There is a growing resentment among Native Hawaiians over the "occupation" of Hawaii by the U.S. Some have called for a revolution, while others have looked to treaties and other legal documents to see if they can regain control over the islands.
This seems rather crazy because there's no way the U.S. is going to give up one of its states no matter what your document says. If the Hawaiians had such a claim, then the entire mainland U.S. and Alaska would have to go as well since none of the land was unoccupied when the first British, Spanish and French people arrived and conquered the lands.
What is funny, though, is that these Native Hawaiians, most are not "pure" Hawaiian, don't want to be called Native Americans because they don't believe their "kingdom" is part of America. Well, it's called America now, and I'm sure the Navajo and Seminoles didn't call their home America before we arrived either.
Besides, what exactly does "pure" mean? It is unclear to me since even the natives came to Hawaii from several different places over the course of a thousand years. The idea of "native" is fraught with peril because all lands are occupied by people who arrived and then stayed. The Native Hawaiians may have come from Polynesia, but where did the Polynesians originally come from? And Polynesia isn't one place. People have always moved across the Earth, just as the Hawaiians did in their canoes, and conquered various lands to make their homelands. At what point are the newly arrived people converted to natives?
The Kingdom of Hawaii united the various island under the leadership of Kamehameha in the late 1700s. But it was united through the power of western cannons and guns. No land appears to have a pristine heritage in which the "first people" arrived in unoccupied lands and then retained that land through modern times without warfare.
And what is "native" anyway? If being born somewhere makes you a native, then I'm a Native Hawaiian because I was born in Hawaii. But these self-appointed Hawaiians would never agree that I'm a native because my parents or grandparents came from somewhere else. With this reasoning, I must be a native Italian, native German and native Brit all in one? It's funny because I couldn't even find my way around Italy, Germany or the U.K. You know why? Because I'm not from there - my ancestors were. I'm from Hawaii.
What's interesting is that the Native Hawaiian movement doesn't latch on to the cash cow of being called a group of Native Americans.
Locals in Hawaii love to gamble. (Heck, they eat more Spam per capita than any other state, so you can see the risks they'll take!) They travel to Las Vegas routinely, even devotedly. The California hotel is geared towards people from Hawaii, even though the population of Hawaii is not that great. But they have a big presence in Las Vegas.
Locals also love fireworks, mostly due to the large number of Asians who continue the New Years firecracker celebration. It even seems that a lot of locals smoke cigarettes, too.
These Native Hawaiian groups should visit Washington State and see the sort of riches they could have by going with the flow instead of fighting against it. Gambling, cigarettes and fireworks are the province and prosperity of tribal governments. It might even help pick up Hawaiian tourism, too!