Sovereignty is Not a Federal Program

On July 5th, 2026, the Libertarian National Committee unanimously adopted the Resolution on Tribal and National Sovereignty. We covered it on this blog and were proud to do so.  Now, party leadership is telling our members to mobilize behind a group whose goal is increase permanent federal control of land. Hawaiʻi will not be taking the bait. We’ve been sold this trade before.

The resolution acknowledged the inherent sovereignty of Native American tribal nations and the Hawaiian Kingdom and affirms that sovereignty came first and outranks the jurisdiction Washington would claim. It grounded that in the federal government's own admission, Public Law 103-150, the 1993 Apology Resolution, where Congress conceded the 1893 overthrow was illegal and that the Kingdom never relinquished its claims.

The resolution closed by encouraging Libertarians to explore how best to empower these nations and the Hawaiian Kingdom to reclaim their independence. That is a truly libertarian position. Liberty is inherent, not a gracious offering granted by the government.

Letter From LNC Vice Chair

National Vice Chair Amanda Griffiths and Region 9 Representative Alex Flores issued a joint statement to subscribers on the reduction of Bears Ears National Monument, pointing members to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance for demonstrations and possible legal action. The exchange that followed can be read on the LNC Public List. 

SUWA is a Salt Lake City nonprofit, not a tribal organization. Its signature project is America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which would designate roughly 8 million acres of Utah land as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System “for the benefit of present and future generations of people in the United States”. 

Wilderness designation is the most restrictive classification the federal government applies. Once land goes in, it rarely comes back out. It requires no sale, transfer, or return to private native hands. That’s the whole point.

The Libertarian Party of Hawaii platform takes a blunt and bold stance on such actions. Plank 1 says the proper role of government is protecting property rights from force and fraud, and that the government should not become a forceful aggressor against those rights. 

Then it goes further. Where any individual or agency, public or private, has violated a right to property, the platform says the property should be restored to its rightful owner. Restored. Not designated, co-managed, or held in trust by the party that took it. 

Plank 2 opposes government action granting monopoly privileges to favored persons at the expense of competition, and our preamble opens on “a world where individuals are sovereign over their own lives”. 

Mere days after telling the world that sovereignty predates and supersedes federal jurisdiction, the national Party is asking members to volunteer in support of a federal land grab.

Hawaii Must Break the Cycle

Hawaii knows all too well about what happens when native peoples trade in sovereignty. We have receipts going back almost two centuries.

The Māhele of 1848 was sold to us as protection. The system included written deeds and secure titles proposed as a modern system that would keep Hawaiians on Hawaiian land. By the time the Kuleana Act of 1850 finished its work, native Hawaiians held less than one percent of it, and foreigners had taken most of the rest inside one generation.

Annexation was worse. No treaty of cession ever passed the Senate, so Congress used a joint resolution instead, and roughly 1.8 million acres of Crown and Government lands transferred with no Hawaiian consent and no compensation. Congress admitted all of it in 1993.

Then came the “fixes”. Prince Kūhiō brought home the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act in 1920, and with it came roughly 200,000 acres of mostly marginal ground plus a 50 percent blood quantum rule that Congress added. More than 29,000 people sit on that waitlist today, and people die on it every year. Statehood added the ceded lands trust in 1959, which mainly produced decades of litigation over who owes what to whom. The attempted Akaka Bill spent twelve years trying to convert an independent national claim into a domestic dependent one, and plenty of Kanaka killed it year after year because they saw exactly what it was.

Every one of those arrangements was sold to Hawaiians as help and ended with less Hawaiian control over Hawaiian land. The pattern is undeniable history. It is the reason Kanaka should not touch federal “recognition” with a ten foot pole. The national party should not be telling our members to line up behind an organization whose stated institutional goal is to seize millions of acres. 

We Support True Sovereignty

We are not indifferent to what happened at Bears Ears. Land was taken by force from the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute peoples, and a president moved a line on a map without asking any of them. That is wrong.

The libertarian remedy is to transfer the title and give the land back. If the five nations want it held in common, that is their call to make as owners. A monument designation is a fluffy proclamation, revocable by the next pen that touches it. An advisory commission is nothing but a chair at a table the federal government owns. Neither one is sovereign. These options are both merely custody agreements with a fancy label attached.

We support the July 5th resolution, and take its closing charge for independent sovereignty seriously.

Here is what we would like to see of the LNC:

1. Don't direct members to any outside organization without researching and disclosing that organization's actual policy program.

2. Help the five nations at Bears Ears advocate for the return of title rather than the restoration of a federal designation.

3. Stop using the word sovereignty to sell federal custody. Hawaii knows the difference intimately.

For our Kanaka reading this: nothing coming out of Washington under the banner of recognition has ever come without a price attached to it. Hawaiians cannot make deals with the same government that took the land in order to get the land back. 

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono.

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