The Case for ʻĀina Back on Molokaʻi: A Historical Narrative of Community Self-Determination

Abstract

This report reviews a timeline, power analysis, and GIS (Geographic Information System) materials created by a research team from the University of Michigan’s (UM) School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) in partnership with the community-based nonprofit organization Sustʻāinable Molokai, in service to the Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) and allied inhabitants of the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi. These resources were created from information shared by Molokaʻi kūpuna (keepers of ancestral knowledge) to support the community’s landback campaign. The function these resources will play in supporting the campaign can only be understood with reference to self-determination, consent, self-governance, and the land back movement. Self-determination, as defined by Mililani B. Trask, is the the ability of Kānaka ʻŌiwi to determine for themselves what their land base is and how they will use it (M. B. Trask, 1991). Kānaka ʻŌiwi self-determination is underpinned by the concepts of aloha ʻāina and mālama ʻāina (love and care for the land). The inherent right of Kānaka ʻŌiwi to self-determination is enshrined at the international level. In the first instance, the right to self-determination has evolved from a right of States to a collective Human Right (Chartier et al. , 2011). The United Nations Covenants ensure the right to self-determination of all “peoples” (Chartier et al. , 2011), and per Anaya, “self-determination is properly interpreted as arising from the framework of human rights of contemporary international law more than from the framework of the rights of the States (Anaya, 2009).” Secondly, self-determination is enshrined as a right specific to Indigenous peoples under the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (United Nations Declaration On The Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007). Embedded within the right to self-determination is the right to consent (Free Prior and Informed Consent: An Indigenous Peoples’ Right and Good Practice for Local Communities, 2016). Consent is the participative procedural aspect of the right to self-determination (Chartier et al. , 2011). It refers to societies being able to choose the ways in which the systems of another society affect them (Whyte, 2018). The exercise of Kānaka ʻŌiwi consent is framed by kuleana, which refers to the responsibility and privilege each member of a society has to care for and protect the land and community to which they belong (Pintor, 2023). The right of Kānaka ʻŌiwi, as the Indigenous peoples of Hawaiʻi, to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is enshrined in UNDRIP and the Convention on Biological Diversity, among other instruments (Free Prior and Informed Consent: An Indigenous Peoples’ Right and Good Practice for Local Communities, 2016). Although the United States Government has not ratified these instruments, FPIC is a universal norm of international law (Free Prior and Informed Consent: An Indigenous Peoples’ Right and Good Practice for Local Communities, 2016), and the right of Kānaka ʻŌiwi to FPIC has been recognized in Hawaiian Department of Land and Natural Resources rules of practice and procedure (AMAC Rules of Practice & Procedure, 2016). Embedded within the right to self-determination and consent is self-governance. Self-governance refers to the actual capacities needed to exercise self-determination and consent (Whyte, 2023). This includes institutional, decision-making, economic, and diplomatic capacities (Whyte, 2023). It is a society’s ability to process and utilize the means of exchange, to plan and implement plans, and to make agreements with other societies and nations (Whyte, 2023). Kānaka ʻŌiwi have expressed and asserted their right to self-governance since time immemorial (Kapilialoha MacKenzie, 2015). While international recognition of the right to self-governance is limited because of the United Nations protection of territorial integrity and political unity of States, the right of Indigenous peoples to autonomy or self-government in matters related to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions, is enshrined in Article 4 of UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration On The Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007). Kānaka ʻŌiwi self-determination, consent, and self-governance cannot be fully realized without land back. Land back is a movement that has existed for generations to return Indigenous lands to Indigenous hands (NDN Collective, n.d.). In 2020, the NDN Collective launched “LANDBACK” as a campaign to amplify the movement and as a political framework that allows Indigenous Peoples to deepen their relationships