Fiji paralells

[Jason Fantus <jfantus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think one of the most correct parallel that could be drawn is to that
of Hawaii. I was there about 4 months ago, and it was quite striking. Of
course, you all know that the indigenous Hawaiians are very marginalized
economically. They aren't farmers renting out their land, because Hawaii
has had a hundred years of capitalist investment/construction behind it,
more than just sugar interests. In fact, there is hardly any food or
sugar farming done in Hawaii anymore. Indigenous Hawaiians have recently
become more active in their soverignity movement (it's at
www.hawaii-nation.org I believe), recently having a Supreme court
decision about their status heard. In this case, some white businessman
had sued to get access to the OHA elections (Office of Hawaiian Affairs,
similar to the Office of Indian Afairs for Native Americans) because he
had lived in Hawaii for a long time. The OHA has large amounts of money
to spend (Allocated by the state budget) supposedly in the interests of
"Native Hawaiians", meaning you had ancestors from there before 1900 (or
something like that.) The supreme court upheld the statute for only
native Hawaiians being able to vote in the election, but only 5-4.

What does that have to do in common with Fiji? Well, as I said the
Hawaiians are the poorest people in Hawaii, actually. Similar to the
position of Fijians in Fiji, instead of being subsistence farmers they
are your standard hotel workers, service workers, etc. Hawaii, on a
whole, is very poor. Even large segments of the Asian and White (whites
because of military pay being low) are at the least just above the
poverty line. And Hawaiians only make up around 10% of the State's
population nowdays. I could go into it a bit more, but this is just an
observation...barring all the coups and other recent events (and
historical events) it's a good show of a nation colonized by another
(cuz Native Americans were never colonized, just moved to reservations
or killed) leaving the native population in very low standing
economically and being a low perecentage of persons in their own
homeland. I would think support for Hawaiian self-determination is
something Marxists in Hawaii (if there are any!) could use as a great
agitational issue, and to try and draw the working class in the area
(especially Hawaiians) away from the "sovereign, but similar" argument
their current leaders are pushing.