“We are Not American”: Competing Rhetorical Archipelagoes in Hawai‘i

Using Haunani-Kay Trask’s “We Are Not American” speech (1993) for the centennial of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom as the impetus, this chapter examines competing “rhetorical archipelagoes” within Hawaiʻi. The chapter offers the term “rhetorical archipelago” as a means for examining how rhetorical symbology and other exigencies determine the unified yet negotiable relationality and borders of the archipelago. Specifically, the chapter examines how genealogy, the Hawaiian flag, and Kamehameha I have been leveraged as symbols to reaffirm the rhetorical archipelagoes of both the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States. It concludes briefly with recent discussions of Hawaiian independence to argue how the Hawaiian rhetorical archipelago continues to destabilize the fixity of US colonial incorporation.