Holders of the indigenous Hawaiian sovereignty viewpoint contend that the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was a fully sovereign, internationally recognized state whose overthrow in 1893 was illegal under both Hawaiian and international law, and that this illegality was never cured by subsequent annexation or statehood. On this view, Native Hawaiians-Kānaka Maoli-retain an inherent and unextinguished right to self-determination, and the proper remedy ranges from restored independence to a government-to-government relationship with the United States. The viewpoint is held by a broad and organizationally diverse movement, including groups such as ka-lahui-hawaii, ka-pakaukau, and the nation-of-hawaii, as well as individual scholars, cultural practitioners, and elected officials.

Central to the viewpoint is the claim that the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was, by the mid-nineteenth century, a modern constitutional monarchy with codified law, a defined territory, a permanent population, and formal diplomatic relations-including treaties-with the United States and other major powers. Advocates hold that the Hawaiian Kingdom was not a colony but a sovereign state in its own right. They point to the events of January 17, 1893, when Queen Liliʻuokalani was removed from power by a committee of American and European businessmen acting with the support of U.S. Minister John L. Stevens and armed U.S. Marines stationed in Honolulu. Proponents emphasize that this removal occurred without a treaty, a vote, or any lawful transfer of power, but through an outside intervention that displaced the sitting monarch and installed a provisional government.

From this, advocates draw the conclusion that because the United States Senate never ratified a treaty of annexation, the subsequent 1898 joint resolution annexing Hawaiʻi-and the 1959 statehood vote that followed-rest on a defective legal foundation that cannot retroactively legitimize the original wrong. Some legal scholars within the movement argue that the absence of a ratified annexation treaty leaves Hawaiʻi's incorporation into the United States legally unresolved. Many in the movement cite the 1993 joint congressional resolution known as the Apology Resolution, signed by President Clinton, as a significant U.S. acknowledgment supporting their position. The resolution apologized to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the 1893 overthrow and characterized that overthrow as illegal, resulting in the suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.

For many advocates, sovereignty is not purely a legal or political abstraction but is bound up with land tenure, language, and cultural survival. They describe the traditional system of communal land stewardship before the Great Mahele of 1848 as relational rather than proprietary-land understood as genealogical, spiritual, and political rather than as mere property. On this view, the loss of national lands following the overthrow and during the territorial period disrupted that system, and restoration efforts properly focus on reclaiming land stewardship and rebuilding land-based communities. This strand of the argument treats sovereignty as simultaneously territorial, cultural, and political, rather than reducible to a single legal claim.

A recurring premise is that Native Hawaiians, as a people, never consented to the loss of their nation and have continuously organized in opposition to it since before the overthrow itself. Advocates point to Hawaiian resistance to the 1887 Bayonet Constitution, which forced King Kalākaua to sign away much of his authority, and to the armed insurrection led by Robert Kalanihiapo Wilcox against that document. They also note that Hawaiian-language newspapers and political organizations (hui) mobilized mass petition drives against annexation in the 1890s, gathering signatures from a large share of the adult Native Hawaiian population-evidence, in this telling, of a sustained national will to remain independent rather than a passive or absent objection.

Although organized resistance to the loss of Hawaiian self-government dates to the 1880s and 1890s, the modern sovereignty movement is generally traced to the late twentieth century. The rise of the civil rights movement and growing international support for Indigenous peoples in the 1960s and 1970s helped spark a second Hawaiian Renaissance, marked by a revival of the Hawaiian language and cultural practices such as hula and traditional wayfinding navigation, and Native activism increasingly targeted militarism and land development. A pivotal early campaign was the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana's decade-long protest against U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Kahoʻolawe, which ultimately succeeded in ending the bombing and returning the island to the state for environmental cleanup. In 1978, the Hawaii State Constitutional Convention established the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and made Hawaiian the state's official language for the first time since the overthrow, even as many Native Hawaiian activists continued to view the 1959 statehood vote itself as part of a history of militarism, imperialism, and colonization rather than a legitimate resolution of the islands' status.

The movement organized rapidly through the late 1980s and 1990s. ka-lahui-hawaii was founded in 1987 under Mililani Trask, and Kekuni Blaisdell's Ka Pākaukau coalition advanced a “nation-within-a-nation” model while convening the 1993 Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kanaka Maoli, an international peoples' tribunal examining the legality of the overthrow. The centennial of the overthrow, in January 1893, became a major mobilizing moment: Ka Lāhui led roughly 10,000 people on a march to ʻIolani Palace marking the hundredth anniversary of the overthrow, while the Ohana Council, headed by Bumpy Kanahele, formally declared independence from the United States on January 16, 1993, on behalf of its members and all Native Hawaiians, invoking the right of self-determination under the United Nations Charter. Later that year, the U.S. Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Apology Resolution, which many advocates regard as a watershed federal acknowledgment of the underlying claim, even as Congress took no further action to remedy it.

In subsequent decades, the movement's energies have extended into environmental and cultural-protection campaigns understood as extensions of the sovereignty claim, most prominently the long-running opposition to construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, framed by activists as a defense of sacred land and of Native self-determination over land use.

• Queen Liliʻuokalani - The last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, deposed in 1893; her continued protests against the overthrow and annexation, including a formal petition to the United States government, are cited by advocates as the founding act of modern Hawaiian sovereignty resistance.
• Mililani Trask - Attorney and founding kiaʻāina (governor) of ka-lahui-hawaii, who has advocated for federal recognition, an end to U.S. control, and the return of ceded lands.
• Kekuni Blaisdell - Physician and founding chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi John Burns School of Medicine; leader of Ka Pākaukau and convener of the 1993 Ka Hoʻokolokolonui Kanaka Maoli tribunal.
• Bumpy Kanahele - Head of state of the Nation of Hawaiʻi (formerly the Ohana Council), descendant of Kamehameha I, and leader of the 1993 occupation that led to the founding of the Puʻuhonua o Waimānalo community.
• Haunani-Kay Trask - Scholar and activist whose writing and political organizing helped articulate the intellectual and cultural foundations of the contemporary movement.
• Noenoe Silva - Scholar of Indigenous politics whose research recovering nineteenth-century Hawaiian-language sources documenting organized resistance to annexation is widely cited by advocates as evidence against the claim that Hawaiians passively accepted annexation.
• Francis Boyle - Professor of international law who has served as a legal consultant to sovereignty organizations, including the Hawaiian Sovereignty Advisory Commission.
• Kahoʻokahi Kanuha and Joshua Lanakila Mangauil - Cultural practitioners and leaders of the movement to protect Mauna Kea, who frame environmental protection as an exercise of sovereignty.

The viewpoint encompasses substantial disagreement over the form sovereignty should take. Some advocate federal recognition through legislation such as the Akaka Bill, which would establish a government-to-government relationship with the United States, while others push for complete independence or a free-association status retaining some ties to the United States. This division tracks roughly onto organizational lines: Ka Lāhui has historically supported federal recognition and inclusion of Native Hawaiians in federal Indian policy alongside the longer-term goal of independence, while it and many other sovereignty groups have opposed the Akaka Bill specifically on the grounds that federal recognition under U.S. Indian policy would subordinate the Kingdom's claim to continuous independent statehood. Groups such as the Nation of Hawaiʻi and Ka Pākaukau favor models-ranging from “nation-within-a-nation” status to full restoration-that preserve the legal claim of unbroken sovereign continuity rather than treating the Hawaiian nation as analogous to a federally recognized tribe.

A second axis of debate concerns tactics and tone. Some factions, including the Ohana Council under Kanahele, have favored direct, confrontational action, including land occupations and public campaigns urging tourists to leave; others, such as Ka Pākaukau under Blaisdell, have emphasized nonviolence and international legal forums, and have at times publicly criticized more confrontational tactics as risking the movement's broader credibility.

A third debate concerns the place of non-Native residents and the broader Hawaiʻi public in a sovereign future. While some advocates frame restoration as belonging specifically to Kānaka Maoli as a matter of indigenous right, others argue that all people rooted in the islands-Native and non-Native alike-have a stake in self-governance and should be invited to help build that future, particularly given shared environmental and economic stakes.

• indigenous-hawaiian-sovereignty - Main topic page
• indigenous-hawaiian-sovereignty-history - Historical overview
• indigenous-hawaiian-sovereignty-viewpoint-debate - Debate page for this viewpoint
• indigenous-hawaiian-sovereignty-statehood-viewpoint - Viewpoint favoring continued U.S. statehood
• indigenous-hawaiian-sovereignty-federal-recognition-viewpoint - Viewpoint favoring tribal-style federal recognition short of independence
• Colonial-Native Relations - History - Broader historical context
• Colonial-Native Relations - Legal Consensus - Legal consensus on colonial-native relations

1. Silva, Noenoe K. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
2. Trask, Haunani-Kay. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi. Rev. ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999.
3. U.S. Congress. “Apology Resolution,” Public Law 103-150, 107 Stat. 1510. November 23, 1993.
4. Nakamura, Kelli Y. “How Native Hawaiians Have Fought for Sovereignty.” History.com, August 1, 2025. https://www.history.com/articles/native-hawaiian-sovereignty-protest.
5. “Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed June 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement.
6. “Hawaii's Search for Sovereignty.” Christian Science Monitor, 1993.
7. “Hawaiian Sovereignty: History, Legal Status, and the Nation of Hawaiʻi.” Nation of Hawaiʻi. Accessed June 2026. https://www.nationofhawaii.org/articles/hawaiian-sovereignty-history-legal-status/.