“Hawaiian Apartheid” is not a work of scholarship. It is a repetitive polemic full of false analogies, logical fallacies, innuendo, sophomoric name-calling, historical distortions, and outright lies.
Kenneth Conklin begins Chapter 1 by arguing that the “danger” posed by the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement today can be compared to the threat once posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany to Europe and the rest of the world. Seriously. Needless to say, Conklin (who insists on adding the Ph.D. after his name even though it is unclear how the philosophy degree he claims is relevant to the work at hand) forfeits any claim to credibility from the opening paragraph. Equating your opponents to Nazis (as he does repeatedly throughout his book) is almost always an admission of the intellectual and/or moral bankruptcy of your own position. Amazingly enough, however, the book manages to go even further downhill from that sorry point. Supporters of the sovereignty movement aren’t just like Hitler and the Nazis. According to Conklin, they’re also like the terrorist group Hezbollah, and warns that if anything like the Akaka Bill passes, Hawai‘i will suffer from “ethnic cleansing,” and he raises the spectre of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur. Non-Hawaiians will be stripped of their political and civil rights, he warns. Other terms used by Conklin include: apartheid, racial supremacy, racial separatism, ethnic nationalism, and racist. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, together with the ali‘i trusts, most prominently, Kamehameha Schools, form an “Evil Empire,” says Conklin. After comparing some Hawaiians as being akin to Nazis hell-bent on ethnic cleansing in order to ensure their racial supremacy in Hawai‘i, Conklin has the gall to decry “false or twisted historical claims using inflammatory language,” which he attributes to those who disagree with his position. He then says he harbors no hatred towards Hawaiians as a people, but rather says that we should think of them as one would think of Arab Muslims after September 11 or Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Though Conklin believes some Hawaiians are terrorists and potential saboteurs, he is willing to concede that most are law-abiding and peaceful (as long as they oppose Hawaiian sovereignty and the Akaka Bill).
Conklin continues his absurd comparisons in chapter two. “Hawaiian sovereignty activists are zealous,” he writes. Not only are they “zealous,” they are “jihadists” and “religious fascists” just like the Taliban. The Taliban, Conklin reminds us, blew up two ancient Buddhist carvings. So what unspeakable act has the Hawaiian Taliban done? Well, Conklin answers, “Hawaiian zealots have repeatedly carried huge Hawaiian flags to the cold and windy summit of Mauna Kea specifically to place the Hawaiian flag higher than all the American flags throughout Hawaii.” Raising the Hawaiian flag over Hawai‘i? Oh the humanity! Is there no level of depravity to which these fiends won’t stoop? He also accuses these “zealots” of stealing or vandalizing books that happen to oppose Hawaiian sovereignty or Hawaiian programs from libraries and bookstores , without providing the slightest shred of evidence in support of these charges. Interestingly, in the previous paragraph where he mentions an incident of vandalism that occurred on the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace, he does not attribute that act to violently anti-Hawaiian haole racists. The use of double standards are a core part of Conklin’s modus operandi.
In chapter three, Conklin outlines what he calls the beginning of “racial separatism” in Hawai‘i, saying that the concept was unknown until introduced during the reigns of King Kalākaua and Queen Lili‘uokalani. Ironically, this claim is actually built upon the tiniest grain of truth, but Conklin distorts it beyond all recognition. Indeed, there was a conspiracy in Hawai‘i to solidify the racial supremacy of one group at the expense of others. But that conspiracy was hatched by the all-Caucasian “Hawaiian League” and its paramilitary arm, the Honolulu Rifles, whose members swore an oath to protect and defend the country’s haole (Caucasian) residents. The conspirators forced the king to sign a new constitution, one that stripped him of much of his executive authority and handed it to the haole minority through its control of the cabinet and House of Nobles. An inconvenient truth that Conklin is forced to omit (lest it undermine his entire premise) is that this Bayonet Constitution, written and imposed upon Kalākaua by a small group of haole, stripped naturalized Asian subjects of the kingdom of the right to vote. That’s right, the Caucasian conspirators decided that Asians should be barred from voting because of their race. Later, in chapter four, Conklin actually tries to argue that these racist haole stripped voting rights from Asians for the good of the Hawaiian people, and not because they believed Asians to be racially inferior human beings who were incapable of exercising self-government. In any case, Conklin argues, Kalākaua signed the Bayonet Constitution when it was presented to him essentially at gun point so he, and not the haole conspirators who wrote it, was responsible for taking from Asian subjects the right to vote. Another inconvenient truth: although Conklin labels both Kalākaua and Lili‘uokalani as racists, he also writes “Caucasians held most of the cabinet positions, nearly all the judgeships, and a substantial number of Legislative seats (both Nobles and Representatives, both appointed and elected) throughout the Kingdom period.” So according to Conklin’s logic, these two were so racist against haole that they appointed disproportionate numbers of them to the highest levels of government. Wait, what? I guess it makes sense it you don’t think about it.
Transitioning from the past to the present, Conklin argues that the University of Hawai‘i is a major force for contemporary “racial separatism.” He alleges that when Windward Community College on O‘ahu received a federal grant through the Native Hawaiian Education Act to provide new computers for the school’s Hawaiian Studies programme, zealous students demanded that they be reserved for Hawaiians only. Not surprisingly, Conklin once again fails to provide any evidence for his accusations. So what really happened? A much more believable scenario is that the students wanted the computers to be placed with the Hawaiian Studies department. Individual departments within universities frequently have their own small computer lab separate from general computer labs. So, for example, the Political Science department will have a couple of computers in one room while the Biology department will have a few in another location on campus. But Conklin equates Hawaiian Studies programmes as really being Hawaiian Student programmes, that is, they primarily, if not exclusively, serve Hawaiian students. So in his mind, purchasing computers for a Hawaiian Studies programme is akin to placing Jim Crow style “For Hawaiians Only” signs on them. It is probably true that many students majoring in Hawaiian Studies are of Hawaiian ancestry. But so what? Many students majoring or taking courses in Hawaiian Studies are NOT of Hawaiian ancestry. In any case, students are not limited to their department’s computers and the general computer labs. Besides, if other departments showed a disproportionate number of students enrolled from one group, say Japanese in Education, or Filipinos in Nursing, would Conklin similarly cry “Racism!” if the Education Department or the Nursing Department purchased computers for their students? I doubt it. Chalk up one more example of Conklin’s double standards.
Conklin throws out words like “fascist,” “apartheid,” and “racist” so often that it sounds like he’s simply repeating himself. In fact, he is. On pages 21-22 and 97, he repeats verbatim, over half a paragraph, warning of the “ethnic cleansing” that is “likely to accompany any form of Hawaiian sovereignty.” I suppose an error like this is inevitable given that Conklin’s self-published book has no editor and was essentially thrown together by cutting and pasting from various articles from his website.
Later in chapter four, Conklin peers into his crystal ball and conjures up several horrifying scenarios of the likely fate of non-Hawaiians in a restored independent Hawai‘i. First, he envisions that non-Hawaiians, who make up four-fifths of the current resident population, would be regarded as “resident aliens” who may be forced to sell their property and move into designated areas where they would be required to live. Forced relocation into ghettoes? Sounds frightening. Where would Conklin get an idea like that? Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII? Hmm…maybe, except we’re not at war. Wait a minute, I know! In the constitution of the “Republic of Hawaii,” Article I, Section 3 declares that “The legislature may provide by law, however, for the supervision, registration, control and identification of all persons or any class or nationality of persons; and may also by law restrict and limit the term of residence , and the business or employment of all persons or any class or nationality of persons coming into the Republic.” Incidentally, this constitution came into effect by governmental fiat and was never ratified by any elected legislative body or by the citizenry. It is impossible to ignore the utter hypocrisy of the oligarchy’s action. When Queen Lili‘uokalani sought to respond to the pleas of her people by ridding the country of the hated Bayonet Constitution and promulgating a new one, members of the oligarchy declared that act so subversive as to justify their own coup. Eighteen months later, they actually did what they had overthrown the Queen for merely wanting to do.
A few pages later, Conklin makes the utterly bizarre claim that haole Americans could “escape” to the U.S. after Hawai‘i gained independence, “but third, fourth, and fifth generation Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos, who speak only English and consider themselves Americans, could theoretically be forced to ‘return’ to their ancestral ‘homelands’ in Asia where neither they nor their parents nor their grandparents have ever lived and whose language they do not speak.” Why is Conklin suggesting that the U.S. would allow only white-skinned citizens to return to America? Does he really imagine the U.S. resurrecting 19th century “Chinese Exclusion” laws to keep local residents from moving to California or Las Vegas? I honestly doubt it. He’s just trying to stir up as much fear as possible. Conklin’s fear mongering continues when he warns an independent Hawai‘i would resemble the situation in Fiji, which has a large Indian minority who are the descendants of contract workers. The Fijian military orchestrated a coup that he argues was designed to ensure the native Fijian majority maintained control over the country. In fairness to Conklin, there are examples in Hawaiian history of military coups undertaken to secure the racial supremacy of one group over others. But both of those coups were led by the country’s haole residents. The first, already mentioned, imposed the Bayonet Constitution of 1887. The second, in 1893, overthrew the government of Hawai‘i and in its place instituted an oligarchy, known first as the Provisional Government, and later renaming itself the Republic of Hawaii.
Conklin addresses a number of what he calls historical falsehoods in chapter five. First up is the claim that Hawaiians suffered from genocide as the population plunged in the century following Captain Cook’s visit. Although Conklin is unable to deny the fact that the Hawaiian population collapsed after 1778, he claims that a significant factor in the decline can be attributed to Kamehameha’s wars of conquest and the introduction of what he ludicrously calls “weapons of mass destruction,” that is, metal knives, and muskets. (No wonder the U.S. couldn’t find Iraq’s WMDs. No one thought to look in the kitchen drawer, right next to the forks and spoons!) Also considered worthy of mention as a factor in depopulation is the practice of human sacrifice. This is an especially odd assertion to make, first, because there’s little evidence that such sacrifices were carried out with the frequency necessary for it to have a significant effect on the overall population level and second, because warfare in the islands virtually ceased by 1795 after Kamehameha’s conquest of O‘ahu, which eliminated the most common source of sacrifices, prisoners of war. In any case, Hawai‘i had experienced intermittent warfare for generations before Kamehameha’s time and there is no evidence this precipitated the kind of population decline recorded in Hawai‘i following Cook’s visit. Moreover, the population continued to plummet throughout the 19th century, providing further proof that these factors had no significant impact on the total population of the country. Conklin also criticizes the pre-Cook population estimate of demographer David Stannard as being wildly exaggerated. While the most commonly cited figure for Hawai‘i’s population in 1778 is around 300,000, Stannard argues that given its abundant resources, the Hawaiian Islands could have easily supported more than double that number. Conklin feels it is necessary to describe Stannard as “the long-time live-in boyfriend of one of the most zealous far-left ethnic Hawaiian activists,” Haunani-Kay Trask. Again, one must wonder why, if Ms. Trask is indeed a racial supremacist as portrayed by Conklin, she would be involved in a long-term relationship with a haole man. In a weak attempt to demonstrate that American rule has been much better for Hawaiians than under their own government, he notes that during the Nineteenth Century, the population of Hawaiians declined consistently from census to census whereas the number of people claiming Hawaiian ancestry has risen during the Twentieth Century from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. In other words, Conklin wants us to believe that American control over Hawai‘i caused the Hawaiian population trend to reverse, and increase rather than decrease.
In concluding the section on claims of genocide, Conklin returns to his Nazi analogies. He notes that in Hitler’s Third Reich, German men and women who fit the Nazis’ ideal racial specimen were encouraged to have as many offspring as possible so as to repopulate Europe with the “Aryan race.” According to Conklin, Hawaiian women (whom he condescendingly refers to as “girls”) are also having large numbers of children in order to regain their majority status as soon as possible. He further claims that the number of babies born to unwed mothers of Hawaiian ancestry is three times the rate of other groups. I have been unable to verify the accuracy of this claim because the URL Conklin cites as his source is invalid, and the State of Hawai‘i Data Book, which he claims is the original source does not appear to contain the data cited. As for the babies themselves, Conklin gratuitously labels them as “illegitimate.” I suppose one should give credit to Conklin for at least not calling these little boys and girls “bastards.” The new mothers, however, are not so fortunate. To him, they are selfish ingrates “presumably collecting welfare benefits the ‘oppressors’ pay for.” He repeats himself again in the next chapter (p.173).
Finally Conklin arrives at the core of his argument, namely that the United States bears absolutely no culpability for the overthrow of the Hawaiian government and the consequences thereof, and therefore owes no redress of any kind to the Hawaiian people. Here Conklin launches into a faithful recitation of the annexationists’ version of the overthrow: Queen Lili‘uoklani unleashes a political crisis after she announces her intention to promulgate a new constitution granting herself “near-dictatorial” powers including the possibility of stripping from all non-Hawaiians the right to vote. (Conklin isn’t sure on this last point because he says all copies of the proposed constitution were destroyed.) When her cabinet refuses to endorse the new constitution, she threatens them and they flee the palace in fear of their lives. The Queen regretfully informs an expectant crowd that her plans have met unexpected obstacles and tells them to go home. Meanwhile, a group of men were actively planning a coup against the Queen’s government. This group begs America’s diplomatic representative in Hawai‘i to land U.S. military forces to protect life and property. The U.S. Minister John Stevens agrees and 162 armed Marines disembark from the U.S.S. Boston stationed in Honolulu Harbor, march past ‘Iolani Palace and the capitol building, Ali‘iolani Hale before setting up camp at Arion Hall, which was nearby. The next day, militia seized control of the capitol building and read a proclamation announcing the end of the monarchy. All of this happened without one iota of assistance from the U.S. military forces. Regarding incidents of vandalism at ‘Iolani Palace, Conklin argues that such vandalism is “normal” and to be expected in the euphoria of revolution. Besides, he says, the Palace and everything inside it belongs to the government in power and not any individual. (Presumably, they could even have planted dynamite and blown the Palace to its foundations and would have every legal right to do so.) Conklin concludes, “Throughout the revolution the U.S. peacekeepers remained strictly neutral. They never took over any buildings. They never surrounded the Palace or the Government Building. They never arrested the Queen. They never patrolled the streets. The armed revolutionary local militia easily maintained order, partly because they were strong and well-trained, and partly because the Queen’s forces were weak and had surrendered without a fight.”
There you have it. The overthrow of the Hawaiian government was strictly a local affair in which the United States played no part. If this were true, it would indeed be a crippling blow to the argument that the United States owes any form of restitution to Hawaiians as a result of the overthrow. Except, it isn’t. The scenario laid out by Mr. Conklin is full of exaggerations, distortions and lies of omission (and perhaps even ones of outright deception). Refuting each and every one of Conklin’s falsehoods would probably take a book of its own but I’ll try to provide a brief version here. First of all, we need to add some context to the situation that occurred in January 1893. Almost immediately after the Bayonet Constitution was imposed on the country, Hawaiians sought to rid themselves of that document, or at least alter its more odious provisions. They asked Kalākaua to abrogate it and reinstate the Constitution of 1867. The coup had left the king cowed, however, and nothing came of their request. Robert Wilcox led a small group of Hawaiians in armed rebellion against it. His revolt was crushed. Then Hawaiians sought to call for a constitutional convention. By this time Stevens had begun serving as U.S. Minister to Hawai‘i. He warned Kalākaua not to go through with the convention, and the idea was defeated in the legislature. Undeterred, these Hawaiians sought to amend the constitution through the process outlined within that document. Although they were successful in gaining preliminary approval of a few amendments, final ratification required a two-thirds vote from the legislature, a futile endeavor given the dominance of haole in the House of Nobles. After the death of Kalākaua, his sister ascended the throne as Queen Lili‘uokalani. Once again, she received petitions from Hawaiians pleading her to rid the country of the Bayonet Constitution. The Queen estimated that these petitions were signed by around two-thirds of the nation’s voters. The Queen’s move to promulgate a new constitution on January 14th 1893, then, was not out of the blue. It came about after Kalākaua was unable to do so, after Wilcox’s rebellion failed, after a proposed constitutional convention was voted down, after various constitutional amendments were defeated, and after the vast majority of country’s voters requested it.
We must also place the actions of U.S. Minister John Stevens into context. Stevens did not drop anchor from the U.S.S. Boston in Honolulu Harbor for the first time on January 14, 1893. Indeed, he had served as America’s diplomatic representative to the Kingdom since 1889. He was a strong supporter of the Bayonet Constitution and warned both Kalākaua and Lili‘uokalani against making any changes to that “free and enlightened” document. Throughout his entire tenure as minister, Stevens was an implacable foe of the continuance of native government in Hawai‘i and repeatedly wrote to his superiors in Washington that the United States must seize control of the islands. To Stevens, the Queen’s government was an “absurd anachronism” and an obstacle to good government, progress and prosperity in Hawai‘i. He wrote to Washington that annexationists in Hawai‘i were too few in number to overthrow the government themselves and thus needed outside support, and he signaled his desire to provide that support even if it violated international law. Stevens wrote to his superiors that he believed that an opportunity to overthrow the Queen and annex the islands was fast approaching and when that moment came, he would do all in his power to ensure its success.
Given their shared goals, it was only natural that Stevens maintained an intimate relationship with Lorrin Thurston and the other annexationists in Hawai‘i. When Thurston departed for Washington in order to gauge support for annexation, Stevens’ influence enabled him to meet with some of the highest ranking members of the American government. Back in Hawai‘i, Stevens kept in close contact with the annexationists. In fact, he even shared confidential State Department memos with Thurston before sending them off to Washington. On the morning of the overthrow of the Queen, Sanford B. Dole, a member of the secret Annexation Club, delivered to Stevens a draft of the proclamation that would announce the end of the Queen’s government. After sending Dole off with words of encouragement, Stevens drafted a proclamation of his own, one that would officially recognize the soon to be proclaimed regime as the de facto government of Hawai‘i. John Stevens was, to borrow a favorite word from Conklin’s vocabulary, a zealot.
Next we must examine Conklin’s claim that the armed military forces that landed in Honolulu at Stevens’ direction (whom Conklin refers to as “peacekeepers”) remained strictly neutral throughout the entire episode. The ostensible reason for landing the U.S. forces was for the protection of American life and property. Unfortunately for Conklin, his argument is undermined by where Stevens decided to station the U.S. forces. Rather than positioning them near the American Consulate, the American legation or the homes and businesses of American residents so as to offer their protection, he sent them into the very heart of the government district. Stevens sought to position his forces as close to the Palace and Capitol as possible. His first choice was the Opera Hall, which lay directly across the street from the Palace and adjacent to the Capitol. The owner refused Stevens’ request to accommodate the American forces but the owner of Arion Hall right next door accepted Stevens’ offer. Arion Hall was still adjacent to the Capitol and only a few yards farther away from the Palace than Stevens’ original choice.
It is interesting that Conklin would choose to use the word “peacekeepers” in describing the U.S. military forces. His intentions seem obvious as the term “peacekeeper” evokes a much more benign image than, say, “occupation forces.” Some people take exception to the use of the term “peacekeeper” for that very reason, seeing it as a transparent attempt to spin history. So were the American forces there to protect American lives and property, or were they there to prevent a clash between the Queen’s forces and those who wanted to overthrow the government? As previously mentioned, the positioning of the American forces belies the former explanation as they were too far away from American property to provide any real security. The second explanation seems much more likely. First of all, the commander of the U.S. forces wrote that he and his men had orders to prevent the outbreak of hostilities in the streets. Moreover, the Americans had placed themselves in such a position that if the Queen’s forces had attempted to put down the conspirators, the government forces would have risked firing upon the Americans. In other words, the U.S. forces shielded the insurgents from the risk of attack, and prevented the Queen’s government from defending itself, thus destroying Conklin’s most cherished myth that the American forces remained neutral in the overthrow of the Hawaiian government.
Let us return to the actions of the Committee of Annexation and its supporters. According to the story told by Conklin, a sizeable militia seized control of the capitol building, “where many armaments had been stored by the Queen’s forces,” read a proclamation declaring the end of the monarchy, then “took over other buildings and disarmed the Royal Guard.” The “1500 armed local militiamen” “easily maintained order, partly because they were strong and well trained, and partly because the Queen’s forces were weak and had surrendered without a fight.” So what really happened? Well, after first sending a scout to ensure the capitol was unguarded, two small groups, travelling along separate routes, and totaling around twenty men, walked to the capitol building. After announcing to a few surprised clerical workers that they were now the legitimate government, one or more of their group scurried off to pick up the previously prepared note from Stevens in which he recognized them as the de facto government. Contrary to Mr. Conklin’s story, armaments were not stored in the capitol but rather were stockpiled in the police station, barracks, and palace. Furthermore, the “1500 armed local militiamen” is nothing but a figment of Conklin’s imagination. When the small group of insurgents met at the Capitol, this huge militia consisted of a single person, Mr. Oscar White. Others trickled in only later. In all, the insurgents had perhaps one-tenth of the figure Conklin cites, or about 150 people. Even the ringleader of the coup, Lorrin Thurston admitted that the conspirators lacked the kind of planning, organization, and disciplined paramilitary force that they had six years earlier when they imposed the Bayonet Constitution upon Kalākaua.
At the time Stevens recognized Dole and company as the de facto government of Hawai‘i, they were in possession of a single building, Ali‘iolani Hale. Queen Lili‘uokalani’s government controlled the Palace, the barracks, and the police station, which collectively housed more than 500 men under arms, along with artillery and Gatling guns. She had not yielded her authority as the lawful sovereign of Hawai‘i and probably had not even received such a demand from those who occupied Ali‘iolani Hale. Stevens’ premature recognition of the Provisional Government was the decisive factor that compelled the Queen to temporarily yield her authority to those representing the United States.
Conklin repeatedly claims that the U.S. military forces remained neutral, that they did not take over any buildings, and that their support was not needed because the insurgents were fully capable of establishing and maintaining themselves in power. Once again Conklin shows that he is not above deception when the facts go against the narrative he is painting. Despite declaring martial law and asking any sympathizers to turn over whatever arms and ammunition they had, the little band of insurgents felt vulnerable. President Dole refused to sleep in his own home, sleeping instead at a different friend’s home each night. Their terror was only allayed when, in the days after the coup, they asked Stevens to formally protect them and their government. Stevens, of course, immediately agreed and the next day, American forces entered and occupied the capitol building while the U.S. flag was raised overhead. So Conklin is misleading readers when he says American forces never occupied any buildings and he outright lies to them when he writes that the U.S. flag was flown above the capitol simply to indicate the Provisional Government’s desire for annexation.
In the aftermath of the overthrow, questions regarding the complicity of Stevens in that event led the newly inaugurated President Cleveland to send a representative, James Blount, to investigate. Conklin describes Blount as a “hatchet man” who was given “secret instructions to destabilize the Provisional Government and to write a one-sided report for Cleveland to use for the purpose of turning public opinion against the Provisional Government and annexation.” Among Blount’s alleged deficiencies was that, according to Conklin, he limited his interviews almost exclusively to the Queen’s supporters and that “he twisted or falsely reported what a few revolutionists told him.” Furthermore, Conklin argues, Blount’s report was completely refuted by the later Morgan Report, which collected information from “sworn testimony under oath and with cross examination.”
So what are the relative merits of the Blount and Morgan Reports? Let us begin with the former. Conklin accuses Blount of being a “hatchet man” but Blount, a former chair of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Relations, had earned a reputation of a man of ability and integrity during his twenty years in Congress that was acknowledged by Democrats, Republicans, and even Lorrin Thurston himself. Shortly after arriving, Blount ordered an end to the American Protectorate instituted by Stevens and sent all U.S. military forces back to the warship laying at anchor. He spent four months conducting his investigation and spoke to dozens of individuals. Throughout his stay, he took care not to reveal his personal views, but it did not take long for him to realize how vociferously Stevens advocated immediate annexation or how adamantly Hawaiians opposed it. Blount’s conclusions, simply stated, was that the actions of Stevens in ordering U.S. forces to land in Honolulu, and his premature recognition of the Provisional Government were the decisive factors in the overthrow and absent these events, the coup would never have been attempted.
Criticism of Blount’s report cover both procedural and substantive concerns. The substantive issues (e.g. U.S. forces remained neutral, etc.) have already been dealt with. As for the procedural concerns, one is the claim, repeated by Conklin, that Blount’s interviews skewed heavily towards the Queen’s supporters. It is true that Blount interviewed more Hawaiians than annexationists, but that fact alone does not mean Blount’s Report itself was biased. Furthermore, A number of annexationists, including Thurston, were in Washington lobbying for their cause, and thus Blount was unable to hear from them. In addition, although Blount interviewed a good number of Provisional Government officials, others, including President Dole and Henry Cooper, the American who read the proclamation announcing the overthrow of the government, refused Blount’s requests for interviews. Being in a foreign country, Blount did not have subpoena power to compel anyone to answer questions.
Now what about the Morgan Report? Immediately after President Cleveland delivered a message to Congress summarizing Blount’s Report, Senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama, decided he would write a report of his own. Over the course of two months, his committee held hearings in Washington and also heard from dozens of witnesses. Given that one of the biggest criticisms of Blount’s Report was that he did not hear from the exact same number of annexationists and Hawaiians, surely Morgan would go to great lengths to correct this perceived bias. Right? Actually, no. In fact, you could say that Morgan’s list of witnesses was also unbalanced. So how many Hawaiians sat before Morgan’s committee? Zero. That’s right, ZERO. Not a single Hawaiian ever spoke before Morgan and his colleagues. I suppose one of way of ensuring that the other side is unrepresented is by making it as difficult as possible for it to appear before you. Holding the hearings in Washington, some 5,000 miles away from where the incidents in question took place is quite effective. But couldn’t it be said that Blount’s Report adequately represented the other side? Not if you’re also arguing that the lack of cross examination in Blount’s Report is also a serious deficiency. After all, if you’re trying to discover the truth, then both sides ought to have the opportunity to cross examine the other.
Since Conklin has no qualms about attacking the integrity of James Blount, it would only be fair if we, too, examined whether or not Morgan himself had any biases. First, we must note the extraordinarily close and friendly relations Morgan shared with Thurston and the other annexationists. Second, he was an avowed imperialist who shared with Stevens the goal of annexing the Hawaiian Islands and similarly disdained the continuation of the native government. Finally, his conduct during the hearings themselves betrayed his personal biases. His practice of asking leading questions led both a fellow committee member and later historians to criticize his behavior.
Predictably, Morgan decided that the actions Stevens took in landing the U.S. military forces was completely justified. The question of whether Stevens conspired with the insurgents or whether the U.S. forces’ presence aided them was completely irrelevant, Morgan argued, because the United States had the right to stage an armed invasion and effect a regime change. Interestingly, despite disagreeing with Blount’s conclusions, Morgan praised the president’s representative for “execut[ing] his instructions with impartial care to arrive at the truth, and…present[ing] a sincere and instructive report to the President of the United States.” Obviously, Morgan would take issue with Conklin’s description of Blount as a “hatchet man.” Morgan could find no fault with either Blount’s or President Cleveland’s actions.
In the end Morgan failed to get any other committee member to sign onto his conclusions in their entirety. Instead, there was a 1-4-4 split. The committee’s four Republican members felt not only were Stevens’ actions fully justified, but also that Democratic President Grover Cleveland had acted improperly by not submitting his representative (Blount) to the Senate for approval. The remainder of the committee, all Democratic senators, excoriated Stevens for actively supporting the insurgents, and felt that the landing of so many American forces and positioning them so close to the capitol and palace were both excessive and inappropriate; a smaller force stationed at the American legation and consulate would have been sufficient to protect American life and property, they wrote. At the same time, they chose not to censure the captain of the U.S. warship for obeying Stevens’ directive to land troops given Stevens’ influence over him.
Whew! Conklin is right about one thing, debunking falsehoods sure is time consuming! With that taken care of, though, let us move on.
Another notion that Conklin tries to refute is the idea that the Provisional Government/Republic was illegitimate, and therefore had no right to offer Hawai‘i to the United States. He concedes, as he must, that the oligarchy lacked any meaningful support from the population. Nonetheless, he asserts that the Provisional Government was acknowledged as the de facto government by the U.S. and a few other nations and had the right to speak for the nation in its dealings with other countries. While this idea is not transparently absurd, it is certainly a peculiar position for someone who loudly and repeatedly asserts his loyalty and patriotism as an American. After all, in the Declaration of Independence, one of the self-evident Truths that Thomas Jefferson so forcefully articulates is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The oligarchy’s political authority, however, was maintained by the barrels of its guns. Can any government be regarded as legitimate or just if the population it rules adamantly oppose its very existence?
What is absurd, however, is Conklin’s attempt to minimize Hawaiian opposition to annexation. He takes issue with the claim that an estimated 38,000 Hawaiians, or 95%, signed petitions against it. One petition, found in the U.S. National Archives, contains over 21,000 signatures opposing annexation. Another 17,000 signatures were collected on a second petition that reportedly demanded restoration of Queen Lili‘uokalani. Conklin argues that many people signed both, meaning that the total was less than the 38,000 claimed. Since the second petition has not yet been rediscovered, this hypothesis is impossible to verify, although it seems plausible enough. Conklin’s logic derails, however, when he suggests that the gap of 4,000 signatures between the two petitions could be interpreted to mean that 4,000 Hawaiians opposed annexation but wanted to continue to be ruled by the haole oligarchy. Furthermore, Conklin says, assuming that the 21,000+ signatures on the first petition are authentic, and also assuming that all 17,000 people who signed the second petition had also signed the first, (meaning that the total number of individual signatories was over 21,000 rather than 38,000), this would mean that over 40% of Hawaiians did not sign the petition, which Conklin interprets to mean that they either supported annexation or didn’t care. This, of course, is ludicrous and is one of Conklin’s more transparent fallacies.
There is more, however. He complains that “the signatures have no relationship to voter registration,” noting that many were of women and children. But Conklin can’t have it both ways. He must either accept that even women and children can legitimately oppose their country’s loss of independence, or he must stop interpreting anything less than a 100% participation rate in the signing of anti-annexation petitions as evidence that many Hawaiians supported annexation. After all, even someone who has less than a firm command of the rules of logic must realize that having anything close to 100% signing rate is impossible if all women and everyone, both male and female, under 21 years of age, shouldn’t count. It should also be brought to the reader’s attention that Conklin’s dismissal of the signatures of women and children over their voter ineligibility is particularly inappropriate because Hawaiian men, too, were effectively disenfranchised by the oligarchy. But that is not all. Conklin goes further by arguing that the most appropriate metric one should use to place the number of signatures in context is by comparing the 21,000+ signatures to the total population of Hawai‘i in 1897, which he guesses to be about 120,265. Doing so yields a figure of about 18%. It is this figure that Conklin wishes us to remember. What Conklin fails to note is that at this time, well over half of the total population, and perhaps as much as two-thirds were composed of contract workers, few of whom expected to remain in the country after their term of service was over. Moreover, many of these workers were illiterate even in their native language; the number who could read and write Hawaiian or even English (the languages used in the petitions) was negligible. In short, there is no reason to expect these workers to posses either the ability or desire to involve themselves in the country’s politics to this extent. Finally, it is important that we not miss the forest for the trees. Whether the number of Hawaiians who signed the anti-annexation petition is closer to 95% or 85% or 75%, it remains an irrefutable fact that the vast majority of Hawaiians vehemently opposed losing their national independence. Any attempt to convince readers otherwise is quite simply dishonest.
Before moving on, I would like to draw attention to another example of Conklin’s hypocrisy. On page 204, Conklin mentions in passing what he calls the “Great Hawaii Statehood Petition of 1954.” Following up Conklin’s footnote to his own website, we learn that this petition allegedly contained 120,000 signatures in favor of statehood for Hawai‘i. But we also discover that thousands of signatures were added in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver, where the petition made pit stops so residents of those cities could also express their support for Hawai‘i statehood. When the petition left Hawai‘i, it supposedly had only 116,000 signatures. It would be interesting to see how many of those signatures were of military personnel and their families, who were temporarily stationed in the islands. For the sake of argument, let us assume that all 116,000 signatures were of actual Hawai‘i residents, (it is unknown how many signatures were from persons under 21 years of age.) According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hawai‘i’s population in 1950 was 499,794 and in 1960 it was 632,772. We can guesstimate that the population in 1954 was around 552,985. The 116,000 signatures would thus represent less than 21% of the total population. Can we conclude, following Conklian logic, that nearly 80% of the population either opposed statehood, or didn’t care one way or the other? Of course not. We know this because five years later, the vast majority of people in Hawai‘i voted in favor of statehood. There is no reason to believe that there was a massive swing in public opinion towards statehood in the intervening years. Because both the oligarchy and the U.S. Congress refused to allow Hawaiians to vote on annexation, there is no similar public record like the 1959 referendum aside from the massive petitions. To sum up, Ken Conklin believes that a petition he views as representing 18% of the population justifies his downplaying of Hawaiian opposition to annexation, while one that represents 20% shows overwhelming support for statehood.
Hawaiian opposition to annexation played a significant role in the failure of the annexation treaty in the U.S. Senate. Unable to secure the votes necessary to ratify the treaty, annexationists turned to a constitutionally suspect legal manoeuvre, opting to annex Hawai‘i by a joint resolution requiring a simple majority vote from both houses of Congress. According to Conklin, “Hawaiian sovereignty zealots say it’s contrary to international law for the U.S. to use a joint resolution as its method for approving a treaty. But that’s absurd. International law cannot dictate to any nation the method whereby that nation chooses to ratify a treaty. Some nations don’t even have a Senate!” Here Conklin sets up an appealing strawman he can easily beat down, but of course, that’s not really what the “zealots” are arguing at all. Strangely, Conklin himself provides a much more accurate representation of their argument just a few paragraphs earlier: “Joint resolutions are merely internal laws of the U.S.; they have no force or effect outside. The zealots say the only way to do an annexation legitimately is through a treaty, and the U.S. Constitution requires a treaty to be ratified by a 2/3 vote in the Senate. The treaty submitted by the Republic in 1887 [sic] was defeated when it failed to get the 2/3 vote needed in the Senate. End of story.” So Hawaiian sovereignty “zealots” aren’t suggesting that annexation was illegal because the U.S. didn’t follow international law regarding the ratification of treaties; they’re arguing that it was improper because the U.S. didn’t follow its own constitution’s requirements!
Conklin continues, saying “Anyone familiar with the fundamentals of contract law can understand what happened. Two parties, both of which were competent and acting freely, negotiated the terms of a contract. One party offered the contract and the other accepted it.” This analogy is easy to understand, but does it accurately reflect what happened? The oligarchy in Hawai‘i did indeed negotiate a contract, i.e. a treaty, with the McKinley administration and promptly ratified it. But when it was America’s turn to sign on the dotted line and close the deal, the U.S. Senate balked. Rather than agreeing to the contract, Congress drafted its own and passed that instead. Neither party actually ratified the other’s contract.
Defending the use of a joint resolution as the means to annex Hawai‘i, Conklin points to the example of Texas, claiming that it, too, was annexed through a simple joint resolution. Proponents of this scheme reasoned that because the Constitution delegates to Congress as a whole the authority to admit new states, Texas could be admitted directly as a state by a simple majority vote of the House and Senate, rather than first being annexed as a territory via treaty and only later being approved for statehood as was the norm. Unfortunately, the process whereby Texas joined the United States was so convoluted, and the circumstances so different from Hawai‘i’s that its usefulness as a precedent is exceedingly questionable. As to the former, the American historian William Russ writes:
The truth is that Texas was not either fully annexed or fully admitted as a state…by the joint resolution, which was signed by President Tyler on March 1, 1845. The resolution merely signified the willingness of the United States to admit Texas as a state if it fulfilled certain conditions, such as acceptance of annexation. Obviously, if Texas refused, there would be neither annexation of a territory or a state. Moreover, there was a time limit in that Texas had to present to Congress a duly ratified state constitution on or before January 1, 1846. The Texan Congress adopted a joint resolution on June 21, 1845, accepting the American offer. A special convention which met on July 4, 1845, accepted annexation and wrote a state constitution. In October, 1845, the people in a referendum not only ratified the constitution but also voted to accept annexation. Thus annexation was, in effect, accepted three times. On December 29, 1845, a bill to admit the state was signed by President Polk, and formal admission took place on February 19, 1846, with the seating of Texan members in both houses of Congress. (The Hawaiian Republic, p.327-328.)
The most glaring difference between the example of Texas and what happened with Hawai‘i, of course, is that unlike Texas, statehood for Hawai‘i was not being contemplated. Instead, it would be admitted as a mere territory, under the direct control of Washington. Without the issue of statehood, it is obvious that Congress was not acting under its authority to admit new states. Under what authority, then, was Congress acting when it used a joint resolution to annex Hawai‘i? Who knows? Other noteworthy contrasts, already mentioned by Russ, include the fact that the joint resolution of annexation was approved not only by the Texas legislature (which presumably enjoyed popular support from the population), but also by a special convention and by the people themselves in a referendum. When it came to Hawai‘i, however, annexationists in both countries avoided certain defeat by ensuring that no public vote would be taken. The argument that Texas provides a clear legal precedent for the annexation of Hawai‘i is a fairly weak one.
Next, Conklin addresses what he calls another historical myth, the suppression of the Hawaiian language by the oligarchy, which continued under the Territory of Hawai‘i. Conklin is grasping at straws, trying to refute the fact that the official government policy prohibiting the use of Hawaiian in instruction did suppress the Hawaiian language in schools and inevitably, in society. He writes that it is “absolutely false” “that Hawaiian language was banned in the schools,” but then he essentially admits that this was, in fact, the case. In 1896, the oligarchy issued a decree which stated that all schools, both public and private, could use only English to teach their students. Conklin concedes the fact that any little boy or girl who spoke Hawaiian in class faced corporal punishment, but downplays it, saying that such punishment was no big deal. After all, he says, they weren’t seriously injured. It’s not like teachers knocked them senseless with a baseball bat. He also says it’s really the fault of Hawaiian parents for not setting up after-school programmes where Hawaiian language and culture were taught, as the Japanese did with their children. Incidentally, these after-school lessons were not recognized by the government as “schools” so even if Hawaiians had done this, the claim that Hawaiian language was suppressed in “schools” is still accurate. Conklin tries to save his argument by pointing out that the law did not prohibit schools from teaching the Hawaiian language as a subject (presumably in English) but fails to mention whether any schools actually did so. Indeed, it would seem highly inconsistent for a school to simultaneously punish students for speaking Hawaiian while also teaching students how to commit that very “offense.” Again and again, Conklin lays the blame for the near extinction of the Hawaiian language at the feet of Hawaiian parents, saying that they failed to pass the language on to their children. But if these parents grew up at time when everything Hawaiian was devalued, where they were told over and over that English was the language of success, and were punished for speaking Hawaiian, even made to feel ashamed for speaking it, how realistic is it to expect them to ensure their children had as firm a grasp of Hawaiian as they did? Finally, it is interesting to note that in order to buttress his argument that Hawaiian was never banned, Conklin notes that Hawaiian language newspapers were published until as late as 1948. After being continuously published for more than a century, why did Hawaiian newspapers finally die out? Conklin himself inadvertently provides the most plausible explanation. The 1896 law banning the use of Hawaiian in schools helped ensure that generations of Hawaiians grew up speaking only English. By 1948, 52 years after the law had passed, enough of those who had grown up during the time when Hawaiian was widely used and respected had passed on, leaving too few readers to support a Hawaiian language newspaper. Conklin’s claim that “Hawaiian language went into a coma due to natural causes and not because of suppression” is almost laughable. The 1896 law banning the use of Hawaiian instruction in schools is most certainly not a “natural cause.”
The following passage is taken directly from Conklin’s book. It is worth quoting in its entirety to demonstrate Conklin’s tendency to making logically incoherent arguments.
Everyone eventually dies. Shocking, but true! And nobody dies more than once. So when the Hawaiian grievance industry says that “Native Hawaiians” have the highest mortality rate for breast cancer, isn’t it obvious that they must also have the lowest mortality rate for some other disease? There are only so many Hawaiians, and each one can only die once. Furthermore, whatever diseases “Native Hawaiians” have comparatively low mortality rates for, it must be true that some other ethnic group has comparatively high mortality rates for those diseases. So, in order to protect the interest of Caucasians (for example), there should be a Papa Ola Lokahi Haole funded by millions of federal dollars to gather and analyze the data for all those diseases for which white people have comparatively high mortality rates. Likewise a Papa Ola Lokahi Kepani to do the corresponding job for people of Japanese ancestry. Of course it’s silly to propose the haole and Japanese institutions. Why then do we not see that it is equally silly to have the Hawaiian institution. But there’s nothing silly about the obvious fact that if a racial group is to be singled out as having a high mortality rate for some diseases, then that same group must have low mortality rates for other diseases while other racial groups have higher mortality rates. Because everybody dies, and only dies once. It is statistically impossible for “Native Hawaiians” to have the worst mortality rates for the majority of diseases, just as it is statistically impossible for the majority of children to have above-average intelligence.
Astute readers will quickly realize that what Conklin wrote makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Nothing in the rules of logic prevents one group from having the highest mortality rates from every disease. The ONLY way for Conklin’s argument to be true is if every group had the exact same life expectancy. In this alternate universe, if one group had a higher mortality rate from heart disease, then it would necessarily have a lower rate for something else, say stroke. Otherwise, there would be some variation in the life expectancies of different groups, which is, of course, exactly what exists outside the mind of Ken Conklin, i.e. reality.
After spouting off that mind-blowing absurdity, Conklin then descends further into paranoia and conspiracy theories.
He verbosely titles one section “The possibility of Hawaiian espionage or sabotage in collaboration with foreign governments hostile to the U.S. in order to get diplomatic recognition of an independent Hawaii, or to weaken the U.S. thereby causing U.S. abandonment of Hawaii.” Wow. Conklin readily admits that what he wrote sounds like it was lifted from the next Tom Clancy novel but insists it is “quite plausible to imagine non-violent sabotage of military bases and military vehicles by Hawaiian independence activists….” He asserts that it is “quite strange” that a woman who has relatives active in some forms of sovereignty protests works on a Marine Corps base. Conklin also finds it “very suspicious” that one activist has allegedly suggested that people in economically hard hit areas seek employment opportunities on military bases. But he believes this conspiracy goes far deeper than that. “Clearly there is ‘diplomatic’ contact between Hawaiian activists and representatives of foreign governments,” Conklin says, without providing a shred of evidence that North Korea or Iran are sending undercover diplomatic agents (cleverly disguised as “tourists” of course) to meet with any number of sovereignty leaders. “Some of those governments are hostile toward the United States, just as the Hawaiian independence activists are. Diplomatic activity between Hawaiian sovereignty activists and governments of nations hostile to the United States could very well result in secret agreements for sovereignty activists to engage in espionage or sabotage in return for formal diplomatic recognition of Hawaiian independence.” Conklin goes on to say that there are Hawaiians who dislike the Patriot Act, and argues that some of this opposition “is undoubtedly due to a fear that the Patriot Act could thwart their future ability to organize and carry out espionage, sabotage, and other forms of treason.” At this point, a reader may be asking, “What is Ken Conklin smoking?” He assures us, however, that “The possibility of trading espionage and/or sabotage for diplomatic recognition is not at all far-fetched.” How can Conklin argue with a straight face that Hawaiian sovereignty leaders are “clearly” meeting with the North Koreans or Iranians? Apparently he believes that “it is very clear that most supporters of the Akaka bill” feel no loyalty or patriotism towards the United States, while the remainder are horribly misguided, naïve, and ignorant.
Given that Conklin earlier criticized Senators Inouye, Akaka, and others for making some statements in Congress that misstated the year in which certain events occurred, it is only fair to point out instances where Conklin commits the same error. He criticizes Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole, saying that “He did not remain in Hawaii to fight against annexation alongside his deposed Queen, Liliuokalani. He went to South Africa to join the Boer War, as a soldier in the British army….He spent about three of the most crucial years in Hawaiian history, 1899-1902, on his ‘excellent adventure.’ Why did he abandon his own homeland in its time of great need?” Conklin answers himself by speculating that Kuhio had “developed a taste for violence.” It is inexplicable how anyone who studies Hawaiian history as much as Conklin says he does could get such basic chronology wrong. Kuhio did not “abandon” Queen Lili‘uokalani and the fight against annexation. The U.S. completed its takeover of Hawai‘i in 1898. Kuhio did not leave until the following year. While the years 1893 through 1898 were certainly critical ones in Hawaiian history, those of 1899-1902 were not nearly as much. Once again, Conklin refuses to let historical facts get in the way of his ideological agenda.
Chapter 8 begins with Conklin questioning whether Hawaiians can even be considered indigenous to Hawai‘i. He suggests that they are not, and goes on to argue that Hawai‘i has no indigenous people because the ancestors of today’s Hawaiians came from other Pacific Islands, and that their tenure in Hawai‘i, stretching back no more than two thousand years, pales in comparison to ancient civilizations such as China. He goes on to say that Britain’s Anglo-Saxon people have inhabited that island longer than Hawaiians have lived in Hawai‘i and notes how strange it would be if they put themselves out as an indigenous people. That indeed would be a strange sight, but is the length of time a people have inhabited a land sufficient, in and of itself, to acquire for themselves the status of being indigenous? Surely not. Actually, there’s a perfectly simply reason why Hawaiians are regarded as being indigenous while Britons and others are not. Generally speaking, the term indigenous is reserved for groups of people who have a history of being politically, socially, or economically marginalized or displaced by other outside groups. Hawaiians, like the native peoples of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and many Pacific Islands, share this historical experience. The British, French, Germans, Dutch, Japanese and others do not.
Conklin next asks whether Hawaiians maintain an “indigenous lifestyle?” By indigenous lifestyle, he means one that is limited to hunting and gathering, and subsistence farming and fishing. Real indigenous people live, breath and are totally immersed in their culture from cradle to grave, he says. After pointing out that most Hawaiians live in homes with electricity, running water, and electronic devices, Conklin argues that Hawaiians have forfeited their right to be called indigenous. Someone who drives a car to work, uses a telephone and computer in the office, then spend two hours dancing with their hula halau before going home is an “inauthentic indigenous wannabe.” I suppose it is entirely appropriate and not at all arrogant or presumptuous for World Renowned Hawaiian Language and Culture expert Ken Conklin to anoint Himself as the final arbiter of what constitutes authentic Hawaiian culture. A true guardian of the ancient ways, Conklin blasts Hawaiian sovereignty zealots for dishonoring the kapu system by allowing, for example, men and women to share food from the same dish. He also decries “new or reinvented cultural forms” as being similarly inauthentic. He scoffs at the fact that famed navigator Nainoa Thompson spent some of his time learning the constellations in a planetarium rather than on the open ocean, implying that a “real” Hawaiian would never have to rely on a technological crutch. Conklin seems particularly offended by the fact that when Hilo hosted the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education, participants “looked[ed] up the words of an ancient chant…invent[ed] hula motions and music to accompany it….got on airplanes and flew to Hilo, stayed in motels, drove by car to the beach, and performed their ‘indigenous’ welcoming ceremony.” Already on a roll, Conklin goes further, saying that the contestants on the TV show “Survivor” are more indigenous than Hawaiians. In his view, the Merrie Monarch Festival would be dismissed as a bunch of people dressing up in costumes, dancing to fake songs.
There are several objections that can be raised regarding Conklin’s hardline views on cultural authenticity and indigenous status. He seems to believe that a people’s culture must be transferred, whole and complete, from one generation to the next, with no changes. If a change does happen, it renders anything affected by that change “inauthentic”. So when Hawaiians adopted metal fish hooks and steel axes, their traditional fishing and logging practices were no longer authentically Hawaiian. When Kamehameha II and Ka‘ahumanu abolished the kapu system and later replaced it with Christianity, they destroyed a central pillar of Hawaiian society and culture, and true, authentic Hawaiian culture was irretrievably lost. Likewise, I’m sure Ken Conklin would be the first to agree that traditional American culture no longer exists because slavery, an integral feature of that culture for centuries was belatedly abolished in 1865. The question of whether Hawaiians today maintain an “indigenous lifestyle” as defined by Conklin really misses the point. The goal of the Akaka Bill or of the sovereignty movement generally is not to return to a subsistence lifestyle guided by the kapu system but to restore some level of self-determination to a people who were stripped of that right without their consent.
Virtually every person born and raised in Hawai‘i, and many others who became residents later in life, knows the song Hawai‘i Aloha. But Conklin, ever the conspiracy theorist, believes he has discovered something sinister lurking in its otherwise beautiful lyrics. You see, the opening lines speaks of Hawai‘i as the place of one’s birth, and of one’s homeland. Thus it is wrong for people like himself who were not born in Hawai‘i and have no family history in the islands to sing it, he says. But even worse, Conklin believes the song is a “subtle assertion of a right to race-based political power.” That assertion must be quite subtle indeed because in the 150 years or so since the song was written by a New England missionary, Conklin is the first (and only) person who has been able to detect invidious racial overtones within it! Why is he even bringing up such an absurd notion? It provides him an opportunity to once again deny the fact that Hawaiians are indigenous by saying the majority of every Hawaiian’s ancestors are buried outside Hawai‘i if you go back tens of thousands of years. But by that standard, since modern man originated in Africa, Ken Conklin could very well be described as an African-American!
Perhaps no section in Conklin’s book does more to reveal his underlying attitudes than the one focused on education. Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate with greater autonomy over their curriculum than other public schools. Because they are publicly funded, they do not charge tuition, allowing those who are unable to afford the hefty fees charged by private schools to have a choice in their children’s educations. In Hawai‘i, the creation of charter schools that have a special focus on Hawaiian language and culture are especially popular. Needless to say, Conklin finds the very idea of Hawaiian based charter schools to be repugnant. Children attending such schools “are not learning what they need for getting admitted to colleges and succeeding once they get there,” he claims. As a result, “Children emerging from ‘host culture’ charter schools will have low rates of success in the larger society of the state of Hawaii or the United States.” This is because “‘Success’ for such children is defined very differently than for everyone else. Success means being able to speak Hawaiian, using Hawaiian to chant and pray to the old gods, to plant and pull taro, to catch fish and gather limu, to know the meanings of place-names and the Hawaiian myths associated with them, to sail on a voyaging canoe, etc.” He contemptuously dismisses learning how to farm as “playing in the mud” and aquaculture as “building rock walls”. It is noteworthy that Conklin denies that Hawaiians are indigenous enough to be recognized as such while also lambasting them for wanting to teach their children the very skills that make them (in Conklin’s eyes) indigenous. Not content with merely disparaging the value of Hawaiian language and culture, Conklin demonstrates a self-righteous mentality that was especially common among the likes of Lorrin Thurston and other members of the oligarchy that ruled Hawai‘i from 1893 to 1898. “Society has a responsibility to protect children against parents who make spectacularly bad choices for their children, even when such choices are ‘voluntary,'” he declares. This attitude is identical to the one held by members of the oligarchy, which led to the law permitting only English be used to instruct children. What do Hawaiians know about raising their own children? Ken Conklin clearly feels that he knows what’s best for them. It’s almost as if Conklin is intentionally turning himself into a caricature of the arrogant, loud-mouthed, abrasive, know-it-all haole. Can it be a coincidence that both Conklin and the missionary families of Thurston, Dole, et. al, all hailed from the same state? (At the time, Maine was still part of Massachusetts.)
Before moving on, one more example of Conklin’s hypocrisy must be exposed. Earlier in the book, he denies that the government’s ban on schools teaching children through Hawaiian was responsible for the suppression of the language, arguing instead that Hawaiian parents themselves were responsible. Conklin approvingly writes, “Hawaiian parents recognized that the path to social and economic success would be through English. The parents would speak to each other in Hawaiian, but would speak only English with their children. The parents did that not because the language was illegal , but rather because they wanted what was best for their beloved children.” Contrast this attitude with Conklin’s belief that society has the right to prevent parents from making “spectacularly bad choices” for their children, i.e. sending them to schools that teach Hawaiian language and culture. Apparently the wisdom of Hawaiian parents depends entirely on whether or not they agree with Conklin.
In the beginning of his book, Conklin readily admits that he’s been accused of being racist. Says Conklin, “This book will be attacked as racism against ethnic Hawaiians. The author has sometimes been publicly accused of being anti-Hawaiian. Such inflammatory personal attacks are typical behavior of the racial separatists and ethnic nationalists. They know it’s very easy for a ‘person of color’ to hurl the ‘R’ word against a white man; and it is nearly impossible to defend against such slander. They know it’s easy to evade serious discussion of the issues by smearing an opponent.” Is Ken Conklin driven by racial hatred? Calling someone a racist is a very provocative charge, and is not one that should be casually thrown out to smear one’s opponents. Yet the disconnect between the sentiments he expresses here and his own rhetoric throughout his book remain as glaring as ever. He certainly has no qualms about hurling the “R word” at others. Even more inflammatory is his explicit likening of many ordinary Hawaiians to Nazis. Conklin writes, “Seeing the mass red-shirt marches in Honolulu of the 2000s brings memories of the brown-shirt and black -shirt marches and rallies in Berlin of the 1930s.” When Ken Conklin looks at Hawaiians, he sees Nazis. Conklin’s also guilty of using a number of other offensive analogies, for example, comparing Hawaiians to spoiled children and drug addicts, or even dogs. Then there are the times when he refers to Hawaiian women as “girls”, and singles out and perpetuates stereotypes of Hawaiians as having multiple children outside of marriage while collecting welfare. The language Conklin consciously chooses to employ leaves him wide open to accusations of racism and it is not difficult to see how his comments could be interpreted as such.
Another issue is Conklin’s tendency to be less than fully forthright regarding his sources. Conklin frequently refers readers to “a webpage” that he says offers further details on whatever issue he’s currently discussing. However, he never acknowledges that the website in question is his own. Rather than citing reputable third-party sources and recognized scholars to support his assertions, the majority of Conklin’s footnotes simply lead to his own website. In another example, Conklin refers to “a professor” at the University of Hawai‘i who directed his students to ask random Hawaiians such loaded questions as whether they approve of violence. Conklin never names this “professor” and I suspect it’s because he’s referring to himself. The nature of the question on violence certainly fits with Conklin’s style. He also mentions how he taught a non-credit six-session lecture series at the University’s Center for Lifelong Learning. I suppose that might be all Conklin needs to justify, in his own mind, the claim that “a professor” at the University really did ask his students to question Hawaiians. And if my impressions are mistaken (though I doubt it because he refers to himself anonymously elsewhere, e.g. OHA lawsuit), Conklin should drop the weasel words and name the professor.
Then there are the more substantive criticisms of his work. There is no question that he is willing to distort history when the facts prove inconvenient to his cause. The most egregious example, of course, is his insistence that the Morgan Report accurately reflected the events surrounding the overthrow of the Queen and rightfully exonerated Stevens and the U.S. military forces. There is no question that he is willing to employ logical fallacies to mislead and confuse the reader, as when he suggests that a significant portion of Hawaiians either supported annexation or were indifferent. There is no question that he is a hypocrite and relies on double standards whenever it suits his purposes, for example, when he blames Hawaiian “zealots” for vandalizing books but does not similarly blame anti-Hawaiian sovereignty zealots for vandalizing a structure on the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace, or when he downplays Hawaiian opposition to annexation while trumpeting pro-statehood sentiment based on two petitions that, under his own standards, represents essentially the same percentage of the population. And there is no question that he shamelessly promotes fear mongering by ludicrously warning that in an independent Hawai‘i, non-Hawaiians could be forced into ghettoes, or deported to their family’s ancestral homeland in Japan, China, Korea, or the Philippines.
Ken Conklin is always pointing his finger at others, calling them racists, fascists, and zealots. While he’s busy jabbing his finger at others, Conklin remains blissfully ignorant of the three fingers pointing back at him. Indeed, he is the ultimate zealot. How else can one describe a man who devotes his life to running a huge anti-Hawaiian sovereignty website, files lawsuits against the state with the intent of dismantling Hawaiian programmes, testifies before legislative committees, writes letters to newspapers across the state, posts innumerable comments on online forums and in the readers’ comments section below newspaper articles, and spends thousands of dollars self-publishing this manuscript. His reliance on making outrageous statements, his bizzare obsession with Nazism, and his full blown paranoia is reminiscent of Fox News’ Glenn Beck. The fact that he presents himself as a scholar (e.g. writing his name as “Ken Conklin, Ph.D.”) with credibility to speak on the issues is disgraceful.
As disgusting as Conklin’s rhetoric is, one can’t help but feel a sense of disappointment in what this book could have been. Conklin had an opportunity to provide a reasoned and dispassionate argument against the Akaka bill, and against the way many Hawaiian institutions and Hawaiian programmes operate, based on policy and he squandered it. Instead, he chose to engage in petty name-calling, hysterically screaming, “They’re all a bunch of Nazis! NAZIS!!!”
Readers looking for an intelligent and well argued alternative viewpoint on Hawaiian sovereignty and the Akaka bill must look elsewhere because they will not find it in Ken Conklin’s “Hawaiian Apartheid”.


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Great review. thank you very much!
Thanks for the feedback! I worked long and hard on this review and I’d like nothing better than to see it gain visibility.
Thank you, DR. Sai and hawaiiblade:
You make me so proud to be a fellow-educated…part-Hawaiian, annexed-before-birth…American.
Today you both are more than able to take on such an unfortunate rabble-rousing, pseudo-intellectual, continental American…visitor. Discussion, debate and logic are so much more civil, than what was done to the peaceful Kingdom citizens and queen long ago…by the American military led by a continental east coast American- who later got removed from his post for taking America to war upon a vulnerable and independent…kingdom.
What skill! What courage! What commitment to the kidnapped and helpless! To the captured and seduced! To the rest of us who look to other ways of bringing true peace and aloha back to our existence, families, and Kingdom/state/nation.
I salute you,
In fact, this Nazi-name calling visitor presently living in Kaneohe aids your cause.
He seems driven on a sermonizing and demonizing campaign against Kanaka Maoli and others from the Kingdom (by way of ancestral/recent/heartfelt oath making)…who have a need to sort out what took place in the years 1887 to today,… in Hawaii.
Have a need to organize, question, challenge, demonstrate against what has been proved to be a grave injustice on a Pacific Ocean kingdom. To expose the rot under the seeming invulnerability of our nation. Have a need to make things right for all, not just for the compromisers, the forgivers, the prayers…like me.
My heart goes out to you and the other courageous Kanaka Plus Other Righteous Warriors of all ethnicities and cultures…who call Hawaii Nei …home. I pray for you all, as I also pray for all Americans here and on the continent that God prepared for the fleeing masses…fleeing from old world oppression, corruption, and unrighteousness.
Bottom line: The visitor to Hawaii Nei who lives amongst us in magnificent Kaneohe is saying, “No! I won’t allow you people of Hawaii to return to what others abolished and overthrew….also by working inside the occupying power as other political forces do today. I like what we congressional-approving Americans now own in the Pacific Ocean. IT MATTERS NOT HOW congress grabbed it. I am so obsessed about this 19th century trickery and theft, because it gives me American rights even though I come with no other connections with the people who have been here with loved ones since before the 1990’s. I know what’s best for all people in Hawaii. I come to save you all from yourselves, like the overthrowers did earlier. They were right; I am right. You citizens of Hawaii need to be rescued all over again!”
Brothers of Righteousness and Authenticity… I forgive this continental visitor. In fact I feel sorry for him. Just look at what he is becoming. Pray for his soul. He needs help.
I look to the only Force that can correct the evils of this world. I wait on God Almighty and His glorious Son. He Comes. Be Patient. Best Wishes!
Aloha, Nuuhiwa (III) Naohiaikamalu
Thank you so very much for this review. It’s so very important to set record straight regarding this person and the misinformation he promotes.