Aloha to the US: Is Hawai'i an occupied nation?

An election has highlighted the deep disagreement between native Hawaiians over what the future should look like. For some, it's formal recognition of their community and a changed relationship within the US. Others want to leave the US entirely - or more accurately, want the US to leave Hawai'i.

When US officials came onto the stage that June night, they must have known they would be hearing from a hostile audience.

Speaker after speaker came up to the microphone, decrying a rigged process and an occupying government with no legitimacy.

"We do not need you here. This is our country."

"Get out of our house! Go home."

The officials weren't hearing from foreign nationals, but a crowd of citizens in Honolulu, Hawai'i. Someone began singing the opening words to Hawaii Ponoʻī - a national anthem of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the state's official song.

"Hawaii ponoʻī (Hawaii's own), Nānā i kou moʻī (Be loyal to your king)."

Many in the room at the Hawaiian state capitol began singing along.

This was the first in a series of 2014 hearings by the US interior department about whether it should offer a path to federal recognition to the Native Hawaiian community. Such a path has been long open to Native American groups on the mainland, but not to the descendants of Hawaii's indigenous people.

A year later, the interior department has made it official - publishing a proposed "procedures for re-establishing a formal government-to-government relationship".

The first ballots to elect delegates to a convention, or 'aha, for this purpose have now gone out in Hawai'i. Forty delegates from across the islands will meet in February to discuss whether there should be a Native Hawaiian government and what it should look like in the 21st Century.

But not everyone is happy with the 'aha. Some of those who would be eligible to vote, or become delegates themselves, have said they will boycott it. One delegate candidate has already dropped out, calling the 'aha "not pono" (upright or fair).

Federal recognition has been a wish of some activists for decades, but previous attempts to do so in Congress have failed. A prominent Hawaiian in Washington, however, has moved the process forward.

Barack Obama publicly ed the last attempt to gain the recognition option through Congress. Like other issues that have been stymied in the polarised legislature, the istration has now decided to take action through the executive branch.

But for those who see Obama as their best chance, time is running out - his term ends just over a year from now.

Native American tribal governments are a nation within a nation. Such governments hold their own elections, run police departments, courts and other internal infrastructure on reservation land. American Indians are citizens of their tribe, the US and the state where they live.

But tribal nations are still "domestic dependent nations" and the boundaries of their sovereignty have moved based on court rulings and legislation.

Recognition would define native Hawaiians as a separate political entity - protecting many of the federal programmes currently provided to native Hawaiians, like favourable housing loans, a land trust programme, health care, educational and cultural grants.

It would also allow for an element of economic independence, although one industry that has enriched a few Native American tribes - gambling - is banned in Hawai'i.

But all of this is predicated on the idea the US government is the rightful authority in Hawai'i, something a small but increasing number of Hawaiians no longer believe.

Williamson Chang, a professor of law at University of Hawai'i, is one of those Hawaiians. He argues under international law, one country can only annex another by treaty - a document which both parties sign. This is how the entire rest of the US was formed - the Louisiana Purchase, the treaties with Native American tribes, the addition of the Republic of Texas. Anything else - including what happened in Hawaii - is an occupation, Chang says.

Hawaii occupies a unique place in US history - a set of islands 2,500 miles (4,023km) away from the mainland where in 1893, white businessmen and sympathetic politicians, with help from the US military, overthrew a constitutional monarchy.

The coup leaders hoped to be immediately annexed, but President Grover Cleveland rejected the idea, calling US involvement in the overthrow an "embarrassment".

Three years later, a treaty failed in the Senate after lobbying by the deposed Queen Liliuokalani as well as tens of thousands of petitions from Hawaiians opposing the move.

But the next year, with fighting in the Pacific during the Spanish-American war and a new president in office, Congress ed a t resolution annexing Hawai'i. US military might and a welcoming government in the Republic of Hawaii helped complete the process.

But if countries could be simply annexed by another's legislature, Chang says, "Hawai'i by its legislature could declare the United States was part of it."

While the US has formally apologised for their role in the overthrow of the Kingdom - a 1993 Congressional resolution itted as much - there's been no word from the US government about whether the annexation was legal.

"There are definitely flaws in the way in which Hawaii and its lands were transferred to the US," Melody Kapilialoha Mackenzie, a professor of law at the University of Hawaii, says.

"But for me, the question is - where do you take those claims - is there any forum in which that voice can be heard">