Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty Quotes

“As of 2015 only a dozen of the then 567 federally recognized tribal nations recognize same-sex marriage...Other tribes, however, have explicitly restricted same-sex marriage (all following the passage of DOMA), including the Navajo Nation, Cherokee Nation, Muscogee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, and Iowa Tribe. Although Congress could pass a statute that affects Indian Country Lindsay Roberson...considers it highly unlikely, given the federal government's relatively hands-off support for tribal governance.

Within the Navajo context, this issue has brought about deep debate about the nature of tradition. Joanne Barker has written about the battles over same-sex marriage in Navajo Nation (as well as Cherokee Nation). She documents how the tribal legislation bans and defense of them affirm the discourses of U.S. nationalism, especially in their Christian and right-wing conservative forms. IN these cases, the tribal nation's exercise of sovereignty and self-determination replicates the relations of domination and dispossession that resemble the U.S. treatment of Native Peoples.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“This 'thy kingdom come' stance invokes the notion of Christian redemption -- the Kingdom of God with Christ as savior as related to the redemption of the Hawaiian Kingdom. This position also resembles a form of fundamentalism that currently pervades kingdom restoration activism in Hawai'i.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“The status of domestic dependent nation that would be granted Native Hawaiians through a process of federal recognition does not recognize the kingdom's history of sovereign existence or take into account the unjust occupation or overthrow of the monarch inflicted by the U.S. government. At the same time, relying on presently existing international law regarding Indigenous Peoples also has the limitation that in tis present state such law still gives priority to existing nation-states and puts the preexisting rights of Indigenous People as nations on a back burner.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“Like race, indigeneity is a socially constructed category rather than one based on the notion of immutable biological characteristics. Moreover, global political movements tending to the legacy of colonial dispossession have shaped how scholars comprehend (and apprehend) the Indigenous as a subject of study (and indigeneity as an analytic).”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“Given that the United States purportedly annexed Hawai'i in 1898, before these statements were negotiated, those who cite them apply them retroactively. In this logic Hawai'i is merely occupied by the United States; kingdom nationalists argue that Hawai'i was never colonized: therefore decolonization is an inappropriate political strategy. Because the Hawaiian nation afforded citizenship to people who were not Kanaka Maoli [native people to Hawai'i] - and because of its status as an independent state - kingdom nationalists tend to distance themselves from Indigenous rights discourse as well.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism

“In the Hawaiian context, the focus of some of these nationalists has been misdirected at tribal nations rather than at the federal government. I suggest that this distancing and logic entails the feminization of indigeneity, which is relegated to what is seen as characteristically 'female' by Western norms.”
― J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism