This alone should raise the priority of preserving the Hawaiian ethny, but there are other intriguing features of the Hawaiians. One feature most particularly worthy of note: Herskovits, M.J. (1930). "The Anthropometry of the American Negro". New York: Columbia University Press, ranked Hawaiians as having the largest cranial capacity of any racial or geographic group. This sort of research -- ranking ethnies by brain size -- is quite taboo subsequent to WW II, but it is so due to supposed support for white supremacy. Are we supposed to believe Hawiians are "white"? A few members of the LDS might classify them so but this is hardly a case for white supremacy. Cranial capacity is a controversial biometric but, it is clearly a most fascinating one. Perhaps Herskovits even mismeasured cranial capacity due to sampling error or due to the way he calculated it. Nevertheless, Hawaiians appear at an extrema of a human biometric, as well as the social metric of wartime casualty risk, and are quite limited in their population.
There are undoubtedly many other fascinating dimensions to the Hawaiian ethny that could be describe but these alone are sufficient to raise the priority given to their recent call for greater self-determination.
Given that Hawaiians have less sovereignty than other indigenous ethnies of the United States, and those ethnies have reservations set aside for them -- albeit with limited self-determination -- it makes quite a bit of sense to set aside one or more land areas for a Hawaiian reservation. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle supports the call for greater Hawaiian self-determination so it seems there may be an opportunity for the exploitation of the recent Supreme Court decision recognizing greater local authority over decisions concerning eminent domain, for the preservation and greater self-determination of the Hawaiian ethny.
