The Apology Resolution, 1993

One hundred years after the overthrow, President Bill Clinton signed a document that the United States government had never produced before. On November twenty-third, nineteen ninety-three, he signed Public Law one hundred three, one hundred fifty, known as the Apology Resolution, a joint resolution of Congress formally acknowledging that the United States had participated in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, that the Native Hawaiian people had never relinquished their sovereignty, and that they had never directly consented to annexation.

The text of the resolution was precise in what it acknowledged. It stated that the overthrow was in violation of treaties between the two nations and of international law. It named the role of United States Minister John L. Stevens and the United States Marines who had landed at his request. It used the word unlawful.

It was also precise in what it did not do. The Apology Resolution carried no enforcement mechanism. It did not restore land. It did not restore governance. It did not establish a legal framework for reparations. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs described it as a necessary acknowledgment and an insufficient remedy, the beginning of a conversation that Congress had declined to continue.

In the years after the resolution, Congress considered but never passed the Akaka Bill, which would have created a federal recognition process for Native Hawaiians comparable to the framework that governs American Indian tribal nations. The question of what recognition would actually mean, and who holds legitimate authority over the islands, remains the central unresolved legal and political question in the state of Hawaii.

The resolution was signed in the same building where, in eighteen ninety-eight, Congress had voted to annex the islands in the first place.