An old axiom tells us that "What's good for the goose, is good for the gander." It cautions against the hypocrisy of favoring one thing for ourselves (the geese) and objecting to the same thing for others (the ganders). Perhaps believing in equal treatment for geese and ganders tell us something about how we should feel about self-determination for others, as well as ourselves.

As the text notes, the United States and most other countries were born amid nationalistic assertions of a claimed right to self-determination. Since then, President Woodrow Wilson and other U.S. leaders have also lauded the importance of the principle of self-determination.

It is difficult to argue with such a lofty principle in the abstract. Harder, though, is supporting it when it threatens to dismember your own country. For instance, if you are an American, how would you feel about returning Hawaii to its original owners, Native Hawaiians, and granting it independence? Hawaii was a sovereign country until it was incorporated into the United States in 1898 against the will of its native people. An active Hawaiian independence movement exists, and when a referendum was held in 1996 among Native Hawaiians about their preferences for the future, 73% voted for independence.

There are other groups living in the United States who were also incorporated into the country without their consent. Aleuts, Alaskan Indians, and other Native Alaskans were first dominated by Russia, then sold to the United States in 1867. Mexico once held all or part of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, and Utah until the United States seized those territories by war in 1848 and involuntarily converted the Mexicans living there into Mexican Americans. Now the ancestors of those first Mexican Americans, supplemented by more recent immigrants from Mexico, are a growing part of the populations of those states and could one day be a majority in some of them. Would they have a claim to self-determination?s

What Do You Think?
Is the right to self-determination claimed by American colonial geese in 1776 equally a right for Native Hawaiian ganders today? The same question can be asked about Native Alaskans and Mexican Americans, but for now, concentrate on writing the policy script for the future of Hawaii.