Anti-Pacific Islander Bigotry

ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY Introduction ‘A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike i ka hālau ho ‘okahi. (All knowledge is not taught in the same school.) ‘Ōlelo No‘eau #203 This discussion begins by acknowledging its limits. First, the term “Pacific Islander” commonly functions as a catch-all, referring to any Indigenous Peoples of Oceania, including inhabitants and diaspora. By grouping together politically and culturally distinct Peoples into a single ethnic/racial category, the term is overbroad and often problematic. We adopt this terminology in this report, but we also dissect the “Pacific Islander” category to highlight the diverse experiences of Pacific Islander communities. Second, this report is written in a language that has historically been deployed, with other settler-colonial tools, against Indigenous Peoples to dispossess them of their ancestors’ tongue and their connection to family, culture, and lands. Although relayed in English, this report nonetheless centers our Pacific Islander communities and values. Sites of Bigotry There’s this notion that to understand how to truly be in the world, you can ignore the Pacific Islands. – Teresia Teaiwa Dispossession Since time immemorial, Pacific Islanders have revered Oceania’s vastness. Epeli Hau‘ofa described how Pacific Islanders understand Oceania: “a large world in which peoples and cultures moved and mingled, unhindered by boundaries of the kind erected much later by imperial powers.” Their cosmologies, languages, and traditions evince this deep understanding of their universe as “anything but tiny.”2 To justify “conquest” of the Pacific, colonizers deployed their own narratives about Oceania. They painted a “bleak view” of Pacific Islanders’ existence, depicted through “derogatory and belittling” images. In lockstep with their images, colonizers deployed the “rule of law” to legitimize their interests. In other words, settler-colonialism relies on its own derogatory stories about Oceania and its People (and the stereotypes and assumptions imbued in them) to justify their subordination.3 ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY The objectification of the Pacific Islands as “exotic, feminized possessions of whiteness” pervade narratives told about Oceania and its Peoples. Thus, as Haunani-Kay Trask observed, most Americans claim the Pacific “is theirs: to use, to take, and above all, to fantasize about long after the experience.”4 This “logic of possession” endures as a (racial and gendered) “settler common sense”5 – one encouraging “ignorance of, and yet power over”6 Pacific Islanders. Ostensibly, it also justifies dispossession through militarization, criminalization, tourism, discrimination, and many other forms of colonial violence. “Legal” Status Bigotry manifests differently depending on the ways Pacific Islanders come into contact and interact with federal, state, and local governments and institutions. Individuals’ rights and protections under the United States rely largely on their purported “legal” status, which depends on where they’re born and reside.7 “Legal” status seeks not to define Pacific Islanders on their own terms but through a settlercolonial lens, thereby disrupting communities’ cultural connections and practices, their relationships to ancestral lands, and their health and wellbeing. Ultimately, it cuts away at Pacific Islanders’ selfdetermination by defining them within the restrictions imposed by settler-colonial borders and laws. American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands are “unincorporated territories” of the United States. The Insular Cases, a series of nine U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the early 1900s, recognized two classes of U.S. territories. “Incorporated” territories are those slated for statehood. “Unincorporated” territories remain “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense” and the U.S. constitution does not fully apply to them. To create these legal fictions, the Court ruled that unincorporated island-territories were “inhabited by alien races” and, thus, “governing them according to Anglo-Saxon principles may be for a time impossible.”8 Militarization displays the lasting narrative that, as asserted in The Insular Cases, these territories “belong to, but are not part of ” the United States. For instance, roughly 28 percent of Guam is occupied by the U.S. military, and 1 in 8 CHamoru enlist hoping to advance their wealth and well-being. Guam ranks higher than any state in its per capita enlistment rates (American Samoa consistently ranks first among all states and territories).9 Further, military occupation devastates Guam’s environment, threatening not only natural resources but also the CHamoru traditions and customs intimately tied to them. The territory’s “unincorporated” status stymies CHamoru efforts to exercise self-determination over their lands and protect against further destruction. ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY Hawai‘i was admitted to the Union as a “state” in 1959. In 1893, a U.S. military-backed coup of white sugar barons and businessmen – who by then had control over Hawai‘i’s economy and much of its private property – took Hawai‘i’s Queen as a political prisoner and overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom.10 Against Kānaka Maoli’s staunch opposition, the insurrectionists proclaimed to establish a “Provisional Government” as a step toward the goal of U.S. annexation. Most of the lands stolen from the Kingdom were eventually “ceded” to the state. As a condition of its admission, the State of Hawai‘i holds in trust approximately 1.3 million acres of public lands, including the natural and cultural resources they contain, for the benefit of present and future generations. Despite state constitutional and legislative mandates safeguarding the public land trust, “blood quantum” – the amount of “Hawaiian blood” a person is purported to have – hinders restorative justice efforts by limiting the state and federal governments’ duties to Native Hawaiians. Further, differentiating “benefits” like housing on the basis of blood quantum arbitrarily divides community members and pits them against one another to compete for “scarce” resources. The Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and The Republic of the Marshall Islands have a unique relationship with the United States through the Compacts of Free Association11 – a series of treaties meant, in part, to compensate Islanders for the irreparable harm caused by the U.S. military’s nuclear weapons testing from 1946 to 1958.12 Under COFA, the U.S. enjoys exclusive military access to Compact areas and may demand land for operating its bases. While COFA citizens are not U.S. citizens or nationals, they may freely enter the United States to live, access health care, and work. When forced to migrate to the states, Micronesians are often met with racial animus and discrimination. Sha Ongelungel denounced the way individual Micronesians who get into trouble with the law “quickly get held up as an example of the entire community.”13 For instance, at a sentencing hearing for a young Chuukese man convicted of manslaughter, the state prosecutor urged a Hawai‘i circuit court judge to impose a 20-year prison term “to send a message out to the Micronesian community, mainly the males, [who have] the idea that they can just drink all they want and not be responsible for what happens after that.”14 As Charles R. Lawrence III underscored, our shared understanding of the cultural meaning ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY of those words – “about Micronesians, about their blackness, their foreignness, . . . their less-humanthan-the-rest-of-us-ness” – “reveals the racism we have all internalized and share.”15 It is “evidence of biases, conscious and unconscious, that none of us has escaped.”16 And it “implicates all of us.”17 Erasure Erasure of Pacific Islanders is necessary to bigotry’s survival. “Official” data – like settler-colonial laws and policies – tell stories about Oceania that seek to erase Pacific Islander Peoples.18 Moreover, data inform law and policy decisions, and vice versa. Governments and other institutions too often fail to collect and report accurate data about Pacific Islanders. When data are collected, they’re usually aggregated and – in effect – mask the varied and distinct social, economic, and environmental issues that impact Pacific Islander communities. These data shape public perceptions of Pacific Islanders. For instance, the Office of Management and Budget introduced “Asian Pacific Islander” as an ethnic category in the 1980 U.S. Census. In 1997, OMB separated the category into two – “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” But the terminology “Asian American Pacific Islander” (“AAPI”) persists.19 When aggregated, statistics show that AAPIs boast the highest median household income of all racial/ethnic groups across the U.S. (approximately $75,000). But disaggregated statistics tell a different story: Micronesians, Tongans, and Samoans fall well below the national average of $50,000.20 When data erases Pacific Islanders, they tell stories that ignore ongoing project of colonization. Those stories then justify the continued subordination of Pacific Islanders and even blame them for it, all while concealing what’s really going on – and what’s needed – in their communities. ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY Toward Restorative Justice We must not allow anyone to belittle us again,and take away our freedom. – Epeli Hau‘ofa We share the following framework as a tool for Pacific Islanders and allies to advance their pursuit of restorative justice, rather than proposing broad solutions that risk further overlooking or excluding distinct Pacific Islander communities. To contextualize bigotry within the broader history of settlercolonialism and forge a path toward restorative justice, we turn to “four Indigenous values for contextual legal analysis” – a framework for evaluating the harms of colonization to Indigenous Peoples and whether actions will result in on-the-ground justice for Indigenous communities or only exacerbate colonial harms.21 As outlined by Kapua‘ala Sproat, this contextual framework evaluates four values, or “realms.” All four values are embodied in the human rights principle of self-determination and recognized under international human rights principles as salient dimensions of restorative justice.22 Together, they help us better understand the complex and diverse legal, political, and historical differences and similarities among and between Pacific Islanders. (1) Cultural Integrity. Cultural integrity’s central role in Indigenous life and identity makes weighing cultural impacts a necessary starting point for any contextual legal inquiry involving Indigenous Peoples. Through this realm, we “must explicitly analyze history and socio-economic conditions in the context of cultural integrity and whether actions or decisions support and restore cultural integrity as a partial remedy for past harms, or perpetuate conditions that continue to undermine cultural survival.”23 (2) Lands & Natural Resources. This realm “directly analyze[s] history and current socio-economic conditions with the intent of understanding whether a particular action perpetuates the subjugation of ancestral lands, resources, and rights, or attempts to redress historical injustices in a significant way.” This realm is particularly important given the way historical narratives –particularly those retold through law and policy – have been constructed to justify dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their lands, resources, and cultural identity. For Indigenous Peoples, this realm is the basis of their identity and culture.24 ANTI-PACIFIC ISLANDER BIGOTRY (3) Social Determinants of Health and Well-being. Essential to the continued survival of Indigenous Peoples, social determinants of health and well-being (or “social welfare and development”) are necessarily evaluated through examining history and socio-economic considerations. This realm asks: “does a decision have the potential to improve health, education, and living standards, or not?”25 (4) Self-Governance. Through this fourth realm, contextual analysis inquires whether and how an action or decision impacts Indigenous groups’ ability to exercise their political and cultural sovereignty. Put differently, will a decision perpetuate “historical conditions imposed by colonizers or will [it] attempt to redress the loss of self-governance”?26