Supreme Court, international courts

Keanu Sai

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KEANU SAI: What we find is that the issue that really is the important issue between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States is really that of an international dispute, dealing with treaties. We're talking ramifications of these treaty violations and also working toward reconciliation and possible reparations.

And on August 6, 1998, I filed in the United States Supreme Court a complaint against the United States government alleging treaty violations on the treaties that we have presently with the United States.

On August 6, 1998, on the eve of the centennial of the purported annexation of Hawai‘i to the United States, and on behalf of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its subjects, I filed in the United States Supreme Court here in Washington, D.C. a complaint against the United States and its president.

The essence of the complaint states that the treaty and conventions of 1849, 1875 and 1884 are in full force and vigor, and as such, it is requesting the Supreme Court to order the president as the chief executive officer of the United States government, to follow United States constitutional and international law and begin the complete withdrawal of the United States and its laws from the Hawaiian islands, and to assist in the ongoing transition and reinstatement of the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom as called for by President Grover Cleveland over 105 years ago.

The complaint is essentially directing the attention of the United States Supreme Court justices towards a gross violation of United States constitutional and international law.

In actuality the complaint is an offering to the citizens of the United States, through their highest court, the opportunity to right a wrong.

As a result of that, the clerk of the United States had refused to docket that complaint, because he received verbal instructions by the justices of the Supreme Court not to admit this onto the docket.

As a result, they chose not to engage, which meant that we exhausted our remedies within the United States judicial system. And no one can say that we did not offer them the opportunity.

Well, this gave rise to a case that is presently going to the Hague, which is the permanent court of arbitration, in the Netherlands.

The importance of an award is that the United States of America and all of the major countries throughout the world, their own laws have to acknowledge the awards being issued by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. So there's no problem there.

The first stage is going to be the verification of the territorial sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom over the Hawaiian islands. That award is very important because that will go to the legal standing of the Hawaiian Kingdom as a nation state, which is very important.