Feeble Echoes of the Heart: A Postcolonial Legal Struggle in Hawai`i

Abstract

This article analyzes the legal discourse of native Hawaiians opposed to proposed federal recognition. We argue that this contemporary contest over the means of self-determination reveals the ways in which law and rights provide inescapable idioms for indigenous sovereignty at the same time that they form the primary obstacles that must be overcome. Strategic maneuvering through this postcolonial legal dilemma is shown to produce new ideas of law's authority, challenging dominant notions of place and time, as well as the performance of legal recognition.