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Hawaii is the most recent of the 50 U.S. states (joined the Union on August 21, 1959), and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean.
Hawaii’s diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches, oceanic surroundings, and active volcanoes make it a popular destination for tourists, (wind) surfers, biologists, and volcanologists alike. Due to its mid-Pacific location, Hawaii has many North American and Asian influences along with its own vibrant native culture. Hawaii has over a million permanent residents along with many visitors and U.S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oahu.
- No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me, but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt me sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides, other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garlanded craigs, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore; its remote summits floating like islands about the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitude; I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago. (by Mark Twain in the 1981 book "Hawaii invites you" by John Tsukano)
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- I look forward to signing this significant piece of legislation, which provides marriage equity and fully recognises and protects religious freedoms.
- Governor Neil Abercrombie on equal rights in Hawaii, quoted on BBC News, "Hawaii Senate votes to legalise same-sex marriage", November 12, 2013.
- There’s no doubt that the activist Hawaii court’s [February] 7 decision sets a dangerous precedent. The justices’ blatant disregard for the superiority of the Supreme Court and the Constitution not only poses a grave threat to Americans’ rights. But, if left unchecked, it could easily inspire other blue states that disagree with the nation’s founding principles to defy much more than the Second Amendment.
- Jordan Boyd, "Hawaii Court Gives Middle Finger To SCOTUS, Claims ‘Spirit Of Aloha’ Overrides Constitution", The Federalist (February 8, 2024)
- I visited Hawai'i as a tourist on summer vacations starting in 1982, felt the spiritual power of the land, fell in love with the rainbow of cultures in Hawai'i and especially with the Hawaiian music, hula kahiko, and other traditionally Hawaiian cultural elements that define the core of what makes Hawai'i the most wonderful place in the world. I therefore decided to live permanently in Hawai'i as soon as I was eligible to receive a teachers pension. Accordingly I moved permanently to Hawai'i in 1992. My reasons for moving here were primarily spiritual and cultural, including a great love and admiration for Hawaiian culture and language. At that point I had not yet studied Hawaiian history very deeply, and knew very little about the sovereignty movement. But I assumed that the people who produced such beautiful culture, language, and music must also be right about their view of history and their demands for sovereignty. I mistakenly assumed that most ethnic Hawaiians agreed with the Hawaiian sovereignty activists and the activists' views on Hawaiian history and sovereignty. I mistakenly assumed that the beautiful culture, language, music, and hula were somehow inherently related to the political agenda of the activists. That's why, immediately upon moving to Hawai'i permanently, I not only began learning Hawaiian language and studying the history, but I also began attending Hawaiian sovereignty meetings and political rallies.
- We favor keeping Hawai'i as a single, unified political entity as one of the States of the United States of America. We oppose partitioning the State of Hawai'i along racial or hereditary lines. We oppose creating any political subdivisions where members of any racial or ethnic group would have legally recognized supremacy of voting rights or property rights. We oppose seceding from the United States to create an independent nation of Hawai'i, or asking the United States to withdraw from Hawai'i... All humans are inherently equal, and should be treated equally by government under the law. A colorblind society need not be colorless. Equality provides a guarantee of fundamental fairness, allowing multicultural pluralism to thrive. Political unity supports cultural diversity. Hawai'i is a rainbow of colors and cultures, each beautiful and unique. Wouldn't that rainbow look weird if the colors were placed as thin stripes in separate parts of the sky? I am opposed to racial separatism. I am opposed to ethnic nationalism. And I speak on behalf of many ethnic Hawaiians who feel intimidated by the activists... The African-American civil rights movement succeeded, as my friends and I are now succeeding, by speaking truth to power, standing up for what's right, and using the courts when necessary to obtain justice. Like those activists, I too am descended from people who once were indigenous. My native, aboriginal ancestors practiced slavery and human sacrifice, and used clubs and spears against their opponents. Some parts of history are best left in the past. The people of Hawai'i are thoroughly intermarried and intermingled. We live, work, pray, and attend school side by side in the most racially integrated society in all of America. What history and the free choices of people have joined together, let not politicians and racist demagogues rip asunder. Support equality, unity, brotherhood, and aloha for all.
- Kenneth R. Conklin, "Aloha For All - Basic Principles" (January 2002)
- Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it. The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush.
- Kenneth R. Conklin, as quoted in "Hawaii Suffering From Racial Prejudice" (30 August 2009), by Larry Keller, Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center
- The lesson of [the story about the Kalaupapa peninsula lepers’ colony of Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi, and Belgian Catholic priest Father Damien De Veuster] is that living together in peace cannot be taken for granted.
Even those who share a misfortune can ultimately not be able to live in peace together unless they discover again the role of the conscience.- Massimo Introvigne, "How to Live Together in Peace: From Father Damien of Molokai to Tai Ji Men", Bitter Winter (May 2022)
- For years, Hawaiians have avoided talk of race and hate crimes. That doesn't mean the island state doesn't have a problem.
- Larry Keller, "Hawaii Suffering From Racial Prejudice" (30 August 2009), Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center
- …when Hawaiians say they're being local, the Shakespeare said be local, they're trying to reconnect their roots to the earth and their roots to their ancestors.
- 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)
- In fact, after a revolution overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, anti-monarchists founded a constitutional Republic with full international diplomatic recognition that was to govern in place of the deposed monarchy. This Republic then offered a treaty of annexation to the United States, which Congress and then President McKinley accepted... Thus, claims to private property, in the eyes of these Hawaiian Supremacists, are invalid. Of course, such claims again tend to ignore historical reality, for example, the fact that before the United States annexed Hawaii, 'government lands were held on behalf of all people, [while] Crown lands were held by the office of the head of state.' At no point were these lands the property of a single race or ethnic group.
- Ryan O'Donnell, "Hate America Professor" (25 June 2003), FrontPage Magazine
- But in the West today public places are no longer named after military victories. Our war memorials depict not proud commanders on horseback but weeping mothers, weary soldiers, or exhaustive lists of names of the dead. Military men are inconspicuous in public life, with drab uniforms and little prestige among the hoi polloi. In London’s Trafalgar Square, the plinth across from the big lions and Nelson’s column was recently topped with a sculpture that is about as far from military iconography as one can imagine: a nude, pregnant artist who had been born without arms and legs. The World War I battlefield in Ypres, Belgium, inspiration for the poem “In Flanders Fields” and the poppies worn in Commonwealth countries on November 11, has just sprouted a memorial to the thousand soldiers who were shot in that war for desertion—men who at the time were despised as contemptible cowards. And the two most recent American state mottoes are Alaska’s “North to the Future” and Hawaii’s “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness” (though when Wisconsin solicited a replacement for “America’s Dairyland,” one of the entries was “Eat Cheese or Die”).
- Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (2012)
- As an island state, we are aware that we are all visitors in the natural environment that surrounds us, and that unfortunate incidents such as this one can occur. We are committed to furthering research efforts that will help guide effective management actions in the interest of safety.
- Deborah Ward, of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, quoted on BBC News, "German Hawaii shark bite victim Jana Lutteropp dies", August 22, 2013.
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