say this in order to get this, in order to teach this,
Speaker: but it accomplishes nothing.
Speaker: Those families that are in the charter schools, they're trying to find an alternative to teach or have education for their children because maybe it's special needs, maybe have difficulty reading and writing, charter schools come with alternatives than the public schools.
Speaker: Well, because they have those problems at this age is indicative
Speaker: that the family has a problem socioeconomically in how to even survive in these islands under this current system, which prompts them to leave the island and go to America because of the cost of living here.
Speaker: So these attributes of the American occupation puts everybody in a bind where it's survival, right?
Speaker: Now, if you talk about hands-on,
Speaker: Well, hands on is what exactly what manual training was at Kamehameha Schools in 1887.
Speaker: And it wasn't from America, that's from a Nordic country that America adopted some of the colleges like Notre Dame.
Speaker: And then in fact, in 1887, this was interesting, they invited a lieutenant from a US naval ship that was in Honolulu Harbor, visiting, not taking over, visiting.
Speaker: They actually asked the lieutenant to give a presentation
Speaker: to the student body of the Kamehameha Schools on manual training and how he benefited because he was an engineer on that ship.
Speaker: So he was speaking, this is what you can become, right?
Speaker: An engineer.
Speaker: And I learned it.
Speaker: And that's what you folks are learning too.
Speaker: So Hawaii's sense of education was worldly, right?
Speaker: It wasn't parochial.
Speaker: It wasn't
Speaker: us against them.
Speaker: Now another thing that the Hawaiian indigeneity movement has, which is problematic, comes a big problem, is that the academics of today probably began, I would say, mid 1980s.
Speaker: It didn't exist before that.
Speaker: There was a movement here to align themselves up with the American Indian movement and indigenous peoples through Hamanitrasq.
Speaker: And her sister Mililani Trasq was also on the permanent form of indigenous rights.
Speaker: And that was operating on a false premise that Hawaii is a part of the United States, but maybe we have rights as a tribal nation.
Speaker: So we have to kind of organize ourselves that way.
Speaker: So what they ended up doing, I don't know whether it was intentional or not, they began to manufacture the story that the American missionaries were the colonizers of the United States.
Speaker: And when they came to the Hawaiian kingdom, they controlled everything.
Speaker: They created the government to benefit them.
Speaker: They created the constitutional system.
Speaker: They created the
Speaker: the land system, complete fabrication, fabricated, and it's already been rebuked, right?
Speaker: So when they start teaching in the charter schools, it's infused with, the Hawaiian kingdom was foreign, but foreigners controlled it, not us.
Speaker: The chiefs were in, were aligned with the foreigners.
Speaker: The Makainana, the commoners, we were the one abused.
Speaker: It's all made up, completely made up.
Speaker: And that is what the university is going through right now because research has already rebuked all of that.
Speaker: And research done by Native Hawaiians themselves.
Speaker: So it's not an issue of ideology.
Speaker: It's called get your facts straight and apply the right theory.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: So you might say everybody's trying to explain a football game using baseball rules and getting angry because things don't make sense.
Speaker: You have to explain a football game using football rules.
Speaker: Now everything makes sense.
Speaker: And that's the difference.
Speaker: And then sort of as a last question, I want you to sort of tell me what you imagine Hawaii could look like, what it could be, and, you know, from an educational perspective, but just sort of generally what you want to see.
Speaker: So there is a Hawaiian concept.
Speaker: And it places...
Speaker: importance on the past, right?
Speaker: So the word in Hawaiian for future is kava mahopi.
Speaker: And so va is a short term for manawa or time.
Speaker: So kava mahopi is literally the time of the past.
Speaker: And mahopi is a directional.
Speaker: So when you tell a Hawaiian, look to the future, they turn to the past, right?
Speaker: Now in that past are all the stories that happened from one minute ago
Speaker: to 100 years ago, to 500 years ago.
Speaker: And these stories is what we call mo'olelo.
Speaker: Each story is important because you capitalize on successes and you learn from mistakes.
Speaker: Once you process that film of the past, you will naturally have what is called, and we say in Hawaiian, ike.
Speaker: You have foresight.
Speaker: Now you see something you didn't see before.
Speaker: And from what you now see, you have an informed decision in what you got to do.
Speaker: And so that's a concept.
Speaker: Another way of saying it is the practical value of history is that it's a film of the past, run through the projector of today onto the screen of tomorrow.
Speaker: That film never changes, but your projector has to get updated.
Speaker: Once you update the projector, you see something bigger.
Speaker: What we have to be, and according to what the rules are with the law of occupation, especially, the whole thing about the law of occupation, its purpose is to maintain the status quo
Speaker: of the occupied state before the invasion and before the occupation.
Speaker: That's a standard.
Speaker: So you cannot deviate from the creating or changing the institutions, the people, the territory and so forth, right?
Speaker: Well, what we have to do is we have to take, we have to go back to what we were.
Speaker: Okay, that's important.
Speaker: So we have to align everything up to what we were before the invasion and then bring it up to date with
Speaker: the development of new ideas, new issues that have to be addressed by the legislature, but we can now have a starting point.
Speaker: So we have to go back to what we were, not what I think we should be.
Speaker: That's too futuristic in the nonsensical way, because that's hypothetical, right?
Speaker: That's in a vacuum saying something like that.
Speaker: But if I can go, Kamehameha Schools was manual training.
Speaker: We have a starting point.
Speaker: Let's look at Kamehameha Schools today.
Speaker: You got a line.
Speaker: You got to bring that back, right?
Speaker: And how do you do that?
Speaker: Well, that's where people got to get creative.
Speaker: In the Army, we call that necessity.
Speaker: And necessity is the mother of all inventions.
Speaker: But as long as there's a baseline, that's why it's important.
Speaker: We need to know our past before we look into the future, because the future is merely a product of our past.
Speaker: And I've seen that operate in how we've been implementing our strategic plan.
Speaker: That past that we brought out has created,
Speaker: Huge changes, major changes.
Speaker: And at no point have I ever said, th is is what I think we should do in the future.
Speaker: All I said, this is what happened.
Speaker: And that leads to what needs to happen.
Speaker: It happens, it happens, permanent court of arbitration, everything that's in line.
Speaker: That's also just being sensical, not nonsensical.
Speaker: And that's why when I was in the Army, you don't come up with a battle plan out of thin air.
Speaker: You got to have intel first.
Speaker: You got to study your opponent.
Speaker: You got to know who they fought.
Speaker: How did they fight?
Speaker: How did they lose?
Speaker: How did they win?
Speaker: See, that is going to inform your battle plan against that opposing force.
Speaker: That opposing force that we're dealing with here, the insurgents are all dead, right?
Speaker: The American administration that took us over, they're dead.
Speaker: They're gone.
Speaker: Our opposing force, our up for, from a military standpoint,
Speaker: And how you address ignorance, education, now we weaponize it.
Speaker: See, and that is when it's power.
Speaker: And that is important.
Speaker: And I can tell you, I've been a part of that.
Speaker: And I've seen major changes come since we returned from the Netherlands in 2000.
Speaker: Major change in the university.
Speaker: Also worldwide with regard to the situation because we have treaties with many countries in Europe, including the United States.
Speaker: By 1893, we had over 90 embassies and consulates all over the world.
Speaker: There's more information outside of Hawaii that speak to this issue and not just here.
Speaker: So Hawaii's position is we're very worldly and we need to keep that in mind.
Speaker: We're not parochial and it's not us against them.
Speaker: No, it's us against ignorance.
Speaker: That's the key.
Speaker: And that's how we approach it.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
Speaker: If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
Speaker: Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: Thank you.
